The ugly truth

Proof of our corruption: three months ago we guffawed when we saw these in the supermarket. Now we're loving them. Chocolate-covered peanut butter pretzels. The chocolate is rubbish, the peanut butter is loaded with corn syrup, and yet we compulsively shove them into our mouths. It's all about the contrast between salty and sweet, with a bit of crunch.

So now you know how far we have fallen.

Thanksgiving tales

Thanksgiving. 5 days of holiday shared with loved ones, not tainted by religion, and all centred around feasting. My kind of festival. We were invited north by our "Michigan family", Ken and Linda of a sumptuous upstate bed and breakfast in a Queen Anne mansion. We knew we were in for a treat - Linda's a marvelous cook and the house is all luxury and crackling fires. Made all the more special with unseasonal snowfalls, making us feel like we had wandered into a Christmas card, sitting in a cozy parlour watching snowflakes drift downwards through the window panes, with a smiling snowman beneath a snow-laden spruce in the garden. I think we managed to connect to the traditions and intentions behind Thanksgiving. We certainly managed to consume the ample bounties of the Thanksgiving table!

My favourite tastes of Thanksgiving:
- mulled wine and warm cider, preferably spiked with spiced rum (as served by Gail and Vindu at their Wallace House dinner last Tuesday, kicking off the holiday)
- Linda's sugary, whipped sweet potatoes with the crunch of pecans
- turkey, and the stuffing. especially the stuffing.
- apple crisps and crumbles
- treacly, homemade pecan pie
- coffee with whipped cream after a walk in the snow
- chipotle macaroni and cheese
- champagne with a drop of brandy and sprinkles of nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice, cloves and ginger

Gerard must be praised for his heroic drive some 230 miles north through deep and slippery snow, much of it along narrow county roads which hadn't been seasoned by a salt truck or cleared with a snowplow. Our first heavy snow was both exciting and alarming, but it's all gone now but for a few stubborn banks of ice, and lots of wet mud. For a laugh, you can always check Ann Arbor for snow from sunny Sydney.

(Tail) gates of heaven

The sunshine returned on Saturday for the final tailgate of the season, and the biggest game of the University of Michigan calendar against rivals Ohio State. The golf course was transformed into a picnic, a sea of tents pitched by one's car, with tables groaning with food and eskies full of drink. We were there as guests of the beautiful Gail, pictured left.

The group graciously hosting us had a BBQ for hamburgers and brats, a pressure cooker full of ribs, a tall pot on a portable stove full of chilli, a large television on which to watch the game (attending the actual match appears to be optional), a generator to power it, and a brasier with plenty of logs for warmth. We contributed a box of Krispy Kremes, bottles of Starbucks Frappuccino and some Bellini fixings.

There was no shortage of tasty food to keep the chill at bay - alternating between savoury treats and cookies or pecan tarts. Basically, one eats at a tailgate. And drinks, and chats to folks you may not have seen since the big game the previous year, or at least the most recent home game. And you throw around a footy or play cornhole, which is devilishly difficult when you are trying to play well, but easier if you're in the middle of a conversation or beer!

And the game? Michigan lost to Ohio in the final minutes. Wish we could return and do it all again next year!

On thin ice

Our end of the pond has frozen, and I've never seen so much animal activity in our yard. Birds are darting around hyperactively through the rushes, and squirrels chase each other up and down bare tree trunks. There were some dancing around on the pond earlier until one, with a start and a twitch of the paws, nearly fell through the thin ice. They’re sticking to terra firma for now.

We have also been visited by a bird with bright blue markings, which, after a quick Google, I feel qualified to call a blue jay. And every time I go to the window to photograph him, he flies away, dammit.

No classes on Friday so I’m tucked up toasty indoors, soon to fill the house with the aroma of caramelised onion and blue cheese tart. I’ve just found another excellent use for concentrated cherry butter: dolloped onto a bowl of slow-cooked, creamy whole-oat porridge. Great, too, on a loaf of Sunday-morning soda bread, hot from the oven.

Weather report

It's just started to snow

... and it's frigging cold.

The flakes are tiny, the size of a freckle. You can't see any on the ground yet but you can make them out drifting through the air, like insects. And I'm surprised, and childishly elated, that they actually look like snowflakes. I'd need a much better camera to show you how delicate these little beauties are. Click on the pic for a larger image.

Walking Detroit

Spent a sunny Saturday prowling around downtown Motor City with the Detroit history and heritage group Preservation Wayne.

Once the richest city in the world, per capita, it's now a deserted place full of empty 1920s skyscrapers...

... abandoned city lots, and piss-stinking shelters

surrounded by a doughnut of freeways, shopping malls and suburbia.

So many exquisite buildings, once proud, now stand abandoned and falling to pieces.

It's not a ghost town: some are still in use, restored and treasured.

Like the Guardian building, an exuberant Art Deco gem from the Roaring Twenties.

... with vibrant aztec motifs and glittering ceramics atop its towers.

At the river you look south (yes, south!) to Canada, and this memorial to the 'underground railroad' - on the site where fugitive slaves on the run crossed the border to safety and freedom. Interesting aside: The bridge to Canada, pictured in the background, is privately-owned. And yes, it's a toll bridge.

Michigan dish? Well, there was a café open, and they did a pretty mean sweet cheese danish (shame about the coffee).

New American food

As in Australia, immigration has meant great things for American stomachs. To celebrate cookbook author Joan Nathan's latest work, The New American Cooking, Zingerman's Roadhouse (the sit-down restaurant from the Zingerman's Deli folks) put together a menu of dishes taken from the book's pages. As a culinary anthropologist and glutton, I thought I should head out for some research.

New American Cooking, according to Nathan and the Zingerman's Roadhouse chefs, is:

- An appetiser platter with:
Grilled Californian Pizza with Duck Rillete
Mahammar & Pulled Chicken Canapés
Cambodian Lettuce Wraps
Chilean Empanadas
Caramelised Cherry Tomato Tarts
Stuffed Grape Leaves

- A bowl of Autumn Harvest soup

- Israeli Couscous and Pinenut salad

- A main plate with:
Stuffed Red Snapper
Chicken Marbella
Malian Lamb Stew
Capsicums stuffed with Jasper Hill blue cheese, polenta and pesto

with side serves of rice-stuffed onions and a lightly-spiced spinach stew with peanuts and pumpkin seeds

- Dessert of Gingerbread sponge with roasted caramel pears
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For ultimate indulgence, the dishes were paired with wines. The 'champagne' (seems they're still allowed to use the French name here) was an Argyle from the Willamette Valley in Oregon, a winery set up by the great Brian Croser of Petaluma (cheers from the Australians as the sommelier gave his wine pairing talk). There was also a Washington state semillon (L'Ecole no. 41), a Napa Valley albarino (Havens Wine Cellar), a delicious Signorello Napa cabernet sauvignon (the last of its kind for a while after the winery and wine stocks were destroyed in a recent fire) and a late-harvest dessert wine from Mayacamas in the Napa.

Our table of seven pronounced several hits on the menu: most of the appetisers earned an enthusiastic thumbs-up, particularly the mahammar (pepper, pomegranate, and walnut dip) and the caramelised tomato tartlets. The soup was sweet as fresh vegetables should be, with some bulgur scattered in the broth, but the Israeli couscous was too subtle for most diners. Adi, the Tel Aviv local in our group, cried "it's not our fault!" after the first taste. Perhaps a peppery olive oil would have imparted more flavour. The main dishes were all hits, although here I stopped taking notes on the food and knocked back the wine with gusto. I remember Birgit loved the snapper braised with fennel, leeks and onion, I remember the green Spanish olives with the chicken, the spicy portions and reddish hue of the lamb stew with dates and couscous, and the cheesy comfort food within the red capsicums. The dessert, from Gary Danko's eponymous food palace in San Francisco, was a spongy brick of gingerbread pudding beneath melting cream, alongside a caramelised pear. Bliss.

That's why they call it Fall

Two weeks ago, leaves were golden and red. One week ago, they were yellow. On the weekend they disappeared entirely. You may have heard there were big winds in this part of the world on Sunday. Ann Arbor looks different now that so many of her trees are denuded. We can see buildings for the first time, and the houses behind our pond look much closer without the leafy screen. For those who want to see where we live, I've posted a photo below.

Socks appeal

Is this the cutest pair of socks you have ever seen? They arrived today in the post from Sydney, made with love by my beautiful, clever pal Alexa, just in time for winter. Thank-you Lex!

A case for Mondayitis

It's hard to top a weekend like the one we've just had. We were blessed to see Senegalese superstar Youssou N'Dour in concert with an Egyptian orchestra for some lush Arabic sounds to accompany his enormous voice. Quite a different sound to the rest of his career. His latest disc, Egypt, honours Sufism, a mystic strand of Islam, so there were flutes and ouds alongside African instruments like the kora contributing to the ecstatic sound.

Last night a group of Fellows and their partners rolled up the carpets at Wallace House for a tango lesson to ready us for Buenos Aires. We spent a lot of time learning how to walk, tango-style (a bit like a glide). For the women in the circle, emancipated all, learning the knack of following your man was the trickiest part. This was followed with a wine tasting (perhaps we should have done it the other way around...). Ten of us put paper bags over the bottles we'd brought in for a blind comparison of two sauvignon blancs and four malbecs. There were wildly conflicting opinions on the sauvignon blancs - one camp preferred the New Zealand example (crisp and elegant, with asparagus and gooseberry notes) while a couple plumped for the Californian bottle (Mondavi-style, made with oak!) which tasted like a chardonnay.

The Friday night DVD sessions at Wallace House continued with Bertolucci's Besieged. And last, but not least, the discovery of good butter in the US! We've been appalled by the tasteless white stuff in the supermarkets and seen melting atop pancakes and waffles in brunch-time diners. Gerard brought home two bocatas from our neighbourhood wine store - crusty organic baguettes stuffed with Spanish jamon serrano and a thick serve of farm butter. Delicious stuff.

The weekend kicked off early on Wednesday night (hey, I'm a student this year!) with what must be America's greatest contribution to the world: $4 key lime pie martinis, at a classy Main Street bar with my new Australian girlfriend and 'big sister', Jo.

Our turn to talk

An old photo, taken at Seamus' wedding, but one we used this week in our seminar to the Fellows about our life and times. Gerard and I were sick with nerves, unaccustomed to the American manner of talking confidently about yourself. But Vanessa mixed us each a mojito and we were able to calm our nerves enough to open our mouths. Gerard spun a superb tale of growing up in Northern Ireland, funny stories from country newspapers, and about some of the more spectacular investigations he's uncovered so far. When it came to my turn, the saving grace was some luscious slides of Bronte Beach, the bogey hole, and the Sculpture by the Sea festival. Now everybody wants to visit Sydney.

The talking was followed by another exquisite dinner: this time some slow-cooked Cuban ropa vieja and beans from Vanessa (who was, until the Fellowship, writing in Havana for her Florida paper) and pizzas and coney dogs (hot dogs, as far as I can tell) from Jamie and Amy (most recently of Detroit). All kicked off with pitchers of mojitos... how classy! As welcome as the Kir Royales served up by the BBC's envoy, Steve (with his wife Sarah) one week earlier.

Hello, Halloween

Our first American Halloween, and it was extraordinary. We walked down some of the most picturesque streets in our part of town to see what was going on. This is a pocket of tree-lined streets with gorgeous family homes with front porches, big windows and book-lined front rooms, set far back from the street. Most, if not all, of the houses are elaborately decorated and lit with strings of lights. We have a favourite house on Oxford Road: it already looks the part with its thatched roof and little mullioned windows, but they went all out with strings of fairy lights shaped like pumpkins or bunches of grapes, animated witches holding crystal balls and tapping against upstairs windows, black cats with bright red eyes tucked into garden beds, tombstones in the lawn, and a large tarantula spider hovering over the front door. Some houses have eerie sound effects coming from the garden or out of animated figures, and ghosts hanging in the trees.

On Halloween night, there were jack-o-lanterns at nearly every front door, even if they hadn't put up any other decorations. They were my favourite sight of the festival. Glowing eerily with candles placed inside, some looked scarier than the others due to clumsy attempts at carving faces into a pumpkin.

In one of the streets famous for its Halloween cheer, posses of children lined up outside each house, ready to move towards the front door when the group in front moved on. The owners of the houses set up a chair in the doorway and didn't even bother closing the door between 'visitors'. Apparently you can spend anything between $50 and $100 in candy to hand out to trick or treaters. And then you have to shell out for house decorations, not to mention costumes. Not just for the kids: adults hold costume parties too. I have a friend who went to a cross-dressing soiree. And there were students on campus in costume too, including a girl in cat's ears and whiskers drawn on her cheeks sitting alone in my political science lecture at 9 in the morning.

The pumpkin cheesecake, since you asked, wasn't bad. Not big on flavour - just a hint of nutmeg and a very subtle pumpkin taste - in a mild tan hue. It's a frozen product, which no doubt affects the texture.