Podfood and other Sunday Things

Belinda and I had breakfast at the famous Podfood in Pialligo at the most unreasonable hour, for a Sunday, of 10.15 am. This was the latest they'd take a breakfast booking, though, and I really wanted to check it out, so we dragged ourselves out of bed and staggered off in the rain. Weekend brunches ought not to finish so early, it's just uncivilised.

Well, I was disappointed. I've been wanting to go there for a nice fancy lunch sometime, or to do some of their Thursday night cooking classes, but now I'm not so sure. I know the weather was a bit miserable, so we couldn't sit outside and enjoy the garden. But inside was very loud, and the service was a bit off - they forgot our second coffee order. And guys, seriously, the disabled toilet has all that space on the floor for *wheelchairs*, not for extra storage space.

Not happy, Jan. The food was very pretty and not too highly priced for breakfast - with the Sunday surcharge it was just under $50 for the two of us. That covered two coffees and a French Toast apiece, plus one fresh OJ. The coffee was quite good, though why don't they have a mug size? The breakfast was well below what I'd expected. The berries were frozen, not fresh, which is fair enough - but some were still icy inside. And the French toast was only coated, not soaked through, in its egg and milk mix. Luckily they made it on fresh French bread, not stale as is more traditional. At least that meant it was soft textured where there was plain bread inside. Belinda even complained about it when we were asked how things were, and it did no good in the way of apology or discount. So, we're probably not going back there now.

The rest of the day was much better. After breakfast we wandered through the adjacent gallery, admiring especially the magpie exhibition room with the wonderful 3-D patchwork sculpture magpies. Belinda wants a lovely cat picture, surprise, surprise. We also popped into one of the nurseries, I forget which now, and I bought some cat-safe snailbait, and seedlings of jalapeno chilli and vietnamese mint. It was too cold and damp to work in the garden, so they're on my kitchen bench waiting to go in later.

After that, I started off making a curry for tonight and later in the week. It's a beef rogan josh, made with blade steak, and a bush tomato spice blend that I picked up in Cairns. I've added some native pepper to keep up the theme, but I'm not sure it's that noticeable. I also got a dhal panchporan mostly done, just ready for its topping to be made tonight. This time I roasted the garlic and onion along with the tomatoes - a good idea, that was, I'll do it again.

Later in the afternoon, the bloke and I spent a couple of hours over at Olims, in the rather sad sports bar area, listening to blues guitarist Owen Campbell. I first heard of Owen when he was busking outside Dickson Woollies a couple of years ago, and have been idly following him since. This time he was on a double bill with his Dad, Satch. Satch plays more folk than blues, in the Dylan and Pogues line, which he sings in a lovely Scottish accent. I enjoyed Satch's set, and I love Owen's slide guitar, but I didn't enjoy the bit of country banjo-pluckin' stuff that they did together. Well executed, but not at all my cup of tea.

Then I had a quiet evening at home while the bloke went off to catch up with another blues band and a friend at the OCI. I took the chance to make myself a simple pasta dinner of bloke-hated food: tuna, sweetcorn and asparagus. And also bloke-approved items like chilli and baby peas and too much cheese. Yummy. I had more of that for lunch today.

Oh, one final note. Sadly for alphabet fans, I have completely failed to make it to anywhere starting with G in the last week. Will try harder.