Things you've never dreamed of

I started the blog purely for vanity purposes. I thought that it would be a bit of a laugh. I mean, I’m not a particularly good photographer or a good writer. I don’t experiment and come up with amazing recipes and I don’t provide any sort of helpful reviews or news on the Sydney food scene.

So it was with some bewilderment that I find myself smack bang in the middle of about 50 food bloggers. I nearly decided not to come, and was so neurotic and anxious about the whole thing (social anxiety, the usual) that I was sure that my partner was this close to telling me to shut my yap. OK, so he kinda did in the end.

Thank god for Helen and her name tags so I didn’t actually have to say my blog name out loud. I did prepare some cards the night before, just in case. So – pictures:

Billy‘s dog Amelie, who I fell in love with. Here, Amelie contemplates a restraining order against me.

Tim and Christina of The Way It Crumbles. This level of cuteness should be illegal.

Gummi Baby (oh god, I forgot your real name, I suck) of YaYa’s Yum Yums and Sara of Belly Rumbles. I typed out Berry Lumbles first and only noticed just before I published this post.

As you can see we had a bloody huge turnout.

FOOD GLOOORIOUS FOOOOOD. Omfg. This is only about 3/4 of everything there.

MORE FOOD. Oh my god everything was fucking delicious. We had a 10 minute photo taking session before swooping down like vultures.

Billy, that amazing and slightly crazy wonderchef brought slow roasted (6 hours, bitches!) pork to the party. He even made homemade sauces to go with it. When the roast came out, he was instantly everyone’s best friend. The roast was super tender and moist. No close ups, sorry. Was too busy having foodgasms.

I sampled this cupcake first (by someone from YaYa’s Yum Yums – again, my memory fails me) – it was just too cute to pass up. I was right to pick this, of course – it was delicious.

Closeup of the savoury rice noodle roll. Can’t get enough.

This is what the spread looks like an hour into eating. If you think that we hardly made a dent in it, you’re right. Regretfully the stomach space available was smaller than the amount of food. I made a Herculean effort and was still defeated at the end of it. From my (hazy) memory, I had one of the little cornflake cups by Susan, a slice of pound cake, Simon‘s mini burger (which reawakened the pickle-eating monster in me), roast pork, a prawn sushi, a roll with bacon bits in it, Denea‘s s’mores, a bit of the chocolate tart I brought along (bought, obvs), some biscuits that Peter brought, custard puffs, the cupcake I mentioned before, rice noodle roll, Billy’s champagne jelly and uh that’s all I can remember. I REALLY wanted to try the gingerbread that Jacq mentioned on Twitter but I didn’t get around to it

For the Kris Kringle I got these – can’t wait to try out some recipes!

I learned these important lessons from the party:

1. Food bloggers don’t do things in half-measures. If the invite says to bring a plate, they will bring a giant plate (or two) of something delicious.
2. I was right: Sydney food bloggers (aside from muggins here) are an extraordinarily attractive bunch. I too want a machine that converts calories into hotness.
3. They’re also hilarious – I’m looking at Peter and Grace.
4. Don’t wear a short dress if you’re going to be sitting on the grass for an extended period of time. I think I spent most of the day trying not to flash people.
5. Chill the fuck out, self. The people you like will like you back. Most of the time. If you don’t, you know, act like an asshole.
6. Don’t change my blog name. Ever. Although Fouad was the only person who knew where the domain name was from.
7. Sydney is tiny. I met two people who live in my suburb who I swear I’ve never seen around before.
8. Lady Iron Chef is a man.

I’m super chuffed to have met a couple of bloggers who I’ve conversed with on Twitter, e.g. Karen of Citrus & Candy and to meet a couple of familiar faces, e.g. Yas. I didn’t really get to talk to that many people but those that I did get to talk to are lovely. If I didn’t mention you or link back to you, give us a holler. It’s not that you’re not awesome, it’s because I suck.

Many thanks to Helen and Susan for organising – a good time was had by all.

Look mom I’m socialising with the internets!

I follow chocolatesuze on Twitter and she mentioned free Ben and Jerry’s ice cream on the 28th and do any food bloggers want to come? Crippling social anxiety nearly made me say no but FREE + ice cream? I’m down with that. So I woke up way too early on a Saturday and caught a ferry to Manly.

Fuck me, $12 for a return ticket? Oh OK whatever. I take the ferry almost every morning to work, but I’ve never been on one of the big-ass ferries before. It has a cafe, gazillions of seats and uhh… a lot more lights.

There was a queue about half a block long when I got there but thankfully the weather down in Manly isn’t as horrific as the rest of Sydney. Ben and Jerry’s had an impressive cast of thousands for their Sydney grand opening, complete with camera crew, gift bags, tambourines, cow bells, dancing girls (not the rude type), stickers and the po-po to make sure that people don’t get run over in their haste to get ice cream.

There were a few of these characters around.

Read the rest of this entry »