port adelaide forking saturday

Only two weeks after the last Fork on the Road, Fork took itself off to Port Adelaide for the Port's Foodie Weekend.

So that was our ultimate destination... but first, the usual rigmarole...

It was raining when I woke up and the sky was just dull leaden grey... which I love, but which isn't necessarily what you want for an outdoor event. But it was due to clear up mid morning, so I wasn't too worried.

This morning actually felt a little like a return to old times... I hadn't quite gotten my butt into gear by the time Ma got here, so there was some hurried putting on of pants before I could open the door.

We headed off to the supermarket and did our usual thing... I managed to pick up some white tea teabags, which I don't think will be as nice as the loose tea, but will do for now.

And after saying to Ma last week that I really wanted to compliment the checkout girl on her ability to pack a bag, but couldn't work out how to do it without it sounding weird and awkward... and then this week, an opportunity just naturally slipped into the conversation, partly because I ended up saying it to Ma instead of directly to the girl. But she really can pack a bag.

After we'd done the supermarket thing, we went into Target so that I could have a look at new dress pants and a new pair of jeans.

Annoyingly Target have changed their size markings over from centimetres to inches for reasons that bypass understanding. I knew vaguely what size I was... or at least what sizes to start with... but inch sizes make NO fucking sense to me... and weirdly, even though the cm measurements are basically twice as much, the inches seem bigger for some reason.

Either that or sitting around on my butt for eight months with readily available snacks, even with a daily walk, has increased my waist size.

I did find a pair of dress pants with no front pleats though, which is the most important thing... because seriously, front pleat pants should be taken out and ritually burned. Nobody looks good in them and they're just generally ugly.

I am a little worried that perhaps the pants I did get are a little too thin, fabric-wise... at least if I intent to walk home from work, which is the plan, at least for now.

The jeans I bought were perhaps a bad idea... technically they are already a size too large, and they're stretch denim, so I don't think I will ever be wearing them sans belt, and if two lots of walking per day does manage to decrease my waist measurements, then they'll become irrelevant pretty damn quickly. But we'll have to see.

The other thing I saw that I really, really wanted as a fur fabric monkey onesie... well technically I think it's an ape, because it doesn't have a tail... but it's brown and furry and has ears on the hood and everything. Sadly what it didn't have was one in my size...

Maybe that's a sign that I don't really need a furry ape onesie... although probably not.

Once we were finished with the general shopping of pants and furry things, we headed back to my place to unpack.

After general unpackery, I got Ma to help me take the diffuser paper (ie the giant sheet of tracing paper) out of the lounge room window... it's been sliding down for weeks and weeks and weeks thanks to the Bluetak I used to put it in place initially (which was only ever supposed to be a temporary measure).

I was going to put it back using masking tape, which is why I wanted Ma's help, but the room looked a hell of a lot brighter without it... granted I think most of that was the fact that I pulled up the very dark brown timber blinds which I swear block or just plain absorb half the light that comes in that window.

For now though, the window is diffuser-less... so we'll see how we go.

We took a bit of a detour on our way to the Port... namely, Haighs... we got the perfect park outside and managed to slip into the queue at the end that didn't have anybody in it, even though the place was full of fathers and children who clearly had no better ideas of what to get the mothers for Mother's Day. Sadly all the broken Easter Egg was gone, but we did pick up a couple of things from the seconds bin before heading off to the Port.

Once we got down there we also stopped briefly at the Kmart, just to see what they had in the way of USB sticks... but they only had fairly boring ones.

I used to work down at Port Adelaide, and I always joke that for the poor bastards who live down there, Kmart is the height of high end shopping, since it's the only major department store in the whole of Port Adelaide. Sure, West Lakes isn't that far away, but Kmart is all they have. But I do remember the Kmart looking kind of better than that when I worked down there about a billion years ago.

I mean it looks like most of the other Kmarts, but somehow it manages to look more cheap and nasty.

From there we headed down the street to Hart's Mill to get our Fork on. It wasn't a bad Fork as these things go... there were a couple of new stalls, and enough old favourites to keep us occupied.

And as usual, not long after we got there we wandered past the Four Seeds stall and waved to Mim. It's weird, even though I've frequented a variety of the vans and stalls on offer, Mim's little stall is always one we stop by no matter when or where we see her.

After an initial wander around to look at all the vans, and a detour to check out the playground they're in the process of building next to Hart's Mill, we decided to start with the GAN Taiwanese Chicken Nuggets... which I love to bits because they're always so tender and spicy.

One of the good things about going along to a Fork with Ma rather than on my own is that we can just get one of everything (well, not literally) and share it... leading to more goodies consumed.

Ma wanted to hit Tacocat next... and I'm always a fan, especially of the beef taco... we ended up getting one of each, I had the beef, Ma had the veg and then we split the chicken.

Having sampled the Amazon Rice from La Chiva last time, I was eager to revisit again the time... and it didn't disappoint.

While we were sitting eating the rice, we noticed a little stall that didn't have a name beyond "Thai Roti"... but it did make interesting use of the Futurama Fry "Not Sure If" meme.

The roti itself was very nice... the sweet version with banana and chocolate sauce is essentially a crepe (or as I tend to refer to them, pancrepes),  but it was incredibly tasty and had a little of that salty/sweet thing going on... although I think that that was probably from the salted butter he was using to cook them.

Usually we would have left Four Seeds until totally last, but I thought we were pretty much on our way out so we stopped off for some Salted Caramel and Apple and Walnut brownies (or, in the case of the Apple and Walnut, a blondie, since it's definitely not dark brown like the rest) and a quick chat with Mim.

Ma was curious about the waffle on a stick van, so we were headed that way, but once she got a look at one she changed her mind, so instead we went to Mr Macaron Man for some of his gourmet ice cream. Mars Bar flavoured (with delicious caramel sauce) for me and Cookies and Cream for Ma.

After that we detoured over to West Lakes, again mostly looking for USBs, but since they now have a Target, I also had a look to see whether they had appropriately sized onesies... they did not.

What I did find though was the Veronica Mars movie on DVD... so I couldn't leave that there. Other than that it was a big fat nothing really.

But then it's not like we were either trying to kill a lot of time or had much that we were specifically looking for.

It was a good Saturday though.

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