The Sydney Global Food Challenge

One of the bet things about travelling is treating your tastebuds to foreign tastes. from the best Piri Piri prawns to the most bland maize meal cuisine is something that can define an experience and is often the thing that lingers longest in the memory.

With Jr on the way it's looking like a long time before the snow family will taste the delights of Sashimi in Kyoto or a juicy steak in Buenos Aries. Fortunately Sydney’s diverse population provides the perfect alternative, a challenge to keep the hungry traveller well feed, a check list to end all checklists, the Sydney global food challenge.

OK so Thai is going to be pretty easy, as is Mexican but beyond the classics is going to get a little harder. So where in Sydney can you get good Rwandan or Turkmenistanian? This is not a rhetorical question. I need help....

So far in the last month we have checked off
French - Essiette
Lebanese - Emma’s on liberty
Thai - Thup Tip Siam
Greek - Mediterranean
Columbian - San Jose
Czech - Prague

We have some restaurants lined up
Hungarian - Corner 75
Brazilian - Casa Brasil
Spanish - La Cantina
Macedonian - Lukas
Austrian - Una's
Vietnamese - Phuong
Egyptian - Radio Cairo


Any other suggestions?? or do you have a better suggestion for one of the cuisines above?

Want to join us for some Iraqi in Fairfield?

Even if we can't have a schnitzel in Vienna at least we will be able to hook into one of these bad boys soon....

Dirtworks 100

5.30, alarm goes after a restless night in a cold cold tent. I momentarily toy with the idea of dencorubing whist in my sleeping bag. I start asking myself why didn't I challenge myself more when I was young and resilient rather than waiting until my 30's? After a few bits of fruit and a B&E roll I made my way to the start line for the Dirtworks 100km race. I was feeling strong.

The first 10kms was pretty flat and then the punishment began. I rode a small portion of the ridiculously steep first climb before running into a logjam of people walking up the hill. To be honest I was relieved to have an excuse to get off. Once of the top of the hill we were speeding along a ridge with fantastic views in all directions. Things were going swimmingly until the 32 km mark when my rear derailleur hanger snapped. Without a derailleur you don't have anything to tension the chain and you effectively lose peddle power. 32kms back to the start line or 18kms to the half way mechanic station??? I made the decision to soldier on to half way with the hope that they had a spare hanger. I didn't mind the uphills and of course you can roll down hill but pushing a bike along the flat with hundreds of people flying past sucks. Just under 3 hours and two massive blisters later I made it to the Mechanic station only to find that that had run out of the hanger that I needed. The only thing left to do was remove some of the links from my chain shortening it to get the required tension. The only problem with that solution is that rather than having 21 gears I now had 1.

With the 72km cut off time looming and with everyone else a good few hours ahead of me I ripped in to the last 50km hell bent on finishing the 100km. The one gear that I was stuck in was 10th/21 which basically meant it was too high for most of the hills and too low for the flats and down hills. I normally peddle at about 90rpm which equated to 16km/h in 10th gear so my top speed on the flats, with a rpm of 110 was about 18km as opposed to the usual 30-35km. I made the 72km mark with time to spare and lined up the next obstacle, a 50m long 1ft wide bridge. You had the option of walking or riding across. by the time I got there 60 of about 600 riders had ridden and 11 of them had fallen in. After double checking my phone and car key were properly ziplocked I set off at a leisurely 16km/h. It doesn't sound hard but keeping a bike straight for 50m is pretty difficult and for a few split seconds I thought I was a goner but fortuity I made it. Unfortunately 10th gear wasn't great for riding up the sand bank on the other side and the cheers of the onlookers turned to jeers as I pancacked meters after getting off the bridge...

The last 30kms was extremely gruelling and I began to cramp all over, even muscles that I didn't know I had began to cramp. I eventually rolled into St Albans 8 and a half hours after I had started. The sense of achievement was huge.

Goosebumps

was doing some random web surfing and I found this little clip. By the end I had a massive smile and Goosebumps and I was calculating how many frequent flyer point I need to earn to get to J'burg.....

http://theworldgame.sbs.com.au/webjunk/4270/

If this video doesn't get you going you're either Japanese or not into sports.