melbourne favourites

in our first year of living in wagga wagga we discovered an unexpected perk, it's a short-ish drive to melbourne. since then, we've been lucky enough to go at least once a year for a weekend visit. usually we go for a reason, to see a specific exhibition or talk but this time round we went just for fun.

I should tell you that the first time we drove to melbourne from wagga back in 2011 we went a little bit nuts with the food. back then there were fewer good cafes in wagga and we'd forgotten what it was like to be in a city. so we went on a food mission, hunting out specific cafes for every meal. that trip stayed with me for at least a year afterwards, I'd managed to put on 3kgs in a single week that I couldn't shift for ages!

these days we're a bit savvier. we share meals at most places, because usually the servings are huge and it means we can stop and snack at different cafes.

after a few visits, we've definitely have a few favourite places:

• the australian centre for contemporary art. acca is a 10 minute walk from the main ngv gallery and is a really cool exhibition space. its shows are a refreshing break from the blockbuster exhibitions that are often on at the ngv. during our last trip we ran into a scary amount of people buying monet souvenir plates and umbrellas. acca has an excellent selection of books and catalogues and I think my most favourite thing from our last trip was picking up some really interesting short books/essays from previous exhibitions.

• the hardware societe. we almost always get lost when we look for this cafe, hardware lane is long and the hardware societe is right at the top of one end, though you can't miss it when you spot the crowds. it's not so fun on a rainy day unless you have planned ahead and brought an umbrella and we usually don't wait more than 15 minutes for a table. I love that they always serve their coffees with a miniature donut. here's what we ate last weekend:

^^ aforementioned coffee with tiny donut and the breakfast we shared. this was my first ever croque-monsieur thought we went the untraditional route and chose a smoked salmon version that was made with brioche and served with a scoop of potato salad (I think! we ate it in such a frenzy) and some aioli. it was so good!

• galleon in st kilda is also awesome for breakfast though we didn't make it to the beach this time. we usually go to st kilda so I can look at the acland street cakes and have some trampoline gelato and tony can go to the book shop but this time we worked out that there was a massive version of his favourite bookstore in carlton so we went there instead.

• we'd stumbled across readings on earlier trips but this blog alerted us to the main store. so we spent saturday night browsing through books of all varieties in carlton. I bought one thing but had the best time browsing. tony had resisted buying any books up until this point (which is super impressive) but walked away with a huge bag of books. and then I discovered the readings sale shop across the road.

^^ we stumbled across la belle miette enroute to the hardware societe. it's also on hardware lane and the shop girl insisted on filling up the counter with macaroons before I took this photo. I managed to carry around two macaroons in my bag all day without squashing them! the girl who served us did an impressive job of using the plastic bag as an air cushion for our precious cargo.

^^ this trip we visited sophie gannon gallery in richmond for the first time and really enjoyed it, I snapped this photo at the end of the street. I love the white house in the middle.

• we've recently discovered the incredibly beautiful heide museum of modern art, which is an awesome combination of architecture, modern art, good food and beautiful gardens only this trip we got our dates wrong and planned to go visit on the only day it was closed. sadly we were leaving town that day too!

• embarrassingly last weekend I totally stalked out the tables at little cupcakes. we go there every visit and despite the cafe being tiny, we normally find a seat. this time we weren't so lucky but we persevered and got cupcakes. hurrrah!

• and finally for dinner, chin chin is a semi-tradition if we're early enough and can get a seat. last visit we didn't feel like facing a 2.5 hour wait for a table so ended up at a meatball restaurant down the lane, which was a lot of fun until I decided to eat a whole ice cream sandwich after a massive dinner.

here are some random snaps from last weekend:

lots of blue and below, a steve aoki salad, which was partly ordered because of its name. I had to google steve aoki!

hope you've had a lovely weekend.

5 good things

^^ the start of spring, though I hardly know myself without a thermal and coat layer.

 ^^ sunday arvo hot chips in the park! these are special lord of the fries beauties with kansas bbq sauce.

^^ another melbourne food favourite - a trip to little cupcakes on degraves street. we did get away last weekend! I always get tiny teddy cake and regret not buying a box for the long drive home.

^^ the pretty view from our hotel room, which was a little bit parisian.

^^ and some fresh reading material from the australian centre for contemporary arts.

and we just had the nicest mid-week evening. we went for a walk after work, made chicken and pesto pasta for tea, watched my favourite show on tv (second last episode of kitchen cabinet tonight!) whilst eating mini chocolate and caramel magnums. so good!

the last days of august

in the last week of august we've been increasingly restless, only we've been out of sync. last weekend it was tony who wanted to go somewhere, anywhere especially after hearing of what I ate in canberra but I was sick and struggled to find the energy to do anything except alternate between the bed and the couch.

and now after a very long week at work, I'm angling for a weekend getaway. I think it's partly to do with the change in weather and time of year. tiredness has built up and I'm desperate for a change of scene but sadly this week tony's come down with my cold.

but earlier in august we found a happy balance between the cold days of winter, work and pottering around the house. there has been lots of cooking and we're now managing to make a sourdough loaf each week, labna cheese from homemade yoghurt and the occasional sweet thing like super thin crepes. I've started making rice milk (the lazy no-cook way) and a really yummy bircher museli.

^^ here are a couple of snaps from a recent burger date in the park. they were yummy corner shop style burgers filled with drippy beetroot and bright yellow cheese. and we ate them in the winter's sun in our favourite park that we don't think has a name.

crossing the border

this was meant to be a crazy week, one in which I'd be in wagga, canberra and melbourne over 5 days but sadly on sunday afternoon I started to feel cold and exhausted and had the beginnings of a sore throat. it was probably because the day before, I'd boasted to tony that I hadn't had the flu since we moved to wagga or caught a cold over winter.

still, I pressed on with my trip to canberra and drove out of town early on tuesday morning. the plan was to record and photograph six stories at one of the major cultural institutions.

thankfully I was joined by vanessa, one of my favourite colleagues and her company made the trip a lot of fun and a lot less stressful. I was also grateful that she could jump in and take over when my cold got a little too much.

we made it our priority to enjoy as much city food as we could when we weren't working. we had a lovely late cafe breakfast on wednesday before we were due to start work. there was seared haloumi all round.

we also tried a japanese restaurant in town that was equal parts traditional and wacky. we ordered the cheese moffle from the menu because it sounded silly and when it arrived we found out that it was a sticky rice pancake covered in cheese. it was funny but probably not the best thing we ate that night. I also ordered a mok grape from the drinks menu, which was a lot more successful. it was a slushie that tasted like grape fanta, with frozen berries sprinkled on top.

and on our final night in town there was a delicious lao thai meal. we'd worked through lunch that day, so we did a good job of over ordering at dinner.

sadly the icy winds and long days did nothing to help my cold.  the drive home was challenging and my trip to melbourne was off. I returned home with a very croaky voice and a small bag of souvenirs, including two very delicious berry brioche buns from the famed silo bakery which had jam baked into them. genius!

hope you have a lovely weekend!

when you are 29

my birthday started gleefully with a pug themed present that had been sent from my friend in bega, which was opened over breakfast. the parcel had arrived four days earlier but the instructions on the back were clear, it was not to be opened until august 13. I made it but only just. the morning before my birthday, tony caught me gently squeezing the package and suggested I put it down.

the gift my aunt sent wasn't so lucky. I opened it later that night and was ecstatic to discover a pair of hand knitted fingerless gloves and a matching beret. she's been in a bit of a knitting frenzy lately and said she'd whipped my present up in a couple of days. handmade presents are the best!

there were more lovely treats to come. my lovely friend amy gave me a box of gift cards and mini envelopes that she had made, along with the most beautiful birthday card I have seen in a very long time. I'm now wracking my brain for things I can make for other people's birthdays!

there was a chocolate cheesecake at work, which was very welcome after I'd spent a long day spent shooting outside in the freezing cold and a bright yellow iPad bag from tony who had ignored my suggestion to not give me any presents this year because of the engagement ring he'd so recently saved up for. instead he organised a mini treasure hunt around the house and gave me a cookbook I'd been eyeing for close to a year, a funny J-pop album, a furry make up bag in the shape of a bear head and all of the archives of my favourite DVD quarterly.

my favourite part of the day was a little after work walk along the levee bank. we found a little walking trail that led us to flowerdale and we watched some pelicans and dodged magpies before hurrying back to the car in what light was left.

tony made a special tea for dinner. I had randomly requested some blue cheese pasta and this chocolate guinness cake and he didn't disappoint. he made everything himself and the dinner was so fantastic. we've been happily eating leftovers ever since.

so far 29 seems very promising.

two weekends

the weekend before last we were in sydney, so that tony could pack up his exhibition and give an artist talk. our first stop was lunch in glebe, and I had to stop to take a photo of this super cute white house with the window sill flower boxes!

on sunday my brother and his wife made us buckwheat pancakes for breakfast, which they served with homemade nutella. they have the loveliest apartment in woollahara and post-pancakes I thought it was a great idea to go and try on some wedding dresses. suffice to say no dress was bought.

but we have managed to book a venue! which is exciting and means we can relax a little. we're going to get married next year in spring and this is the view from the place we'll get married and have a lunch reception. I'm super relieved and now we'll just save our pennies, organise the fun things and be patient.

we're hoping to have an engagement party in wagga this year and I'm obsessed with hiring this caravan for a picnic in the park.

and here's a quick snap from our sunday walk from this weekend just past. after two weekends away from home it was such a relief to be back.

it's my birthday tomorrow and I am so excited! this morning tony caught me squeezing a present my friend sent me that I'm not allowed to open until tomorrow. he's making me this chocolate birthday cake as I write!

if I wait here, will you come?

on sunday morning we looked for the place where they buried my aunt.  at 9.30 in the morning the cemetery was quiet and more impressively manicured and still than I had remembered. when we were last here we stood in the sun and waited amongst family members young and old, and some people we had never met before. I wondered how they knew her.

but on sunday the car park was empty as were the grounds, save for three people we passed standing by gravestones dotted throughout the gardens.

we had a map, my late aunt's husband is an architect and my brother had given me extra directions over email, to what was an already clear and detailed diagram. still, we got lost. there were graves with colour coordinated flowers (yellow and white), one with a pale pink balloon and one direction trinkets, some had oval framed pictures set into gravestones.

I had secretly hoped to find her myself but was relieved when tony found the place.

a big box of red roses that had bloomed rested next to the small stone marker which held a name plate. I didn't know her middle name until that moment, though it made sense being her mother's name. I stroked the rose petals as I read the name plate, suddenly desperate to touch something. I thought I had come to remember her but suddenly I craved tactility.

we returned the next day, cutting through lanes of traffic so as not to miss the turn off. we stopped at the cemetery up the road to buy flowers from the 7 days a week, 365 days a year florist.

I chose the brightest thing I could find, and something to complement the big box of roses that was already there only when we found her again, the box was gone, leaving only rose petals scattered around her stone.

I set down my box of flowers and made a groove for it in the dirt. then I quietly started work on the petals, rearranging them around her stone so none were lost or wasted on the ground. as I busied myself, a thought crept into my head. if i waited here, would she come to me?

previously I had thought it would be enough to find the place but at that moment I knew it was not.