I had a great Christmas visiting my family, eating, eating and of course more eating! My favourite thing about all the food at Christmas is that everyone makes enough to cater for triple the amount of people that are there so we get to eat left overs for the next three days! I then get to the point where I have to leave because if I keep eating like this, I will need someone to roll me back to Ballarat!
I was home for one night before heading off to Warrnambool to bring in the New Year with a group of friends. I love heading away with the girls for a few days, especially when I don't get to see them very often. We checked into our caravan park cabin and with very little, aka zero, plans I think we ended up doing some relaxing and fun things. We had a very relaxed New Years Eve with an Aussie BBQ at the caravan park and of course checking out the fireworks! It was New Years Day when we really stepped up our game. We headed out to winery for some wine tasting and lunch and golly it was a good start to 2015.
We visited Basalt Winery between Warrnambool and Port Fairy and not only was the wine really really good but the food was exceptional. The cellar door was nothing like I have seen before just out in the back shed, although it looked really rustic and cool I was thinking to myself I am not sure what we have gotten ourselves into here. We ordered some dishes to share and I was blown away. My favourite by far was the locally made Shaw River Buffalo Mozzarella balls served with basil and pancetta. So fresh and amazingly delicious.
I think we could have stayed here all day but thought better of it and headed into Port Fairy to have a look around. It was definitely a stroke of luck that our great day continued and we found some markets to check out before heading down to the beach. It sadly wasn't warm enough to get my gear off but I love the beach. There were some people out surfing so we hung around for a while and enjoyed enjoyed the sound of the waves.
The next day the blistering 40 degree sun came out to greet us and it was a welcome change. Before heading to the beach we decided to check out Cheese World which was a short drive from our caravan park. We were so pumped expecting a beautiful gourmet cafe we could have a sophisticated lunch at after checking out the museum. This was not meant to be! We did some cheese tasting and had a look around but the cafeteria serve yourself style lunch certainly wasn't up to our standard so we headed back into town and hit the beach. After spending the afternoon cooling down in the refreshing ocean we decided to check out the night markets. There was live music, market stalls and my favourite, the food vendors! There was lots to choose from but I settled on a wood fired lamb pizza. My first thought was gosh that is small for the amount of money I just paid but the ingredients spoke for themselves. It was so fresh and clearly good quality local products I would happily go back and spend the mula again.
We ended our trip by heading across the road to the carnival. I have never seen a grown woman get so excited about carnival rides...especially ones that go a 360 degrees that leaves you hanging upside for a little while. Even writing that makes my stomach turn. There was no way I was getting on that ride but I watched (and tried not to faint or vomit) as Connie and Sally hung upside down. That was me done for the night!!
As we headed back to Ballarat I couldn't believe I had one more day at home before my two and a half weeks off was over. I must have been blinking too fast. I decided before Christmas that I needed to get my new recipe Sunday back on so what better way to end the holidays than with a new dinner. When I was a kid I used to love the continental creamy chicken and mushroom pasta you used to make in the microwave. They no longer make this flavour and I have long been trying to find something that even came close. I did some research and I found a chicken fricassee recipe that I decided to try and see if I could recreate the taste. I did a few alterations including adding some curry powder to the recipe and it was darn close let me tell you. I am definitely going to make my version of creamy chicken and mushroom curry again.
I am definitely back in the swing of things including having a dinner session with my girls as having three weeks without seeing each other feels like an eternity! We decided to go to North Ballarat Sports Club so we could get a bingo session in. Yes that's right, we love bingo! It has been a long long time since I have played bingo here, in fact I don't think we have gone since I have been back in Australia so it was well overdue. We heard a rumour that they do Ballarat's best parma and I honestly thought that must be rubbish but they surprised me. They clearly used home made crumb and crumbed their own chicken breast and I would have to say they did an exceptional job..I feel bad I didn't try and get a better photo, I was really writing them off from the get go! Ignore the picture, go there to get a parma, you won't be disappointed!
I have now had two weeks back and work and as of tomorrow I am on two weeks holidays again! I am really looking forward to our trip to Kingscliff and we have booked an extra night at Dubbo on the way up to visit the Taronga Zoo. Wish me luck for the 20 hour car trip, I am NOT looking forward to that one bit at all. Until then, don't be too jealous and keep smiling as you make your mark on 2015!
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