Time was if I told someone I lives in Alexandria, I’d have to explain where it was. Usually I’d just say Redfern. More recently, mention Alexandria and you conjur up images of chic warehouse hotspots like The Grounds or Kitchen by Mike. That’s just dandy, but those are hardly ‘stroll-in-for-a-quick-coffee’ joints.
So it is with a touch of trepidation I begin this post on The Rag Land, a new cafe on Raglan street in Waterloo which is relatively unknown. A couple of weeks ago they liked me on facebook and when I saw where they were located, my heart skipped a beat and I liked them back. And when I read that they serve Golden Cobra Coffee, of which I am a fan, I was extra psyched to give them a go.
So its full steam ahead with The Potluck Club as we’ve been compiling and proofing recipes, chasing up submissions and sorting through photos. 24 bloggers have submitted a total of about 35 original recipes and as many photos. A huge thank you to everyone who has submitted their work to help raise money for Foodbank, in conjuction with The $35 Challenge.
This October, as part of the the City of Sydney Libraries’ ‘Lunches with bite’ series, I will be presenting a couple of talks on The $35 Challenge – one on Tuesday October 9th at the King’s Cross Library and one on Friday 12th of October at Custom’s House Library. The talks are on the week before the challenge, to get you ready-slash-psyched. Both talks are free but places are limited, so if you’re interested, follow the links to register.
I’ll also be hosting a recipe swap at the Glebe Library in November. We’re encouraging everyone to bring their favourite home recipes, cookbooks and food blog links – we’re calling it an ‘old-fashioned-meets-social-media recipe swap’. I’m both excited and phenomenally terrified, so come on down. If nothing else, it’ll be good for a laugh.
Since its been all about the e-cookbook lately, I thought it a good idea to post an actual recipe. I’ve been eating roasted cauliflower all winter as a side dish, but it also makes a fab ‘share plate’, as the kids say. Serve it with crusty bread and mediterranean dips, or maybe as a side to roast chicken or a comforting casserole.
“To find our newest Campos Coffee espresso bar, head to the Sydney Opera House, go to the top of the stairs, and at the box office, and turn left.” So the Campos crew wrote a few days ago, and by gum I was there to check it out.
Working a three day week has so many benefits, I can’t count them on both my hands. One of my favourite things about it is I get to go to cafes at non-peak times, soak up the atmosphere and have a couple of leisurely coffees. No matter how much fun that is though, it’s always better to have someone to share it with, to revel in it like a kid wagging school. That’s why I’m glad I got to check out Cowbell with my mate Elise of beauty blog Stuff That I Bought. What’s more, she told me her idea for The Potluck Club, so it was a pretty mach a business meeting, yeah?
The Cowbell 808 menu is a 1-pager, listing 13 items. Its a fusion of ingredients and cuisines, served up cafe style, presenting a mish mash of meal times. It’s not the usual suspects ingredients-wise, although weirdly, its what you’d expect. House made is the word du jour; these guys make everything from their own yogurt, to their own bacon. Now that’s hardcore.
The Sydney Food Bloggers Picnic 2012, hosted by Suze and Helen.
The Potluck Club
The Potluck Club is a new ecookbook of simple, affordable recipes that anyone can cook. A fundraising initiative for The $35 Food Challenge, the ebook will be sold to raise money for Foodbank Australia. A collaboration between food bloggers and budding home chefs, we are now seeking submissions for our first issue.
- Submit 1-2 original recipes of 200-300 words and a brief 50 word bio by Tuesday September 4th 2012 to elise@stuffthatibought.com or lau@corridorkitchen.com
- Submit 1 high resolution photo (minimum height 1000px) per recipe and one avatar (300px square – optional).
Please note: Recipe photos will be cropped to fit our layout and cropped images will be roughly square in shape. With this in mind, please send photos with plenty of space around the food, suitable to be cropped – pre photo-shop photos are fine.
Deadline: Submissions close Tuesday September 4th.
What are we looking for?
We welcome a wide variety of recipe submissions to The Potluck Club, however the emphasis is on affordable food, so steer clear of hard to find or expensive ingredients- no truffle oil, expensive cuts of meat, isreali couscous, purslane, etc.
We would love anything that is culturally specific or that people might not know how to make (shakshouka, summmer rolls) or really on trend (peanut butter bacon maple hotcakes, easy pulled pork)…while still being relatively inexpensive.
The book will be in 3 sections:
- Share Plates and Sides
- Something Substantial
- Sweets
The idea of a small bar crawl has been brewing for a while, but it really came to be after a conversation with some food bloggers at a dinner I was at a few months ago. The conversation went sort of like this:
Me: “Ok, well what about a bar crawl, hashtag small bar crawl.”
Other food bloggers: “Yes/yeah/ok/great/I’m in!”
And so it was that finally, on Monday August 6th a group of 8 food bloggers and drinkers assembled to crawl the bars of York St. Below is a sampling of the bars we crawled, with a bonus bar thrown in for good measure – 5 bars in total.
Thanks to the bloggers of Sydney Feed Me, Love Swah, CookSuck, Alanabread and I Can’t Believe it’s not a Food blog, as well as the two non-blogger chums who shall not be named (unless they want to be) for making my #smallbarcrawl dreams a reality.
You’ve gotta love a coffee place that bills itself as ‘the second best coffee in Marrickville’ (and the 11th best in Australia). Regardless of the quality of their coffee, its fair to assume they have a sense of humour. At least, that was my logic the first time I tried to go to Whole Bean, on a Saturday, but the joke was on me as at that point, they weren’t open Saturdays (they are now), so I added them to my list for sometime soon.
‘Sometime soon’ came sooner than I thought, as one gorgeous day last week I headed there with my partner in coffee and in life to try the second best coffee in Marrickville. Whole Bean is housed in a Marrickville Warehouse just off Victoria Road, and comprised of a coffee roaster, syphon bar and more edison light bulbs than you can poke a stick at, not to mention recycled coffee sacks and velvet curtains. It’s a cavernous space, and one you can rent out for functions, should you be so inclined. The space is large and there’s plenty of seating, another benefit of many cafes in this part of town.
The Stats
If you only have $5 a day to spend on food, all it takes is $3 coffee and suddenly 60% of your daily food budget is spent. The fact is, this is reality for many Australians. In Australia, approximately 2.2 million people live below the poverty line – 11.1%. That’s 2.2 million Australians without access to basic necessities like healthy food, dental care, transport, affordable housing and education. This is in spite of the fact that Australians as a whole are living through good economic times.
How is this possible? What can we do?
The $35 Challenge asks you to experience poverty. During Anti-Poverty Week, from October 14-20, you have $5 a day to spend on food. For 1 week, experience what it feels like to eat below the poverty line. By experiencing poverty for just 7 days, we can come to a better understanding of the reality of living in poverty, and raise awareness of an issue so often swept under the rug. And by donating the remainder of the money we would usually spend on food to Foodbank, we can make a real difference.
For me, the holy grail of westie food, elusive and delicious, has always been La Paula. I had heard nothing but good things and it had been on my wishlist for aaaaaaaaaages. I’d even visited their nearby branch in Kingsford with their more pared-back menu and had some delicious alfajores and empanadas, but I knew it wasn’t the full experience. So I’ve been licking my lips in anticipation of Chilean sweets and fast food for some time now. A month ago, a group of us finally stopped in for a veritable feast of sweets, softly ensconced sandwiches and dulce de leche delights. No one left disappointed. Or hungry.
We don’t often have house guests as we live in a 1 bedder, but I always enjoy it when people come to stay. Last weekend I had the pleasure of hosting little bro 1 and his wife, up from Melbourne for a few days, and since little bro 2 lives in my hood now, it’s a weekend I’m dubbing ‘Sydney Quinns’. My mum made an appearance as well, although she’s no Quinn. It’s nice to be surrounded by family, I’m always surprised by how much I miss them. Guess you never grow out of that.
The only thing requested by little bro 1 (besides a trip to the dip, which I thought was open Mondays but was very much mistaken) was a decent breakky. We decided on a Monday morning breakfast and I was thinking Bang Bang, but Le Monde was on the way and had been on my neverending to-try list for almost a year. I’m freaking out a bit now not only at the size of the list but at the number of places that close down before I get to try them. The menu looked good and I’d heard tell of excellent coffee so in we went. Cross that one of the list and add ten more…
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Popular posts this month…
Sparkling Long Black posted on May 10, 2011 
The quest for Mex part 2 – Feisty Chicken Burritos posted on December 21, 2010 
Bake Sale vs. Cake Stall posted on August 30, 2013 
How not to order a takeaway coffee posted on March 15, 2011 
Review – Philips Saeco Intelia posted on January 10, 2012 
Stay caffeinated over Christmas posted on December 20, 2013 
Café review – Flint and Steel (Coffee Alchemy), Marrickville posted on March 1, 2011 
The Reformatory Caffeine Lab, Surry Hills posted on February 14, 2014
