james test

After our late lunch at Tom Phat , Mike, Jo, Cindy and I made use of a borrowed car to head out for some sort of road trip. By the time we got our acts together and picked up Tracy it was already getting on for four in the afternoon, meaning that our initial plans of driving to the Dandenongs and going on a 7km lyre bird walk were looking a tad optimistic. Instead, we decided to head towards Healesville and go for a quick stroll around one of the nearby nature reserves before finding something delicious for dinner. Our previous trip to Giant Steps/Innocent Bystander had been fairly successful, so we decided on a follow-up visit. Both Cindy and I ordered pizzas this time around - pumpkin, marinated goat feta, pomegranate and roasted garlic for me ($22) and green zucchini, capers, fennel & lemon for Cindy ($17). These were some fine pizzas - perfectly cooked thin bases, thoughtful combinations of toppings and an appropriate level of cheesiness. Mine (see the picture above) was ...

This weekend heralded the arrival of yet another Mike, this one a colleague from the US. To welcome him to Australia and Victoria in particular, Jane took us all on a half-day tour of the Yarra Valley. I packed a few super sandwiches and some fruit to line our stomachs as we travelled, since the main attraction would be wine tasting. It became apparent quite quickly that Mike knows a lot about wine, so the expedition proved to be as educational as it was enjoyable. We managed to cover five of the smaller vineyards, encountering a variety of hosts, almost all of them chatty, and Michael amassed a substantial collection of reds to take home (lucky Jane had a kombi, rather than a little hatchback, to fit them all in!). The added bonus (for Mike especially) were encounters with a laughing kookaburra, a small flock of galahs, and about a dozen kangaroos, one with a joey in its pouch. As the clock ticked past 6pm we decided we needed something more substantial than even the local shira...