Australia Day for me has come to mean prawns and beers and a house party. Ever since Mike and I started our little ex-pats parties together in California. Half the adventure is the weeks leading up to it, when you try and work out what Australian items you can actually locate.

So, in Iceland, that meant no Coopers, no quality beer, but I did manage to find some nice prawns. Eventually. I started my mission at the Sea Baron, the old man of the sea and his crazy shop on the harbour. He almost laughed when I said I wanted them in their shells. Complete strike out there :)

Some other people said I should just get some lobster, it's tastier anyway. Fools. They fail to comprehend prawns on two levels. One, they are only used to deep water, north atlantic, boring prawns, not tropical warm water south east asian yummy black tigers! Two, they fail to appreciate the joy involved in the peeling process.

My old standby, the Asian grocery, came through, as they almost always seem to. Prawns from Bangaladesh, neatly packed in a box like a cutlery set, proudly labelled "head on" on the packaging. A bit different for me, I've never bought prawns in a box before, but it worked out well. Had some fun defrosting a couple of kilos of prawns in the kitchen sink. :)

Well that covers the ingredients then. We were having this affair at Teresa's house, because it was also her last weekend here. She's had a lovely six months work here with the British Embassy, and has become a stable member of "Útlendingar kvikmynd félag" (Foreigners movie club) She's also driven the golden circle more times than I've written overly detailed stories that no-one reads, with her constant stream of visitors from the mother land coming to see Iceland.

But, as usual, I digress. As I was saying, Teresa was leaving, so she declared that the only things we were allowed to bring were a healthy appetite for alcohol, as she needed to get rid of her accumulated stash of liquor. It seems her stream of visitors bearing gifts of cheap duty free liquor from Stanstead Airport had created a glut on the market.

Teresa also produced a vast array of food, so apart from the fact that we were inside, not outside in t-shirts bbqing, it was a fitting way to do Australia Day. Lots of food, lots of grog, and lots of good people.

We were even treated to a tap dancing demonstration in the later hours, thanks to Teresa.

We managed to finish all of her red wine, but we did a pretty shoddy job of finishing off the rest of the liquor, though that's probably for the best really. It would have been something like a litre of spirits per person if we'd really tried to empty the shelves. Therefore, I walked out the door with a backpack full of alcohol, and two shopping bags of more alcohol and bags of munchies.

Til next year!