Just said goodbye to my little brother. He’s off to his hotel and then tomorrow he’s on a plane back to his family in Wisconsin. It was such a welcome experience for Julie and I to spend time in Australia with Mark. Here’s a brief run down of the two days I saw him this week…enjoy!
Tuesday I saw him twice. I met him, and his Australian sales representative (Andy Knox) for lunch at Jamie’s Italian. Andy is a true Scot complete with a heavy Scot accent with quirky Australian words tossed in for good measure. He’s somewhere in his early 60’s and just a nice guy. Good sense of humour, hearty laugh, love of life. A real pleasure to join for lunch. How nice is it that we got to break bread together at Jamie’s Italian! I’ve long been a fan of Jamie Oliver though I’ve never eaten at one of his restaurants — I’ll be back.
Any restaurant where you get to sit next to hanging meat is a good place to eat!
For the starter course, we shared a bread starter, some baked mushrooms, and some crab and avocado bruschetta. All was truly wonderful — hearty, earthy and delicious. For our mains we each ordered something different though we sampled off each other’s plates. I had a truffle risotto (I know, right!?), Mark had a wild boar lasagne, and Andy had a pasta dish with venison and wild boar. We added a couple of sides for the table; posh fries which is basically french fries with parmesan and truffle oil (again, I know right!?) and some polenta with rosemary and parmesan. The sides and the mains were also wonderful. Finally, we also ordered dessert even though we were all pretty stuffed. I had tiramisu, Mark had lemon meringue pie and Andy had a brownie dessert. Truthfully, dessert was pretty marginal although Andy did manage to eat his entire brownie dessert. My tiramisu was one bite and done - really pretty bad.
I left Mark with Andy (they have to work after all) and headed home to await my grocery delivery. Mark wrapped his day and headed over to our place around 5:30 to spend the evening with us. I had the rather unenviable task of cooking dinner that followed Jamie Oliver. Suffice to say that no matter what I cooked I was not going to compete with Mr. Oliver. Still, my salmon with rhubarb sauce was pretty decent and the evening was simply great. Having my brother for 5 hours is something I don’t often get to enjoy and I relished every moment. Julie made a wonderful dessert to end the evening (Amaretti Peach parfait) and Mark headed out on the 9:43 ferry.
Today, Thursday, Mark returned to Sydney from Brisbane and made it over to the house for dinner around 6:00 pm. I made a shrimp, feta, pasta dish with peas and we had baclava for dessert. Julie made it home around 8:30 to join us for an hour and a half before Mark headed out again on the 9:43 ferry to his hotel. Again, it was wonderful to hang with my bro!
That’s about it. One of the things I love about Mark is the lengths he will go to, and the distance he will travel, to stay connected with family. That might be us in Sydney, Jenna in LA, frequent trips to the parents, you name it… he puts in the time and effort to be the best of our family. I’m blessed to have him in my life.
Bed time for me… have a good day blog stalkers.
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