Good Food Show 2005

Good Food Show 2005
Good grief. What a day. The Snook and I were excited to see that the Food & Wine Show had moved to Darling Harbour this year, as that’s pretty much within walking distance of our place. (It used to be in Homebush and the long train trip was a source of hesitation.) We made it down there about 3:00 today and figured three hours were more than enough to get through. We were wrong. We found ourselves amongst huge crowds, shuffling down long aisles full of bogans treating the show as an all-you-can-drink buffet. Once you got past that, though, it was pretty good! We ran into Steph and Eva fairly early and waved a greeting as we were swept past. Our first major purchase was a tagine from Spice Bazaar (that’s the red conical ceramic dish). The booth owners were really nice and we got a packet of Moroccan spice to go with it. The Snook’s already planning a recipe for tomorrow! We also bought some nice olive oil and verjus (which we tried for the first time). I also ate my very first pickled onion, which wasn’t that bad! What else…? Oh, we picked up some gyoza molds for two bucks, and I grabbed some free Atkins stuff (which finally seems to be breaking into the market here). I pretty much blew my Points for the day, grazing on everything from cheese, laksa, Jelly Bellies, more cheese, dips, olive oils, mustards, and jerkies. Oh, and more cheese. We also picked up some tasting glasses and began sampling the wines on offer. YUM. The only misstep was a truly wretched Rioja, but other than that everything was really good. We came across the booth for the Wine Society and ended up chatting with the nice attendant for a good fifteen minutes. By the time we staggered off, we’d signed up and been given our complimentary Riedel glasses. Time was running short so we hurried off to the beer area… where the Snook promptly discovered the Australian Beer Club. We joined that one too. We never even made it down the last aisle before they kicked us out! What a day…