Naughty... 2 weekends have passed

and no new blog.

Andy's chosen title for this blog is: Wine by the bottle, by the case and by the strawberry!

He was over-ruled, as is my prerogative and I am the one typing. However it would help to explain what happened last weekend nicely, so I will leave it there as a sub-heading.
So since last week I have joined the world of the employed again, this may mean blogs start slowing down, or it may mean that blogs become more often as it becomes my displacement activity, we shall see.

So last weekend was the start of the Food and Wine Festival in Melbourne where many restaurants, food providers, drink providers and chefs show their wares and talents (at a reasonable price).

We decided to check out one of the many events taking place that weekend - Farm gate to Cellar door. This event was held along the Yarra River next to the Exhibition centre. There were many little white stalls set up and for $35 you were given a wristband and a plastic wine glass (with a black line marked on it) and set free amongst the stands.

There were over 60 wineries at the event and each stand had several wines to try (as this was not a challenge to taste them all, we selectively chose our wines, I stuck to the whites).

One winery made all their wines from strawberries - Mmmmmmmmmmm, they also dabbled in ciders too, so a purchase was made. The day was warm and sunny and if they had provided sun loungers I would have been fast asleep, as this wasn't an option we kept on tasting the wines until it closed.



The weekend continued nicely with a barbecue on Sunday, to expand our bbqing repetoire we took a wander to South Melbourne market, we finally ended up with the traditional burgers, sausages and corn on the cob, but also prawns, salmon, mushrooms and several marinades to experiment with.




What is wrong with this picture?









Is it just me (because Andy didn't see any problem with this) or aren't the prawns supposed to lay flat?

The weekend we have just had, has been a looooong weekend (not due to boredom or the fact that I now have work to do) we had a public holiday on monday. To fill the weekend, there has been shopping of both clothes and food, tidying (of the flat) and work :(
However, there has also been a little time for fun (mostly eating and drinking in the sun fun). Saturday lunch was DUMPLINGS, we went to a lovely restaurant in chinatown and the dumplings were delicious (according to Andy), they restaurant is famous for them and even has instructions on the table on how to eat them for maximum enjoyment (Andy strictly followed these guidelines). The meal continued with various bits and pieces including some spicy prawns (heads and all!) which were covered in chillies (HOT, HOT).

The remainder of the day was spent in a variety of places including:
A rooftop bar









A bar with pool tables









and beside the river









I will include one other activity that has kept Andy very busy - PS3 Gran turismo 5 (I won't mention the pile of ironing which is sat next to the table as yet untouched).









There is also my crochet (the brown thing is a Sackboy from PS3 little big planet, the things on the left are meant to be cupcakes, I think you can guess the rest).

Mmmmm... Wine!

There are several areas around Melbourne that are havens for wine. The areas are perfect for the vines and therefore there are plenty of wineries (as they are called here, not vineyards).
We headed to one particularly dense population of wineries - the Mornington Peninsula.
No packed lunch or picnic was prepared, we had already discovered that most wineries come with some sort of restaurant, so we decided to risk it and go for lunch at one of them.
The prediction for the day was grey skies and possible showers in the morning, however the weather is unpredictable, so with both umbrella and suntan lotion packed, we headed out in the car.
We stopped off in Mornington (presumably the town for which the peninsula was named) and took a stroll down the main street towards the beach (the drive had been along the coast so we had seen plenty of it already, but there's nothing like getting up close and personal). The town was full of shops and cafes. I was very lucky and Andy purchased me a bento box, it is super cute, with a little sauce pot and knorf (a fork/knife). I shall be searching the internet for bento box lunch recipes over the next few days - yum, yum.
So it was nearly lunch and we headed further down the peninsula to Redhill and our first winery - which also did woodfired pizza (lunch) and a sculpture trail. The wines were fine and we purchased a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.
The next winery was named 10 minutes by tractor, although we didn't ride in a tractor at all and wandered into the cellar door (not because we were drunk but rather this is the name for the area were you can taste the wines). The wine tasting was $4 each but the people were very knowledgable and there were at least 7 wines to taste - you could also waive the cost if you bought a bottle of wine, which we did (well 2 bottles, a sauv blanc and a chardonnay).
We were then going to head home but there was time for one more, so I choose Darling winery (really, that was it's name) which was on the route back. This winery was fabulous, mostly due to the 2 wonderful women hosting the cellar door, they were so friendly and funny and gave a laypersons explanation of their wines. So we ended up with 7 bottles (buy 6 get one free, can't resist a deal) these were a mixture of pinot, rose, sparkling, viognier (pronounced vee-on-yay) and sauv blanc.
So plenty to drink at ours at the moment. Bottoms up!

We also went the Palais theatre in St Kilda to see Tim Minchin vs the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, both Andy and I had a fantastic time, it was comedy and music in one, very funny and very entertaining. There will be photos if I can get them off of the mobile phone!
All round a 5 Stacey star weekend.