In My Kitchen -Sydney Rd Shopping & Putting things off

Too bloomin’ cold and too much else going on here so not a lot of food IMK this month. Our positive energy and thoughts are being transported to Celia-Fig Jam and Lime Cordial. who normally ‘stitches’ all our IMK posts together every month. Unfortunately Celia is enduring difficult times so we are all ‘winging’ it by posting to comments on her site. For someone who is always the first to offer a helping hand and support to others, we wish her and her family a quick bounce back to normality. She is quite an amazing and caring person.

For those of you who don’t get my regular blog posts, we have started moving everything from the kitchen to what will be the temporary kitchen while our reno/extension (yes, my real kitchen) are taking place. You can read about that here.

The Lovely Francesca from one of my favourite blogs ‘Almost Italian‘ told me a couple of posts ago about a store in Brunswick that sells ‘everything Italian’. As luck would have it, we ended up in Sydney Rd last weekend when we were in full ‘avoidance’ mode at having to repair a broken poly pipe in the back yard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Saturday morning it was raining heavily, a freezing wind blowing and it was threatening to snow (that is a rarity) so I quickly decided we should go looking at timber flooring for the reno rather than play in the mud. We turned off the water main, Googled for some showrooms of timber flooring and headed to Coburg in Melbourne. Coburg is close to the suburb I grew up in, Preston, but it certainly isn’t anything like I remember it. After looking at the timber place, I knew we would find somewhere to eat along Sydney Rd, understatement. We parked and walked for ages along the strip shops savouring quite a few tasty things on the way. God, I felt like I was in the Middle East and in particular Turkey (or how I imagine it). Such a haven of interesting shops and friendly people. After we’d had a kebab at one place (we weren’t piggies, we did share a small one) , we then ate lunch at the Middle Eastern cafe/bakery Zaatar. Lunch was a couple of freshly baked Middle Eastern pastries and they were delicious. The pastry was superb! We grabbed some Turkish mastic ice-cream to eat as we headed into more interesting stores. This had a very different taste but I think I could easily get to love it. We didn’t choose it based on it having ‘Booza’ on the label.

 

 

I was very tempted to buy this bag of chillies, (please excuse the blurring)

but really, how many chillies can one use?

We then headed further down Sydney Rd to Brunswick and I remembered the lead Francesca had given me about the Mediterranean Wholesaler for everything Italian. Well, the delights continued! I came out from there with some beautiful looking aged, hard cheese, we just can’t get that here.

and some balsamic vinegar that was in the cutest little bottle,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

definitely going back there. Thanks Francesca!

Back at home I’ve dried some of my Phoenicia sourdough starter (this originally came from Celia sharing some of her starter Priscilla). Having some dried starter, means I can share it and have some as a back up incase something terrible happens to Phoenicia.

Lastly, I have a lovely little teapot (1-2 cup) that I bought at what is the best tea shop I’ve ever been to. Tea Leaves in Sassafras which is in our Dandenong ranges, a popular  place for a weekend drive. We ended up there a few weeks ago after collecting something reasonably close by. They sell online and the prices are reasonable. The knowledge the staff have about tea is quite amazing. Love it!

So that’s it for this month. Looking forward to reading some of the other posts, it really is fun looking into peoples kitchens. I hope that Celia is back on top of things next month, we love hearing her stories.