On the weekend I promised Ange I'd cook sometime during the week. Her only real stipulation was that it had to be healthy. With Ange running late last night it was the perfect time for me to cut loose in the kitchen.

It'd been a while since I cooked an entire meal myself (usually I'm on frying or grilling duty) and I'd forgotten how carthetic cooking really is. It's amazing how much joy can be extracted from such a simple thing like inventing your own stirfry.

Why am I so excited you ask? Because this is one of the few things I've cooked that Ange has eaten and enjoyed. And that makes it one for the record books.

Trav's Stirfry
one packet pad thai noodles
one carrot, sliced
two handfuls of snowpeas
one bushel of broccoli, chopped
one chicken fillet, sliced
one onion, sliced
peanut oil

sauce
4 tablespoons oyster sauce
4 tablespoons soy sauce
half a chilli, crushed
one garlic clove, crushed

For the sauce, mix all ingredients together in a bowl. Set aside.
Prepare noodles as per instructions on packet.
Blanch the broccoli and snowpeas.
Heat peanut oil in a wok. Cook chicken for a couple of minutes, turning often. Season with salt and pepper at the halfway point. Remove chicken and cover. Add more oil and cook vegetables for 2-3 minutes. Once onion goes translucent return the the chicken to the wok. Add sauce and stir through.
Add noodles. Using tongs fold the vegetables and chicken into the noodles until covered in sauce.

Kobe Jones is not the easiest restaurant to get to. It's tucked away in a second storey nook of New Quay. The information board at the beginning of the boardwalk doesn't even list it. It took almost a full circuit of New Quay before we spotted it and found our way inside.

Kobe Jones is good Japanese food. But it's food that's been pushed through the fine sieve of western civilisation. The same goes for the interior design and even the menu.

Entrees start with a plate of Lolly Pop Sushi ($26). A very western ideal of how small foods should be eaten, impaled on small sticks. Thin circles of seafood, roe and asparagus held in shape by a strip of shaved cucumber and skewered with a toothpick. They tasted great, but they would break part when we lifted them off the plate. The drizzled vinegarette had a hand in this I'm sure. The Crab Croquettes ($8.50) with their dark brown crust held their shape just fine. The first bite resulted in the gooey, cheesy inside spilling on to my lip and burning it. I still went back for another bite, and another though. Third degree burns be damned.
The final entree was the Chicken Kara Age ($12.50). This was a last minute addition to the menu, but i'm glad I ordered it. In keeping with the theme these were a Japanese version of the Colonel's best. Smaller and more efficient.

After a wait that was too long by anyone's standards, our mains arrived. Shallow Soft Shell Crab ($18), Tuna Tataki Kobe Jones Style ($20) and what I think was the Seafood Papaya Motoyaki ($18) for the girls. I chose the Calamari Fritto Kobe Jones Style ($12.50). We joked about the portion size of the calamari plate, but we stopped when the tuna arrived. It was five or six small, thinly cut pieces of fish layered in the middle of the plate and not much else. The papaya dish was reported as "not that great". The soft shell crab and calamari dishes however were both excellent, despite their size.

All in all it was a great experience. But I do question why, in a multicutural city like Melbourne, they felt the need to westernise their dishes.

As I had last night all to myself, I decided to check out the Victorian Microbreweries Showcase at Federation Square. At $20 for 20 samples of the beer on offer, it really was fantastic value. Even moreso because the stall owners kept forgetting to ask for a ticket after filling my glass.

Even though it's the middle of winter, and I should be drinking heavier (and hoppier) brews such as lagers, I still can't go past a good ale.
Highlights were the Hargreaves Hill Brewing Company's Hefeweizen, the Mildura Brewery's Storm (a cloudy ale) and Red Hill Brewery's Scotch Ale. Also top marks to the Bridge Road Brewery's Australian Ale and the purple-haired German bar girl who correctly guessed the location of my grade six camp: The Old Priory.

I have to mention my favourite brewhouse of the moment, Mountain Goat. I've tried all their beers before, the Hightail, the Pale and the IPA, but I've been very reluctant to try the Surefoot Stout. In the spirit of the evening I handed over a ticket and gave it a go. The deep oaky colouring of it wasn't very appealing, but I was surprised by just how good it was. In fact I was impressed with just about every beer I tried there. Barring a few bevvies like the 3 Ravens Brewing Company's Black. But like I said earlier I was there for the ales and I enjoyed those immensely. And that's not just the booze talking.

Interesting postscript time: When I left I grabbed a cup of water off a table just outside the door, guarded by an incredibly bored looking blonde girl. It was only after seeing the look on the girl's face, and the bags stacked behind her, that I figured out the table was a refreshment stand for some sort of marathon. Why they thought putting a table full of water outside a beer expo was a good idea I'll never understand.

As anyone who lives in Melbourne will tell you: It's been a very cold Winter here. Freezing even, and we're only just getting to the halfway point of the season. (Those of a more druidic bent will tell us that Winter only started a couple of weeks ago).

Ange and I have done our best to keep warm at home; stockpiling blankets, cranking the ducted heating up and walking around in layers of clothing. Everything short of setting the coffee table on fire really. On those nights where the warmth is ripped right out of our bodies while we're huddled together on the couch, I'm forgetting one thing, well four really: my herb plants.

Even in this bitter, bitter cold I've left the herbs sitting just outside the back door. Great for things like sunlight and fresh air. Bad for things like frost. Of the four, only the Bay tree and parsley are still thriving. I'd even go so far as to say that the parsley is enjoying the cold. The masochist.

The oregano and basil are, much like myself, not huge fans of this horrible weather. Strangely enough, the basil bush looks like it's been hit by frostbite. A good two-thirds of the pot is now black and crumbling away and what's left is not well at all. The oregano has fared slightly better. Some of the leaves are discoloured and there's at least two small branches completely stripped of their leaves. Including one that had started to wind its way out of the pot. Proof that my repotting antics hadn't killed it.

I've performed a bit of "emergency surgery" on all the plants, so I'll see what happens over the next few days. If we keep having these subzero nights then I'll do what I should've done to begin with: turn them into indoor plants.

Even though we live about 10 kilometres from Melbourne it's very rare that Ange and I will come into the city on a weekend. After spending five days of the week there, it has to be a very special event that drags us back in.

On this occasion it was the Pixar: 20 Years of Animation exhibit at ACMI that called to us (well, mostly me). I've been a big fan of Pixar even since I first heard of them, some 13 years ago. Even a verbal description of the original Toy Story trailer blew me away. So of course when I discovered, during last week's photography trek, that Pixar would be in Melbourne I was ecstatic.

Before heading inside ACMI we made a beeline for Chocolate Buddha. I won't go into too much detail, suffice to say that both our meals were excellent; the Nabeyaki Udon was especially magic.

I don't want to spoil any of the Pixar exhibit, but if you're a fan of their work and any animation really, you could do worse than spend a couple of hours immersed in the artwork, sculptures and renderings of these most creative of creatives. Even Ange, who was a bit reluctant to spend time looking at "half-finished cartoons" came away smiling. We both agreed that give the opportunity we'd jump at the chance to work for Pixar.