This is a very back dated post.

Our very first stay over at the winery. It was a wedding present from DJ’s cousin. Excellent
Ainsworth Estate is located at Yarra Valley which is almost an hour drive from Melbourne.

Our winery package consist of 2 nights stay at their luxurious self contained one bedroom apartment which includes breakfast and a two course dinner in the Ainsworth Estate restaurant and a bottle of wine.

Day 1

We arrived at the winery around lunch time. It was 39 degrees at that time we arrive and decided to have lunch at the estate restaurant.

For starters, we shared a platter of antipasto because I was so damn hungry. The platter was alright. Nothing fancy just the usual stuff. The smoke chicken breast was yummy- very salty, me likey

I had the barramundi with mango salsa on roast potatoes and rockets.

DJ ordered the pan fried calamari stripes.

After lunch we checked into our apartment and had a nap before cooking dinner.

View from the living room.

View from the balcony

DJ cooked dinner with only 4 ingredients
-2 chicken Maryland
-frozen peas & corn
-a can of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup
-cauliflower

Ta-da, here I present you his creation of an all in one dish dinner.

Day 2

Our first stop was St Hubert .DJ didn’t really like the wine selections that were offered for tasting. I in the other hand quite liked the late harvest Riesling. I have a very bad sweet tooth for Riesling *grin*

Then we went to Punt Road estate. DJ was trying on all their wines that we offered for tasting. He immediately fell in love with the cabernet shiraz. He was all smiles after his first purchase.

We did a quick stop over to Green Point Wines which are famous for their Chandon bubblies.

As always, at Green Point Wines estate is usually packed with tourist trying out wines and champagne so instead of waiting for our turn to for the tasting; we took a mini tour around the estate.

After purchasing some bubblies from Green Point, we drove up to Healesville town centre for lunch at the Healesville Hotel.

I kind of like this restaurant. It has this old fashion bar saloon type of feel dining area. Very retro yo.
Most of the foods in the menu are seasonal produce from the surrounding area.

We decided to have a light lunch since we’ll be having a 2 course dinner back at the estate as part of the package.

As for starter we had freshly shucked oyster from coffin bay S.A with cab sav granite. Having oyster on a hot day is so refreshing. I heart fresh oyster to bits.

Then I set for ceviche of scallops with lime, basil, avocado and soft herb. It was absolutely divine but I guess $17 for an entrée is a bit steep tho.

DJ ordered the roasted bone marrow and snail escargots with watercress and shallot salad. i tried the escargots and it tasted funny. Me no likey.

The cheesy man sure loves his formage.

Due to the unbearable hot weather, we decided to go back to our apartment for a nap. I love my afternoon naps.

At 7pm, we went for our dinner at the estate restaurant. We had the whole restaurant to ourselves.
Sounds romantic right, almost like what you see in the movies where the rich guy book the whole restaurant for his girlfriend. Candle light dinner followed by a slow dance bla bla bla…
Actually, I feel awkward and bad for the chef and the host to purposely come in to prepare everything for just the 2 of us. We even have to talk so softly because it was so darn quiet.

We got a bottle of complementary wine which DJ ended up buying 6 bottles to so called keep for special occasion

The dinner menu was the same as the lunch menu we had on day 1. *scratches head*

For starters, I ordered the pumpkin gnocchi triangle with Mediterranean vegetable sauce. It actually looked more like pan fried polenta. in fact it tasted like polenta. Weird. How come the chef called this dish gnocchi?

DJ had the smoked chicken, orange, pear and strawberry salad with vinaigrette dressing.

As for the mains, both of us ordered the eye fillet on roast potatoes and rocket with mushroom compote. The steak was cooked to our liking – rare.

It was a very quick dinner. We finished our dinner within an hour and returned to our apartment to finish the complementary wine from dinner.

Home time

After we’ve checked out at 11am, we went to the Warratina Lavender farm at Wandin Yallock

There’s a little café / retail shop for lavender lovers at the farm. I ordered a lavender scone and tea for morning tea.

The amount of lavender that was use in the scones was tad little till I can’t even tell the difference between plain scones.

Last stop was Whispering Hills estate before we head back to Melbourne.

Overall the stay at the winery was indeed very relaxing and it was really nice to be away from the city for awhile but not too long. After all I’m 100% city girl that lives in the burbs.

Posted: January 17th, 2008 under DJ's cooking, Holidays.
Comments: 4

Team BSP was in Torquay during the christmas holiday.

Here’s a short description about Torquay
It is located 95km from Melbourne city which is about 1 hour and 20 min drive.
Famously known for it’s surf beaches in Victoria.
Must visit: The Shopping Plaza- surf wear outlets – Haven

Day 1

Getting all ready for our road trip

MonkeyKing made us take a photo at the Torquay sign. Very embarrassing tho

All happy with the new beach tent. The weather was not very good during the Christmas week. It actually rained on the first day
KatsuDon and I fell asleep inside the tent when it was raining. We were trying out the quality of the tent so far so good.

Later in the day, we caught up with Iriya,Hj, Yauie & Eve for BBQ at the apartment.

Picture moment of the founders of Team BSP:
Belachan Boy & Sambal Surfer posing for the camera. vain

DJ giving some TLC to the sausage.

Day 2
The weather was not better than Day 1. It was so windy that our tent almost went kaput.

This time is our turn to cook for Christmas Eve dinner. Well DJ did most of the cooking and I did my usuals – Dish washing.

DJ has prepared a 5 course degustation menu for dinner. Everyone was so stuffed after the entree.

Appetiser:
Pepper crushed fillet of beef with fresh buffalo mozzarella, cherry tomatoes, basil & lychee balsamic reduction

Entree:
BBQ whole baby chicken in home made peri peri marinate with edamame peas & pea sprout

Palette cleanser:
Lychee with raspberry sorbet

Main:
Fisherman’s catch [mussels, prawns, clams, scallops & sand crab] in white wine and coriander broth

Dessert:
Cherry scotch compote with vanilla ice cream

On the last day we took a drive up to Bells beach to watch the pro surfers surfing and later we went back to Torquay beach for a last round of body boarding and surfing before we head back to Vo’s spit roast spectacular party.

*most of the photos are taken from MonkeyKing’s camera.*

Posted: January 5th, 2008 under DJ's cooking, Holidays.
Comments: none

Here’s an outdated post that was meant to be posted on last Monday.
[Australia Day long weekend 26th - 28th Jan]

Day 1 – Australia Day
Bad idea to have excessive drinking session the night before the road trip The usual suspects were in EL to celebrate Hayden’s big 3-0. Ken and Pear signed their ROM papers on that day as well. Congratulations Mr and Mrs Tan!

DJ and KatsuDon took turns to drive because MonkeyKing was totally smashed from the night before.

We stop over at this bakery at Bairnsdale to try out some award winning pies. I had the curry scallop pie. The filling of the pie looks disgusting [ehm..like baby’s poo] but it tasted really good. I highly recommend trying this bakery at….DJ prefer the satay prawn pie. Apparently its spicy and nutty.

Jarrod’s Bakery, Bairnsdale

Eden is a town about half an hour away from Merimbule. It is situated on the deep harbour of Twofold Bay. This town is famous for its fishing and whale- watching.
Too bad we have missed the whale watching season which is usually held in October.

An old school petrol station.

Merimbula is famous throughout the world for its oysters. We stopped for lunch at Wheelers for some fresh oysters and apparently Wheelers oysters are the best of the best. I think the oyster tasted just ok. The after taste was a bit funky. Probably some Tabasco sauce would help to mask the after taste.

Fresh oysters from Wheelers farm.

At Merimbula, we stayed at Tuscany Apartments on Marine Parade. The apartment is situated on Merimbula’s fishpen peninsular between the Main beach and the shores of Merimbula Lake
After we unloaded all our stuff in to the apartment, we quickly changed to our bathers and hit the beach. it was some what crowded with locals tourist. the water was freezing cold but once in the water, it doesn’t feel that bad.

Main Beach, Fish Pen

Australia Day is all about BBQ. So after the beach we went to Woolworth to get some lamb chops, sausages and chicken wings to cook on the communal bbq that was provided. We decided to have lamb! Otherwise it is so un Australian to have lamb on Australia Day. KatsuDon made potato salad to go with the meats.

BelachanBoy at work

Day 2
Woke up at 10-ish and opened the room door and all I smelled was belachan. phew… it smelled like something has just died in the apartment. DJ was supposed to make the sambal belachan paste the day before the trip but something came up unexpectedly. ahem… drinks at Hayden’s birthday.
neways MonkeyKing was very ambitious of going out to the beach at 7am to swim with the wave. obviously what was planned the night before [under alcohol influence] did not happened. HaHa.

KatsuDon made banana & passion fruit pancakes for breakfast.

We went to the town to hunt for fresh seafood to cook for dinner. We brought scallop, prawns, squid & whole baby snapper. The menu for dinner was “everything about sambal belachan”

As soon as we finished our grocery shopping, we hired boogie boards and MonkeyKing was very ambitious [again] to hire a surf board. We decided to try out the other beach at the other side of town. ShortPoint beach is a surfer’s haven, apparently it not as choppy as the main beach . Body boarding is fun. In my case I manage to ride every wave that came at me. The weather was not too promising. It was extremely windy and the water was freezing. I got blisters around my tummy area from rubbing against the board. Ouch >_< . Therefore I didn’t stay out in the water as much as I want to.

Short Point beach

Dinner time~
Something was missing from the dinner menu – VEGETABLES
My meals will not be complete if I don’t have any vegetables. Luckily there was cucumber that was to go with the nasi lemak
Our belachan feast.

Suprisingly no one had the runs the next day. Well done DJ!

Day 3
DJ & MonkeyKing are very enthusiastic to go for an early swim; therefore they woke up early to catch the wave at dawn. I obviously did not join them instead I slept in for a bit.
After we checked out from the apartment, all of us head back to Main Beach to do some more bodyboarding before heading back to Melbourne. the weather was really beautiful on that day. It was sunny with a bit of sea breeze. I roughly figure out how to use the boogie board as soon as I saw this AhSoh doing it so professionally. After an hour of boarding I found blisters around my tummy, thigh and elbow area. Damn painful. Next time I’ll wear a wet suit to avoid getting blisters.
I really enjoyed bodyboarding except for that one time when I was waiting for the wave to come, I got drifted away by the rip without realising I was actually very far from the shore. That was really scary. Until today I still feel a bit traumatised from that day’s incident.
We left the beach around lunch time. Everyone was hungry and decided to have KFC for lunch and I recall seeing a KFC at Eden but I was wrong. Later we found out that the closest KFC was in Bairnsdale – 4 hours drive from Eden. Oppss…

The trip was really relaxing and fun. I was really glad that we went away for the long weekend. Otherwise it will be such a waste to just stay in Melbourne.

Posted: February 3rd, 2007 under Holidays.
Comments: 2