food porn

What better way to tell you about my trip than with pictures of all the delicious food and drink I had?!

I often get asked "why do you take so many pictures of food?!" and my answer is "because I like to!" :P I do love my food, and I like to remember special meals that I've had - or if a meal is particularly beautiful, I think it deserves to be immortalised!

When I visited New Zealand a few years ago, my friend Emily wrote a sum up of my visit, in food! Turned out we'd had "3 x salmon eggs benedict, 2 blocks Caramel Coconut Rough chocolate, 4 Moro Golds, a case of Tuhi, 3 visits to Burger Fuel....." (this is all from memory, by the way!). A lot of my holiday memories involve food in some way!!

So here's my Australian trip, in food porn. Enjoy! And don't hate me, but I lost weight on this trip :P

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On the first day of the trip, we woke up in Melbourne, incredibly groggy and disoriented. Somehow I remembered which tram to take to St Kilda, where Tom and I descended upon Grocery Bar:

Breakfast number 4: poached eggs on the most delicious grainy toast, with avocado, lemon and smoked salmon.

A skinny latte - what else :) Coffee is so good in Australia, I had forgotten.

That evening we flew to Hobart - and this was our welcome pack in my parents' guest room! Mmmm....Bubbly!

My mother and I did a lot of cooking together - this was something we whipped up a few nights after we arrived. It's a vietnamese noodle salad with rice noodles, carrots, cucumber, coriander, chilli, peanuts and lime juice. Some people had prawns with theirs, Tom and I had Sanitarium Lime & Chilli tofu burgers with ours!

If you know Hobart at all, you'll know Banjo's Bakehouse is a bit of an institution! I couldn't resist their Cauliflower Cheese Pie on a cold day. Their coffee is pretty good too!

Delicious fruit! I started nearly every day with a bowl of yoghurt (Tamar Valley of course!) with muesli and a fresh mango, or strawberries and banana.

Machine Laundry Cafe in Salamanca still do their maximum latte!

Tom's birthday breakfast hotcakes at Machine Laundry Cafe - the hotcakes were studded with fresh banana, and had toffee sauce to pour over them!

Very apt wine to serve at my sister's hen's day, considering there are four sisters in our family :) This was such a delicious wine - we're now trying to source it here in the UK!

The spread at my sister's hen's day - Tasmanian cheeses, fresh grapes, dips and crackers.....so delicious! I prefer this to crisps and deep fried stuff any day!

Brunch with my family at Salt, a new cafe in Moonah, north of Hobart. While everyone tucked into egg-based dishes, I felt like a break from eggs and chose this delicious open flatbread, spread with pesto and topped with pumpkin, pine nuts, spinach and fetta. It was delicious!

Beer! My favourite discovery of the trip was James Squire Golden Ale, it was such a good beer - refreshing and with a sweet vanilla-ish tang. Perfect for enjoying in the sunshine on the deck :)

Antipasti on the deck! The beetroot dip in the middle was quite extraordinary - it has parmesan and cashews in it. So good! I liked it spread on toast as well.

This is my mother's "Australian" christmas pudding - ie: icecream! Christmas in our family is considered incomplete without it. It is basically vanilla icecream with lots of delicious goodies in it - slivered almonds, chocolate chips, chopped up Cherry Ripe bars....and when served it's covered in berries! Some of us put Ice Magic (a chocolate sauce in a squeezable bottle that turns hard when it hits icecream) on top too!

Tom and I took a road trip to the east coast of Tasmania to see the beautiful beaches that make up the Bay of Fires. I arranged a night in some luxury spa accommodation as part of his birthday present, which was absolutely gorgeous and had some superb views of the beach. We had a superb meal at a beachside restaurant called Angasi - which turned out to be owned by a childhood friend of mine (!) - and watched the sun set over the ocean as tucked into plates of blue eye, dusted in sumac, served atop a potato and asparagus frittata, and a rocket, olive and lemon salad. Washed down with a Bay of Fires Sauvignon Blanc!

The chocolate platter we got to share afterwards (camera battery had died, sadly!) was also to die for. My favourite tidbit was the coffee soaked chocolate dipped dates.

Next morning we were treated to breakfast in our accommodation - this is a mushroom and spinach "Bruce sized" omelette [Bruce is the guy who owns it]!

Mures Upper Deck was a must visit while we were in Hobart - their salmon is still the best dish they have! It is served with lemon potatoes, baby beetroot, asparagus, confit of fennel and dressed with a herbed creme fraiche, spiked with horseradish. Yum!!

Whisky at the Lark Distillery. I never used to be into whisky, but I really am now! Goes really well with food too, which surprised me. We had some cheese with this one.

Macadamia and banana pancakes, made by my mum and served for breakfast on the day of my sister's wedding. Liz (the bride) and I had just been for a lazy 5k run! I totally recommend going for a run on the morning of a wedding - it gave me so much energy that lasted the rest of the day!

My sisters and I enjoying our dinner at the wedding reception! I don't really remember what we had - it was all very nice though!

I do remember the wedding cake! It was chocolate!

Jansz - Tasmanian champagne. The nicest champagne I've had for ages - even Tom liked it, and he isn't a bubbly drinker. Strawberries optional!

Back to Melbourne, and my favourite bar Cookie for one of their legendary cocktails. A toast to Mary and Dan, whom I enjoyed this cocktail with there the last time I was in Australia - "Life on Mars"! Tom is a huge Bowie fan so I had to get him one of these!

A meal at Soulfood in Fitzroy with dear friends. My selection was this delicious satay tofu wrap, jampacked with fresh salad.

Brunch at Mr Tulk. I had this lovely avocado and fetta with lime on sourdough, and my friend had the zucchini fritters with yoghurt and lemon below.

Ash cooked pizza for us - it was so delicious! This one had potato, rosemary and parmesan:

And this one had pumpkin, pine nuts and pesto on it. They disappeared so quickly!

We slept in one day and missed our breakfast at the hotel! We sauntered up the street to Verve, my new favourite cafe in Melbourne, where the owner (who now seemed to know who we were, as we'd already had coffee there a few times!) brought over spinach and fetta boreks with yoghurt and rocket:

Washed down with some fresh orange juice:

I found time for a few snacks in between shopping and catching up with friends:

White chocolate and pistachio gelato from Trampoline - I love the colour of the pistachios!

Sushi from Plush Fish - an old lunch time favourite of mine when I lived in Melbourne, and just as good as I remembered.

Tofu and vegetable stirfry with rice at Chocolate Buddha, where we had dinner with a friend who'd come down from Brisbane to see us. We also had some gyoza, and a Western Australian Sauvignon Blanc.

Didn't get any pics of the food on the Qantas flight home - but it was very good! They even had James Squire!

So yes, those were the food highlights of the trip! Are you guys hungry yet?! ha ha.

A lot of people wonder how to balance the indulgences while they're on holidays. The key, I thought, was having a bit of what I wanted and enjoying it - most of the time I didn't finish the portion that you've seen in these photographs. Not depriving myself, but not overdoing it either. I ate until I was full. I tried to have fruit and vegetables at every meal. Tried to drink as much water as possible. And I was also active - went for runs, went bushwalking, trekked along beaches, danced like a maniac at the wedding....but what is a holiday if you can't let your hair down and be a bit lazy, and enjoy a bit of what you fancy? Plenty of time to compensate when you get home and back to normal, I think.

Not a dry day while we were there, so we had a week being alcohol free when we returned! Not so much with the chocolate, I am still managing a bit most days :P Especially now that a Hotel Chocolat has opened up ten minutes walk from me!

Loads more to tell you - including some very exciting news - but I need to dash and check my roast pumpkin that's getting nice and crispy in the oven for tonight's pasta. Will there be a photo of it?! You know there will be ;)

Till next time then my friends, and thanks for reading!