Gelato Messina and a food bloggers meet up

 I finally got to cross something off my food to do list yesterday. Gelato Messina. And I was so not disappointed.

It was voted best gelato in NSW in 2012 for the Good Food Guide. That's a pretty big win. And I had seen the fabulous Jill Dupleix visiting the Darlinghurst shop and chatting to the Nick Palumbo.

As an added bonus to getting to eat Sydney's best Gelato on a rainy public holiday, I was also meeting up with the lovely Heidi from Apples under my Bed and Hannah from Dear Asparagus. Heidi is a really talented photographer and writer, and also a nutritionist by trade. I've been reading her blog for a couple of years or so and have always thoroughly enjoyed reading her recipes and all about her travels (I'm still totally jealous about the amount of time she recently spent in Sicily). We're more instagram buddies than anything else as my blog is a bit dormant at the best of times.
Hannah and I have also been in touch a bit via our blogs.  Honestly, so lovely to meet you both.

Double scoops all round!

We visited the Surry Hills shop. It's a tiny little hole in the wall with only a few spots to sit down. But as you can see the gelato really is the queen here. It has a retro feel with the letter boards for the flavours sitting at the bottom of the freezers and flashes of bronze everywhere.
There are at least 30 giant mounds to choose from, with six or seven seasonal & unique flavours on rotation. White peach bellini or Poached fig in marsala, apple pie or bounty, pear & rhubarb or salted caramel and white chocolate (their best seller) along with the classic Italian flavours of gelato and sorbet.

I went with Salted coconut and mango salsa (a sorbet) and pistachio gelato. I'm a little obsessed with nut gelatos at the moment, and couldn't go past trying this one.  The salted coconut was just incredible, new flavours popping with every mouthful. And the pistachio made me very very happy, a little less sweet than many others I've had recently.

Gelato Messina also have a large range of ice cream cakes that to me look like sculptural Zumbo creations. My next birthday cake perhaps?

My Thermomix arrives this morning!

After much deliberation and a lot of persuasion, we finally decided to purchase a Thermomix. My local consultant is coming to my house this morning to run me through the main things I need to know about the machine, and then we are going to make a vegetable stock concentrate together.

I honestly feel like I'm a child again and I'm getting a huge present on my birthday! Beyond excited.

I'm looking forward to trying out the essential Thermomix recipes and getting to grips with my new machine. This will no doubt mean that more than a few Thermomix experiments will appear on these pages in the next little while, so maybe this will bring about a return to blogging too!
I also joined the Thermomix Community last night - incredibly large and very supportive forum for TM users.