Yum yum yum

My journey into becoming a hard core foodie (or, how I'm now the fattest I've ever been) started about a year and a half ago. Sick of supermarket bread, I went on my first foodie's expidition to find the best bakery bread on my side of town. After months of carbo loading, I settled on Filou's chewy and tasty wholemeal loaves. It tasted like the homemade bread my mum used to make with her bread making machine. The smell of bread baking to the time that you wake up is a better alarm than the annoying beep of my Nokia. Every house needs a bread making machine like they need a microwave (although I prefer stove top heating rather than microwaves).

The problem with being a foodie is that now I've tried the best of everything, I can't go back to eating grilled chicken breast salad for dinner every night. I was once a very plain, healthy eater. Fruit, vegetables, tuna and grilled meat was satisfactory. On some occasions I wouldn't even feel the need to eat. I know there are ways to make healthy food interesting. Believe me, I could write my own healthy recipies book. But my brain is now telling me to eat like a glutton at every meal, and to not resist temptation. On Thursday I walk past Let Them Eat Cake and want to buy a cupcake. On Saturday I walk to Filou's to buy a chocolate cherry brioche. On Sunday I go to A1 to buy a cheese pie. I tell myself each time that it's a treat, but how often do I need to have these treats? There should be a way that I can balance my love for food with a healthy lifestyle. Well, I'm running more to compensate for my daily indulgences. Getting fit is actually quite fun because it gives me a goal other than to make the perfect hot cross buns.

I'm extremely spoilt for choice in places to eat in Brunswick. I wonder if I will be as lucky in Toronto. If I can't find anywhere good to eat there, at least I will lose weight.

Porridge variations

Banana porridge

1. Cook porridge as per directions on packet.
2. After it's cooked mix in one mashed banana.
3. Sprinkle cinnamon, sultanas/currants and slithered almonds.

Pear oats

1. Throw in a pear into a pot of boiling water (twice the amount of water to cover the pear). Add cinnamon and ginger spice powder. Boil till pear is soft.
2. Add in rolled oats. Stir until cooked.

Apple oats

Same directions as for pear oats, except leave out the ginger spice.

VISIT MALAYSIA GODDAMMIT!!!!

It annoys me that so many people are ignorant about Malaysia and choose to go to Thailand or Singapore instead for a South East Asian holiday. Thai food is great, but Malaysian is just as good and has more variety. As for Singaporean food, well, it's an inferior version of Malaysian and they don't have any signature dishes (chilli crab doesn't count as it's Malaysian!). All Singapore has to offer is clean public toilets. Why people should go to Malaysia:

1. The variety of food influenced by Malay, Chinese (especially Hainanese), Indian and Portugese cultures.

2. The Malaysian Chinese food is better than what's found in China, where every dish I tried, from street stall to hotel restaurant, was either too salty, bland, or overpowered with chilli. Mao drove the good cooks away from China!

3. Kelantan (north east) - the best meal of my life so far was ayam percik (barbequed chicken marinated in coconut milk, tamarind and other spices); rice wrapped in banana leaves and shaped cone, with three different curries layered in the rice cake; and blue rice.

4. Malacca - chilli crab with thick, white slices of white bread; Nonya kueh (Malay-Chinese deserts);

5. Penang - asam laksa and kueh

6. KL - Maggi mee goreng (fried noodles), mee rubus (soft egg noodles in a potato based sauce), roti chanai, peanut pancakes with corn and coconut, tofu bakar (barbequed tofu stuffed with cucumber and dipped in satay sauce). Many food stalls are open 24 hours, which is perfect for an after drinks meal at 3am.

Love list 4/3

SAM ROCKWELL

Watch Lawn Dogs, Matchstick Men, and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.



BIRCHER MUESLI

To make enough for 4 breakfasts (for lazy loners like me), mix together:

- 2 cups oats
- 1 cup cloudy apply juice
- 1 cup natural yoghurt
- 1 grated Granny Smith
- almond slithers
- sultanas
- cinnamon

Serve with blueberries or strawberries (whatever is on special). But as the Special K ad says, buy blueberries BECAUSE YOU'RE WORTH IT.

Muffin porn

It doesn't matter if you are a top or bottom - the muffins at the Green Refrectory will please you any way you desire.

The wide, crisp top has edges that are almost as crunchy as a biscuit.



The base is filled with an abundance of fresh berries and chunks of pear or apple. Soft, moist and sweet. On weekends they may surprise you with chocolate chips too.


Forgive the dodgy photography.

Muffins were a staple food for me while I was at uni. They're cheap and filling. Whenever I visit a new cafe or bakery I always try their muffins, but time and time again I have been disappointed by their general dryness and lack of fruit. Are bakeries overcooking muffins on purpose to put people off eating them, thus helping to reduce obesity rates in Australia?

The Green Refrectory, without a doubt, makes the best muffins in Melbourne. These are the regular varieties they offer:

- Blueberry and pear
- Raspberry and apple (with chocolate chips sometimes)
- Strawberry and pear
- Blackberry/boysenberry and apple/pear
- Savoury - sun dried tomatoes, spinach, roast pumpkin, feta and pine nuts

Location: 115 Sydney Rd, Brunswick. It's next to the shoe store, opposite the tanning salon.

Opens till 8pm everyday but Sunday, when it closes at 5.

The fat person’s mind

10.03

Bread, I want to eat a chewy slice of bread. The Vogel’s multigrain toast I ate in the morning had a good chewy consistency but multigrain bread always leaves an unpleasant aftertaste in my mouth.

10.57

I want to eat coconut. Something with coconut and chocolate. Maybe a coconut and chocolate flan? What about a brownie with shredded coconut?

11.24

I’m craving the burger pattie I made last week. It had lots of chopped onions in it and parsley. I think I will make one tonight. It was one of the best burgers I’ve had in my life.

11.49

I’m sooooo hungry.

12.46

Just finished a leftover lunch of salad (cucumber, tomato, Bulgarian feta and tuna in vinaigrette) with Turkish bread spread with a yogurt and cucumber dip. I am now satisfied for the moment. Maybe I’ll eat a mango in the afternoon.

Turducken

A chicken stuffed in a duck stuffed in a turkey, with a layer of stuffing in between each meat. When I head about this I thought it was a joke. But I saw a turducken on an American Christmas food special today. This is what a turducken looks like:



An amusing article on how a turducken is made: http://www.blacktable.com/turducken031217.htm

When I go to America I HAVE to see one and taste a bite. I probably won't eat a whole serving though, only because I hate duck. I'd love to see Martha Stewart make one.

What about a Laef? Lamb stuffed into beef. What about Latton? Lamb stuffed into mutton. What about stuffing chicken eggs into a chicken? What about a qupiturducken? A quail stuffed into a pidgeon into a chicken into a duck into a turkey.

Birdman Eating

Rating: 3.5/5
Address: xxx Gertrude St, near Smith St. A few doors down from the Roti Chanai restaurant, opposite Alia bar.
Prices: $8 - 15

The unique menu was the drawing card for me. I was especially curious about the papaya and coconut toast with lemon and lime marmalade. They used dried papaya and we could smell the coconut as the plate was placed on our table. The toast was rich and despite the small slices, one slice alone was substantial. The lemon and lime marmalade was a beautiful accompaniment.

Next up was black pudding. This is something I've always read about but never tried. I always ask anyone who has ever been to England if they've tried black pudding. This was the first restaurant I've been to that had black pudding on the menu, so I did not hesitate to order it. It was cut up like sausage and fried. It was slightly crispy outside and almost mushy soft, like tinned corned beef, inside. The texture didn't sit well with me. It tasted like sausage. I'll be sticking to actual sausage next time.

Finally we ate a salad with crispy bastirma. Bastirma is cured, air dried beef that is flavoured with paprika and then slithered. The bastrima was fried and tasted like strong bacon. I loved it! The salad dressing was kind of like tzatziki and the vegetables were cucumber and lettuce.

The cafe is modern and cosy. This is often a hard balance to strike, because many modern venues come across as soulless. The waiters were friendly but they didn't bring our $5 change to our table! Did they just assume we were going to give them a tip? We sat there for awhile waiting for the change, but eventually we left as we were too chicken ask them for it. It's pretty much because of this that I'm giving Birdman Eating 3.5 instead of 4 stars.

Mr Natural Gourmet Vegetarian Pizza

Rating: 4/5
Address: 469 Brunswick St, Fitzroy
Phone: 9481 7775
Leaflet blurb: We use only low fat rennet free cheese, fresh vegetables and 100% wholemeal flour.
Prices: Small - $7.50 - 8.50; Medium - $11.00 - $12.50; Large - $13.00 - 14.50

My they really pile the toppings on here. I was a bit sceptical about eating rennet free cheese, but it had the same bite as regular cheddar cheese. I loved it because the cheese was melted to a golden brown colour, which gave it even more umph. The base was thin but strong enough to support the ample toppings.

They could do with offering pizzas with less toppings, such as a simple potato, rosemary and onion combination. The toppings were rightly balanced, so there was no overpowering taste of garlic, herbs or the base sauce. I could actually taste the brocolli and spinach. This is a rare find in vegetarian meals.

Shanghai - food

I was most looking forward to eating steamed dumplings. The Shanghai Dumpling House restaurant in Melbourne gave me the impression that Shanghai was renowned for dumplings. The dumplings, otherwise known as xiao long bao, were nice but no better than the dumplings I’ve eaten in Melbourne. I became sick of eating dumplings after two consecutive days of eating them. Although the food was cheap (I bought a bowl of homemade soup noodles for $0.50), it was mostly too salty, oily or sweet.



Shanghai does not have as much street food variety as Malaysia. The most common finds were chicken wings and Muslim Chinese lamb kebabs. Steamed bun stalls were quite uncommon unfortunately. I found a few spring onion pancake stalls. They crack an egg on the pancake and smother it with chilli. Fried buns were everywhere too. Imagine what would happen if you deep friend something that wasn't meant to be deep fried - that's how I felt about the deep fried buns. It was a thick dough with a hard, not crispy base. I wasn't used to eating food of this texture.




I observed that not many Shanghainese ate rice to accompany the salty stir fries. I did not understand how they could do without rice to balance out the saltiness of the dishes. All servings were massive and a lot of food would often go to waste.

There were many bakeries that sold buns and pastries that made me worry about developing diabetes. I took advantage of the cheap bananas by eating one a day. The tastiest meal I ate was at a Chinese restaurant named Yin. I was apprehensive about going to this restaurant because it was located in a hotel, which meant the food would be less authentic. I liked the place the moment I stepped into it. It was furnished in rich, dark wood and jazz was playing in the background. It had a Manhattan basement jazz bar from the 1920s feel. The menu claimed that they did not use MSG in their cooking and they did not use as much oil and salt as other local restaurants. This suited me, as it was difficult to find a healthy meal in Shanghai. My Chinese friend said that the food at Yin, even though nice, was catered to foreign tastes. And here I was thinking that my taste palette was Asian so I was an authority to tell people where to eat in Melbourne’s Chinatown. Yin had a few of these mahjong lamps, which I loved: