These brownies came about due to op shopping.
There’s an op shop near my workplace that I pop into occasionally to look for photography props. Most of the time I come out empty handed but sometimes I get something good.
On my last visit, I found something great – a large French crystal cake stand. For the huge sum of $5. Wheeee.
Disclosure: I attended courtesy of Nobu and Media Moguls.
Peru is awesome. Peru is good. Peru is definitely worth a visit.
But it’s also very, very far from Australia. So if you can’t make it to the actual country, you could instead head to Nobu for a Taste of Peru.
But what does a Japanese restaurant have to do with Peruvian cuisine? Well the menu at Nobu has South American influences, which comes from Nobu Matsuhisa’s years in Lima after he moved there when he was 24 to open a restaurant.
Nobu Melbourne’s Executive Chef, Christopher Shane, is paying homage to Nobu’s history on Thursday nights with a special menu of 16 Peruvian style tapas and nine cocktails, and I was invited there late last year for a preview of the menu.
Can’t be bothered cooking dinner? Sureeee you could get greasy takeaway, but in my opinion a much better option is one of these sushi / sashimi platters from Hinoki Japanese Pantry.
Hinoki Japanese Pantry is a Japanese grocer plus sushi bar on Smith Street in Fitzroy. They sell a range of Japanese foodstuffs: snacks, condiments, beer, sake, and frozen goods, but there’s also a sushi bar where you can buy sushi or sashimi to take away.
I’ve been wanting to go to the Heide Museum of Modern Art for a while. Most people go to a gallery to see – oh I dunno – the art. That wasn’t my main incentive though.
Truthfully, I just wanted an excuse to buy a picnic hamper from Cafe Vue. This tells you my priorities: Food > Art.
Australia Day turned out to be the perfect occasion. My MIL and step-FIL were over, and the forecast was for a very hot and sunny day. Perfect for a picnic!
Warning warning: not a food post. There’s only orangutans within. Really, really cute orangutans though. 🙂
We had to see orangutans when we went to Borneo, since they’re native to Borneo and Sumatra.
There’s actually two species: the Bornean orangutan and the Sumatran orangutan. We saw the Bornean orangutan on two occasions – once at a wildlife centre called Matang Ai (which, I wouldn’t recommend, it’s a bit of a sad place – cages and concrete enclosures) and the second time at Semenggoh Nature Reserve.
Disclosure: My guest and I dined courtesy of Portsea Hotel / Lamaro’s on the Deck and Kate & Co.
Wouldn’t it be nice to leave the city behind and head down the coast for summer? Particularly on these hot, hot days?
That’s exactly what the team from Lamaro’s, the restaurant in South Melbourne, did earlier this month. They snuck down the coast and took over the deck at the top of Portsea Hotel.
Hey, it’s summer.
And surprise! It’s hot! Well, it’s not that hot *today* but it was stupidly hot last week, and we have another bout of 40°C weather coming up early next week.
What to do when it’s already 30°C at 7am and getting a bit too warm for coffee?
Never fear coffee addicts, there’s always cold brew.
Disclosure: Afternoon tea was courtesy of Mossgreen Tearooms and Q Strategies.
So 2013 seemed to be the year of high/afternoon tea for me, blogging oh 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (!) plus a bonus high coffee. And here’s another one I went to before the year finished: afternoon tea at Mossgreen Tearooms.
Mossgreen Tearooms is next door to the Mossgreen auction house and gallery on High Street in Armadale. The Tearooms are in a large, white, split-level room with large windows at the front that let in plenty of light.
So peas are the most evil vegetable in existence (and if you don’t think so, you are wrong). As I said in an IG comment this week: peas hide under your bed so they can murder you in your sleep and they kick puppies for sport.
It’s true.
And if peas are the most evil of evil, then parsley is the evil understudy.
Really, what do people *do* with parsley apart from pushing it to the side of their plate and trying to ignore it?
I always say I’m not really a birthday person, but that’s not strictly true. I don’t like to celebrate my own birthday, but I enjoy celebrating other people’s. And by celebrating, I mean: torturing.
And by torturing, I mean torturing with love and attention and cake OF COURSE.
(And birthday lasagne, but only for the very special ones.)
But for my most recent birthday in December, I was keen to do something because reasons. It was on a Friday, so I thought it would be nice to have a long weekend away.