If ever I migrate, it's to a place where there are gorgeous parks. I just adore parks! Beyond the grass and the breeze, it's the very FEELING of languorous laziness that so seduces me...
Anyway, on one particular day of my 12-day Oz trip, Chloe and I were exploring the Surry Hills neighborhood and deciding where to eat. We were thinking of going to one of the very tempting restaurants but ended up doing something entirely different-- a PICNIC!
It happened that we were browsing through and organic grocery and Chloe chanced upon a huge slab of SMOKED SALMON on sale!
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So, of course, being creative and imaginative and wanting to have all the adventures we could, we decided to EAT IT ALL IN ONE GO. We then proceeded to look for other goodies to eat it with. I promise you, it was such a glorious afternoon and the idea of having a picnic IN A PARK, LIKE THEY DO IN THE MOVIES,(I think I just admitted that I'm a jejemon with that previous phrase) was just the perfect, wonderful, memorable thing to do!
We had SO MUCH FUN in the grocery store. I remember debating about which kind of bread (I wanted the garlic and Chloe wanted some boring old baguette) and what sort of cheese (I wanted some exotic cheese and Chloe insisted that cottage was the way to go with salmon) and so on! Here's what we ended up getting:
1. Black Pig prosciutto. On the label (so you don't strain your neck craning to see what's written, like I just did) it says: Hand-made charcuterie from free range heritage breeds.
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It was lovely and fatty and rich and salty. I loved it so much! It went PERFECTLY with my sweet, refreshing juice.
2. Preshafruit juice and Parker's juice.
Chloe wrote a blog entry about Preshafruit juice once (please see our archives) and when I got to Sydney, I drank it all the time! She was not exaggerating when she said that it's clean-tasting and absolutely FRESH! It really is. Only the Lord knows just how much I love Preshafruit juice.
So I had Preshafruit in Pink Lady (grapefruit and apple, absolutely DIVINE) and Chloe had Parker's organic blood orange juice.
3. Lumpfish caviar
Very salty as well, but great texture. I found out later on what the fish it came from looks like, but it DID taste good! Excellent with the...
4. Cottage cheese
It was perfect and slightly bland in the BEST POSSIBLE cottage cheese way. It was fluffy and lumpy and it went so well with the salty things we bought! I could not have imagined a cheese that would have gone better with the salmon and the prosciutto. I want a marriage like that! Perfectly complementing each other. :) And to think I wanted bleu cheese or roquefort. Good thing Chloe insisted on THIS. I suppose this really is a good analogy for love-- sometimes we keep ASKING for, and INSISTING on, and WISHING for one person when it may (I hope) turn out (in the end) that there was someone else better for you all along...
5. EPIC BREAD
Bread is my second favorite carb (after chocolate and before congee). This bread was wonderful shmonderful! It was chewy and extremely, painfully, insanely FLAVORFUL. It was baked with mashed garlic within its folds, and topped with WHOLE garlic cloves. It smelled extremely GREAT and tasted SO SO SO GOOD. I will never forget this bread. If I get Alzheimer's when I am old, the taste and texture and EXPERIENCE of this bread will be one of the last memories to go...
6. Lastly (and this was a really cool bonus), at the checkout of the store, there were two guys giving out BEN AND JERRY'S SAMPLES!! And the coolest part of all was that there SAMPLES were like MAN-PLES (you know, like man- samples) and not sad little spoonfuls of ice cream! It was a whole cup of ice cream (like what you'd pay 25 HKD for in Hong Kong). AND it was in the best flavor ever created and tasted by man: CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE DOUGH.
7. Last-lastly, the scenery. The environment! It was around 5-6 in the afternoon and it was just a beautiful day. There was a woman with an afro walking her dog and there was a guy practising with his soccer ball! :)
So. I hope Chloe and Robyn and I have picnics like these with our future boyfriends, and then with our future husbands, and then with our future families, and then with our future grandchildren. :) That would make for a lovely life!
Hope you are all happy and cheerful and submerging yourselves in POSITIVE thoughts just like I am!
Cheers,
D
P.S. All photos were taken by Chloe (can you tell? :P)
P.P.S. Thank you to my wonderful mother and father for allowing me this trip! :) You are the absolute best and I love you!
P.P.P.S. I forgot to include this gorgeous "portrait" of the salmon (that's my leg there in background, if you care to know) :
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