Portliness

My recent Melbourne visit (and related food extravaganza) has left me a little portly. My mum has described me as being a little bit more 'juicy'.

You know that stereotypical scenario: Girl goes shopping, drags boyfriend along to carry shopping, boyfriend is in catatonic state as girlfriend tries on endless item of clothing after another, prances out of change room and asks: "Do I look fat in this?"

Apparently the bit that we *don't* hear after the "Yes", and then slapping said-boyfriend is....

"Wow, you look fantastic, Yes please buy it, *drool*, in fact let me buy that for you, even better - here, use my credit card..."

So what am I *supposed* to do with it?

A little bit shirty, because I got locked out of my gmail account for 24hours. The reason had been "oh, there's been way too much activity on your account, so we've locked it."

Grr - so if you enable to email auto-forward on your account, and then some emails come in, and get forwarded elsewhere, "normal" activity suddenly becomes "abnormal", and you get locked out. ARGH!

Review: Chat thai

Visited Chat Thai on Campbell Street for lunch today. Good crowd - mix of mostly Asian, some westerners, quite a few thai. Excellent vibes. Seems authentic, but it has a bit of a french influence - e.g. the use of 'consomme' and 'jus' in the menu descriptions

Service staff were lacking, and seemed more interested in taking names for people queueing for tables, and not in actual service. E.g. mains arrived before entrees; mains were dumped on table with no explanation of what dish it was; and mains were delivered without cutlery or serviettes!! Use of wireless pda-style order takers. Design - although it looks pretty, the waitstaff have to push past the queue of people waiting for tables or paying in order to deliver it to the table. Precarious when carrying three or four dishes.

Food good. The Som tum (papaya green salad) was plenty hot and sweet: but lacking in the sour taste. The little dish of chilli sauce that came with the pork skewers - fresh and panfried chillies, coriander, ground rice was a lot better balanced. The snacks - chicken skewers with satay sauce and the bbq pork were disappointing.

Eating Well, in contradiction

Flying 800kmSydney-Melbourne to do "the slow food thing" seems a bit of an enormous contrdiction.

I had a fantastic time, with three going-out-meals in three days. Sitting for 3 hours on a plane (and filling in the other hours with shopping) don't seem to have balanced out the amount of eating that I achieved. I have most decidedly put on weight, and he had to yield an extra hole on his belt!

Saturday night: "A taste of slow" dinner at Tjanabi restaurant in Federation Square*.
Sunday night was yummo vegetarian banquet at the Morroccan Soup Bar. (Shares joint 'fave melbourne places' with the Vegie Bar in Fitzroy)
Monday lunch was risotto at Piadina Slow Food in Punch Lane. (In retrospect, I should have gone for the Japanese mushroom, green pea lentil curry)
Finally, a double pot of rainbow chai at Well-Connected cafe to settle the stomach on Monday night.

*slow food incorporating food/fish/microherbs flown in from NT, and cooked by two chefs from restaurants in Alice Springs seems to contradict the *other* slow food tennant, that of sourcing food locally.