james test

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?