The Order of Breakfast, and Tognini's Milton

I like alphabetical order.  It makes sense.  When making breakfast, I have an order for the food components which makes perfect sense.  There are so many components of a porridge breakfast though, so this allows me to put them in the bowl in alphabetical order - except it ends with porridge then spices (the spices, of course, are sprinkled in alphabetical order).  If my fruit of choice was apple, for example, it would be as follows: almonds, apple, goji berries, protein powder, ricotta, porridge, spices.  This morning, however, I was doing the dark chocolate and marmalade porridge (an excellent incentive to crawl out of bed on a cold morning).  This means no almonds or fruit, so I felt quite daring reversing the order of food into the bowl: ricotta, protein powder, goji berries, porridge, spices.  And instead of keeping everything reverse alphabetical, I put the chocolate and then the marmalade into the porridge. 

The end result, of course, was the same - yummy breakfast, mixed nicely.  My brain did not explode knowing the ingredients had been added semi-randomly.

After church, a few of us had coffee at Tognini's, Milton.  I used to live across the road from here, but I don't believe it was there when I was there.  This is most likely a good thing, as I would probably be the size of a house if I still lived so close.  The savoury selection looked pretty tempting, but the sweets - drool.....  It was a tough choice, but I went with the most amazing brownie ever.  That wasn't actually what they called it, but it was similar, and accurate.

Today's photo:

Not a great photo, but it looked pretty special in reality.  Walking up Ann St this morning, I was stopped by the sight of what looked like a sun shower.  The building next to Anzac Square had a mass of water droplets falling at its side.  I soon worked out it was something like window cleaning going on.  You can just get a glimpse of the water effect in the middle of the photo, all that haziness in the sunlight.  Hopefully tomorrow will be more artistic!

Avant Garde Patisserie and Invitations

Yes, it's holidays.  Some friends I only see when each of us is on school holidays.  This morning, I sent a text to Di (who has a blog too - find it here), asking if she'd have time for coffee today.  I must admit here, I'm a fairly slack friend.  I very rarely take the initiative in catching up with friends, and I'm very fortunate in having friends who will suggest things to do.  So the fact that I made the first move today is (in my head, anyway) a step forward.  I have a mental list of other friends who'll need a connection soon.

The weather today was a bonus too, as it wasn't raining the entire time.  I even had a rain-free run this morning!  However, considering the possibility of rain and parking, we opted for Baroona Rd, Milton.  Well, it was an interesting parking experience, but we had no dash through the rain so I'll consider that a win.  Neither of us had been to Avant Garde Patisserie before.  Very tempting treats - neither of us was very disciplined.... I had the Choc Date Pistachio slice.  I was expecting a mega chocolate indulgence, but it was quite light and chewy.  Dusted with cocoa and icing sugar resulted in me making quite a mess!  Nothing too embarrassing though.

There was nowhere really warm to sit which was disappointing, so I spent most of the time chilly.  And the seats were not superbly comfortable either.  Coffee was in the middle of the bell curve - not bad, but not something to write home about (or recommend to coffee aficionados - aficionadi?). 

Today's photo:

The sun came out for just long enough for me to grab my camera and take 4 photos before my battery died and the clouds hid the sun again.  It was so exciting seeing the water droplets sparkling in the sunlight!

Soul Bistro

This evening I had dinner at Soul Bistro, Milton.  There are four of us who used to get together and have coffee after church, or watch a movie and discuss it afterwards, or just have a meal together.  One of us is about to move away, so tonight we had a farewell dinner.  Miraculously, we were all available for the same evening at a reasonable time.

Soul Bistro was a great choice.  Good location, and nice enough without being pretentious.  Hard to find places like that around there!  Our wait staff were attentive and informative without being clingy, splitting the bill was no problem, and good food.

Normally, I'm one of those eaters who will have a main, preferably entree size, and maybe think about dessert, depending on what my stomach and other diners are saying.  Tonight, all of us looked at the menu, flipped on our waiter's prompting to the 3-course special, and decided to have the special.  I think this is a first for me.  There were 2 choices for entree and dessert, and 3 for main.

I chose the soup (soup of the day was spinach and broccoli, which had a nice parsley kick to it), fish - snapper I think with sweet potato mash, and the orange panna cotta with chocolate sauce for dessert.  I can quite proudly say that this was a good choice.

No dish was so big I felt I couldn't finish it, and although it was probably a bit more than the eating plan I follow would recommend, a one-off excess (and not by too much, anyway) is nothing to worry about.  Plus I had a very sweaty workout beforehand.

Although there was a tinge of sadness to this farewell - nothing will be the same, even though she's moving not really all that far away, and this friend has been a wonderful, life-changing force - it was such a good night.   So much laughter, some so much I could hardly breathe, I thought my mascara must surely be running down my face, and I was clutching my stomach - as well as real talking about the issues all of us face.