25 September 2010

First produce of the season


Great excitement today as I picked my first bunch of asparagus for the year.

These are truly amazing plants, cropping for over 20 years. We have four plants in the backyard. They are so productive that by December we'll almost be sick of the taste of asparagus, but then there are so many things you can do with it - steamed, blanched, in a soup, baked in quiche or pie (it goes well with chicken), cold in salads, grilled on the BBQ.

I'll fry these in some butter and serve them with pepper and Parmesan cheese tonight.


05 September 2010

Asian high tea (kind of)



This past weekend Tom and I went to Melbourne, which is always a nice thing to do (I still miss living there, I must admit).

We stayed with Tom's parents in East Melbourne, near to my old flat in Richmond and we had a walk around Bridge Road and down to the Gleadell Street Markets. I bought a couple of Chinese boxes that I had been eyeing off for over a year (I bought them as a birthday present to myself, with my birthday being later this week). We also saw a movie at the Palace Como and had a nice Japanese dinner at the great restaurant across the road, just like old days :)

Over the weekend we also went to the Oriental Tea House in South Yarra, which is a nice place to get a late night yum cha or practically any kind of fancy tea you might need. There were having an Oriental style high tea, in which we partook. It was basically a selection of savoury and sweet dim sum with tea. It was quite nice although somehow not quite as special as I'd hoped.