Sometimes you just have to ask

After scanning the wares at gelatomassi twice in one week, and not spying any "peanut butter" gelato, tonight I asked for it before making my decision. They had some out the back. Score!! I guess sometimes you do have to be a bit of a pushy customer, and ask directly.
It seems Dolce and Gelato have also joined the craze for peanut butter flavoured items (I spotted some last week).

Sydney Festival's Festival Bar

I went to the first night of the Sydney Festival Bar. Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings, on the basis of a big write up by that trashy afternoon rag, MX.

Dangnammit, why don't they tell you that the main act doesn't hit the stage until 10pm? You can't find that information on the website, and it is not listed on the ticket. the *ticket* time of 8pm is actually when the doors open.

Doors - because there was one entry only... it took a very long time to get all the punters inside. I was sitting on the sideline, just watching the queue to get in. Having just come back from holiday (and about to start work again the next day), I was very tempted just to leave & grab dinner in town instead.

Food inside - limited, but the usual inflated hostage-punter prices. The only vego suitable dish was quiche. A sausage onna a bun plus onion cost $6, with a 100ml tub of serendipity ice cream $5. I think fish & chips was $13, and other options including kebabs, burgers, chips.

I tried serendipity "peanut butter disaster", hoping for some of gelatomassi's peanut butter goodness. It would be okay, if it weren't for the overly sweet chocolate sauce that was on top, and as a result coated everything. Too sweet for me, and I couldn't taste the peanut butteryness.

Anyway, once they did come on, Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings were really a lot of fun. The bass player was a fill-in for the standard line up. Sharon was so tiny, and and so much energy dancing around all over the stage. The crowd really loved it, and were cheering for more.

2009 Tassie holiday, part 1

I've just come back from a holiday in good €old Tasmania. It looks like a lot of people at work at a similar idea, with one guy heading to the Falls festival at Marion Bay, and someone else was going carvaning. We went with no real plan in mind: fly in to Hobart, fly out of Launceston, camp at Freycinet National Park in the middle.

It turned out pretty well! I got a last minute invite to R&N's NYE party, and we camped along the river Derwent. It was so much effort setting up camp, that as soon as we had done it, we decided that we would be spending two nights in each place.

After Hobart (and never quite making it up Mount Wellington), we shifted north to Oatlands. Oatlands is approx 30km south of Ross on the midland highway. It has a whole lot of Georgian architechture, but not only that, it has *free* camping on the shores of Lake Dulverton for up to three nights. It's pushed as a roadside stopover for campervans/caravans, but honestly, people who camp drive too, right? The advantage of this for Oatlands, is that people who stopover will then go ahead and spend that camping fee in the town instead.

On the recommendation of the people working on restoring the mill in the town, we visited Blossoms Tea house, which has a neato pelican onna nest sculpture on its chimney.
We were grubby as anything, not having had a shower for 4 days, and having just walked around 2/3 of Lake Dulverton that morning, but we were treated like royalty.

We had a really lovely ploughman's lunch (for one, shared between 6!), with homemade multigrain bread and including my first pickled onion. The main event though was a devonshire tea, with an enormous pot of tea, strong enough to refill, and really yummy scones, cream & jam.

Just back from holiday...

Inspired by traytable, although I can't think why: I've just come back from holiday.