About Life is probably one of the more expensive places to eat around here. The menu states that they use “100% clean ingredients and as much organic as is seasonally possible”. That’s cool, I don’t mind paying a little bit more for good food. They’re also very accommodating when it comes to people’s dietary needs – there are heaps of vegetarian options (even vegan!) and there are little legends on the side of menu items for things that are vegetarian/vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, low fat, low sugar and low GI.

The real test however, as we all know, is in the taste.

The SO ordered the big breakfast -  “including natural smokehouse bacon and chorizo, with organic eggs your style, char grilled field mushrooms and slow roasted organic roma tomatoes”. I’m an idiot because I forgot to note down the price of the meal, but it was a bit more than $15, and even more if you get the optional coffee and orange juice. It was OK. I reckon the best part of the breakfast was the giant field mushroom, it was nice and meaty and perfectly seasoned. The SO isn’t a big fan of the bacon, which was a bit too crisp for his taste and a bit bland. I think it’s because there’s less sodium in these (a good thing IMO).

Pimento got the bacon and egg roll. This was also… OK. There are a lot of green bits. I personally don’t think green bits belong on a bacon and egg roll but well, this is About Life we’re talking about. This was also kind of expensive for some bacon, and egg and lots of green bits on a bun. What’s that? Organic? Oh, right.

This bacon and egg roll took agesss to arrive, which brings me to the service at About Life. They’re very friendly but damn bro things fall apart a little bit when it’s busy. My SO and I were nearly finished with our meals before Pimento’s arrive, even though we placed all of our orders on the one ticket.

I got the vegan breakfast – “scrambled tofu with spinach, spanish onion and roast pumpkin relish with sumac”. This was very tasty but sweet (they’ve stirred through the relish instead of having it as a side). I was actually taken aback by how sweet it was, but I was doing fine until about 2/3 of the way through when the sweetness started getting to me a little bit. The soy and linseed bread was very good so props to About Life for that.

There’s just one little thing. Protip: Don’t give away one of those little butter packets with a VEGAN breakfast. It was busy though so I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt and just say it’s an oversight. It’s awesome that they even have vegan options (that’s right bitches, PLURAL) on the menu. I’m not vegetarian, but I know how annoying it is to try and get vegetarian, let alone vegan stuff around here without resorting to chips and a green salad. Or a veg option that’s not just egg and cheese.

This reminds me of an anecdote: I once got the “vegetarian breakfast” from a place that shall not be named (irrelevant – the business is now closed) and found a piece of ham hock in my beans. I asked them about it and they were apologetic and said that a piece of bacon “fell” in the beans. Right. I’m pretty bloody sure that the ham hock is part of the recipe because I can tell the difference. I’m just sayin’, if you cook your stuff with bits of meat/meat-based stock/sauces, it’s not vegetarian even if you remove all the meat.

Wow that turned into a super rant. Did you know that I love to read vegan blogs in my spare time? Well, now you know.

In summary – I love the concept of About Life as a “natural food market” and appreciate the fact that the menu’s mostly organic AND caters to all sorts of dietary needs, but it’s overpriced and the service gets super slow when it’s busy.

About Life
605 Darling St., Rozelle
(02) 8755 1333

Oh and here’s a thing that I got from Bertoni Casalinga today!

It’s a ricotta cheesecake with coffee beans on top. Oh man, the first time I’ve had the ricotta cheesecake was probably one and a half years ago and I’ve been waiting for it to make a comeback all this time. Well it’s back and I got two slices. It’s really good and surprisingly light. If you’re in Balmain you should get there quicksmart and get yourself a slice before I buy the rest of it it’s all gone.

Look at these goddamn deep fried zucchini flowers. They’re stuffed with ricotta and goat’s cheese and chives and fancy shit your B-grade celebrity chefs get their pants wet over. You know you want to eat the shit out of these fuckers goddamn

(Props)

Awesome, but I don’t reckon I’ll be mentioned in any publications anytime soon.

The category sponsor was Australian Pork who kindly gave out prizes and goodie bags of pork loin and rosemary pancetta (both of which were delicious). Liam Silk, the brand manager for Australian Pork gave us a preview of their new advert which should have started showing early this month. In case you haven’t seen it, you can watch it here.

You can read better writeups on the event here, here and here.

Also from my inbox:

As some of you may already know, the seasonal/we’ll bring it out whenever KFC Tower Burger is back on KFC menus across the nation. It’s an artery clogging combination of chicken breast fillet, hash brown (what), cheese, barbecue sauce and what looks like mayonnaise and obligatory green bit so you can delude yourself into thinking that it’s actually not that bad for you. Though when you’re pissed enough who gives a shit about fibre amirite.

As part of the Tower Burger marketing campaign, KFC has teamed up with Melbourne-based clothing label Travisty for a limited edition range of tees. Behold:

Now all you need to do after a night on the piss is to stumble into a KFC, point to your shirt and empty your wallet on the counter. SIMPLE.

Despite the severely overpriced nightlife, you can always count on Northbridge – Perth’s Chinatown – for reasonably priced feeds. Here are a couple of my favourites:

Dim Sim Cafe
297 William St.
(08) 9328 9388

Previously known as Hoi’s Kitchen, Dim Sim Cafe is home of the infamous Fried Squid, also known as Crack Squid. It’s really just deep fried salt and pepper squid, but there’s just something about the spice combination that makes it really addictive. The crunchy tentacles are tossed with spring onions and green chillies with just a hint of sugar. Please sir may I have some more

Their pork and century egg congee is not too bad either. It’s generous with the pork and century egg as you can see in the picture. To be perfectly honest the other yum cha items are just slightly above average so I can’t really give any other recommendations aside from the chicken pie (the crust is to die for), but the food is cheap and the service surly, as good yum cha places should be.

Saigon Cafe
101 James St.
(08) 9227 1552

Saigon Cafe has always been my favourite place to have Vietnamese food as a poor struggling student. I revisited the restaurant with BusinessClass one night for dinner.

I ordered the combination pho:

The soup is nice and fragrant and they pack it full of beef slices and miscellaneous cow parts.

BusinessClass ordered the duck with dry noodles – check out the amount of duck they give you:

The sauce that came with the duck tastes almost like the nasty sweet and sour sauce you get in shitty Chinese restaurants, but it managed to just taste nicely sweet and went really well with the crispy duck.

Kind of honourable mention:

James St. Kitchen
109 James St.
(08) 9227 1437

I’m really just putting this here for nostalgia’s sake. I revisited James St. Kitchen with Pimento and was pretty disappointed.

I got the salt and chilli fish fillets with fried rice (it’s on the menu as chicken fillets, but you can change it to fish for an extra dollar). This was tiny and the fried rice was pre-prepared – four years ago the serving was twice this size and the fried rice was made to order. The fish was still good, though – it’s served with a heap of fried garlic so make sure you have breath mints on you.

Pimento got the crispy noodles with pork. As you can see, they burnt bits of the noodles. Not impressed guys! It was OK, taste wise.

One item of the menu never fails to disappoint, however:

It’s just strong brewed tea with sugar syrup and slices of lemon, but I reckon they source the same crack that Dim Sim Cafe use for their fried squid to put in this business because it was crazy delicious.

Note that this isn’t the last of the Perth entries, I’ve just been lazy.

Ever since I told BusinessClass that I was coming over to Perth for Christmas, we’ve been brainstorming themes for our Christmas lunch. BC picked up two cactus-shaped candlesticks from a church sale and suggested a Mexican themed Christmas lunch. As fate would have it, the SO was given a bottle of tequila from a Mexican friend last September. Life has a way of working itself out.

Our Christmas lunch, hosted at our humble rented apartment in Freo. Yes, we used Old Del Paso burrito kits (crumbed chicken & beef) – haters to the left plz. We also had crackers, hummus, fresh cherries, crisps, shortbread and Gran Centenario Anejo tequila. Guys, let me tell you about this tequila. It’s smooth, slightly sweet and burns like a motherfucker going down. BC and I sat away from the candles in case we’d catch on fire by breathing on them.

Christmas dinner was hosted at BC’s, where BC’s mum slaved all day over a hot stove to make the most amazing Christmas dinner I’ve ever had. Before I get to the photos, let’s have a look at BC’s pickle tree.

The story goes something like this: One day, BC walked into a Bed, Bath & Table to find a box full of pickle-shaped Christmas ornaments. The helpful salesperson said that it’s tradition in Germany to hang pickles on the Christmas tree (note: I Googled this and apparently it’s a myth). BC, naturally, bought the whole lot – she now has the dubious distinction of being the only person in the whole of WA to have bought any, let alone multiple, pickle-shaped Christmas ornaments.

This is why I love her so much.

BC’s family is big on Christmas – check out the awesome decorations on the dinner table.

Everyone gets a cracker, a present and personalised reindeer gift tag.

BC’s mum kept insisting that the dinner is just “simple” – it’s not! We had roasted parsnips, broccolini, baked stuffing, Caesar salad and of course succulent roasted turkey. Everything was delicious.

This, however, is my favourite part of the meal – single-portion Bombe Alaska with a macadamia and cherry ice cream filling. This Bombe Alaska kicks arse, takes names and for good measure punches the face of any Christmas desserts in the history of all time.

Then we sat around chatting and drinking tea. Best Christmas ever.

Summary: hi, this is a new entry. Sorry it’s a bit late.

So, where were we? Oh yes. After our lunch at Little Creatures we walked around Freo town to see what else is on offer. We went past Dolce Vita on South Terrace, also known to tourists as the “Cappucino Strip” – I’ve never actually heard a local refer to it as that. A gelato sounds good on a hot day, so we went in.

We weren’t disappointed. I got a Snickers gelato, which I think had a vanilla (or caramel? Idk, can’t remember) gelato base and has generous chunks of chocolate and peanuts.

BusinessClass pronounced it as tasting “just like Snickers”, which I’m taking to be a good thing. She got the cappucino gelato – it was amazing, full of coffee flavour and a generous sprinkle of cocoa powder on top.

The gelato selection. The Snickers one is second from the bottom left.

I can’t find the website or the address for Dolce Vita, unfortunately. It’s right opposite Gino’s Trattoria if that helps.

For dinner we were going to go to Ria in Leederville, but Pimento rang us and said that they’re closed. We went to Leederville anyway and decided to walk down Oxford St until we find a place that smells good. That night, the place was Giardini. The smell of the garlic bread will, to borrow a phrase from Pioneer Woman, make your skirt fly up.

We sat down and peruse the menu. Goddamn but the place is expensive. BC and I exchanged looks and contemplated going elsewhere, but the waitperson came back. Too late. Fortunately, while the mains are stupid expensive, the pasta prices are on the reasonable side of expensive. These were our choices:

Garlic bread, of course. The lady told us that they’re small and come in threes, so we ordered two serves. Turns out they came in serves of four slices! They’re good though. Very buttery, garlicky and uh, bready. These are $6.20. I’m going by the prices on their website by the way so don’t get shitty at me if they’re wrong.

The SO ordered the Chicken Penne. From the website: “Penne tossed with chicken pieces, onion, spinach, roasted pumpkin with a hint of garlic & chilli in a cream sauce. Topped with avocado & diced fresh tomato set on Neapolitana sauce”. There ain’t no Neapolitana sauce on that dish but whatevs. Serving was huge and it was delicious. So it should be for $23.50 though, Christ.

Pimento ordered the Linguine alla Giardini – “pasta tossed in olive oil, garlic, prawns, mushroom, capsicum, onion, bacon and a hint of chilli”. I had a bite and it was fresh tasting, but missing a zingy chilli hit. $24.80.

BusinessClass and I ordered the spaghetti marinara. Oh my gahd this was gooooooood. You know how sometimes you order a marinara, and it comes with a pitiful spoonful of frozen marinara mix? This dish wipes the floor with that business. The dish was very generous on fresh and succulent seafood. At the end of the meal I was just picking bits of seafood off and leaving the pasta, but there was so much fish and squid hiding in between the pasta that I ate too much anyway just from picking bits off. If I have a gripe it would be that the sauce is a bit sweet, but it was still $26.90 well spent.

Giardini
135 Oxford St, Leederville
(08) 9242 2602

For Christmas this year my partner and I decided to go on a holiday to Perth. I studied in Perth for 4 years and my bff BusinessClass (who I will refer to often in my Perth entries) still lives there. I haven’t been back for about 5 years so I was pretty excited.

The holiday started with our traditional airport food: Hungry Jack’s. Sure, it was 7 in the morning and starting the day with a slightly suspicious cheeseburger is normally a Bad Idea but these sorts of rules don’t apply when you’re travelling. Also, a $2.50 cheeseburger > $8 cheese and tomato croissant. The burger was fucking delicious.

I was terribly restless throughout the flight – we were on one of the older planes that don’t have individual TVs on the back of seats so I resorted to poking my SO and demanding to be entertained, which earned me the title of Worst Flight Companion Ever. We did a cryptic crossword and solved two clues, then a normal crossword and solved about 6. I heard that cryptic crosswords help prevent Alzheimers, so looking at how we’re going I guess I’ll just need to save up to go to Mexico for barbiturates before it sets in.

I skipped the flight breakfast. My SO got the scrambled eggs, the fool! We landed without incident and my SO managed to get through the 5 hours without strangling me.

BusinessClass picked us up from the airport and we exchanged excited squeals. My SO and I rented a flat in Fremantle (“Freo” to locals), so BC suggested that we go to the Little Creatures Brewery for lunch.

The Brewery is huge – on a nice sunny day though you want to be at the back outside. The inside is nice and impressive and all, but well, it smells kind of like off fish and beer. The Brewery is also connected to the Creatures Loft for the artsy crowd. The Loft regularly features art showings and bands etc. I didn’t go because I only want to get shitfaced.

Speaking of getting shitfaced:

I had a pint of Pipsqueak cider. It was nice and light and fizzy. Not very apple-y, but I don’t have cider very often so I don’t have anything to compare it to.

The three of us shared a bowl of the best chilli mussels I’ve ever tasted in my life. Big claim, oh yes, but well-deserved. The chilli tomato sauce doesn’t skimp on garlic and chilli. I could easily finish a bucket of this. The only thing they do skimp on is the bread. There’s shitloads of sauce left over so make sure you ask for more bread to soak them up.

We also shared the harissa lamb pizza. This was also amazing – the lamb is well seasoned and went exceptionally well with the crumbled fetta. Crust is thin and crispy. I hate that there are burnt bits but I guess you can’t really help that with traditional pizza ovens. I’m picky, sue me. That’s BusinessClass’ thumb you see in the photo. You will be seeing more of it in my Perth entries.

Chips, or frites if you want to be a ponce (or French). These are fried with skin on.

Food is a bit expensive but that’s really to be expected somewhere touristy. Service is kind of meh, since the brewery seems to be staffed entirely by European backpackers. Not to say that all European backpackers are shit at waiting tables, but they seemed overwhelmed and look like they’d rather be at the beach, and who could blame them? Check it – below are a few pics of South Freo beach:

If you don’t want to get on a plane right now and go there, you should.

Little Creatures Brewery
40 Mews Road, Fremantle
08 9430 5555

Next post: gelato and delicious Italian food!

To celebrate my SO’s birthday we booked a table at Braza Churrascaria in Leichhardt. They do all-you-can-eat Brazilian barbeque and my SO, being a big fan of flesh, was very keen on the idea.

I started with alcohol. This counts as bread.

They give you a thingy what’s in the picture above. If you want to keep eating, place the thingy so the green bit is on top. You lay it down on its side if you want to take a break, and place the red bit on top if you want to stop eating and want them to clear your plate. They only give you one of these things per two people so make sure you sit across someone who shares the size of your appetite.

The all-you-can-eat menu includes all the sides. Above is a plate of deep fried cassava, polenta and banana. The fried bananas were absolutely amazing. The insides were pleasantly squidgy and sweet, which is like my perfect texture for banana fritters. The cassava is good, dunno about the polenta. It’s okay but I didn’t eat it again after tasting one – it was bland and I’m not a big fan of the texture.

Delicious potato salad topped with heaps of crispy deep fried shallots. I love the contrast between the creamy potatoes and the crunchy shallots. Pimento reckons his mum makes better potato salad (I agree, but it’s still yummy).

Garlic breadcrumbs (not sure what it was for so I just added them on everything) and a very flavourful tomato salsa. There was also a green salad but I didn’t bother taking a picture of it. The salad tasted like leaf vegetables.

Pickled chillies arranged in order of heat. The gourd-like red ones are the least hot, then you go counter-clockwise until you get to the tiny ones. I was a wimp and cut up my green chillies into at least 5 sections before eating them.

For mains, we had:

Meat

Meat

Meat

Mea Fish

The highlight for me was definitely the beef ribs (3rd photo). It was nice and fatty and had a crispy exterior, man I can feel my arteries clogging as I’m writing this. The above is of course a very small sample of the stuff that we had oh god it just kept coming. Below is a full list of meats available for the traditional churrasco, which was what we went for:

Picanha – Rump Cap
Costela – Beef Rib
Fraldinha – Thick Flank
Maminha – Tri-Tip
Cupim – Hump
Scoth Fillet – Noix
Picanha c/ Alho – Garlic Rump Cap

Linguiça – Sausage

Coração de Frango – Chicken Hearts
Coxinha da Asa – Chicken Drumettes
Sobre Coxa – Chicken Thigh
Frango c/ bacon – C. Breast w/ Bacon

Costelinha de Porco – Pork Ribs
Paleta de Porco – Pork Neck
Pernil de Porco – Pork Leg

Pernil de Carneiro – Lamb Leg
Alcatra de Carneiro – Lamb Rump
Costela de Carneiro – Lamb Ribs

Camarão – Prawns
Peixe do Dia – Fish of the day

Availability of the above varies from night to night. It does feel a bit like they keep bringing the same things out for the first half of the night and only got the more unusual things (ribs, prawns) much later, which is a shame because by then most people are too full to try them. The meat tends to be on the salty side as well, but servings are generous and the meat are of decent quality. I found that a couple of the cuts of beef were overcooked (they tend to vary in doneness as they come out of the grill), but everything else is nice and juicy.

Service was good – if you want one of the skewers that’s going around you might need to wait a little while. I’m not sure if the people taking the skewers around have like a predetermined route they need to take for all the tables or what, because certain things don’t seem to reach us unless we ask for them. They’re v. friendly though and are patient with requests for more than a slice of meat at a time.

I had a 100% vegetarian day today because my stomach feels like someone’s placed a brick in it. Fibre is highly recommended for the morning after.

Braza Churrascaria
13 Norton St, Leichhardt
(02)9572 7921

Oh oh I gotta show you this cake I got for my SO’s birthday:

Custom (Mod-ded? Har har please tell me you got that joke) birthday cake by Valerie of Love and Cake. I ordered a carrot cake, which was nice and moist and not too sweet. She also threw in some free Christmas cookies because she’s awesome.

*** JOKE HERE, YOU CAN STOP SCROLLING NOW ***

When a clock is hungry it goes back four seconds.

(Courtesy of Pun of the Day)

I had my Polish food cherry popped on Tuesday Wednesday. We were invited to dinner at Na Zdrowie by a friend with Polish background, who promised “something different”. Let’s call him Legoman because I’ll probably reference him a couple of times in this entry. Also at dinner was Sydney Veggo of Beyond Pesto.

Festive cock. Look, if I didn’t say it someone else would’ve.

Interior of Na Zdrowie. It’s a pretty small restaurant – cozy, but it gets noisy. The lighting here is, ahem, romantic. I’ll have to apologise in advance at how shit the pictures turned out. Time to save up for a proper DSLR, y/y? (photography lessons more like)

We had kompot to start, which is a very refreshing drink made of boiled dried fruit. Na Zdrowie’s kompot is lightly spiced with cinnamon. I feel bad because Legoman was like “Did you take a picture of the kompot? Did you?” and I’m like “yeah brah no worries” and when I checked my memory card tonight it turned out I didn’t. An arse is me!

My SO ordered deep fried mushrooms as his entree. I could have eaten a whole box of this stuff, it’s genius. Crispy on the outside, squidgy on the inside and served with a tangy, creamy sauce.

On Legoman’s recommendation I ordered the sledzik (pickled herring) as my entree. The herring fillets are wrapped around slices of apple, capsicum, onion and pickle on top of a creamy dill sauce. This is probably my favourite dish of the night. I’m already a big fan of strong tasting fish, but the contrast of textures and salty-sour-sweet flavours are a winner. This was actually a pretty big serve and I would have been happy to have just this as a main.

SV ordered the barszcz (beetroot soup) as her entree, which had tiny dumplings at the bottom of the bowl. I did take a picture of it but couldn’t edit it enough that it won’t look like blood, so I left it out.

Bread for the herring and soup.

Both SV and I had vegetarian pierogies (dumplings) for our mains. SV asked for a combination of the potato and mushroom/sauerkraut pierogies and I followed suit.The pierogies are served with a mushroom sauce.

If you know me, you’ll know that I have an intense and lasting romance with carbohydrates. With my love of carbs comes a slight guilt. It’s kind of like finding your first cousin hot – perfectly legal but slightly wrong. So, dumplings stuffed with potatoes? This hot carb-on-carb action was a whirlwind affair where my tastebuds were swept off their, uh, feet and my cellulite screams at me to be rational. Then I remembered it has cheese, therefore has some protein content in it and is perfectly OK.

The mushroom pierogies weren’t as exciting for me, but that’s because I can only have so much sauerkraut before my tastebuds start to rebel.

Red cabbage. It’s sweet and goes very well with the pierogies. Legoman also ordered a cucumber salad thing in sour cream but I hate cucumber so I didn’t take a picture of it out of spite.

Legoman has this very pretty looking meat skewer affair with what I think is horseradish sauce.

Legoman’s friend and SV’s partner had bigos, a stew with meat, sausage and cabbage. I only had a bite but it was pretty good. Sauerkraut again though, so… you know.

My SO and Legoman’s wife had the stuffed cabbage. It’s basically cabbage, right, stuffed with veal mince and served with a tomato-based sauce. I took a picture of that too but there wasn’t anything I can do with it that won’t make it look like bloodied brains on a plate. I thought it tasted slightly bland.

ON TO DESSERT, ARE YOU READY FOR THIS

I can’t remember what this one is called, except that it’s ice cream and the description promises a “flaming dressing”. This picture is taken at a shit angle because I was trying to take it super fast, fearing that the flames will die out before I can take a picture. I put away my camera and you know what? That shit burned for ages.

There wasn’t actually a flaming dressing – it had a berry sauce and they set the sugar cube next to it on fire. It came with a marshmallow biscuit that kind of tasted like Arnott’s Chocolate Royals and a bar biscuit that I can’t even remember tasting. It was a bit of a disappointment to be honest, but hey, it’s on fire!

The kompot, entrees, mains and two desserts cost about $40 per head. Servings are crazy massive and I would highly recommend not eating anything 12 hours prior.

Na Zdrowie
161 Glebe Point Rd, Glebe
(02) 9660 1242

Any enquiries re: pronunciation should be directed to Legoman or your Polish friend.

ETA: It’s come to my attention that eatshowandtell has written a review of Na Zdrowie as well – so go and read that one if you want pictures of food that actually do them justice!

So it was with some bewilderment that I find myself smack bang in the middle of about 50 food bloggers. I nearly decided not to come, and was so neurotic and anxious about the whole thing (social anxiety, the usual) that I was sure that my partner was this close to telling me to shut my yap. OK, so he kinda did in the end.

Thank god for Helen and her name tags so I didn’t actually have to say my blog name out loud. I did prepare some cards the night before, just in case. So – pictures:

Billy’s dog Amelie, who I fell in love with. Here, Amelie contemplates a restraining order against me.

Tim and Christina of The Way It Crumbles. This level of cuteness should be illegal.

Gummi Baby (oh god, I forgot your real name, I suck) of YaYa’s Yum Yums and Sara of Belly Rumbles. I typed out Berry Lumbles first and only noticed just before I published this post.

As you can see we had a bloody huge turnout.

FOOD GLOOORIOUS FOOOOOD. Omfg. This is only about 3/4 of everything there.

MORE FOOD. Oh my god everything was fucking delicious. We had a 10 minute photo taking session before swooping down like vultures.

Billy, that amazing and slightly crazy wonderchef brought slow roasted (6 hours, bitches!) pork to the party. He even made homemade sauces to go with it. When the roast came out, he was instantly everyone’s best friend. The roast was super tender and moist. No close ups, sorry. Was too busy having foodgasms.

I sampled this cupcake first (by someone from YaYa’s Yum Yums – again, my memory fails me) – it was just too cute to pass up. I was right to pick this, of course – it was delicious.

Closeup of the savoury rice noodle roll. Can’t get enough.

This is what the spread looks like an hour into eating. If you think that we hardly made a dent in it, you’re right. Regretfully the stomach space available was smaller than the amount of food. I made a Herculean effort and was still defeated at the end of it. From my (hazy) memory, I had one of the little cornflake cups by Susan, a slice of pound cake, Simon’s mini burger (which reawakened the pickle-eating monster in me), roast pork, a prawn sushi, a roll with bacon bits in it, Denea’s s’mores, a bit of the chocolate tart I brought along (bought, obvs), some biscuits that Peter brought, custard puffs, the cupcake I mentioned before, rice noodle roll, Billy’s champagne jelly and uh that’s all I can remember. I REALLY wanted to try the gingerbread that Jacq mentioned on Twitter but I didn’t get around to it

For the Kris Kringle I got these – can’t wait to try out some recipes!

I learned these important lessons from the party:

1. Food bloggers don’t do things in half-measures. If the invite says to bring a plate, they will bring a giant plate (or two) of something delicious.
2. I was right: Sydney food bloggers (aside from muggins here) are an extraordinarily attractive bunch. I too want a machine that converts calories into hotness.
3. They’re also hilarious – I’m looking at Peter and Grace.
4. Don’t wear a short dress if you’re going to be sitting on the grass for an extended period of time. I think I spent most of the day trying not to flash people.
5. Chill the fuck out, self. The people you like will like you back. Most of the time. If you don’t, you know, act like an asshole.
6. Don’t change my blog name. Ever. Although Fouad was the only person who knew where the domain name was from.
7. Sydney is tiny. I met two people who live in my suburb who I swear I’ve never seen around before.
8. Lady Iron Chef is a man.

I’m super chuffed to have met a couple of bloggers who I’ve conversed with on Twitter, e.g. Karen of Citrus & Candy and to meet a couple of familiar faces, e.g. Yas. I didn’t really get to talk to that many people but those that I did get to talk to are lovely. If I didn’t mention you or link back to you, give us a holler. It’s not that you’re not awesome, it’s because I suck.

Many thanks to Helen and Susan for organising – a good time was had by all.