Sydney Food Bloggers Christmas Picnic 2013

This time last year my friend CW was telling me about the Christmas picnic she got invited to. It was by invitation only for Sydney food bloggers. She had decided not to attend as she had other commitments but I immediately felt very left out. I thought to myself 'why wasn't I invited? Am I not considered a food blogger? Is my blog so insignificant?' After all, at that point in time, my blog was a year and a half old. Big mental sigh at that point in time! But I got over it as I knew it would take a while for any blog to have any form of attention.

I really don't know what makes a blog more popular than another. I suppose there has to be a point of difference for readers to visit regularly. But over time, my blog has started to pick up more readers and it literally has a life of it's own these days. All I do is contribute to it. :)

Okay, enough postulating I think! So this year when I got contacted by chocolatesuze through twitter as she could not find any way to email me (information not on my blog) I was very thrilled! Suddenly I felt included and part of a community of people I had yet to meet!

The designated day started by being cloudy then sunny then stormy and windy. Seriously, one minute I thought yay the picnic is on and another minute I thought it cannot be on when the rain was bucketing down Parra way with thunder and lightning to boot!!

Twitter was my main mode of comm that morning. There were tweets between jeroxie, the adventures of miss piggy, myself and grab your fork. Finally Helen of grab your fork tweeted the picnic was on irregardless!!

Traffic was heavy driving into the city but I eventually got to Centennial Park and was only 20 minutes late. Not bad for all that happened that morning!

The organising committee of Helen and Suze bought tents so the food could be protected. They even bought larger tents for us adults in case the rain returned. How sweet and thoughtful of them. I cannot believe their commitment and can only thank them for being who they are.

The weather turned out beautifully, there was sun shining down on us and a slight breeze throughout the afternoon. There was so much food brought by everyone who attended. I could not possibly eat everything so I picked a few and was very happy with my selection.

I couldn't get my hands on ramen raff's macarons! Darn it! Missed out on love swah's cupcakes which looked so pretty! And I saw a picture in Instagram of a dessert served that day which I didn't even see in person! Darn, darn, darn! :)

Three Blue Ducks (Bronte, Sydney)

My regular readers must be so over me constantly saying 'this is another place I have been wanting to dine at'. It would seem my list is endless and forever changing to add more and more. But it is the truth so I do apologise to those who do read my blog regularly that I will constantly be saying lines like 'I have been wanting to check it out since it opened'. :)

Three Blue Ducks has been on my list for at least over a year now. There was an attempt to dine there last year with a friend of mine but those plans fell through and this time it all worked out!

It was a Saturday night and I elected for the 6.00 pm seating which meant we would have to leave around 8.15 for the next round of diners. Understandably so as it is a small restaurant and a very popular one at that!

I was so excited be to finally be here and I liked the cool vibe. There were some interesting pieces of mural art on the walls and some antique artefacts hanging on one of the walls. And I do like the corridor of sunshine with plants hanging off the walls! The bar area is located on one side of this corridor and the main restaurant is located on the other side.

We were seated in the bar section and the guys serving us were very friendly. I had a mocktail and CM and JM had cocktails.

We decided to share some small plates and ordered a few mains with the idea of sharing some of the mains too.

We started with:

Chicken liver parfait with Iggy's bread (from the bar menu) - a rustic looking parfait but so so delicious! It was smooth and creamy and quite addictive actually. The bread was beautiful, it had the texture and feel of a mini damper. This was JM's first taste of chicken liver parfait and I think he is now a fan!

Mussels and pipis with chilli and lemongrass - seriously YUM! The chilli and lemongrass sauce should be bottled and sold commercially. It was that good!!

Corn, chawanmushi and crab - I asked for this dish because I was wanted to try chawanmushi and I can't say no to crab. It was a lovely dish, light, summery with beautiful textures of the silky chawanmushi. Delicious!

Beetroot salad with parsley and dates - a fresh looking salad with lovely slivers of beetroot. And on top of that we had a side dish of roasted carrots.

And for mains, we had 2 serves of the Egg hopper, caramelised eggplant curry, yoghurt and Sambal. Mmmm..mmmm. A burst of flavours mingled as I savoured the dish.. there was sweet, savoury and a slight tang from the yoghurt. I found out that the curry had toppings of chilli powder, coriander, eschalot and green onion. Another delicious dish.

Breakfast at The Butcher's Block (Wahroonga, Sydney)

The Butcher's Block opened earlier this year in the suburb of Wahroonga. Ever since it opened there has been a bit of buzz about this very popular cafe and I have had it at the back of my mind to check it out.

When my friends from Canberra told me of their impending weekend in Sydney I suggested we meet up for brekkie.

Having not hung out at Wahroonga before but knowing how busy the village gets, the roads were packed with cars and finding a parking spot can be challenging at peak hours.

The cafe is located in a location which was previously a butcher's shop, hence the very apt name. You can still see remnants of the butcher artefacts hanging in the cafe and the rugged walls are part of the original architecture ( I assume).

This place is packing it in and I loved the vibe! It was family friendly, yet hip!

We decided to sit outside which was located at the rear of the cafe and there were lovely herb beds surrounding the tables. It felt a little like a green house. There was even a chilli plant sprouting right behind where I was seated.

Our breakfast orders were:

Butcher's feed of eggs, mushrooms, tomato, house beans, spicy sausage, black pudding and bacon with sourdough. Thumbs up from J!

Warm marinated forest mushrooms with fresh rocket, shaved Parmesan, and a poached egg on sourdough. T said it was delicious!

NYC Group Reunion at Flying Fish (Pyrmont)

Would you believe that it has been 4 months since my return from my US holidays?!? I cannot believe how time flies! Sigh!

It was time for us ladies to meet up, i.e. the ladies from the NYC group with Sami Lukis as our host. A couple of ladies flew in from Toowoomba, a couple from BrisVegas, one from Melbourne, one from Canberra and the rest were Sydney based. We decided to meet up at The Flying Fish, an idea that germinated many months ago when we were trying to work out where and when to meet.

What better way to spend our $100 Flying Fish gift voucher? Note to all that when we were holidaying in NYC with Sami, we received a goodie bag loaded with freebies and some gift vouchers. One of them was the Flying Fish voucher.

It was again a lovely Saturday evening and as we walked down the wharf to the end of the jetty I was struck again by how beautiful Sydney is. I so love living here and I know I am one of the lucky ones!!

Deja vu hit all of us big time. It was just lovely seeing the girls all dressed up to the nines! Waves of NYC flashbacks hit me..

Most of the group but not all are in this shot

Now on to the meal itself. I had been to Flying Fish once before. It was about 3 years ago and back when I was yet to own a blog.

But this time I am here as part of a group of 12 ladies. We all decided to order a main and a dessert. Plus we were sharing bottles of sparkling wine, soft drinks and even beer. For my main I decided to have the WA Marron with brown butter emulsion, charred lettuce and aged balsamic. It is actually an entree dish but I asked for it to be upsized to a main dish.

The Marron was spectacular; it was perfectly cooked. It was succulent and beautifully complemented by the brown butter emulsion. More please!

One of the other main dish I managed to take a picture of was Sami's dish of Blue Eye Trevalla with white curry, mango yoghurt, and leaf mallum. She said it was delicious and she loved the white curry flavour.

We also ordered some side dishes to share. There was Shaved fennel, blood orange, mint and chilli salad; Hand cut chips with chilli salt; and Dutch carrots with Harissa, yoghurt and cardamom (sorry, but I forgot to take a photo of the delicious carrots).

Mad Hatter's Afternoon Tea at the Lobby Lounge, Westin Hotel (Sydney CBD)

The Good Food Month is in full force every October in Sydney. This year was no exception. If I am not wrong, there are more events and venues every year. And having high tea at one of the selected list of venues is part of the Good Food Month program.

We started this tradition last year, having high tea at The Victoria Tea Room in Westfield Sydney. And this year CW and I decided to try out the very quirky but eye catching Mad Hatter's afternoon tea at The Westin.

And coincidentally October is also the month of CW's birthday and this is the second year in a row we are celebrating her birthday by having high tea. Maybe we are starting a tradition, who knows!?! :)

So what comes with the Mad Hatter's Afternoon Tea Party?

For the savouries, we had Roasted beef and fresh asparagus roulade on mini laugen.

Cherry bocconcini, tomato on a fresh garden salad boat

Alaskan crabmeat salad on double bread

The highlight was the Alaskan crabmeat. Too bad there was only one serving of this dish per person. I could definitely have happily eaten more of it. The bread was soft, fresh and the crab meat had a deliciously creamy flavour. I am not sure about having a salad boat for high tea, but that's just my opinion.

The scones were not served together with the rest of the dishes but we were told to request for them when we were ready. We decided to have them before the sweets and we both felt that was a good decision.