August 18, 2013

The weeks in brief: 5 August – 18 August

Agnes weekly

I can’t believe we’ve been back home for two weeks. 🙁 Saaaad.

Okay, enough moaning.

Just quickly, there’s a Hot Chocolate Festival happening at Yarra Valley Chocolaterie.

Last weekend I went down with a few other bloggers to taste some of their hot chocolates (disclosure: tasting provided by Yarra Valley Chocolaterie). Through August there will be 31 flavours of hot chocolate available in total (7-9 flavours are being released each week).

We tasted the week 2 flavours, which were all on the sweet side for me, but I’m sure those with sweeter tastes will love them!

After arriving back in the country very late on Monday night, this was our first meal back in Melbourne at The Premises – corned beef and potato hash with sauerkraut, mustard aioli and a poached egg.

Man, I missed Melbourne cafes.

Oh, I did a tour of the Queen Victoria Market (disclosure: I was invited).

I will write it up properly, but it was really good. Normally whenever I visit the QV market it’s the weekend and therefore packed. So I didn’t realise exactly how much (delicious) STUFF they sold because I can never see anything past the crowds of people.

Last Sunday we also had lunch at Hargreaves Hill Brewing Company with Shellie, Taz, DD and Gazman, DaisyDase and Lianne.

Yum, the food was yum. I’d definitely go back.

We also did a baking swap, with Shellie making hot chocolate biscuits, Daisy making sugar cookies and Lianne making milo cake.

I handed out these browned butter blondies that I’d baked. Hello!

This week I had lunch at the new Si Senor in Balaclava with my colleague/friend MC. I had a very nice burrito.

They need to rethink their furniture though. We sat in the backroom and it (the furniture) was very. strange.

And then on Thursday there was tea and cocktails at Storm in a Teacup (disclosure: invited).

It’s such a cute place (with a great name). Unfortunately (for me anyway) we did a tea tasting along with cocktails and I fell in love with an expensive oolong tea. Sigh. Oh my life.

Post to come.

After tea and cocktails, I trotted down to Robert Burns hotel with Haz and Taz for dinner. The food was pretty good – my favourite thing was the calamari pictured in the top left corner.

Okay. Now we’re getting into Operation Eat All The Things (#eatallthethings).

After three days of restricting my eating during the week, on Saturday I opened the floodgates. We started with brunch at Reading Room cafe where I had baked beans with a side of bacon.

Unfortunately it was a slow start from there. My sister-in-law and her partner were visiting this weekend, and after brunch we drove out to Healesville Sanctuary. Which was really, really good, but there is no food there.

But it was okay! We left at 5pm and went to Giant Steps for a pre-dinner snack. Yay eat all the things – carbing it up edition – chips, eggplant dip with Turkish bread and four cheese pizza.

Dinner that evening was at The Abyssinian.

Today’s breakfast was at Footscray Milking Station, where I happily ate corn cakes with guacamole and relish and extra chorizo (tip – don’t order extra chorizo, it’s not really worth it).

And then I helped Alastair finish his honey glazed French toast with passionfruit pannacotta and candied pistachios.

I continued #eatallthethings later today with a Vietnamese coffee.

And then sticky rice with BBQ chicken.

Eat. All. The. Things.

(Don’t worry, eat all the things has now ended and it’s back to celery tomorrow.)

Okay that’s it. Do you like my new tea cup? So cuteeeee.

(Yes Gaz, I did bring it back from Malaysia.)