Hitting the markets and then Thai

One of the reasons I always look forward to my sister coming back from Singapore is because we both share a love for gourmet food. We love walking through organic markets and looking at home made jams and pies. Even though the prices are sometimes double what you would pay at the Flemington Markets, we don't mind paying a bit extra for the decadence. So the first thing she wanted to do on her trip back to Sydney this time, was to hit the local market at the Orange Grove public school. We didn't end up buying much (Well, 3 full size pies, infused oils and vinegars amongst other things....) , but we had a fantastic time which found us at Toby's Estate at Broadway enjoying the best coffee we've ever had.

Beautiful fresh organic tomatoes

Toby's Latte

Toby's Cappuccino

Whenever family comes from overseas to visit, the one who suffers the most is my mum. She spends the entire cooking and cleaning nonstop. She ends up catering for 17 people at a time. So to give her a break, we decided to eat out at our favourite Thai restaurant Chedi.

Chicken and Cashew with Chilli Jam

My nephew's all time favourite - Massamum Beef

Chicken Pad Thai

Salt and pepper squid

Red Duck Curry

Pork Pad See Ew

Grilled BBQ Pork

Grilled BBQ Chicken

Thai duck salad

After dinner, we decided to put up the xmas tree where the kids got to hang their own xmas ornament. And by "their own", I had their photos printed onto ceramic ornaments. One for each kid. They absolutely loved it! And I think this is a tradition that I'm going to try and keep it going each year. My sister has requested that I get ornaments done for each of the adults. I guess that will become our family tree.

Pizza, pasta and ice cream

As thanks to my cousin for the lovely gold bangle she gave my niece for Christmas, we had decided to take her out to dinner as well as have a family outing. My sister left the lovely job of picking a place to us. My nephews are picky picky eaters, my parents are sometimes against certain cuisines. In the end, we just decided to find some place at Liechhardt. Park and then look for a place:

I've been to Gioia once before for coffee. It was after my last birthday party where it was just too early to call it a night. Ok, it wasn't too early, but we were going through that stage where anything before midnight meant we were getting old, so we would force ourselves to go have coffee and stay out past midnight. Talk about a quarter life crisis.....

Anywhooooo, as a group of 12 people without booking, they were great in accommodating us. Within minutes we're seated and given menus. We decided to grab some entrees, pizza and pasta to share amongst everyone:

Garlic Pizza

This was a bit too hard and chewy for my liking. Since we had wanted to share that between 12 people, it took ALOT of effort to try and cut them into smaller slices since it was so hard.

Salmon and avocado salad

This was quite nice and refreshing. The salmon was nice and creamy and not too salty and went perfectly with the avocado.


My nephew wanted to order the kids pasta all for himself. $5 for a bowl of penne bolognese isn't too bad.

BBQ Grilled Octopus

Some of the tentacles were very burnt, but was overall quite tender. Definitely needed a good squeeze of lemon juice for the extra flavour.

Pesto Penne

I don't like pesto. I've tried it numerous times and I don't like pesto. But this pesto was absolutely delicious! Has it always tasted this good and I just didn't like it before? Has my taste buds changed? Either way, I couldn't get enough of this! Even my mum, the one against all things creamy, loved the sauce. They must be doing something right!

Spaghetti Marinara

There was a lot of seafood in this dish. The seafood was very nice and tender, not too overcooked. Nothing fancy in the sauce, but simplicity sometimes tastes best.

Penne Siciliana

A very simple sauce of tomatoes and eggplant mixed with the pasta and then grilled with a layer of mozzarella on top. Too bad I didn't get much of this pasta, otherwise I would love to recreate it at home. Another excuse to go there and eat again! hehehe

Norton St Special

MmmMmm this was good! Lots of mushroom, olives and thinly sliced ham.

Hot and spicy

This wasn't as spicy as I would've liked it. But then I would've liked it REALLY REALLY spicy. The kids enjoyed it even though they wanted more meat on it.

Leichhardt special

This was my sister's favourite. She's been brainwashed by the large unnamed pizza corporations where a super supreme means everything you can find in a fridge thrown onto a pizza. This was topping overload for me, but hey, she liked it meaning more Norton St special for me!

After eating all of that, we were being greedy and decided to order ANOTHER serve of the pesto penne and a spaghetti bolognese since my oldest nephew likes to stick to the traditional dishes. (Meaning he doesn't like trying new things!)

You'd think we'd stop after that, but considering the disappointment last time at BBQ City, we decided to take the kids to the French Riviera anyway. Strange how everyone was moaning about how full they were, but still ordered massive amounts of ice cold goodness!

Rum & Raisin, hazelnut and chocolate

Coconut and walnut

Espresso

Chocolate and rum and raisin

Kiwi fruit and coconut

After the kids finished their ice cream, me and my brother scooped all the cream from our bowl and dumped it into their empty bowl. Then the kids decided to mash up the whipped cream, add water, add sugar, add the remains of our espresso cup and mixed it all around. Then there was a big round of us daring them to drink it, them daring us, us offering money and so forth. Somewhere along the line, my youngest nephew stuck his head into the circle and drank straight from the bowl! EWWWWWWWWWWW!!! Someone forgot to tell him it wasn't melted ice cream inside!!

Just another typical outing for our family! hehehe

Toby's Estate

I fear that I am becoming a coffee snob. I used to drink anything with caffiene in it. I slowly progressed to drinking certain types of coffee depending on the cafe I'm in. Then it was the barista. If my favourite gal wasn't making coffees that day, I wouldn't have coffee. Now, I'm actually down to a certain type of coffee bean. Toby's Estate. If I walk by a cafe that uses Toby's Estate Coffee, before you can say "Skim Latte please", I'll already be throwing myself onto the counter. Ever since trying the coffee at the North Shore Produce Markets, I've been spotting Toby's everywhere. I knew there was a store at Broadway, but it was too much effort for me to get to. But now, I'd happily drive there just to have a cup of coffee....

With my sister, who I have converted to a coffee drinker with a single cup of Toby's Estate coffee (something my brother in law hasn't been able to do for over 10 years) and my little niece in tow, we headed over to Broadway.

Since my little niece was active enough without any added caffeine, I ordered her a Soy babycino.

Its sooooooo cute! But so tiny. She gulped it down before my coffee even arrived! So I ordered her another one. A normal cino......without the coffee. A big cino! hehehe That lasted her a bit longer. Meanwhile, I stuck with my Latte.

I wonder if all Toby's Estate Baristas must do a funky design on the coffee. Whether its a Rosetta or a heart. *Shrugs* Either way, it was the perfect cup of coffee. Now I'm not picky enough to specify a particular blend of coffee yet, or even whether its single origin or not.....but I fear I'm not far from it.

Toby's Estate Roastery, Cafe and Tea Emporium

32-36 City Road,
Chippendale NSW 2008.
(between Broadway and Myrtle Streets, opposite Victoria Park)
Phone: +61 2 9211 1459

Merry (late) Christmas!

Bit late in posting this, but since I put up my New Years post, I thought I'd do my xmas one whilst I was at it. This year xmas is huge for us. The entire family is back from overseas with the addition of a new family member as well! This is why I went a bit nuts with the shopping this year. We totalled 91 presents beating last years 72 presents!

As as we had a few of the young ones with us this year, I decided to play up the whole Santa thing and went all out. After spending a few days revving the kids up on Santa, I went and printed out some Santa gift wrapping paper and a letter from Santa using Santa's own letter head:

Each present had a personalised letter with comments such as "Do not chuck anymore tantrums otherwise Santa will put you on the BAD LIST next year" to "Sorry I couldn't visit you earlier, but you did not have a chimney in your house".

The presents all wrapped up

The young ones even went and wrapped a present for Santa and made a card for him ontop of laying out the cookies and milk as well as a bowl of cherries.

After the kids all fell asleep, I snuck into the living room (Where all the kids were having a slumber party) and took all the presents, tipped out the milk, took bites out of the cookies and left some cherry seeds behind. Then I left a note from Santa as well as the presents.

7am I was woken by the screams of "SANTA CAME!! SANTA CAME!!!". My niece, came up to me when I walked out and said that I was Santa because the gift wrapping paper was printed out! This is when I play my dumb look and pretend to go back to sleep. Damn that girl is smart!

We had to wait around until about 11am before it was time to open the presents. This took us over 1.5hrs with the amount of presents we had. I basically sat at the tree and randomly picked a present. All the presents were opened one at a time:

Santa's present

Wearing their presents

One of the best presents of the day was actually given from a very close family friend. Her mother passed away a few months ago, and we treated her like our 3rd Grandmother. She treated my father better than her own son and if it wasn't for her, we wouldn't be living in Australia today. She found out my sister in law was pregnant but didn't live to see the baby. The present below was a little gold bangle that belonged to her when she was a baby girl. Instead of passing it to her daughter, she left it for my brother's first child. This brought tears to all of our eyes, in particular my sister in law and mother. I've made it very clear to my brother it is his responsibility to keep it within the family.

The family heirloom

Ashley the lucky girl (in the dress I bought!)

After all the presents were opened, the kids went off to play with their new toys whilst the adults prepared the xmas lunch.

My 4 bean and corn salad

Ham and pineapple skewers

Jellyfish salad

Turkey

Ham and Smoked Salmon cold platter

Verjuice vinaigrette for the smoked salmon

Chinese crunchy noodle salad

Hokkien fried noodles

Gluten and egg free fried rice for Jess (That's duck egg you see)

For everyone else - The orange dots you see is egg roe

BBQ TIME!!

Grilling the Nem Nuong

Table shot

Table shot #2

Baby cakes from Summer hill

http://www.babycakes.com.au/

Jelly Belly for DIY dessert

We also had a sago and taro coconut soup and a watermelon and grass jelly dessert. But by that time I felt more stuffed than a Turkey that I just laid down on the couch and tried to pass out. That is until we turned the karaoke machine on which continued for a good 5 hours!!!

We had so much food left over we ended up eating the same things again for dinner, and again for breakfast. After dinner when the other guests had gone home, we decided to sit around the livingroom playing chinese whispers. This was a complete disaster. Phrases went from "Jonathan has smelly armpits" and came out as "King Oyster". Like WTF?

The problem was my dad's english isn't good. My nephews and neice's chinese is just as bad. Meanwhile, my sister was busy having a laughing fit EVERY TIME it was her turn. Probably why we ended up with a "Uncle's milk smells like a pig". Oh so wrong.......by oh so like my family!!

I don't know when our next all family reunion is going to be, but I hope it'll be soon. We should always cherish occasions like this when we have a chance.