This week in brief

Hello lovely people. Alastair and I spent a lovely weekend down in the Mornington Peninsula. We did heaps, but it was very chilled out and relaxing.


One evening this week I made bunless chicken and mushroom burgers for dinner. (Well, mine was bunless. Alastair had bread.) They were fantastic! I marinated the chicken breast in garlic, cayenne pepper and smoked paprika and then sandwiched the cooked chicken in between two grilled mushrooms with some lettuce, grated carrot and a dollop of whole egg mayo. Who needs bread? 🙂

Inspired by Megan’s comment from last week, I used the last of my fresh coconut to make coconut and date balls – no bake, and vegan. (Go on Hannah, say your piece). I splashed out and bought some Medjool dates (omg they are SO DELICIOUS) and blitzed them in the food processor with my coconut. They were unbelievably good and so easy to make. Here’s a quick recap:

2 cups of roughly chopped fresh coconut
1 cup of Medjool dates, pitted
A dash of vanilla extract / vanilla bean paste
Pinch of salt
Desiccated coconut

Put everything apart from the desiccated coconut in the food processor and blitz until all smushed up and coming together. Add a bit of water if necessary to get everything to stick together. Roll into small balls and roll in desiccated coconut. Try not to eat all of them in one sitting.

Unfortunately, you need to go and buy those stupidly expensive Medjool dates because I don’t think normal dried dates aren’t going to cut it.

One of my workmates (awwwwww bye Charlotte!) left this week, so we went out to lunch at the Newmarket Hotel. My Boss remarked that the fit out was like, “an architect went crazy and put in every single idea they had” and it is a bit like that. But very cool! Concrete arches, plaid picnic carpet, wallpaper with naked people… it is INSANE. Anyway, we had a very, very good lunch – I wasn’t intending to blog it but I so enjoyed my lunch that I will write it up.

On Friday night, as mentioned, Alastair and I drove down to Mornington Peninsula for a couple of nights. On the way down we stopped at Mornington Peninsula brewery for a drink or two.

When we got down there I put together a quick dinner – salad, cold meats, antipasto, smoked trout, washed down with champagne.

Saturday was a jam packed schedule of awesomeness. In the evening we went to the Hot Springs, and afterwards we had a quick dinner made up of salad, cold meats, and a cheese tasting plate that we’d bought earlier at Red Hill Cheese. They make amazing cheese – the blue was one of the best ones I’ve ever had. I wish I had bought the larger tasting plate!

I’ll blog separately about our time down in the Mornington Peninsula – some fantastic food was had. But now we’re home and back to work tomorrow. Boohoo!