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Cindy: Though this is really Michael's post to write, I wanted to give a bit of back story. Michael's the mortar-and-pestle master of this household, and when he saw an ad for Jamie Oliver's Flavour Shaker last year, he was keen to get one. I did a little shop around in the lead-up to his birthday and ultimately decided against purchasing. The standard model cost upwards of $30 and to get a bonus spoon that would fit inside the blessed thing and scoop out the flava cost over $40! Not my kind of price range for a fun little extra gift - I'd already ordered some Dr Who merch from the UK. Fast forward a few months and Purple Goddess ' fab feller Furry puchases a non-endorsed version - it's larger and much, much cheaper. A couple comments here, a few emails there and this rockin' couple organise our very own Taste Maker to arrive in the mail! Food-bloggin' folks is some of the best folks in the world, I tell ya. Anyway, enough of my gabbing. Check

Our final night at the theatre as MTC subscribers was a memorable one. For starters, we had my dad and his wife Anne joining us as our belated 2007 Christmas gift to them. Then, after reading Jon's great experience , I decided to book the four of us in for Ezard's pre-theatre tasting menu (four courses, $65) to round out the evening. So the stakes were high when Michael and I lost the four theatre tickets . Nevertheless, I cheerfully confirmed the details of the night to my Dad on the phone on Thursday with nary a mention of the house in disarray around me. My faith in the Melbourne Theatre Company proved well-founded. On Friday morning one of their employees endured my convoluted explanation of how we purchased those four tickets in two pairs and on what days and which names might have been used and gosh, I'm so sorry and embarrassed , and within half an hour this unfazed gent had worked out our precise seat numbers and arranged for passes to be picked up on our wa

When I read that the theme of the 2nd Let It Grain blog event was millet, I made myself a stern mental note to join in. I've had a bag of millet in the pantry for well over a month, you see, and not used it at all. Thankfully, Lucy of Nourish Me had recently come up with just the kind of recipe to get me excited about it! The millet is cooked with brown rice in tea rather than water, mixed with tahini and herbs and rolled into balls, and finally plopped into a soup or fried into patties. I tried the latter approach. Even with a heat diffuser my grains cooked hotter and faster than they should have, and I added more water to cook them longer. This wasn't the greatest of ideas, with my grain mixture ending up rather mushy. Even so, the patties held together well in the pan and we were rewarded with some rather rich, nutty nuggets. We ate them with a salad lightly dressed with pomegranate molasses, and they worked well with this fresh and tangy contrast. The rooibos te

In any other year, I would be oblivious to Fine Food Australia - it's a food and hospitality exhibition intended for folks in the industry, not amateur enthusiasts such as I. However, last week I was able to enter Jeff's Shed in the guise of writer for I eat I drink I work . (Full disclosure: I received no monetary payment for this gig, and the opportunity just to be there and eat a lot of food samples was reward enough.) You can read my based-on-a-true-story article here . Many thanks to Duncan and Cam and for inviting me along for the ride! I'd like enter them as a duel nomination for the Pushyjuice™ Award for Keeping Cool Under Pressure. Keep an eye on I eat I drink I work over the coming days, because articles from one or two more of Melbourne's food bloggers will be appearing soon.

Though I don't buy them often any more, Cherry Ripe bars do have a special place in my sweet tooth. As a 3rd-year uni student, I would buy one every Thursday night in the break between grueling hour-long statistics lectures. They were the Aussie treat I missed most when I was studying in the U.S. - the American candy-coated interpretation of a cherry's flavour is entirely different. I've never been a huge fan of the cherry-coconut slices that imitate the chocolate bar, but Bella's vegan version still set the cogs whirring in my head. After all, there was no need to use those icky glace cherries now that I'd discovered the divine dried ones , right? Bella warned me that this might not turn out quite as I envisaged, so devised an experiment. I'd make the slice in four ways, using a different cherry mixture in each one. They are (clockwise from top-left): morello cherry jam, glace cherries, dried cherries and morello cherries preserved in syrup. I pressed an

Cindy and I rarely make the trek across to Northcote - it's not as though it's particularly far, it just doesn't fit nicely onto one of the nearby north-south tram lines, so it tends to get ignored until there's a sufficiently interesting gig on at the Northcote Social Club. This is a shame, because there seems to be loads of interesting eating places around High Street for us to explore. Take Otsumami for instance - it was a new entry in this year's Cheap Eats Guide, scored three stars and snagged a little 'v' for veg-friendly, so it's pretty remarkable that it's taken us most of the year to try it out. Still, it was only one candidate on the list of places I'd drawn up as options - the fact that it's more or less next door to the venue for our post-dinner entertainment was enough to make it #1. Luckily, we had no problem finding a table - Otsumami have a couple of large communal tables which I presume you can't book, so even on a bu

Us food bloggers usually discuss what's behind them, but Wendy wants to know what's on our fridge door. Take a look! (And click on the image to enlarge if you want an even closer look.) Ours is primarily a repository for takeaway menus and novelty magnets, but you can also find a map of our neighbourhood, a postcard from Michael's mum, and a scrawled image of Michael watching TV. What's on your fridge door?

Edit 20/05/2012: Baba has been replaced by burger joint The B.East - it has a veg option but we didn't love it. While the Brunswick end of Lygon St has been a breakfast paradise for some time , this strip may soon also become known as a stylish dinner destination. Rumi 's been there a while, George Calombaris has got something on the boil , and recently Baba has opened. With tickets to an 8:30 movie booked, we arrived well before 7pm to try it out. Though the restaurant was completely free of patrons (and waitstaff) as we entered, it filled in ten short minutes! By the terrace-house dimensions that I measure the inner north in, this is a large and open restaurant with generous spacing between tables. The fit-out is primarily sleek and sophisticated, though the huge murals and shiny retro turntables hint that the lights go down and the music goes up up up when the clock strikes 10. But let me tell you about the menu . The theme is Levantine , and though Baba is m

Spring affects different people in different ways. All it took was one 20 degree day to have Michael planning weekend trips away and a birding expedition within the city limits. Me? I had an overwhelming desire to pull out the icecream maker and get churning. The only problem was, there was no room in the freezer to store it. Pastry, spinach, bread and paratha were in the way. Oh, and two lunchboxes full of too-crunchy chocolate cookies . Whoops. It took me a day or two to work out the obvious solution - cookies'n'cream icecream! By then I'd seen Steph's vanilla-malted icecream , so I set my sights on a choc-malt twist. I started with my favourite vanilla icecream base , went light on the sugar and added 1/4 cup of malted milk powder after the cream. After an hour or so in the fridge, I strained the mixture and poured it into the churner. Twenty minutes later I added about a cup of coarsely chopped cookies. Done! This icecream was even better than I'd ho

What's a pantry challenge? In our home, once every week or so, I tend to delve into the bottom two shelves of the pantry, looking for a half-finished packet of something that can be entirely finished for dinner. Noodles, quinoa, rice paper sheets or felafel mix - these dry and colourless ingredients can actually be a great launching point for a brand new meal, given a quick trip to the shops for some fresh veges on the way home from work. That's hardly a challenge , though, is it? Well, on Tuesday night I managed to create a meal using only ingredients already at home. I realise that's par for the course in many households, but it's highly unusual here. We often don't plan our meals any more than hours ahead, and buy groceries up to five times a week. (For the record, my pantry meal consisted of stir-fried mock chicken and shredded Brussels sprouts with soba noodles and Happee Monkee's dark caramelised garlic sauce .) Kathyrn from Limes and Lycopene has

We'd loaded up on goodies at the Queen Vic Market on Saturday and had decided that we should buy some dried black beans and then get ourselves organised enough to actually use them. Thus, by the time Monday rolled around we'd had a couple of cups of beans soaking for a good 30 hours and were ready to turn them into dinner. My first port of call for Mexican-y recipes is Ken Charney's Bold Vegetarian Chef , possibly my favourite in our cookbook collection. He didn't disappoint, providing us with a recipe for 'Beautiful black bean and avocado soup'. It all took a bit longer than I imagined it would - despite our preparedness, I didn't realise how long the pre-cooking of the beans would take. I had them simmering for about an hour, but they still ended up a little bit firmer than I'd have liked. Still, that was the only minor complaint about this meal (well, that and its lack of visual appeal). The soup had a spicy zing, complemented by the citrus tang of th

Trippy Taco has long been one of Michael's favourite places to buy lunch near his work place. But he took his sweet time letting me know that they're open for an early dinner! Thankfully we had plenty of time to stop by on Friday between work and ACMI's Jim Henson rarities . The layout is still just as Michael described it 19 months ago, though I think the menu has expanded. They're now fully licensed and cook several kinds each of quesadillas, tacos, taquitos, burritos, nachos, as well as breakfast variations thereof. Everything (except possibly the fries, but I think they're working on that) is vegetarian, and the menu is scattered with tips for vegans - letting you know where to request soy milk, soy cheese, tofu instead of eggs, dairy-free chocolate spread instead of nutella. And though they won't keep you waiting too long for food, you can pass that time with snakes and ladders! There's nothing like a quick victory to pique the appetite, even i

To welcome various people back from their travels, a gang of us decided to catch up for dinner on Thursday night. Mike and Jo were talking up Tiba's, as was Cindy (thanks to a very old post by Truffle). What we weren't planning on was Ramadan. Tiba's was overflowing with people - huge groups gathering to break their day-long fast and just to hang out and be sociable. We were told that there was a two-hour wait for a table, so we decided to move on. Our first port of call was Nila Junction , but it was unexpectedly closed. By this stage we were getting hungry and a little frustrated, but Jo-Lyn saved the day by reminding us that A Minor Place offers more than just great breakfasts. The dinner scene is much, much, quieter than breakfast - we wandered in and were presented with a corner booth that comfortably seated the six of us. The menu comes in two parts: dumplings and snacks ($5 - $9.50) and tapas ($9 - $13), both of which were reasonably well-stocked with vegeta

I arrived home in time for dinner on Tuesday night, though not really in time to shop and cook for it. Thus, Michael and I headed to I Carusi for pizza - given the freezing drizzle that Melbourne 'welcomed' me with, I needed a reminder of the finer things this city has to offer. I Carusi's looking a little slicker out front than last time (professionally painted signage!*), though their MO remains unchanged - high quality mid-price pizzas and accoutrements. Michael generously allowed me to choose the two pizzas we'd share, and I tried to reciprocate by picking some toppings I knew he'd particularly like. Up top there is the Broccoli ($13): "in bianco, fior di latte, broccoli, lemon, chilli & parmeggiano". The freshness of the ingredients made it great, though the uneven distribution of the chilli created a bit of a rollercoaster ride. This is the No. 26 ($13.50): "gorgonzola, sauteed leeks, fior di latte, in bianco". So rich, soooo good

On this weekend, Michael and I had rare chance to share some time and food with Doof. A lot has happened since Doof and I were co-renting five years ago, yet it was surprisingly familiar and comfortable sharing wine and takeaway pizza with him and his current housemates in their New Farm home. His beige and brown crockery, which once held my mediocre pre-vegetarian meals for one, probably helped. Doof's housemate was on the receiving end of a painful accident and some poorly executed medical attention that week, and a combination of medication and wine had her excessively apologetic that she hadn't made cake for dessert. She had this great cream, you see. I didn't, but figured some cake was achievable enough. With my hosts' blessing I raided their cupboards for cookbooks and ingredients, converting a Donna Hay recipe for a rectangular maple cake into a dozen golden syrup cupcakes. Though they were nothing spectacular, I was quietly proud of my resourcefulness and s