Melbourne food post #1...Vegie Bar.

Well it has certainly been an age since I typed anything in here. Last time I did I believe it was freezing cold. Now it's practically Christmas, which is a scary thought in itself.

Anyway, Nadine and I went on holiday a couple of months back to Melbourne. We often go to Melbourne (well this is the second time together, and I'm sure there'll be many more trips there in the future). I love Melbourne for the food, the cute little old houses and the fact that it is as flat as a pancake. (Likewise I love Brisbane for the cute big old houses and it's hills). We spent almost our entire holiday budget for Melbourne on food and alcohol. Almost, because on the first day there we had to buy warm jumpers because we were idiots and took cardigans that didn't even have full sleeves. We also hired a car to drive out to Hanging Rock where we drank nice wine and had a picnic.

Anyway onto some food. Vegie Bar is always a winner because it is so cheap, the meals are huge and it's always delicious. We went a couple of times this trip.

Nadine had the burrito. Barely managed to finish it.

I had the nachos, which were indeed the biggest plate of nachos I have ever eaten. They don't really skimp on anything, this Vegie Bar place.

We also had a carafe of sangria this time too, since we were eaten Mexican food. It was good sangria but not as nice as my own recipe. That might be because of the amount of vodka I pour into it.

We went to vegie Bar again just before the end of our trip, since we were running out of money and I didn't have anywhere to access the internet to look up other vegan friendly establishments...And I was so desperate for food this time because I'd just gotten a new tattoo and on the tram trip up the road there it hit me that I'd just had needles scraping my wrist and therefore felt a little faint.

Our starter was the dumplings. I love dumplings. I should make my own again one day soon. Can you get gluten free dumpling wrappers? Or does anyone know a good recipe for me to make my own? These ones were filled with some sort of vegetable/mushroom/tvp(?) mixture and had a soy sauce dip.

Nadine ordered the faux duck stir fry, which was delicious and spicy and oily, but I avoided too much of it since by this point in the trip I'd eaten so much gluten my intestines were about to wrench themselves out of my gut to put themselves out of their misery.

I ordered...I can't remember really, also can't remember if it was technically gluten free, but it was thick rice noodles with lots of different types of mushrooms (and as far as I can recall, no fake meat things). It was delicious. Savoured every last bite.

So that was our Vegie Bar experience this time. No desserts were sampled because there is no way we would have fit them in! Maybe next time. I would also like to try them for breakfast - we wanted to this time but the day we chose they were closed.

Next installment will be pub food! Yes, pubs in Melbourne have vegan stuff. I was floored. Vegan parma? Bring it on.

It's Rawesome! raw vegan restaurant

This weekend just gone Nadine and I took a long weekend holiday on the Sunshine Coast! It was half a celebration of her birthday and half a celebration of her finishing her cert 3 in companion animal services. How exciting is that. The weather was perfect and we did pretty much nothing but lie on the beach getting sunburnt. Nadine was also quite sick so everything was just too hard...except lying on the sand. Haha.

Anyway I have a few posts, but this one first. I saw a review for this cafe called It's Rawesome! on Easy as vegan Pie and we decided we must eat there while we were up the coast (since it takes like 2 hours to get up there from my house lol).

I love going to raw food restaurants because I usually can't be bothered to do much at home myself. The drinks we had were the Pina Colada, which is pineapple, coconut water, lemongrass and ice (I couldn't taste the lemongrass, but it was still delicious) Nadine had a juice, the Betacarotene Booster which had carrot, ginger and apple. Also very nice.

When we buy meals out we always go halves so we don't have to miss out on anything (who knows when we'll get to go out again!) so we got:

California Burrito with avocado lime sauce, red pepper sauce and sour cream

and the Sun burger with apple mint relish.

We both liked the burger more than the burrito, but the burrito was still yummy. It was like a thin crepe wrap with fresh salad inside with a chipotle 'cheese' (all their cheeses are made from a cultured cashew nut mix [ I think, can't find it anywhere] and are so good).

The sun burger was worth it for the apple relish alone. And whatever the mushrooms are marinated in. And the mayonnaise was quite impressive.

We of course had a dessert which we forgot to take a picture of! It was a chai cheesecakey type deal though. Very rich but very delicious. Good thing we only got one dessert :)

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Whenever we are up that way again I'll definately go back. It was actually quite busy for a little place out in the middle of nowhere (that's Rosemount, which is in the middle of Nambour, Bli Bli and Woombye). It's a good thing I like driving along random highways in woop woop aye! The only thing that irked me -and it's a really really tiny thing that shouldn't bother me - but the lady who was serving kept making sure I knew it was a vegan establishment and that the 'burger' wasn't a burger in the traditional sense rah rah rah. I don't know, little but annoying. I think that might turn people off - let them be pleasantly suprised by the delicious food they ordered!

Ps: lately I haven't been able to leave comments on blogs that have the comment form at the bottom of the post. Does anyone know how to fix that? It seems all the blogs I want to comment on have that form!

Date day!

Today Nadine and I had the day off together (yay!) so we decided to have a date day rather than just sit around watching telly which is what we usually end up doing.

First there was breakfast. I made buckwheat pancakes again, but we had no maple syrup so we squeezed a lemon over the top and melted a little bit of margarine on them. Delicious. I also used straight buckwheat flour, not half and half. Didn't make a difference at all, I thought they might be a little dry but nope. Perfect. I topped them with some fried sliced banana.

Nadine drinking yummy cocktail

I got to choose the restaurant, so I picked Ginga Japanese restaurant because we haven't been there for ages. We started off with a cocktail - sake, gin, ginger ale, lemon and pickled ginger slices. Mmm. The sugar in it kind of gave us a headache though, haha. That's the problem with giving things up! 

Nadine ordered the bento. Clockwise from left: PLain rice with black sesame, vege tempura (eggplant, sweet potato, carrot, zucchini and capsicum) steamed vege and tofu, inari zushi and an egg sushi, Ignore that we didn't eat it haha.

We of course has edamame on the side. Can't go to a Japanese restaurant without edamame!

I had this massive bowl of veges in broth with some bean thread noodles, rice, miso soup and pickled things. Yuuuum.

The glands in my throat have been acting up over the last few days (tmi? Ha) so I ended the lovely day with a green juice :) Silver beet, carrot, orange, ginger. Hopefully it all goes away because I can't afford any days off work!

While we were in the city we walked past a little cafe that said they had vegan sweet options on a sign outside so after lunch we went and had a delicious piece of (sugary!) cake. It was chocolate with mint icing. And we found beetroot in it. It was pretty good. I forgot to take a picture though :)