Jess Carey

Photo Journals, Travels, Travels: America

Milton Lee Olive Park, Chicago

It’s incredible how well hidden this park is in plain sight… It’s not like it’s particularly small, and it’s right near Navy Pier, yet when we visited, we were the only people around; it was completely deserted.

Located just north of Navy Pier and just west of the purification plant, Milton Lee Olive Park is a beautiful little urban paradise. It’s the perfect spot to escape the city craziness of Chicago, while simultaneously enjoying one of the most beautiful views of the city over the water. The sand of the beach was spotless, the bare trees were beautiful in their own skeletal way, and the water was the most gorgeous shade of icy, winter blue.

It always amazes me to find such perfect little paradises like this so empty and barren… I guess it just goes to show that city dwellers everywhere probably need to take a little more time to escape the hectic, fast paced lifestyle and take a little time to sit back and enjoy the beauty of a big city from a distance every now and then.

Personal musings, Travels

10 Books Every Traveller Must Read (as published on ThoughtCatalog)

Well this was an exciting email to wake up to – my first ThoughtCatalog article has been published! Hehe yay for small wins : )

If you’d like to read the full article, please make your way on over to the ThoughtCatalog page, which you’ll find right here. Otherwise, enjoy the slightly quicker version below!

With travel being more accessible than ever, more of us are packing our bags and taking off on our own little adventures. Airlines are offering new routes, we’re able to organize every part of our trip on our smart phone, we’re increasingly using travel as an opportunity to connect and learn, and we have the ability to travel faster than ever.

At the same time, though, there’s a push to move back to the travel of yesteryear; moving slowly, spending time getting to know the locals, street food over exclusive restaurants, keeping travel journals and getting off the beaten path.

Whatever your style, it seems most travelers do have at least one thing in common; most enjoy reading about the adventures of other like-minded souls. There are an infinite number of travel tomes out there, running the full gamut from informative and clinical to the imaginative, story-telling styles. The following books are ten of my favorites (so far), and I think worthy of a place on the reading list of anyone else suffering from that incurable case of wanderlust.

1. “Nine Lives” – Dan Baum

2. “Away From It All: An Escapologist’s Notebook” – Cedric Belfrage

3. “Wanderlust: An Affair with Five Continents” – Elisabeth Eaves

4. “The Snow Leopard” – Peter Matthiessen

5. “A Fortune Teller Told Me” – Tiziano Terzani

6. “Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place At The New Orleans Table” – Sara Roahen

7. “The Tao of Travel” – Paul Theroux

8. “On The Road” – Jack Kerouac

9. “Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel” – Rolf Potts

10. “The Idle Traveller: The Art of Slow Travel” – Dan Kieran

Photo Journals, Travels, Travels: Canada

Toronto Islands, Canada

Been to Toronto? Been out to Toronto Islands? Probably not… you might not realise what you’re missing, then!

It’s a pretty quick ferry trip from the CBD, and there’s a surprising amount going on there – well, there is in more inclement weather. It was a bit quieter when we visited. Normally operational are things like the Centreville Amusement Park and the Far Enough Farm and the Frisbee Golf Course and some eateries and what not. But we visited in the bitter winter cold of New Year’s Day, January 1st 2015. It was the coldest I can ever remember feeling, but it was beautiful… We wandered around for a while, away from the other visitors of the island, enjoying the time to just be quiet and take notice of the little things; husband looking at the ice built up on the branches in the water, me walking aimlessly through the piles of orange and brown leaves.

You can read a lot about the history of the islands and their offerings on the website, and I’d rather not just regurgitate their information, but basically, the island broke away from the mainland courtesy of a nasty storm in the mid 1800s. A lot of people now know the Islands as being home to Hanlan’s Point, home to one of the world’s great clothing optional beaches (seriously), an area known in the late 1800s as something like Canada’s Coney Island.

While we didn’t quite make it to the beach, it was really nice to walk around the quieter part of the island without any crowds. I guess it’d be a little different in summer, given the amount of activities actually offered there, but it was so peaceful and calm when we were there. It was the perfect spot to spend a little time reflecting on the year that had just been, the year that was beginning, to just take some time out of a crazy few weeks of travel and let my mind wonder for a while, without worrying about plane schedules and itineraries and what not.

Photo Journals, Travels, Travels: America

Photo Journal: Crossing the Brooklyn Bridge at sundown

I totally didn’t plan to be crossing the bridge at dusk. I’d intended on crossing in daylight, to get some cool photos. But I got distracted by pie. I regret nothing, because Four & Twenty Blackbirds makes a damn good pie.

But, turns out that it was all for the best (pie usually is), and I got the most gorgeous shots on our way back to Manhattan… Also, if you head over there and want to walk it, the entry to the walk way on the Brooklyn side is the corner Adams and Tillary. Wish someone had told us that. Would have saved about 2km walking to find the entrance. Probably lucky – I had some pie to walk off.

Recipes, Recipes: sweet

Cook this: Chocolate bourbon pecan pie

My contribution to our early family Christmas was chocolate bourbon pecan pie. Not a traditional Aussie Christmas dish at all, but instead I figured I’d do something a little more representative of the country I’ll be spending Christmas in. Also, the recipe I found in one of my cook books was for straight pecan pie, but I felt like the addition of bourbon and dark chocolate could only be a good thing.

Ingredients
– short crust pastry
– 3 tbsp plain flour
– 150g brown sugar
– 2 large eggs
– 200g golden syrup
– 200 g dark chocolate, melted and cooled
– 30g butter, melted and cooled
– 2 tbsp vanilla extract
– 3 tbsp bourbon
– pinch of salt
– 300g pecan halves – half crushed into smaller pieces, half left whole

Method
1. Grease a 9 inch pie dish and roll out the pastry to line it. Prick a few holes in the bottom with a knife or fork, line it with baking paper, fill with pie weights/rice/dried beans and bake for 15min or until the edges start to turn golden.
2. To make the filling which the crust is blind baking, combine the flour and sugar in a large bowl.
3. Whisk in the eggs, golden syrup, chocolate, butter, vanilla, bourbon and salt.
4. Mix in the crushed pecans.
5. Remove the pie from the oven and pour in the filling. Arrange or sprinkle the pecan halves on top.
6. Turn the temperature up to 200°C and bake for 10min, then lower the temperature back down to 170°C and bake for a further 45min or until set.
7. Rest in tin until cool enough to handle, then transfer to a wire rack to cool a little longer before slicing and serving up – with ice cream or thickened cream, preferably!

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: