Good day everyone! So for those of you who don't know, I sometimes go on little adventures in my lunch break - destinations carefully selected by my cousin or friend who live interstate. We check out google maps of the eateries surrounding each other's work places and select a place for each other to go and sometimes set challenges. Today my destination was the Queen Victoria Market and the challenge was to eat a lunch comprising of free samples. I'm quite shy in person and don't usually ask for samples, but today I left all inhibitions at my desk and went guns blazing and mouth open into the belly of the free sample beast. I took Kate along as photographer so you believed I actually did it. She and I had a grand old time which began in the fruit section, where free samples are encouraged....
Here I ate 3 little bits of pineapple. Mind you, it was a $7.90 organic pineapple and was absolutely DELICIOUS! Also in the organic section, I stopped for 1 macadamia nut and 2 roasted cashew nuts...
We had our eyes peeled for another little bowl somewhere, and here i found it with some yellow nectarine. I got 2 little cubes maybe 1cm square or less haha..
Next was on to the cheese! I hit this place first, and tried the King Island Brie, the Cheddar and the Blue. The Cheddar was worth a mention :)
Then we hit another cheese stand which the photos of me were horrendous... and i tried the blue cheese there. Next was onto a place where I was going to ask for an olive sample before we got distracted by this:
We asked what it was and the man explained it was a Greek dessert made from sesame...tahini, nuts, and chocolate. those were his words. He said the whole thing could sell for $250 - $300 but you can buy small sections for about $8. That was interesting enough for me so we gave it a go and:
FIREWORKS! This stuff is amazing!! It has the strangest texture like fairy floss/nougat combined! The guy suggested that we should crumble it over ice cream and we nearly jizzed it. That would be AMAZING! I want to check out a recipe and see if it is actually something that some non-greek nobody like me could pull off :D wee-hooooooo!! Next was onto the African stall, I was actually just checking out the spice mixes as I'm planning to make some african soon ;) I have a feeling I could pick this up in Footscray cheaper, as it's $12 for the medium jar... or i could possibly make it myself?
Next was onto the nut shop. I had to think of something obscure enough to ask for and act as though i was interested to try it. I picked dried blueberries as i didnt think i had had them before.
I was genuinely interested after eating them and asked whether they reconstitute in muffins or pancakes etc when you cook them but they didnt know anything haha. Oh, next i was determined to get an olive. We went to this place that had all different kinds of stuffed olives and i pretended like I wanted to know what i was getting in case I didn't like it. And i was:
No samples! OUCH! Then i hit another cheese stand and tried their brie, cheddar and blue. All three = amazing! I will definately buy some of the blue.. it was a gorgonzola dolce something. I'll remember when i see it.
Oh, then it was on to dip central! This place had the best green olive dip for sampling and also a sun-dried tomato pesto for sampling. Then i was cheeky and asked to sample 2 more flavours - one of which was carrot and coriander dip - which i have never had!
That face is the face of positive assessment! There was a strange woman next to me who urged me to try another flavour - spicy hommus. I felt like i had taken too much from them already and the shopkeeper only agreed to let me have a taste 'as long as i don't ask to sample every flavour'. I promised, and the spicy hommus was in my mouth. Of course it was tainted with guilt so didn't taste so great.
Next door was the wine cellar. They advertised 2 wines available for tasting. This one:
And a rosé. I tried both and didnt like the rosé, but the moscato was great! I asked the guy if it really has white chocolate flavours in it, and the
lovely man (sarcasm) said "No, it's just there so girls like you get all excited and buy it." before walking off to get me a glass....................................... hmmm. Here he is:
I'm not sure if he was actually a see you next tuesday, or if he was trying that schoolyard cheeky thing on me, a bit reminiscent of 'the game'... negs and all that shizz...
I drank to 'all the girls like me' out there. All the girls who slept in and had 8 minutes to get ready thus didnt put on makeup or do their hair :P Then we checked out the French shoppe. Crazy stuff in there..
Oh yeah (oh my god we went everywhere) then we hit the juice bar which had a sign saying "please ask for a free sample" so i tasted the lemon cheesecake yoghurt and then the apple and rhubarb yoghurt (yuuuummm) but then she noticed the camera and got a bit funny...
Then we went back to the first cheese place I was at because there was a new person serving cheese. It must have been
all 2 sips of that wine i drank going to my head and imparing my judgement for me to think it was a good idea. The lady actually said the boy's name and asked "Why have they got a camera!?" and then everyone looked at eachother awkwardly and we walked off in a hurry. hahahaha. I should have gotten up on my soapbox and said "there is no rule as to how many samples you can have god damn it!!!"
I tried 1 sunflower seed but i didnt realise it was in a shell until i was almost choking on it :P
Then we hit the fruit place again as nobody cared who ate what...
So there you have it... 5 bits of pineapple, 2 bits of yellow nectarine, 1 macadamia, 2 cashews, 9 cheese samples, 2 halva samples, 1 taste of berbere spice mix, 4 dried blueberries, 4 dip samples, 2 wine samples, 2 yoghurt samples, 1 sunflower seed - complete with shell, 1 bit of white peach, and 1/4 of a strawberry. I just thought the cumquats were funny :) So even after all that scabbing about 3 hours ago, i am hungry. surprise surprise! I have some steamed vegetables to eat just in case (yay). Kate had said I wasnt allowed to have a back-up lunch otherwise i wouldnt have the determination to get as many samples. She changed her mind as she was impressed by my forwardness and was happy with the amount i got. We agreed that we probably couldn't have got any more and had robbed enough local farmers for one day. On the plus side, I now love halva, know where to go for an amazing green olive dip and also where to go for the best blue cheese. Hooray! Oh and i picked up a bottle of that cool moscato to drink with my friend Mel who gets back from Hawaii today. She is a 'girl like me' who can appreciate a cute bottle of wine ;)
No comments:
Post a Comment