Eton Mess

We were spoilt at lunch in Hawthorn yesterday.  Khamsouk made a delicious salad, cheese and cold meat lunch.  To follow he served Eton Mess (a combination of strawberries, cream, sauce and meringue) and it was exquisite:

We were full, so for dinner, we pealed some prawns and made a salad with apple, celery, feta and cucumber:

Fig ice-cream at Messima in Sydney

After the conference finished last night, I went for a walk to Victoria Street, Darlinghurst.  Messima was open and full of happy ice-cream eaters.

I indulged in one scoop of fig ice-cream in a waffle cone:

It contained delicious morsels of fig admidst the creamy scoop.  I walked back satisfied.  9/10

They have a book of recipes for sale ($40) and might buy it on my next visit.

Here was the delicious breakfast at Momo in Elizabeth Street this morning (haloumi, proscuitto, roasted tomatoes, poached eggs):

Long weekend long lunch

Mum made a delicious plum tart for lunch today and served it with coffee ice-cream:

We played a retro card game called Happy Families and were indeed one.

:-)

When the heat is on

We went house hunting on a 40 degree day in Melbourne and stopped at Leo's for an ice-cream.  We were delighted to find they had our favourite Aurora flavours in small tubs:

Bubbles and I polished them off in the car and thought it would be a good suburb to live in if we can source our favourite ice-cream there!

What's happened to the Metropolitan?

A few weeks ago we had dinner at the Metropolitan in North Melbourne.  We sat in the white table cloth restaurant rather than the front bar and were quite disappointed by the steaks (normally very reliable).  Perhaps the chef was having an off night, but they were cooked as if they were frozen and then seared.  Dessert was also not up to scratch.  Bubbles and I shared a dessert and it looked beautiful, but lacked flavour:

I'm hoping they pick up their act.  The service was excellent and the wine they recommended was very good (but on the expensive side).  I am hoping they return to the excellent pub they used to be with great steaks, parmas and reasonable prices.

Sumner by the seaside, Christchurch New Zealand

For our last night of the holidays, we drove down to Sumner for dinner and a movie at the old Hollywood cinema.  Having eaten a lot of rich food over the last week, we thought we would try the Mexican cantina.  We had Argentinian pulled lamb burritos and they were terrific - the meat was soft from slow cooking and the guacamole, beans and sour cream made a great compliment to the salad and rice:

However we managed to find some room for our last scream of the holidays.  We found a little stripy wallpaper shop serving Deep South ice-cream.  I had orange and choc-chip.  Bubbles had raspberry marshmallow yoghurt with orange chic-chip.  Excellent food for a stroll along the shore:

Geraldine has more than cordial and jam

On our way to Christchurch, we followed a large cycling group and some terrible drivers trying to overtake them.  We decided we needed a stress break in Geraldine and found a shop serving Kapiti ice-cream.

I tried apricot with fig and walnut - fantastic:

Bubbles had apple crumble with double chocolate - very nice: