Gaswork Farmers Market and St Ali

This weekend was a weekend well spent! 1st stop, Gaswork Farmers Market. I heard about it but never being there. Since we running low on fresh food, decided to pop in and take a look.

Find that Gaswork Farmers Market is very different from Nunawading Whitehorse Road Farmers Market. Gaswork space area is a lot bigger, more variety of different stuff. Looks like the stall holders are totally different too. Thought it will be almost the same and stall holders just go around to different location each week.

Anyway we did mange to get quite a bit of food : eggs, baby carrot, white radish, tomatoes, cucumber, Australian garlic <3, 2kg bag of royal blue potatoes (used for last night mash potato, yum!!), 1kg of cherries (used for cookbook challenge), 2 pack of steak (nice) and also 3 bags of dried fruits.



After marketing, both of us were hungry and Mr asked where should we go for breakfast. I suggested St Ali since we were already in that area. We never being there but I heard about it very often and was 1 of the place I always wanted to try. Lucky I had the address handy in my iphone.

We got there before 10am and there was already a queue. Mr. was surprised! He always thought only Asian will queue for food. Plus we had never actually queue for breakfast but we decided to wait hoping it won't be too long.
We were 4th in the line when we arrived but the couple in front of us decided to give up in less than 5 minutes and the 1st group was being served. Which means we were 2nd in the queue and got informed we should be able to get a table in 10-15mins. It wasn't long before my name got called :-)

We started off with coffee as usual. It was a good cup of coffee! Pretty too. Well St Ali is known for their coffee isn't it? I even got a pack of house blend, chompy for my stovetop. Coffee at home was running low as well. I haven't tried it yet, maybe tomorrow morning but it smell really fragrant.


Cappuccino

The breakfast menu was different from the usual cafe. We had a bit of difficulty deciding what to try. Mr. chose Poached eggs on sourdough, beetroot and red cabbage relish, smoked salmon, rocket and dukkah.



Mr. loves the combination while I love the beetroot and red cabbage relish. It's slight sour but very appetising. The poached eggs looked overcooked but once Mr. cut into it, I know it was actually cooked to our liking.



I decided to go for something sweet which is Sweet french toast with pepper spice rum, pineapple and coconut. I was craving for french toast and was glad I sticked to it even though I'm not keen on coconut. The french toast was crisp on the outside but very soft and fluffy on the inside! When I first saw the dish, I had doubt it will fill me up but I was definitely wrong! But it's so nice I could fitted in a 2nd serve :-p. But I find it too sweet for me but the pineapple does help to equalise the sweetness.

We definitely enjoy the breakfast but no idea when will be our next visit. Opps just realised I haven't write about Three Bag Full which we visited on Melbourne Cup Day and also Hardware Societe which we <3 <3 <3

St Andrew Market

08-03-2008

This trip was planned at least 2 weeks ago. The gals (Robyn and Fiona) has being talking about going to St Andrew Market for ages!! (more than a year) Finally they got it organised and asked me along.

It was my 1st female engineers outing with them. :) Planned was to meet at Fiona's place and she will drive. I was in-charge of bringing Robyn to the 1st destination, Eltham. It was my 1st time driving outside my comfort zone (office, gym, vic market). Lucky I had Rodyn with me to direct me, calm me and guide me. It's a bit tricky to drive to Eltham but it was a very good experience for me.

I took Fiona 30minutes to drive us all to St Andrew Market. Opps btw, Fiona's Mum Diana joined us too. Roads by the side are mostly covered by parked cars when we arrived. Didn't know what to expect from the market, we had a lot of green bags with us and started shopping.

St Andrew Market


It's a nice market to stroll, look at interesting stuff. But there wasn't a lot of stalls or we expected too much? Robyn was the main shopper for the morning. Diana next, Fiona went home without spending a single cents. As for me, I went home with 3 corns, 1 sweet potato and 1 lemon. "Huh! Why did you buy such stuff" was my Mum reaction when she asked about our gals trip. It's a maket and they sell everything from cosmetics to clothing to fruits and vegetables.

We had our morning tea at a Chai Tent. It's really cool and their Chai tea smell so nice! I can't say about the taste as I didn't have any. But Robyn loves it and even bought a packet of Chai tea leaves from them.

The Chai Tent

If you do not have a cup, pay $1 as deposit and you will get the dollar back when you return the cup. I LOVE the idea! It cut down land-fill.

I spend the rest of the afternoon playing with Jeremy, Fiona's eldest son. I was amazed pretty amazed that he understand me. I still don't think I speak like a Aussie at all and my english sucks! Guess most important is all of them understand me.