December 23, 2012

The weeks in brief: 10 December – 23 December

Agnes weekly

AHHHMAGAWD it’s almost Christmas. Where did the time go? Christmas last year doesn’t feel that long ago. 🙁

Oh well – lots and lots (and lots) of eating in the last fortnight. Oink oink!

Finally made it to Papparich last week with mum and dad. It was fine. The roti was really good.

Then that night we went to (the tried and true) Chinese Spicy & Barbie Kitchen. You know I love it. We only ordered stuff that I’ve tried before.

This is one of my faves now – steamed chicken drumsticks with chilli sauce. It’s so spicy and nutty and flavoursome.

Naturally we had to order the lamb ribs. Every time a good time. So fatty and crispy. Ahhhh.

And yes, there was deep fried ice cream to finish. 🙂 We also tried a new dessert – crispy deep fried milk (in the background). It was… interesting. Really rich and super oily.

I finished off my Xmas shopping last Friday and stupidly tackled it before lunch. RAGE. A Schnitz lunch helped sort me out.

We finally managed to take mum and dad to yum cha at Tao Tao House.

I think they approved. O_o

Incredible.

DERP BREAK.

And finally, we move to this week AKA The Festival of Eats.

I had a delicious lunch at The Sharing House. My main was poached chicken breast, which sounds totally boring but it was honestly the juiciest chicken breast I’ve ever eaten. And dessert was a gorgeous Eton Mess with strawberries.

Then there was dinner on Tuesday at I Spicy with my food blogging homies. This is the pork shank.

Yet another lunch this week: this time at The Conservatory. I mostly stuck to the seafood, yum.

And then *another* lunch – afternoon tea at The Langham.

(See what I mean about Festival of Eats?)

Yesterday morning my FIL arrived for Christmas. We went and had breakfast at Reading Rooms Cafe.

I ordered the South of Provence: a French country style omelette with dry cured pancetta, golden potatoes, caramelised onion, petite peas and gruyere crostini. Even though it had peas in it, it was really good.

And last night we had a BBQ. Thanks to BBQ Master Bro for cooking! Summer rocks.

A tale of two ice creams.

Today, Alastair and I took our FIL to Duchess of Spotswood for breakfast. I had the Idle Tongues: ox tongue with crumbed zucchini flowers and poached eggs.

Dee. Lish. Us.

And a bit more from Duchess. My FIL had the Poetry in Motion: fruit with an oat crumble and vanilla yoghurt. Alastair ordered the Prince of Wales: house smoked salmon with pickled cucumber, fennel and horseradish yoghurt, and poached eggs.

Afterwards, we went to the NGV and checked out the Neo-Impressionists exhibition.

TBH, it’s not really my thing (I prefer contemporary art), but the NGV was lovely and cool, and it wasn’t a shopping centre. Hah.

This one was MUCH more to my liking. After seeing the Neo-Impressionists exhibition, we went and had a look at some of the other galleries. This room held Pacific and Asian art.

It’s part of a larger video piece called Phantom Landscapes by Yang Yongliang. It’s probably the only video art that I’ve ever liked – a short 3 minute loop, and different aspects of the picture were animated – you could see traffic and people moving, the billboards showed moving adverts, cranes turned, ships moved through the water, lights twinkled etc etc. Really, really cool.

And finally we just had an exceptional meal at the Estelle in Northcote. Nine courses of deliciousness. More on that later!

Time to round off this eating fest. Have a merry Xmas everyone. 🙂