Long time, no blog

We've been quite busy and so haven't had much time to post (no change there then), but this also means we've been doing lots of exciting things.

On Friday we went to our local Taiwanese restaurant, which is called Blue Eye Dragon. We had Pork and Prawn dumplings to start, followed by Calamari in Spicy Sanbei Sauce (I still don't know what Sanbei is) and Steamed Fish Fillets, which came in a kind of ginger and spring onion sauce.

Sean was a bit worried that the dumplings were undercooked but I thought all the food was brilliant. Now we have two great restaurants less than 5 minutes walk from our house.

Also on Friday, a large package had arrived. This was a long awaited birthday present of a Lego Millenium Falcon. Sean started straight away on Saturday morning.



In progress



Finished

He was finished by lunchtime, so we trotted off to the Powerhouse Museum and stopped for lunch at a local cafe on the way. Sean had scrambled eggs on toast and I had a halloumi, pumpkin and spinach salad. My salad was nice but nothing spectacular. Sean was similarly non-plussed by the eggs. There are lots of cafes in Pyrmont, next time we will try a different one.

I was planning on being disappointed before we got to the Powerhouse Museum: there had been a Kylie exhibition but it had finished the week before. What bad timing. However it was slightly less exciting overall than we had imagined.

The second most exciting thing was the Strasburg Clock. It was a photo of this in the guide book that had prompted me to go. It is a working replica of a clock in Strasburg and has lot of exciting features (like an orrery). I thought it was great but Sean wasn't very impressed.



The Strasburg Clock

The most exciting thing was a replica of the robot from Lost in Space. We didn't stay very long.



The robot from Lost in Space

We didn't go out and explore on Sunday. I think this was because we knackered ourselves out by going for a swim / run in the morning.

On Monday evening we went to a traditional Chinese banquet at the restaurant Billy Kwong. I didn't realise until we got there that it was in conjunction with Vogue and designed to promote the owner (Kylie Kwong)'s new book.

The food was all from the book, we had:

Grandfather pickled vegetables and Wontons
Salt and Pepper Squid
King Prawn and Mint salad
Crispy and runny eggs
Mussels in black bean sauce
Cod in soy sauce and something
Steamed chicken in some sauce
Duck

Sorry for the inexactness; we would have been able to bring a menu home (and I could have told you all about it) but unfortunately Sean was falling asleep by the time we got to tea so we had to leave.

We also missed dessert of a fruit platter and Fairtrade chocolate (Kylie is the Fairtrade ambassador for Australia and New Zealand) and a chance to buy a signed copy of the book (and make the recipes at home). I think we're going to try and go to the restaurant another night and see if we can get a book. If we do, I'll update you on what the dishes we ate actually were!

All the food was amazing and Kylie Kwong is clearly a very cool person - she's involved with everything: free-range, Fairtrade, sustainable fishing, organic produce. She said that it all forms part of her Buddhist beliefs that everyone has unique talents that they should use to help the community.

There was a girl at the table next to us and I thought she might be Augustus Gloop from Grab Your Fork (a food blog). I thought this partly because I have the suspicion that our paths are going to cross: I found her blog when I was looking for details about the Farmer's market in Pyrmont (she was there too) and also found that she'd been to Viva Goa just before we didn't. No post has appeared on her blog though so it can't have been her.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to going back to Billy Kwong on the excuse of getting a book and eating some more of Kylie's food!