I was going to post a bit about last Sat­ur­day, but it looks like I’ve been beaten by both Mike and Jus­tine! No mat­ter, I’m sure there’s still enough story left for me.

Ange and I had spent the bet­ter part of Sat­ur­day morn­ing house hunt­ing. There’s only two months left on my lease, so when­ever I’ve had the chance I’ve been trawl­ing real estate agents like an old woman at a trash and trea­sure mar­ket. It’s been good to get out there though. We’re quickly pick­ing up the bizarre, twist­ing lan­guage that the agents use. There’s no trace of exag­ger­a­tion used when I say that a “euro­pean laun­dry” is noth­ing more than a small cup­board com­plete with sink and space for a wash­ing machine.

Apart from that, and other small set­backs (not being able to find a prop­erty being another that comes to mind) our search­ing hasn’t been too bad. We’re begin­ning to nar­row down the sorts of things we’re look­ing for in a domicile.

But, I’ve wan­dered from the orig­i­nal point of this post, which was Sat­ur­day night. Ange and myself along with Mike and Jus­tine went out to a trendy lit­tle Cam­bo­dian restau­rant in New Quay called Bopha Devi.

After strug­gling to find a car space, Ange and I got to the restau­rant to find Mike and Jus­tine seated and wait­ing for us. After a quick glance at the menu (OK, I stud­ied it like it was a torah), we went for the shared plate option. Some­thing I’m see­ing more and more around Melbourne’s eateries.

For entree Ange ordered the chicken ribs, that was served with a nice smear of sam­bal chilli on the plate. Jus­tine went for the pump­kin filled parcels, which is both an ade­quate descrip­tion and no-nonsense name. Through a crazy twist of fate, both Mike and I ordered the k’dom, a rather nice vari­a­tion of the hum­ble spring roll. Each one a deli­cious mix of crab and chicken meats pressed and rolled up in a crispy bread wrap. When driz­zled with sweet chilli sauce they were amazing.

The mains were good, but those k’dom had set the bar pretty high.
Mike ordered the amok, a green tin­gled fish curry served wrapped in a banana leaf. Jus­tine sur­prised by order­ing a dis­tinctly, non-vegetarian chicken curry. My choice, rice noo­dles sprin­kled with shred­ded, dried shrimp and sur­rounded with pieces of boiled egg, radish and bean shoots did not impress the table mates. Top marks to Ange for order­ing the prawn lort char: a school of prawns draped with thick egg noo­dles and a truly excel­lent sauce.

As our evening came to a close we headed out to the board­walk, pants two sizes too small. As if we weren’t bulging with enough food already, the girls decided to cap the night off with two big serves of gelati. Which I assisted in eat­ing, if only to stop it melt­ing of course.

I’m up for round two. How about you guys?

I’ve got a few half-finished entries float­ing around behind the scenes, so I thought a bet­ter idea would be to con­dense them into the one grandiose entry.

I started the year, fun­nily enough, in the same house I am cur­rently liv­ing in. I’d been invited up for a new years party and spent the night drink­ing, eat­ing and play­ing var­i­ous card games. One mem­o­rable occa­sion from that night was hav­ing a food fight with Kris while speak­ing with friends in Syd­ney on the mobile.

At the start of May I took up the offer to move into the house. With the help of Dad I shifted all my belong­ings into the house over half a day. I’m happy to say that the new house­mates def­i­nitely suit my per­son­al­ity bet­ter and that my stress lev­els dropped at a leg­endary rate.
2006 also saw me push my gour­mand ideals fur­ther. Ange and I dis­cov­ered an amaz­ing amount of restau­rants hid­den around Mel­bourne. Top of the list is the “veg-aquarian” mas­ter­piece that is SOS. Hon­ourable men­tions go to esca­grill and of course Mer­cato in Daylesford.

This year finally saw me attend the Good Food Show with Ange. I’d been try­ing unsuc­cess­fully for a few years to get to the show, both with and with­out the girl. We spent hours there just absorb­ing the food, wine and expert advice. It’s one for this year for sure.

Push­ing my body to an almost hedo­nis­tic level had some adverse effects. Around the begin­ning of Sep­tem­ber I dis­cov­ered that I’d bal­looned out to almost 100 kilo­grams. Jus­tine pro­posed a race, and so began The Biggest Loser website-style. She just piped me at the post, but con­tin­ued exer­cise and ill­ness has brought me down to that weight I was a few years ago.

Speak­ing of Jus­tine, and of course Mike, this year finally saw them get hitched after six years of defacto adven­tures. I was lucky enough to play both pho­tog­ra­pher and best man. Also mar­ried off in a blaze of white were Ange’s friends Tony and Age (where I threw elbows as I tried to grab the garter). And of course I can’t for­get Briony and Sean’s wed­ding. Though with the amount of booze I had con­sumed there was a very good chance that I would’ve blanked out the entire night.

I can’t for­get the new arrivals this year: We gra­ciously wel­comed Adamo, Tiana and Cooper to the big wide world.

What bet­ter way to fin­ish off a post than with some notes on the end of the year. Not want­ing to be any­where near the city doing the new years cel­e­bra­tion, Ange and I escaped to the out­skirts of Wilson’s Promon­tory a few days before the clock ticked over to 2007. The lit­tle place we’d rented suited our needs very well, although we did have to bring every bit of food we’d require. No free milk and bread at this place.

Of the four days spent down there, we got out for two short, but entirely enjoy­able hikes. The rest of the time was spent indoors hid­ing from the howl­ing wind that whipped off the Antarc­tic, bounced through the Prom’s impres­sive moun­tain range and hit the cabin with all the force it could muster. We were suc­cess­fully able to while away the remain­der of the time by play­ing the Wii, read­ing and cook­ing var­i­ous meals.

Not a bad way to begin 2007. Not too bad at all.