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.

Grams of my life, part 2

Another week in Instagram. I take so many photos these days with my iphone, I'm not sure anything much would get recorded if I didn't have it. Especially my beautiful babies. The little one is getting big so quickly. At 7 months she is crawling all around our house, pulling herself up on things and bouncing whenever she can. I've been told more than a few times that she has the makings of an early walker, serious eeeekkkkk!

The buckets and buckets of roses above formed the aisle for a wedding we went to last weekend. In the Botanic Gardens in the middle of Sydney, they had their ceremony within the Rose Garden. The last week of November may be the perfect time to have a wedding, the Rose Garden itself is so beautiful and they had thousands of roses looking absolutely perfect just in the beds around the wedding venue. This was an utterly stunning wedding, and as a guest it was perfect. After the ceremony we were served Bollinger and canapes whilst looking across the Botanic Gardens and down to Sydney Harbour. The break between ceremony and celebration was almost 2 hours, I didn't mind a bit as we caught up with friends and took in Sydney. We then ambled down into the heart of the gardens to the Botanic restaurant. They did a fantastic job and we were totally spoilt. Matching food & wines, macaron towers, photo books for guests to take home, Polaroid walls. Best barramundi I've had in absolutely years!

Back to reality, and I'm eternally on the search for the best yogurt. It feels like Australia is just starting to get to the point of premium, local, healthy yogurts that England was producing when I left 10 years ago. I still find myself thinking back to how beautiful the Yeo Valley products were and think how silly I am to be missing yogurt. Still, it's true.

Roaming Cow is very special find, the natural yogurt is so silky and mild. I chose it for my 7month old. It's so tricky to find yogurts that are suitable for babies, full fat but with no added sugars and flavours, gelatines etc etc. Gippsland is the only other one that is widely available but it is much more tart. So Roaming Cow gets a huge thumbs up in our family. I may or may not be consuming more Roaming Cow than the little one.

Coffee at Outpost espresso. Favourite spot.

This is London by M. Sasek. These books are absolute retro classics. The prints are just adorable, I think they would be stunning in frames in kids' rooms too. We gave this to a friend of Miss 3 who had a birthday last week. Many of the major cities have their own books, apart from Sydney, but there is a This is Australia version available.

Our first Gardenia this year. They always make me so happy when they appear, and yet so sad that they only last a matter of days. Sensational perfume.

First cherries of the season. Apparently they have had a fabulous year in Young, NSW. So bring on the cherries. My telly watching snack of choice at this time of year!

Digestive biscuits. Blast from the past. I picked these up at Coles for the base in my Chocolate Key Lime pie recipe, and nibbled on a few during cooking. So comforting to have biscuits from childhood.

A trip into the city on Friday morning, lovely to Sydney all decked out for Christmas. I headed to Laduree to pick up some macarons for my sister's 30th birthday. The shop is situated in the middle of the Westfield and has a little cafe too. They are much more of a classic macaron than the Zumbarons. And very special if you are into macarons.

Little one travelling on the bus in the heat. She was the perfect shopping buddy.

First stop in the city was Becasse bakery. They make superb french pastries, probably the best I've had in Australia. I'm still sad that Justin North had to close the rest of his little corner on level 5 of the Westfield. I loved what they were doing and had a wonderful birthday meal there too.

We had 6 close friends over for lunch yesterday. The theme of the day was lime, I think I went through 15 limes in the preparation of all the dishes. 8 or so for Nigella's Chocolate Key lime pie (do it, do it!) 1 on the grilled sweetcorn, 1 in the guacamole, 2 on the barbeque chicken with lime and garlic, another in the beetroot dip.... Might have been a good idea to work out that they are not in season in Sydney right now....

A gift from T2 from one of our guests. Take me to Morocco teas. I had such a lovely weekend.

Have a great week everyone xxx

Grams of my life - Instagram

My blog has been very neglected recently. Having 2 kids in the house makes things very busy, I'm sure you can imagine.
I keep up with what's happening on Instagram. If you haven't looked it up yet you really should! Although the app is key to using and liking other images, Instagram have recently they have also launched user profiles. Here's mine

And some recent photos:

Feel like I've spent hours at the Apple Store in Chatswood over the last few days. My mac finally died after four years, but that has meant that I was able to upgrade to a beautiful Macbook Pro. Exciting!

 My local beach. Freshwater. We are so so lucky.

My first taste of Barambah Organics yogurt. Blissfully thick, and the hint of cinnamon makes it a little bit different.

Chickpea curry. Simple and wholesome.

 

Some new cookie cutters bought by my Dad for our family in a great baking shop in Fremantle. They had everything! Miss almost 3 is learning letters so he thought these would be perfect to combine with a bit of baking.

  

My helper making sure the icing sugar is 'perfect'!

 

Our family loves gingerbread, especially this Hummingbird Bakery recipe that contains a large amount of ginger, some Tate & Lyle Black treacle and ends up being not too sweet. We're trying to extend the gingerbread season as much as possible and I'm also planning a few gingerbread gifts for my toddler's teachers.

Come follow me on Instagram - I'm heavenlyingredients. see you there!

Early birthday present from T2

T2 is one of the only 'high street' shops that I totally love. (The other is Kikki-K, but that's a whole other blog post...)  The concept is spot on. They adore tea, and everything to do with it. I also think their range of teas and accoutrement is fabulous.


They treat teapots, cups and saucers like fashion shops - they change them all the time, and are always linked by a theme. It seemed to be all about decadence when we were in there today, and my local store had a whole wall of vintage teacups too.

My lovely MIL treated me to an early birthday present, T2 loose leaf Earl Grey, a black square tin (I already have a collection of these and love them!), a honey spoon and 2 tea scoops. At T2 they also let you have free samples - we both chose Creme brulee. So delicious, and perfect as a black tea.

Thank you for my bday present xx

Do you thermomix?

I'm a gadget queen. Ok, I am, but only in the kitchen. I love having every little bit and piece that I need for making the perfect pasta, madeleines, cupcakes, stews, stocks... the list goes on.

When I started watching youtube videos about the Kitchenaid and saw how beautiful it was, I just had to have one. So impatient too, I could only wait so long after I had ummed and arrggged about the perfect colour. Majestic Yellow. Which of course was being discontinued and gave me even more reason to buy once I found one. Think I got the last one in the country in David Jones in Bondi Junction. I just had to drive across and have a look, and then it was love at first sight.  I continue to adore it, but have to admit that it is hard to justify, on health grounds(!), making cupcakes every week. Still, it gets some use.

More recently I've heard lots of chat about the Thermomix. They do everything.  Chop, beat, mix, whip, grind, knead, mince, grate, juice, blend, heat, stir, steam and weigh! I was told upfront how expensive they are which just made me shrug. I can't imagine my husband would be very understanding about that, even though I think the multi-use factor probably does justify the cost. 

Then last weekend I went to the Good Food & Wine festival and popped to their stall.  The demonstration was fabulous, and so was the sample (some sort of gluten free chocolate almond dessert with orange custard). I'm so almost sold. I would love to host a demo at my place, but I realise that I probably couldn't say no after that...

$1939.... big ouch!

Do you own a Thermomix?

my kitchen

My beloved kitchen!

I can hardly begin to tell you quite how wonderful it is to design your own space. Making sure there is space for everything. Choosing the width of your drawers, the finishes, the fittings, the appliances. My heart flutters a little when I get home and see my dream kitchen is still there, waiting for me.

I spent a long time looking at kitchens before deciding what I wanted. It's such a big decision, and not something that I wanted to have an ounce of regret for. Every since we bought our place, almost three years ago now, I've been flicking through Real Living and Australian House & Garden magazine for ideas.   Anything mentioning kitchen special on the front cover, I was totally there.  Then there were the posts about other kitchen makeovers - I love Retro Mummy's kitchen so much, but the Hampton's style did not feel the right style of kitchen for our 1960s house.

We ended up deciding on very simple polyurethane handle-less cupboards and drawers in white. I love white white white, and wanted to use other colours as accents. It's a really modern feeling kitchen, but I knew that if we ever decided to sell that the place wouldn't offend either.  It's got oodles of drawers for easy access. They really have changed the way I cook and prepare.  I spend so much less time looking for things, and reaching into dark spaces that I can't see into!

Another pre-requisite was the biggest possible kitchen island. And I got it. It's a dream size, and we spend so much time sitting and eating around it. I no longer have to cook away in a tiny little 3m x 3m kitchen space with no company, everything is open. I think the island itself is 1.6m x 1.8m!  I can see my little girl drawing, doing play dough and reading, because she can sit and do that on the other side of the island to me.

And then to space. Our kitchen designer told us that he would easily be able to trump the space of our last kitchen. I'm so happy with it. We have hidden storage under our island, a huge pantry with pull out drawers to chest height, wine racks, open shelving and even a cupboard for my ever-growing cook book collection.  I don't have to stack items upon items upon items to get them in the cupboard. Love it!

 

The finishing touch was the splash back. If we had designed this a few years ago I'm sure I would have chosen a glass splash back. But I've seen so many over the last little while and really wanted to go with tiles. I love the subway tile look too, but I got a lot of opposition to that. So, inspired by Martha Stewart we chose dark blue penny tiles. I was so nervous that I would hate them, as they are such an important feature of the kitchen. But I adore them, they totally make the space, and bring the contrast to the white that it so needed.

Have you ever designed a kitchen? And what do you love or hate about your current space?