BIRTHDAY CAKES

I wanted to feature some Birthday Cakes; a few from this year and some from the past...

TOM'S BIRTHDAY CAKE
at Los Amates. Cake by Laurent.



MELISSA'S 31st BDAY
at the Retreat. Chocolate Cake with White Chocolate Mousse by Cara.


CARA'S 30th
at Bar Nancy.

Note the fabulous badge she's wearing - "30 is the new 16" - courtesy of moi (Number One Chicken).

MARIKA'S BDAY
Lamington Cake at my house.


GUISEPPE'S 1st BDAY
A very special Beef Cake (!) for Guiseppe the baby pug on her 1st Birthday. Cake from Pets & The City.



AMY'S CUPCAKE BDAY CAKE
This is an experimental cupcake-cake i made last year for DJ Amy (Macromantics). I did a food blog about it that you can read here.


CHILDHOOD CAKES - 1987
Every year as kids, my brothers and i would thumb through this old Women's Weekly Kids Birthday Cake book and hassle our Mum to make the craziest cakes. Here are a couple from 1987:


This is "Sniffety" the rabbit with liquorice whiskers!


What a phenomenal Train Cake this is, with biscuit wheels and popcorn in its carriages....!

It seems something went awry in 1987, and half of our photos are double-exposed. You'll see my bro and i cuddling in another photo across his awesome Sweathog jumper... cute!

EAST BRUNSWICK CLUB - $10 MONDAYS

280 Lygon Street, East Brunswick
http://www.eastbrunswickclub.com/

Everyone should hit the East Brunswick Club for a bite and a beer on Ten Buck Mondays. There are loads of vegan counter meals, and jugs of beer are just a tenner as well.

Tonight i wish i wasn't so partied out and was eating and drinking at the East to the tune of DJs Romy Hoffman (Macromantics) and Max Kohane (Agents of Abhorrence).


Vegan Parma


Lisa & Vegie Burger, Marika opening wide for Vegan Bolognese

EARTH HOUR DINNER PARTY

I threw a Potluck Dinner Party with eight ladies at my house. Sadly i have no good photos of the food - but for good reason. Without knowing so when i planned it, the dinner party fell on the evening of Earth Hour, so dinner was served only by candle light.
What was supposed to be Earth Hour turned into Earth-Several-Hours, when once the hour passed we decided it was really nice to eat and chat in the glow of the candles (oh and the glow of some city lights in the background that were naughtily not switched off).
It was a bit romantic, really... Marika had said earlier:
"I wonder if anyone'll pash when the lights go out?!"
And we laughed... Nine women. Three lezzo's to six het's. And we'd all known each other some 6 to 15 years...? Chances were pretty slim for a spark in the dark!!


Just look at those few bastardly lights left on in the city... tsk tsk...

Two guests were excused from dish-making duties. One has recently made a baby, after all, and is busy enough making milk like a maniac. And another was excused in light of relationship relationshit.

Though you wont see it for the light, this is the amazing food we had:

MARIKA - Mushroom Soup
LIA - Gyoza Dumplings
(Pumpkin-Coriander-PineNut as well as FieldMushroom-Zucchini)
JESS - Sweet Potato & Cous Cous Salad
ALEX - Bean Salad, Fruit Salad and Soy Choc Icecream
LISA - Vegan Lasagne and Vegan Banana Cake
CARA - Pesto & Vegetable Risotto
(with homemade pesto and veggies from her veggie patch!)
MICHELE - Tiramisu

Oh, here's one i took with flash, of the Lasagne and Risotto being dished up:


Upon eating, some conversation began around the dinner table:
"This is delicious!"
"Thanks. It's from a Good Weekend recipe..."
"Oh, HOW GOOD is the Good Weekend?! I made something from it last night!"

Melissa and i turned to each other in horror at what was being said... How is it that we've gone from rock'n'roll slags to sounding like bloody housewives...?? Funny that the one most horrified, was the only one that's a wife and a mother!
Luckily the conversation then took a welcome dive, as two of the girls recounted a concert ticket fraud operation they undertook in the 90s. And the Smashing Pumpkins concert where they were finally busted and separated, just moments after they'd dropped some acid.




Earth Hour Dinner was awesome, and we plan to make it a monthly occurrence.

The night ended, after guests departed, with a text i received upstairs, coming from Marika in the spare room downstairs:

"Hey chicken im gonna read in bed but likely to fall asleep with light on. Can you please turn it off before you go to bed. Earth xxx"

"Bloody Earth i will!", i should have replied. But she was asleep already.

Earth indeed.

http://www.earthhour.org/

PORTLAND: PART TWO

VOODOO DOUGHNUT
22 SW 3rd Avenue, Portland, OR
http://www.voodoodoughnut.com
Voodoo Doughnut came recommended by stacks of people. Open 24 hours, with vegan options and a slogan like “The Magic is in the Hole”, how on earth could you resist?!




I left Marika to queue up and order, and surprise surprise - she came out with a DICK shaped doughnut! I reluctantly broke some off to eat. The balls were crème-filled, and i'll never forget the look on poor Marika's face when she dropped one of them on the footpath. Truly devastating...



INDIAN TRUCK – “INDIA CHAAT HOUSE”
804 SW 12th Avenue, Portland, OR
We’d walked past many a food truck in Portland, but given at home these things are more commonplace (and crumby) at showgrounds and festivals, we had disregarded them as somewhere to eat. My mate Pete (Yellow Swans) enlightened us however, and before taking us on a walking tour of the Pearl District, he kindly shouted us lunch at one of his favourites - the Indian Truck!








THE EGYPTIAN ROOM
3701 SE Division Street, Portland, OR
http://www.eroompdx.com/
I must make an honorable mention of our Ace Hotel host, who took us out to some bars in SE Portland on our final night. Sadly, it was midweek and there wasn't a great deal going on. But after a few drinks at Holocene, we head to The Egyptian Room, which was warned to be a total dive and said to be the only Lesbian Bar in Portland (something i find hard to believe, since Portland's such a notoriously homo city!).
I was thrilled to have my beer served in a Souvenir PBR Mug that came with cheap refills. Pabst Blue Ribbon (PBR) is the equivalent of VB, i guess, in that it's rather cheap'n'nasty.
There's something a bit wrong about this, but i've since been having soyshakes in my souvenir glass at home:



Wednesday at the "E-Room" was Karaoke Night, and our Ace new friend did an amazing rendition of Rod Stewart's "Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?":



Aside from my companions, my fave karaoke-ers were the girl who looked as though she’d come straight from the hospital in her blue scrubs, and the excitable girl in a wheelchair. My not-so-favourite karaoke-er was the lady who got up after her and sung Denis Leary’s “Asshole”… I winced knowing the line “handicapped people make handicapped faces” was coming…

Just to keep this in Food Blog territory.... here's our host taking a bite out of her sweaty, Acca Dacca loving friend:



Thanks for taking us out, Liz. Little did you know, that after you kindly dropped us at our door, we only pretended to go inside... before running across the road to the Roxy!

THE ROXY
1121 SW Stark Street, Portland, OR

This was our first diner breakfast at a very unbreakfastly hour. How good is eating breakfast late at night?! We definitely need a good Roxy equivalent in Melbourne, cos i'm tired of potato cakes and souvlaki's as drunken snacks in the CBD.



I had Eggs & Hash Browns, and it looks like Marika had Pancakes & Bacon. Marika also had a spew, but not before putting a stack of awesome tunes on the jukebox.

OCEAN GROVE VEGAN RETREAT

A couple of months ago, I went down to my Nana's fabulous beach house in Ocean Grove with two vegans in tow. As people will know, I am not, myself, a vegan. In fact, I am fully carnivorous. But who's to complain when two great cooks are prepared to take the reigns? I may have provided the beach house, but I feel bad that I truly didn't lift a finger in the kitchen.




Dinner on Friday night was Jessica's moreish Tempeh Bolognese followed by a pool tournament where i was brutally caned by Romy the pool shark.


Turn your back and Romy has spun a web of Rice Paper Rolls...! Mmmm.


On Saturday, three more Melbournites drove down and joined the party at the beach.


Guiseppe, the baby pug, came as well and enjoyed a good perve on bikini-clad babes.


Saturday night, before settling in to watch The Honeymoon Killers and Bugsy Malone, there was a Dumpling Feast to be had.


Dumplings x 3 varieties: Mushroom, Eggplant, and Tofu & Corn (some steamed, some fried)


It seems Jessica enjoyed it so much that she wore the sauce.

What a treat of a weekend. Thank you ladies - open invite 4 life!

PORTLAND: PART ONE

THE ACE HOTEL
1022 SW Stark Street, Portland, OR
http://www.acepdx.com
I know it aint food, but this boutique hotel is a DISH in itself, with all its rooms uniquely decorated by local artists. Thanks to a legendary friend at the desk, we got an upgrade from our modest shared-bathroom bed-sit, to a fucking lavish suite with a huge bed, L shaped lounge, clawfoot tub and the piece de resistance – a record turntable! Complete with records including The Temptations, Aretha Franklin, ABBA and Kris Kristofferson.
The building was previously the seedier Clyde Hotel, and our room was just up the hall from one in which Matt Dillon got off the junk in Gus Van Sant’s Drugstore Cowboy.






The upgrade was a double-edged sword… Suddenly, we didn’t wanna leave the hotel room, and afternoon naps and chill-outs became hard to resist.

We decided we should go out and meet some people to bring back for champagne in the bath, but unfortunately we didn’t meet any obliging parties. Next time for sure, and it’ll be Ace! I highly, highly, wholeheartedly recommend that anyone visiting Portland stay nowhere else but The Ace.


THE CLYDE COMMON
1014 SW Stark Street, Portland, OR
http://www.clydecommon.com



Also within the Ace Hotel building is Stumptown Coffee and The Clyde Common, where I had the most AMAZING Pork Chop.....



It had a Baked Peach with melted Blue Cheese on the side. Mmm. I want it again, right now.


MASU
406 SW 13th Avenue, Portland, OR
http://www.masusushi.com
I had eaten at Masu a few years back, after having met a sushi chef who had worked there. We sat up at the sushi bar and marveled at the art that came out.


Edamame (US$2)


Kaiso Salad with 5 types of seaweed, cucumbers, and sweet vinegar (US$6)


Tamago & other mixed nigiri


Veggie Inside-Out Maki


Someone else's amazing plate!

Thumbing through the Portland Mercury over dinner for something to do, my companion suggested we head to the Clinton Theatre for something called "SEXPDX". I agreed, without quite realising that we would spend the rest of the evening eating popcorn, watching porn... Yep. We sat down to some 70s porn out-takes as a prelude to a full feature called "Moments of Love" (1983), starring a young Ron Jeremy and a hung John Holmes. Interesting, to say the least.


HUBER’S
411 SW 3rd Avenue, Portland, OR
http://www.hubers.com
Before a gig, we stumbled into a place that claimed to be “Portland’s Oldest Restaurant”.

We sat up in Huber's grand dining room, which certainly had an old world, romantic feel about it that we were happy to indulge. Hence I was taken aback when our waiter, dressed in a black tie and waistcoat, nodded at my ensemble and said “Rad Maiden Shirt!”. Way to ruin the illusion, dude.





Illusions aside, it was a nice dinner, and we ended up chatting to the owner of the restaurant for a considerable amount of time about - of all things - tennis!

I had the specialty of the house:

BAKED SUGAR-GLAZED HAM - Topped with pineapple sauce and served with fresh mashed potatoes (US$14.95)

VALENTINE’S
232 SW Ankeny, Portland, OR
After Huber's we went around the corner to see a friend play at a cute little café-style bar. She sat on the floor and made beautifully layered, laid back noise.

Grouper at Valentine's

I urge you to listen to some of Liz Harris/Grouper's music, and will point you toward an mp3 download of one of my favourite tracks: Grouper - "Cover the Windows and the Walls". Good.

The girl who ran the bar at Valentine's was awesome, stopping every once in a while, between pours to churn tunes out from her ipod. Coco Rosie, Biggie... Definitely the kind of place I’d soon make my local, were it in my locality. I heart Valentines.