FoodieChat

Thank you to Dr Atkins for introducing this staple food into my “naughty food” category in life, along with pasta, bread and rice. Oh how I long for the taste of white bread again! Especially guilt free. Is Turkish bread white?  Anyway, let’s not steal the spud’s thunder.  On this rare occasion where I buy one – and the smallest one available, what should I do with it (as opposed to the days where I used to buy a bag of them!).  Mash? Too fatty.  Bubble and squeak.  Home made chips? No, hate deep frying. Oven fries? (more…)

Ever tried one of these? I’ve tried it before on various exotic fruit platters (including the fruit salad at David Jones FoodHall), but never actually cut one up, as it looked too complicated. Well at 67c each at Harris Farm I was willing to give it a go – and it was a cinch! Just cut it in half and scoop out the flesh like an avocado.  It’s a very clean, refreshing taste. Not soft, but firm – doesn’t crunch. Sweet tasting, and also comes in white with black seeds.

This is my second trip to this restaurant in Sydney’s inner/north/west whatever. The first time was for my friend Bec’s hen’s night (same Bec who took me to the amazing Dadong Beijing Duck restaurant in China!), where we feasted on course after course of Shanghai specialties.   Tonight was just a quiet dinner for two; and we feasted on handmade noodles with pickled vegetables and shredded pork. A huge mound of slippery al dente noodles came to our table, stir fried with plenty of bean shoots, and shredded pork.  The pork was quite fatty, but the noodles were surprisingly not too oily at all! Could have done with a bit more salted vegetable – because I love them – but at $8.80 you can’t complain too much!  The noodles were brilliant with the chilli oil I asked for too.  Then came my favourite dumplings of all time – wartip – or pot stickers as they are also known. These are crescent shaped dumplings wrapped with pork mince (and sometimes some vegetables), and then pan fried and steamed until the meat and pastry is cooked, and the bottoms crunchy.  They’re served bottoms up so they remain crunchy. We got 10 for $8.80. Bargain.

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Ever since Boost came onto the scene, closely followed by Pulp and many others, Sydney became swept into healthy drink fever.  Smoothies are refreshing on a cool day, and also are a great meal replacement as they are so filling! But then I decided to delve into the nutritional information of these drinks after a tip off from a newspaper article and discovered these may contain as many calories as a high sugared soft drink!  And no wonder why.  They are made with fruit juice, fruit and frozen yoghurt or sorbet with no fresh milk in sight.  So that was the end of those drinks for me. Admittedly, some of these chains have introduced drinks with some milk component, but before that I already discovered my own trick of making a more nutritious and lower calorie version which is equally as delicious (and much cheaper!!). (more…)