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In this week we had a special guest speaker in my workplace seminar series, so I thought I'd bring along some snacks. I've been trying to think of a few things that aren't just cakes or biscuits - partly for variety, but also in the hope that non-bakers in the group might feel comfortable volunteering their services. So I gathered together some dip and crackers and found time left over to try baking these rosemary and cheese biscuits anyway! The recipe is from Anna at Morsels & Musings . What I didn't notice on first examination of the recipe is that the only wet ingredient in the list is a mere tablespoon of sour cream! I had enormous trouble pulling this dry powdery mix together and ended up doubling the quantity of sour cream. This meant that my biscuits were less shortbread-y (as Anna's were) and more akin to a chewy cookie, though obviously they had a savoury flavour. I also used only about one and a half teaspoons of dough per biscuit for small bit...

As a gesture of gratitude for hosting her, Katy kindly bought us a meal at a restaurant of our choice and we took little more than seconds to choose Shakahari. I declared that a shared plate of avocado rolls was mandatory. They were as exquisite as ever - buttery avocado and soft eggplant, firmer capsicum, crisp golden tempura batter and a slightly tangy herb sauce. Entrees don't get much better than this. When we recently wrote about tempeh , Sarah mentioned how much she liked the tempeh laksa at Shakahari. Even though we'd never seen it on the menu ourselves, Michael had said earlier in the evening how much he'd like laksa and he got lucky - there it was on the menu tonight! This is the Green Laksa Siam ($18.50) - green tea soba noodles, spinach, mushroom and sprouts in a coconut broth of Thai herbs and spices; it is topped with seitan, tofu and tempeh strips. It was a large meal, even for Michael, and with quite a spicy kick. I went for the Satay Legend ($17.50), n...

I knew that whenever Katy eventually made it to Melbourne, we'd have to go on a chocolate-themed excursion. I initially planned to join an organised tour but when they were booked out on our only available day, I figured I could easily plan my own. All it took was a notebook and 15 minutes on the internet! To prevent any incidence of chocolate fatigue, we actually got a head start by eating two chocolatey desserts out on the town before the Day of Chocolate. ________ Our first stop was Cacao in St Kilda, towards the end of our Friday visit to the south side . I sampled three: Rose: milk chocolate ganache flavoured with rose water, crumbled roasted pistachios and dipped in white chocolate. Ruby: blood orange caramel filling and dark chocolate. Safran : citrus caramel ganache, milk chocolate ganache with infused saffron, dipped in dark chocolate. They were all beautiful to look at and had a lovely creamy texture. However I found the special flavours too subtle and the chocol...

The Eels' rather strange combination of autobiographical documentary and rock 'n' roll show lured us (and some friends) across the river to St Kilda to The Palais* on a chilly Saturday night. While St Kilda is no doubt chock full of exciting new restaurants for us to visit, we get there so rarely (and we loved it so much last time) that we couldn't resist a return visit to Blue Corn. Part of the appeal of our previous visit had been the sunny, open courtyard, so I wasn't sure whether it would be quite as wondrous with the temperature in single figures. I was even more apprehensive when we were ushered through to the courtyard. Fortunately, Blue Corn enclose their courtyard in the winter and we didn't even need our coats. We started things off with cocktails - a sour apple margarita ($15) for Cindy and a raspberry mule ($16) for me. Cindy's margarita didn't taste much different to regular apple juice but by the time she was half way through she was ...

So you know the people I work with are cool, right? Well, their families are cool too. Stu is the son of one of my colleagues - he was responsible for the muesli, quinoa salad and multi-layered cake we enjoyed at the Prom . He's clearly a fine all-round cook but something he has spent quite some time perfecting is bread baking and all things yeast related. Over the past months, little samples of what he's made have turned up at work for us to taste - white bread, bread with olives, even bagels! But Stu's generosity extends further than sending in leftovers, further even than cooking for our camping trip - he offered to host a bread baking day in his home to teach a few folks the tricks he's learned in the past year or two. So Cass, Yung and I crossed town on this miserable-looking Saturday to a cosy home with a comforting fire and well-prepped kitchen. Stu had everything at the ready, including a timetable co-ordinating the dough-making, resting, kneading and bakin...

Update 31/12/2014: Guru Da Dhaba has been closed for ages, and the venue has housed another Indian restaurant or two before being taken over by the highly rated Addict cafe that we've yet to visit. Jo-Lyn's Anzac Day Indian yearnings inspired us on an impromptu visit to Guru Da Dhaba in Fitzroy. Mike and Jo weren't as enamoured with De Orchid as we were, meaning that the quest for outstanding local Indian continues. The smells wafting from the corner of Johnston and Gore streets have tempted me every time I've walked past, but we'd somehow avoided making the trip until after we'd sampled almost every other Indian restaurant in the neighbourhood . The menu is inspired by the dhaba street eateries of India - vegos are well catered for with 16 curries to choose from (aside: I've developed the theory - following our trip to Red Pepper - that Indian restaurants with beef-free menus are likely to be higher quality. For the record: there's no beef ...

A mere three hours after Michael and I returned from the Prom , my high school buddy from Brisbane, Katy, arrived in Melbourne for a holiday. Yes, we were excited to spend some time together but you wouldn't have known it from our demeanours. She was as exhausted as we were, having spent the morning at work before making the interstate journey. I pulled together a meal and we all did our best to create a catch-up conversation before retiring to the sleep of the near-dead. On Thursday we shared a hasty breakfast and went our separate ways to honour other commitments . Finally, on Friday, Katy and I had the entire day stretched out in front of us to do whatever we pleased, together. I decided to take her to St Kilda, and before the shopping and the eating and the bikers and the blondes in big sunglasses, I wanted to show her the community garden . It was beautiful, showing even more colour and character than I remembered from my past evening visit for the first Bloggers' Ban...

How cool are the people I work with? Let me tell you. When two of us admitted over lunch in February that we weren't really campers, the wheels were set in motion for a camping trip that no-one could refuse. Three days in Wilsons Promontory with a choice of tent or cabin for shelter, walks and rests and games and chatting (and swimming and kayaking for the brave!). And how cool is my boss? When he found out about the planned trip, he not only packed a swag to join us; he packed 7 bottles of wine and insisted he'd find a way of reimbursing our accommodation costs. It seemed that even the gods couldn't stop us from having a good time, and they didn't even try, giving us unpredictably fine weather for the duration. So on Sunday, Tracy squashed Mike, Michael, tents, pillows, food and wine and clothes and me into her car and we set off. The first stop was made after less than a kilometre - we needed lunch from Dench ... Mike snagged the last two vegetarian savoury ite...