Picture pinched from Il Fornaio. Yuk! Over at Espresso in The Age the editors are already licking their lips at the prospect of a drive through Krispy Kreme doughnut outlet in Melbourne. I’ve had the misfortune to eat these dubious sugar coated bits of dough. Double yuk! At first bite they have a pleasant crispy sugar coating but underneath is dough that does a disservice to the worst kind of white bread you can buy. Triple yuk! Soon we can […]
Recent posts
Five food challenges for 2006 (and koala)
Lucas (aka Crazy Gaijin) has tagged me to come up with my five food challenges for 2006. 1. Bake loads of different cakes and biscuits Especially a sponge cake, probably a traditional one using no fat but also a Genoese (made with butter) one filled with strawberries and cream. I’ll probably make a couple of each and gorge myself. I may share some with friends and neighbours. Or perhaps I’ll hide them and scoff both. There may be a small […]
Land of the giants
Steve walks down the street and over the road to an ofice carpark to harvest giant rosemary for our whole baked snapper. Then he reachedd over the first floor balcony to his house-sized bay tree. Brisbane in Queensland is land of the giants. My own Bay tree is barely 30 cm tall. Steve’s is more like 30m. Okay, 10m. These pics were taken on the 30th and we’ve only got back home and got the broadband firedd-up again today. A […]
The Australian: Balance transfers
From the Wealth section of The Australian in December Be careful about the fine print in balance transfers, reports Ed Charles
My food blogging predictions for 2006
Could 2006 be the year that the local foodblog community seriously starts to challenge traditional media? Predictions are a dangerous thing. But I’m prepared to put my neck on the line about the growth of food blogging’s in popularity in Australia. There are currently 49 local food blogs, about 80 per cent of them regularly updated. I reckon by this time next year there will be at least 250 – possibly more – if the current growth rate is continued. […]
All change for restaurant critics
Well sort of. Last week saw the appointment of Melbourne critic and John Lethlean and Epicure’s (the food section of our local broadsheet, The Age) deputy editor Necia Wilden as the co-editors of our local Good Food Guide. Now Sydney’s man of the sharp knives Matthew Evans has quit Good Living (the food section of the Sydney Morning Herald) as restaurant critic after five years (although it’s not clear if he remains joint editor of the Sydney Good Food Guide). […]
Reflections on beer glasses
Sure Asahi isn’t the cheapest beer on Tap. But that is more than compensated by the stylish frosted glass that this beer comes in. We’ve just popped in to recently refurbished Espy, (The Esplanade Hotel, 11 The Esplanade St Kilda 3183 +61 3 9534 0211) for a quick beer. For those of you not in the know this pub has one of the best bay views in St Kilda. It serves the beers made or marketed by Fosters which means […]
Always choose a wine by its label
I find wine labels pretty exciting and this Wine Blogging Wednesday #16 even more so. I once worked in a marketing type job and was involved in some brand development. The idea was to imagine what the bottle’s label would have been like, say, a couple of hundred years previously. With that in mind we could develop a label that communicated heritage, quality and all that guff. Winemakers are split between heritage look labels and funky designs. There are plenty […]
In The Black: The house always wins
For In the Black in December 2005. Ed Charles tells why reverse mortgages should be handled with care, and vetted by professionals. This is a story about how a new car or a cruise might cost pensioners their home. It’s about the lucrative reverse mortgage, where banks will lend up to 45 per cent of a home’s value and compound the interest over a pensioner’s lifetime. It’s about the gap between compounded interest rates and increasing property values. And about […]