Photos from Tasmania Trip

We loved our trip to Tassie. We flew into Launceston, where we went to the Trowunna Wildlife Park, did a Tamar Valley wine tour, etc.

Then we drove to Hobart, stopping along the way at Nant Distillery in Bothwell for a tour and whiskey tasting. In Hobart, we went to the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), had dinner at Garagistes, went on a Gourmania Food Tour, went to Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary, and toured the Cascade Brewery.

It was a pretty great time, mostly just food, wine, art and animals! We got a pat a Tassie devil, and got to hold a wombat joey, which made me very happy! :)

A very happy Amanda - holding a wombat joey

Nant Distillery in Bothwell

MONA

Matthew giving food and scratches at Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary

Here's the album with our photos from the trip, and a couple of videos. 

Tasmania Trip

Trip to Tokyo

Matthew and I went to Tokyo again -- business trip for him, holiday for me. As with our first trip in 2010, we had an excellent time! Our photos from the trip are below.

Tokyo Oct-Nov 2012

Trip to Melbourne

Last week we went to Melbourne for my birthday and for Matthew to give a talk at the AusNOG conference. We had a great time! We went to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne Zoo, had cocktails at Eau de Vie Melbourne, and dinner at Birdman Eating and Movida Aqui. While M was at the conference, I went to the Melbourne Aquarium and to the National Gallery of Victoria, where I saw the "Napoleon: Revolution to Empire" exhibition.

For my birthday dinner, we went to Cutler & Co, where we had the eight course degustation with matching wines. Everything was fantastic, and it was nicely paced. They were very good on portion and pour size, so we weren't overstuffed. Here's what we enjoyed:
Selection of appetisers, including oysters, marinated octopus, foie gras cigar
Oyster broth with scallop
Mud crab with buttermilk potato
Baked carrots with goats curd and toasted grains
Smoked and fried duck with morcilla
Roasted suckling pig with kohlrabi
Apple sorbet with dill
Earl Grey ice cream, chocolate and Pedro Ximenez prunes.

I didn't take any photos, so here's a couple of the restaurant itself.

Restaurant exterior - photo from Cutler & Co's website.

 

It was another great visit to Melbourne! Here's a link to the album with more pics:

Trip to Melbourne

Winter Beer Dinner at The Union

About a week and a half ago, we went to a winter beer dinner at the Union Hotel. The Union is third generation family-owned, and has decided to get into craft beers on tap, to the extent that I think they no longer have VB (Victoria Bitter, sort of the Aussie Budweiser) on tap. Here was the menu:

1. Stone & Wood Jasper Ale (NSW)

2. Mountain Goat Coffee IPA (VIC) with braised ox tail and pigs trotter fritter

3. Holgate Gruit Expectations (VIC) with South Australia ocean mullet

4. Murray's Dark Knight Porter (NSW) with braised beef cheeks and spaetzle

5. Little Creatures (WA) Day of the Long Shadow with spiced apple and pear strudel
6. Young Henry's (NSW) Black en More with coffee chocolate short bread

The food in general was good but not great - the beers were the best overall thing about the evening. My memory might be a little hazy (ahem), but I think my two favourites were Stone & Wood Jasper Ale and the Murray's Dark Knight Porter (on its own, without food).

alm + beer + mtw's glasses

Towards the end

I hesitate to ever complain about being served too generously, but in the end, it was too much beer, and we pushed half-full glasses away! Anyway, it was a fun night.

Happy Anniversary to Us!

We've been living in Sydney for two years now! Our anniversary was about a week and a half ago, and we went to dinner at Bloodwood to celebrate. 

We've eaten there several times before, but this might have been our best meal there yet. We shared cassava and sweetcorn croquettes; smoked trout and kale salad; grilled Greenslade chicken with brussel sprouts and smoked speck; chocolate torte with caramel mousse. So delicious. 

It was too dark, and I didn't feel like taking photos, so this will have to suffice. :)

Photos from July

Here are a few random photos from July...

Panorama at Blue Mountains Botanic Garden at Mount Tomah

Interesting flower at botanic garden

Home-made pickled carrots

A bit of Engrish on this Japanese package: "The commodity is taken out of the outside bag, and it puts it on the spaces such as chest of drawers and sink as it is."

A calf at the petting zoo at a community event in Sydney Park

Aroma Festival in the Rocks

Doughnut-hole robot at the Aroma Festival

Coffee cup reading at the Aroma Festival

Camel rides past the Opera House - Aroma Festival

Easter

Happy Easter/Happy Spring/Happy Autumn! Here are two popular Aussie Easter items: a chocolate bilby, and a hot cross bun.

Despite the fact that Easter happens in Autumn here, Aussie Easter still involves spring things like eggs and bunnies. There are plenty of chocolate bunnies in the shops right now. There are also chocolate bilbies! The bilby is a cute Australian marsupial. Feral rabbits are an environmental pest here, so years ago someone introduced the concept of an Easter Bilby.

Hot cross buns aren't really a big deal in American Easter celebrations, but they're quite popular here. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the two main grocery store chains alone (Coles and Woolworths) will sell an estimated 90 million hot cross buns across Australia over Easter.

Aeroplane Jelly

In Australia, jelly=Jell-O, and apparently Aeroplane Jelly is an Australian icon. When I saw it on sale at the grocery store recently, I bought the most random flavour on an impulse. Rather than get a regular fruit flavour, I got Wobble, the dairy version, which had a hula-hooping cow on the box. It isn't chocolate pudding or mousse, it really is firm like Jell-O.

I can report that it was...not bad. One box for $0.99 made 4 servings, which kept me in dessert for a few days. Matthew didn't care for it.

Australian Lollies

Australian candy, better known as lollies, seems odd to me sometimes: Red Skins (a raspberry candy); Chicos (a brown baby-shaped candy, which I think is caramel-flavoured); Musk Sticks (a strange name; I've been told they're "pink" flavoured); Milk Bottles (milk seems like a boring candy flavour to me).

Originally, I thought Violet Crumble might be something purple fruit-flavoured, but it turns out it's just the wrapper that's purple.

Violet Crumble is "honeycomb" wrapped in chocolate. It looks sort of like Butterfinger, but it's not sticky.

Honeycomb is very sweet, and doesn't exactly taste like honey. It's hard, and shatters when you bite into it. All in all, I'd say Violet Crumble is so sweet that it makes your teeth hurt!

Canberra Trip

Matthew and I went to Canberra this past weekend with our friends Lindsay and Grant, who grew up there. They did a wonderful job showing us around Australia's capital. We went to the Australian War Memorial, Parliament House, the National Gallery of Australia, the National Library, the Royal Australian Mint, the National Zoo and even a few wineries on the way home.


While the National Zoo was quite small, a particular highlight was that we got to pat a kangaroo! I have now patted a kangaroo and a koala. If I ever get to pat a wombat, I will be in heaven! ;)

Here are the rest of our pictures from our trip:

Melbourne Trip

Matthew and I went to Melbourne August 7-11, and had a great time! We went to the Queen Victoria Market, the State Library of Victoria (where we saw Ned Kelly's armour), walked down Brunswick Street in Fitzroy, thoroughly enjoyed the Healesville Sanctuary (where we paid a little extra and got to pat a dingo), had some wine in the Yarra Valley, and went to the "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharohs" exhibit at the Melbourne Museum. We also visited Cook's Cottage, the Old Treasury Building and both locations of the National Gallery Victoria.

Finally, we had lots of good food and drink. Our favourites were Movida Aqui and Cumulus Inc., and the coffee at Sensory Lab. However, there are so many more places we want to try on our next visit.

Here are our pictures from the trip:

Melbourne Trip

A Long Walk with Stops for Cheese and Beer

On Tuesday, Matthew and I went on a long walk, about 5 to 6 miles. We started at our apartment, walked up to Pyrmont and walked through the Sydney Fish Markets, which is fun, even if just having a browse. In addition to lots of fish (both raw and prepared), there is a florist and a nice deli there, too. We were tempted, but didn't buy anything, since we were walking and wouldn't be home for a while.

From there, we walked over to Harris Street to the gourmet shop Simon Johnson. We bought some Valrhona chocolate and some cheese -- Roy Des Vallees, a semi-hard sheep and goat's milk French cheese from the Pyrenees. Simon Johnson has a lot of delicious looking items, but it's quite expensive. Also, they really only had dry goods, a coffee bar and the cheese room. For some reason, I thought they would also have a deli/charcuterie, but they didn't.

Then, we walked over to the CBD, to the David Jones Foodhall, where we bought some bread, fruit and some ham, and continued on to the Royal Botanic Garden, where we ate our picnic lunch. Here's Diana, atop a cool water fountain in the Garden.

Afterwards, we strolled over to The Rocks, had a pint at The Lord Nelson Brewery, and then caught the train home. What a lovely, leisurely afternoon.

Finally, we passed by this new mural someone painted on the side of a house near our train station.

No Window Shopping with Epoisses

I just learned the hard way that, after you purchase Epoisses cheese for your beloved (stinky, runny cheese not being your own desire), it is necessary to walk home briskly. There is no window shopping with Epoisses on your person. After it's out of the the deli case and warms up even a little, it will start to smell in your bag, which is awkward in the tight space of the cute, small bookshop you thought you'd pop into on the way home.

Photo from TheCheeseandWineShop.co.uk

Visitors!

This past week, two different groups of friends of friends were visiting Sydney, and we got to meet up with some cool people: Megan, and Dannalea & Jason. I'm still a bit unsure of myself has a tour guide since we haven't lived here quite that long, but I hope everyone still had fun! :)

Here are some not-so-great cell phone photos with Dannalea and Jason, while we were passing time at Lowenbrau. We were waiting for our table at Sake Restaurant, which turned out to be very good food, although we had to wait a while for a table, even on a Sunday night.

Lebanese Sweets from Bankstown

A week or so ago, we took the train to Bankstown to run an errand, and while we were there, got a cafe sua da (Vietnamese iced coffee) from one of the many Vietnamese places there, and also stopped in at Chehade El Basha & Sons, a Lebanese pastry shop. We were only going to get a few items, but buying by the kilo or half-kilo is a better deal, so...

The biscuits (cookies) were just okay, but everything else - mainly just cashews, pistachios, phyllo and honey - was really yummy.

Birthday Concert and Another Dinner

For Matthew's birthday, I got him tickets to a Philip Glass concert, who was in town as part of the Sydney Festival. The concert was last night, and first we went out to dinner at Est. Restaurant, which is has an elegant dining room.

When we first sat down, they offered us glasses of champagne from a Dom Pérignon-branded trolley(!), but we resisted. As we had to get to the concert, we didn't have time to do the tasting menu, so we ordered à la carte, and had a few wines by the glass. It was an excellent meal -- nothing that was simply amazing, but all quite refined and good overall.

To start, we shared:
Sashimi of tuna and Queensland scallops, lime, dashi, hazelnut, radish and white sesame oil.
Grilled white scallops, pork cheek bacon, king mushroom, tarragon and sweet corn salsa.

Our main dishes were:
Roasted, boned squab pigeon with cherries, almond cream, hazelnut picada and pan juices.
With a glass of 2008 Descendientes de José Palacios Pétalos (Bierzo, Spain; Mencia).
Juniper crusted saddle of venison with black cherries, beetroot, cocoa soil and semolina potato gnocchi.
With a glass of 2007 Pierre Amadieu Gigondas 'Romane Machotte' (Rhône Valley; Grenache/Shiraz/Mourvèdre).

Finally for dessert, we shared:
Valrhona chocolate delice with black cherries, sesame and cocoa nib ice cream.

We finished just in time to walk over to the concert hall and get into our seats without being too rushed. It was pretty exciting seeing Philip Glass again! The concert was about 1.5 hours of his various pieces on solo piano, and it was great.

The last piece was one that he collaborated on with poet Allen Ginsberg, and Glass said he hasn't been able to perform it much since Ginsberg passed away. But luckily, a special guest who was also in town for the Sydney Festival, would help him out, and out came John Malkovich to read the poem while Glass played! It was a wonderful surprise, and a great ending to a brilliant evening.