Steve and I celebrated seven years of marriage this weekend. Official day is today (Sunday) but why celebrate on one day when we can do it twice?

We had a Neil Perry (Australian chef) double whammy and had dinner at Rockpool followed by Sunday lunch at Spice Temple. Neil did well and both meals were lipsmackingly good.

Weather is warming up nicely. This photo was taken this afternoon. The air is still cool but in the sunshine it gets pretty warm. Another couple of weeks and it will be pretty good me thinks.

We enjoyed afternoon drinks today with Martyn and Claire on a pub terrace and I can envisage this kind of activity occuring with more and more frequency as the weather improves.

It's been a busy week for me with midweek activity! Yes aside from a demanding work schedule I have a social life.

Wednesday evening I joined some Americans, a Canadian and a fellow Brit at a pub quiz. They call it trivia here. Being a team of girls with no Australian representation, we had low expectations. Although Steve should be proud that I managed to provide 2 correct answers to name the Premiere League managers of Manchester United, Liverpool and Everton. I failed to come up with David Moyes for Everton but I'll not forget for next time!

Thursday night I enjoyed a date with Tanya who I work with. We both manage the government contract and decided to try out a new restaurant in Prahran. It was really enjoyable and we even went so far as to share dessert just like a proper date!

Friday night was the Hudson charity quiz / trivia. My proud moment was coming up with the name of the current English cricket captain correctly! We did not expect it but our time actually came first! What an achievement!

We're on the countdown to our holiday to Perth and Margaret River. We leave on Saturday for a week. Very excited! And tomorrow I'm taking the day off work to have lunch with a friend of a friend who has arrived in Melbourne and to prep for our trip. I get to be a lady of leisure for the day. Excellent!

We're also waiting on tenterhooks to hear about Baby Pea Holich-Mennell. My good friend Andrea is ten days overdue and was going to be induced this weekend.

It's been a busy week and weekend. I often call Steve unromantic and not very spontaneous but the highlight of my week was coming home to a beautiful bouquet. And bless his cotton underpants, it's not like he went to a florist next door but he headed over to South Melbourne where I'd commented when we'd walked past it that it looked nice, to buy them. Thank you Barley boy!

Friday night was Double Date Duck night and we ventured East to Box Hill to meet Ling and Noah (or Ning and Loah as Steve calls them after a few drinks) to try the supposedly best Peking duck in Melbourne.

It has such a strong following and reputation that Simon, who owns the restaurant can come up with his own spelling and he calls it Peiking duck! If he wants to put in an extra i then he can as his duck is pretty darn good!

See Steve's smile here - it's genuine and it's because his belly is happy!

Saturday and I was meeting Sharen, who is my good friend ginger Rachel's schoolfriend. We're both in Melbourne and Rachel put us in touch with one another. We decided to have a shopping and lunch date and I can tell you now, she's a bad influence!

We had a lovely time with a yummy lunch and some mooching round shops and I ended up with 4 yes 4 new pairs of shoes. I've only put pics of three pairs up and the 4th pair aren't that photogenic. They're similar to the sandal but made of that "jelly" stuff and good for the Summer.

In my defence, I've been wanting some tan sandals in a while ever since my gold ones broke last Summer but I've never found the right pair! And the other two pairs were bargainous. I saved over $100 on the black Alannah Hill ones and got free chocolate and the patent nude coloured ones were maked down by two thirds! And I've been wanting nude heels in ages...but never wanted to spend too much but didn't want cheap ones as they would hurt! And now I have good Steve Madden ones but at a cheap price! So that's me done for shoe shopping for a long while!

Today Steve and I had lunch at the Oriental Tea House on Collins Street. I've reviewed it on the Restaurant Reviews page. Steve has had a very chilled weekend which he deserves as he's been working hard over the last few weeks. He's been finishing work after 7pm and setting up again to do some more at home. In fact, we've both been putting in some hours so looking forward to our week off in 2 weeks time.

Steve has also succumbed to Foxtel (Australian version of Sky). I'll let you know how that affects the Barley household. Speaking of our household, it's our 7 year wedding anniversary next week...

Steve bought tickets from a colleague for the Taste of Melboure festival and we made our way there having been dropped off at the back of the building by our crazy taxi driver.

The Royal Exhibition Building is imposing a beautiful to look at. The crazy taxi driver told us it was once the Parliament building and that's not hard to believe.

As we approached the entrance we could see hordes of people and a text conversation with Ling previously had informed us that there was a huge queue. This had dampened my enthusiasm as I hate crowds. It was also a warm evening so I thought it would be uncomfortable inside the hall.

Indeed there was a queue and it went right round the the central fountain bit but it moved very quickly and there was no pushing or shoving. Once inside the hall, it wasn't overcrowded so all good so far.

Basically the Taste of Melbourne exhibition is very much like the Good Food Show in UK except smaller. There are producers exhibiting wares and samples as well as food stalls representing top restaurants and you can buy signature dishes from them. The good thing about Taste of Melbourne though is that although it's popular it's a lot easier to navigate through the crowds as there just aren't as many people as is the case with the Good Food Show.

So, we sampled wines, beers, liquours, teas, juices and coffees. We spent some time at the Rekorderlig cider bar and enjoyed the blackcurrant and apple cider and the plain apple one for Steve. Refreshing especially as we could feel the temperature rising.

We visited the Nespresso stand several times and Ling had about three cups of strong coffee from there although she did spill one.

We chomped our way buying food to eat and looking out for free samples. There were some good cheeses, cookies, olive oils, dips, meats and sauces.

This is the KFC ‘St Katherine’s fried Lilydale chicken’ with BBQ sauce. St Katherine's is one of George Columbaris' newer restaurants and a lot of people have been twittering and talking about this dish on food forums.

Barley verdict - pretty good and nice balance of skin and not too much grease. Not enough BBQ sauce on our serve though. Infinitely better than the chicken goujons I've had at the MCG when watching some sporting event although appearances are similar.

Also from St Katherine's - Turkish lamb dumplings, garlic yoghurt, sumac, dried fruit from St Katherine's.

Barley verdict - no dried fruit which isn't necessarily a bad thing as I don't like it. Very rich and no need for a bigger portion. Tang of the yoghurt is a nice accompaniment to the sumac and rich lamb. The dumpling skin is quite thick and pasta like which adds the the richness and heaviness of the dish.

This is from The European and is the Western Plains pork parcels. This was a recommendation from one of the wine exhibitors so we decided to try it. Crispy and thin pastry on the outside and a good tasty piece of pork with some refreshing apple and spring onion flavours. A good choice.

Steve wanted to try this one from The Millswyn - 10 hr braised beef cheeks with beetroot, spinach & field mushrooms. This was a good sized portion although Ling's serve was smaller. The earthy beetroot and spinach were a good contrast to the tender beef. No fancy seasoning here just good produce that tastes of what it's meant to taste of.

Mozzarella tasting plate and we weren't informed what was on it but it all tasted good. 4 big chunks of creamy mozzarella ranging from a butter like spreadable consistency to the chewy, rubbery end of the spectrum. I think I'd have liked the smoked mozzarella / scamorza to be warm and melted though. That would have been sublime.




We also tried the lamb fom Sarti restaurante which was delicious and was so tasty I forgot to take a picture! We left with three jars of Nando's sauces - the exhibition is about all levels of dining form the every day to the high end! It was a fun way to spend a Saturday evening but I think once you've done it, it doesn't need to be an experience that has to be repeated.

This weekend has been about revisiting some old haunts and generally absorbing as much relaxation time as possible. Weather forecast had said rain all week but we didn't see any of that until Friday. It was all blue skies and sunshine up till then and then the Heavens opened and we even had a short hailstorm too with intermittent sunshine breaks. Crazy weather!

Friday evening was about post work drinks with out respective colleagues and I then met Steve at Crown Casino as that's where he'd spent most the afternoon. Not at the tables or the machines but in one of the restaurants and at the piano bar. A quick martini there and he suggested dinner at Nobu for a Friday feast. Who am I to object to that offer so we secured two seats at the sushi bar. The chefs and wait staff gave us the usual "iraasshai mase" shout out and we rolled up our sleeves ready to chow down.

We asked the sushi chefs to make up a sampler of sushi and sashimi and we had abalone, scallops, toro (that fatty tuna belly stuff) and it was all very delicious. The bill? Not quite so easily digestible but we had fun and we enjoyed it.

Saturday was a bit gloomy and there has been sunshine and showers today so the plan was to get some brunch and stay in and avoid the frizzy hair nastiness Melbourne has a habit of causing. Steve's hangover on a scale of 1 - 10 was floating around the 5 mark. He tried to go to the office to do some work and to his credit he did head in that direction only to return home not long after. He says it's because the accounts he was meant to work on hadn't arrived in his inbox but I suspect that 5 rating was creeping towards a 6 or 7. So we spent to rest of the day on the sofa, under the duvet, in front of the TV and I was behind my Kindle.

Saturday night was Claire and Martyn's housewarming so we headed to South Kensington to check out their new pad. We wish them lots of happiness there and it is a very nice home. It was fun to catch up with Charlotte and Lucy and their other halves as well as meet some new folk. We were home by midnight ready for Sunday!

Steve's hangover this morning was probably around a 6 or so and we headed to South Melbourne market for some brunch - yummy baked eggs at Gas and some shopping. We've been wanting to cook red braised short ribs with daikon after seeing it on Masterchef so we headed to the Asian store to get the ingredients. The shopkeeper was so funny as she guess what we were making after I asked her for sichuan peppercorns and star anise and pretty much got all the other stuff for me. She told me she sold 50 bottles of Chinese rice wine in one day after that episode was aired! I think there's a market for stores to box up all the ingredients for a dish that airs on Masterchef and sell it all in one box.

So the braised short ribs are a hit and the whole apartment smells all Asiany spicy and there's enough for tomorrow too. We've certainly eaten well this weekend (as always) but no new restaurants to review so taking a little break this weekend. Not sure I'll retain my spot at number 15 of the Victorian Urbanspoon bloggers leaderboard though if I take breaks. Better get back to it next weekend!

Congratulations Nicola and Lee on your wedding which took place on Friday! I can tell from all the FB messages that you had a great time which I'm really pleased about. Steve and I wish you a lifetime of happiness together.

Since being in Melbourne, we've missed out on two close friends weddings, some pregnancies and new arrivals, some house moves, lots of birthday dinners and who knows what else. It does make me a little sad to miss out but I also know that I can pick up where I left off too with these dear people.

It's September and the 4th day of Spring. We've been here for 10 months now and our supposed halfway mark is coming soon. We still don't know if November will be our halfway milestone (we planned on being here for two years) or whether we'll stay a bit loner and then November may become our 1/3 marker...who knows?

And if we hadn't come to Melbourne then we wouldn't have had the chance to do things like celebrate Ling's birthday! We'd missed out on her party as I didn't want to spread my germs to the rest of her friends and arranged to go out this Friday instead. We went to Red Spice Road for dinner and Ling dressed for the occasion with red accessories and sexy bright red lipstick.

This lovely beauty blogger also gave me lots of gifts even though it was her birthday and not mine. Thank you, thank you and I promise I will review them for your blog. And Noah said it wasn't fair I got all the gifts so he chose a joint gift of a very cool pepper mill which I have used today and it works super well. Much better than the one we have so thanks again.

So Friday night was double date night and Saturday evening was Barley date night and we went to Mamasita for an early dinner. We had a fun time eating and drinking beer before waddling home.

This weekend has been welcome respite after a long week at work. I have had some long days as it's been pretty busy. I've been at my desk at 8am and then getting home about 8pm and bearing in mind I have a ten minute commute, that does mean I've been in the office an awful lot. I'm hopeful next week will be easier.

Healthwise - thank you everyone for your good wishes. This week has been uneventful for which I am very grateful. I think I'm back on track and judging from this weekend's activities, the appetite is well and truly back!

Holiday countdown also begins with 4 weeks to go before we do a Perth and Margaret River trip. Before then we also have our 7th wedding anniversary, a peking duck date with Ling and Noah, tickets to the Taste of Melbourne festival (more food), a housewarming party plus more! No resting for us. We need lots of energy to get through all this. Good thing we have a cleaner who comes once a fortnight. This means the energy we used to put into housework can now be channelled towards more fun things!