Tazziberry pancakes

It's a cold, Autumn day in Tasmania; it has been raining on-and-off all day, with very strong and gusty winds. In fact, there's a "Sheep Graziers Warning" today - get your little sheep inside or tied down, farmers!! Here's the quote from the weather page: "These conditions may cause a risk to recently shorn sheep and newborn lambs until later in the day". Brrr. To brighten up our morning, celebrate fall, and to welcome Reed home after several grueling days of Ultimate frisbee, I made Tazziberry pancakes for breakfast. What is a Tazziberry, you ask? Good question. And in fact, I didn't know until I looked it up myself. I purchased a carton of gorgeous, red Tazziberries (they look like a brilliantly red blueberry) at the market on Saturday, after sampling one and declaring it phenomenally delicious. After a little search around the internet, I found the webpage of the growers I bought my Tazziberries from:
http://www.tazziberry.com/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=1&MMN_position=20:20
Turns out they are actually a plant native to Chile (there called 'Chilean berries', go figure...) but that grow well in the Tasmanian climate (read: cold, rainy, windy; very similar to Chile...). Their description of the berries' flavor is unsatisfactory, but, for the life of me I can't figure out how to describe them! They have a very fragrant, floral taste, and to me, almost a hint of vanilla or butterscotch. Texturally they aren't overwhelming - they are less juicy than a blueberry, but the exquisite flavor more than makes up for it. And adding them to pancakes? A culinary win. So along with roaring winds and rain, Tasmanian Autumn also brings us a delicious gift: the Tazziberry.

Cadbury Creme Egg withdrawl...

A wise friend (and fellow Creme Egg fiend) recently told me "Dude, I stock up on Cadbury Creme eggs before Easter, don't you?". Ummm...no. And I have no idea why not. And I wish I had thought of it sooner. A fun fact for those of you in the US - Easter is a big deal here. A REALLY big deal. As in the major grocery stores are all CLOSED on Good Friday (as we learned last year, d'oh!) and there are aisles upon aisles of chocolate goodies in the stores for, oh, roughly the 4 months preceding Easter. I saw (and purchased, and ate) my first Cadbury Creme egg this year on January 8th, people! And, as my parents (who visited in February!) can attest to, there are some seriously crazy Easter goodies in the stores. There are several 1 kg (One whole kilo!!!) hollow chocolate eggs roughly the size of your head available, as well as endless other bunnies and eggs, both filled and non-filled varieties available. The crazy thing is, that, inspite of the fact that Woolworth's had roughly 4 full aisles filled with Easter candy, the chocolate just DISAPPEARS the day before Easter. However, the chocolates always disappear in this order:
1) Creme eggs
2) Mini-eggs
3) Ginormous head-sized eggs
4) Caramel eggs (who eats those, anyway?)
By the time I realize that Easter is upon us and I get it together to get to the store, my creme eggs are all gone.
Until this year.
Last Friday I stopped at a random Petrol station (yes, I live in Australia now) and was just about to hand over my Eftpos card to pay for my fill-up, when a glint of red and blue caught my eye....CREME EGGS!!!! We're talking two full weeks after Easter! In a little basket, on the counter!! I practically snatched my card out of the poor shopkeeper's hand and shouted "No wait!! I need some of those!!". And perhaps the saddest thing about this story?.....I only bought two. So now I am sitting on my "stockpile" of two eggs. How long will they last? Who knows? Some day I hope to heed my wise friend's advice and stock up on Creme Eggs, no matter how gluttonous I appear.

Guess I still don't have a hang of this blogging thing...

So yeah...I guess I'm finding it difficult, what with all the other mediums for technological outreach (e.g., Facebook, Flickr, and the ancient art of email...) to keep going with the blog. Plus, I may have limited myself a bit to only talking about food....But I am here, yet again, to try to get back on the blogging! Wish me luck...