feast for the senses

Behold! I am Lobster Boy!

Since the weather report said that the cloud from this morning was due to vanish and leave us with "clear skies and a top of 22", I probably should have thought ahead and not only worn my hat but also put some sunblock on before I left the house...

But I didn't... and now I'm Lobster Boy.

What I really hate is that you never feel like you're burnt until you're out of the sun and not being burnt anymore... rudeness! That and the fact that I think the heat melted my brain a whole lots and I'm having trouble putting together a coherent thought just at the present moment.

And the reason for my Lobsterness? Tasting Australia 2007's LifeStyle FOOD Channel Feast for the Senses in down by the riverbank today.

This was actually a first for me... although between the Tasting Australia thing (which has been running for ten years... although only every other year I think) and The Parade Food, Wine and Music Festival, not to mention the Autumn Food and Wine Affair just around the corner from me in North Adelaide, I've never actually been to one of these food/wine festival thingies. Partially because I'm just not interested in wine (or booze in general for the most part... although it didn't seem that way during parts of today's adventures)... but also because its not really the type of thing you go to on your own really... which is probably what I would have thought about doing before this year where Ma and I are all about the excursions.

So off to the Feast for the Senses we went...

We got there a little before everything was due to start and ended up wandered around to the Arts and Craft Market in the Adelaide Festival Theatre... which isn't anywhere near as impressive as say the similarly sounding market that happens at the Melbourne Arts Centre... some dozen or so stalls a market does not make. But I digress... because I'm all about the digress in the mood I'm in right now.

Anyway... once the Feast was open for business we wandered about aimlessly for a while taking it all in (and one of the things I always love about those kind of festivals or whatever is how very docile and unaware of their surroundings most people are... they just wander blithely about, stopping wherever they like with no concept that there might be somebody right behind them when they do it... and when you mix that in with people who've been drinking... well yay... or, you know, not!)...

Part of me had kind of expected there to be more "little" serves I guess... I mean nothing Ma and I ended up eating was a huge serve... but I would have thought that at that kind of event the whole idea would have been to try as many little bits and pieces as possible. Which is pretty much what we ended up doing... we pretty much shared everything too, so we only ever had half of a serve of anything for the most part.

What we ended up eating, in as much of the correct order as I can remember, was:

• A serve of salt and pepper squid (actually there were three different kinds of seasoning... one with lemon and something with chili) from Squid Inc Seafood... which, as the guy with the microphone kept insisting, was indeed the "most tenderest" calamari I've ever eaten...
• A raspberry vodka jelly shot (that was just me though, Ma didn't have one)... which was SOOOOOO strong... both the vodka AND the jelly flavour actually. Nice as all hell, but strong...
• A piece of crusty bread with "truffle butter"... which, to be honest, just tasted like normal salty butter to me...
• A serve of Garlic Naan from my favourite Indian place, Beyond India... sadly though, for some reason it seemed a bit like old boot leather... I assume it's because they'd cooked it and then had to have it sitting in the warmer or something...
• A sample of Nestle Noir chocolate (more on that in a sec)...
• A "sausage sizzle" (bread, onion, sausage) with Beerenberg BBQ Sauce (although I thought the sign on the tent said something about it being "Coopers" BBQ Sauce... no idea)...
• A Fruit Tingle frozen daiquiri (the purple drink in the montage up the top)... I'm not exactly sure what was in it... but it was nice... strongish, but very nice...
• A lamb kebab from some random place because I had a craving for red meat... but I then remembered why I'm not a big fan of red meat in general when it turned out to be fatty and chewy and gristly... at least the mayonnaise that it came with was really nice... I could have eaten that all on it's own...
• And last but not least a serve of Greek Honey Puffs... basically big puffy balls of batter slathered in this wicked honey based sauce.... yummy!

Add to that a bottle of water each and probably a few other little tasting samples that I've forgotten about and you have a very full on contented yanibelly.

I will say, for the record... that I am SUCH a Cadbury (glass and a half) when it comes to drinking... between the jelly shot and the Fruit Tingle I was well on my way to being overly cheerful... not drunk... just cheerful.

The place was also full of B and C Grade Celebs... or People of Interest... or whatever... mostly Adelaide names like two thirds of the trio in the top right of the photo up the top... Mark Bickley (ex footballer) and Michael Keelan (who's actually a gardening "guru", but also does a cooking show)... along with Ian Parmenter between them in the photo... but also Maggie Beer (who used to bug me, but who I don't mind now... except for her obsession with "verjuice"), Jane Reilly (the weather wench from Network Ten who I dislike a lot... but luckily I only heard her and didn't see her), Gabriel Gate (who made fun of my purple shirt/orange tie combo while I was his assistant back in a former life when we had him as a guest at a work related thing) and, although you would probably only know her if you, well, knew here... the woman on the far right of the bottom panorama photo is Jane Lomax-Smith, Member for Adelaide...

See, I told you they were C-Grade...

Now, going back to the "Noir" experience... after Ma and I had gotten the naan (and a bottle of water) we found a couple of seats and sat down for a bit to eat said naan and just let the world float past us. And one thing we noticed was this black tent (which really stood out because pretty much every single other tent was white) with a bunch of people outside it... and a BOUNCER! Yep, the tent had a bouncer, complete with velvet (well, it could have been nylon for all I know) rope. But there were people queueing up to get into this tent... and neither Ma nor I could work out what the hell was going on in there... we had wandered past earlier and I'd only seen the pretty, pretty, pretty boys working in there, I hadn't really taken notice of anything else... luckily though, around the time we were finished with the naan there seemed to be a change over between the people waiting outside and the folks who had been inside, so we wandered over and managed to snag a position at the front of the line.

Turned out all they were doing was "chocolate tastings"... but they'd decided to make a whole theatrical production out of it... employ three very pretty young men to distribute said chocolate (catering to the female demographic one assumes) and only let a select number of people in at a time. While we were queueing up was one of the times when you realise how much you can get away with when you're a grey haired old lady (and had I been thinking, I might have gotten Ma to pull the same stunt)... the pretty pretty (as featured in the photo up the top) had obviously been doing his spiel and then Granny (who you can just see on the right of him, in the blue) whipped out her digital camera and I have no idea what she actually said to him, but she decided she needed to take his photo. The poor guy blushed like 300 shades of red, but smiled and stood there and took it like a man. Of course it was after she'd done that that it gave me the idea to whip out the camera and see if I could manage a sly shot... which I did.

Anyway, I'd said to Ma that we really needed to take the seats right at the front where Blonde and Pretty was... the Blonde and Less Pretty But Still Interesting on the right side would have been okay... but I couldn't see the guy on the left. Unfortunately I thought the Universe was playing with me, because when the bouncer let us in he told us, being the first in line, to go around to the far left... so we were left with Brunette But Still Pretty. But once we'd sat down and he introduced himself ("Hi, I'm Mark, I'll be your chocolatier") I knew the Universe was looking after me and had sent me to the only other homosexualist in the tent... hehe. Brunette, Pretty and Gay beats Blonde and Pretty every time... well... 99 times out of 100 anyway. And I know I gave myself away as we were leaving when I used the word "chocolat", which I just tend to do... and then he repeated it, even though I was actually talking to Ma...

But after all of that random drama in the Noir tent, they gave us one poxy piece of "chocolat" each... and only the plain stuff... they didn't even let us try the cherry or honey flavours... RUDE!

Once we were done with the whole Sense Feast, we headed over to the East End Rundle Street Markets... they were supposedly doing a "food" thing too... although I don't know how much more food orientated it was today than it normally is. I will say that since we first went about a year ago, it has gone downhill... not only because they shifted it from Saturdays to Sundays, but there are less than half the number of stalls now as there were then. We did manage to continue the food theme while we were there though... there's a place that sells these "designer" cupcakes... and they also sell little cups of frosting for 50 cents (I know, bad)... I should have just asked the guy what they were, because I ended up with what I thought was going to be lemon (hell, it was bright yellow) but seemed to just be "butter"... whereas Ma got the peanut buttery flavour... bitch! Hehe...

And then there was some random place selling all this unreal chocolate... and they were giving out these samples... we must have eaten the equivalent of a couple of squares (the big, nice kind... not the scummy Cadbury size)... I can't remember what the brand is (I spoke to Ma on the phone just before... the brand is Cocoa Farm... interestingly half the flavours we bought aren't actually on their website), but they too have disappeared into the Black Abyss that is "Away for Christmas", so I'll have to remember to take note than.

All in all though we had a pretty good day... except for the sunburn... and the fact that I think I melted my brain earlier... the food was great though.

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