Post-Christmas lunch

OK, so after just finishing a post about a great, excessive lunch only a few days after a period of time known for excessive consumption of food and drink, what would make sense to write about next? More food, of course.

I just spent the morning hitting up M-town for sales bargains (40% at Ben Sherman? Hello...) and was meeting J-star for lunch. Away from the major shops, the streets were rather quiet and we were feeling rather indecisive about our lunch venue. Feeling extravagant since my credit card had been slipping so easily out of my wallet all morning, I suggested we walk past one of the happiest places on earth... Becco. If you like classy, well-made Italian food in a stylish venue, there are few places around nicer than Becco.

A short review this time...
Main course - Tagliata; char-grilled rare porterhouse with capers, spanish onion and wild rocket (accompanied by a rocket, radicchio and cherry tomato side salad). A heavy duty red meat dish, with the porterhouse cooked to a nice rare to slightly medium rare consistency, with a nice charred, peppery crust.

Dessert - Vanilla pot with passsionfruit jelly. A small pot of vanilla bean-flavoured custard/pannacotta/mousse "stuff", covered with a layer of tangy, thick passionfruit jelly. Delicious.

I love food. I love holidays.

Christmas lunch

All this Christmas business over the last few days has diverted me from my intended task of posting about our Christmas lunch last week for work. Hmmm, doesn't sound too exciting, a work lunch, but there is a bit of history here. (Note: this isn't an "official" lunch, this is simply the exploits of me and a few culinarily enthusiastic work colleagues).

Two years ago, we had a shocking Christmas party for work, so a few of us compensated by having a extra long, boozy lunch at a South Melbourne pub the day after. Last year, we went to Tolarno. This year, we thought we'd celebrate in style... Christmas lunch at Circa. Oh yeah.

We started our sunny Wednesday afternoon with a round of cocktails, mine was a lovely cinnamon and pear number. We then got straight in to drooling over the menu. I went light for my entree, with a vegetarian dish - pressed tomato with grilled shallot, Italian buffalo mozzarella and white tomato cream. It was very fresh, very tasty and very colorful (almost festive); white for the cheese and cream, yellow and red for the tomatoes, green for the lettuce. In particular, the layers of pressed tomato and shallot was intense in flavour, while the mozzarella was quite delicate.

There was method to my entree selection... my main course was a grilled rib eye with bearnaise sauce - the other end of the food spectrum! Wow. The meat was cooked medium rare, so it was still just pink and juicy in the middle. And the taste, oh, the taste... melt-in-the-mouth juicy, fatty, delicious beef. All accompanied by a lovely shared bottle of red.

Since we were well and truly on the path of lunchtime extravagance, we shared a bottle of dessert wine with our dessert. I chose the lemon verbena pannacotta, a light and tangy way to finish the meal. This was accompanied by either peach or nectarine (can't remember) and yellow (!) raspberries. Delicious.

So what was the point of this post? Not sure, beyond reminiscing about more lovely food. And a great lead-in to my next post... my post-Christmas lunch! (Sense a theme...?)

Ho ho huh?

Anyone receive/give/hear about any worthy Kris Kringle presents this year?

We had a KK at work... I received two rubber stamps from ThinkGeek - "I haven't got time to read this CRAP" and "This is F**KING URGENT". Awesome.

There was an assortment of presents at our Christmas party... from the normal (cook book, mug and hot chocolate set) to the geeky (desk-based rocket launcher) to the humourous (megaphone for the woman with the hoarse voice) to the the extreme (an erotic inflatable love piggie).

Under the influence

I blame one thing only...

[EDIT: ... a bottle of Bacardi Oro... (Blogger has messed up my image of a bottle)]

I was partying, Christmas-style, last Friday night with a number of work colleagues, and with my good friend Bacardi, at a house BBQ. It was the "pre-work Christmas party Christmas party". I had a good time, a very good time. Me and the Smack-ardi (cut with pineapple juice, Bacardi is very addictive) hit it off. I remember starting the bottle; hell, I even remember finishing it. But some of the minor details in between got a little fuzzy... like the drunken voicemail left on the mobile of a friend who didn't make the bbq, mainly involving me yelling over the top of the person actually making the call... and like when the trash talking between work friends somehow ended in the threat of a "dance-off" to prove who had the best moves. Hmmm, that just smells of trouble, doesn't it.

I spent most of Saturday in what could best be described as a "delicate" state.

Saturday night rolls around, and it is time for the work Christmas party. By this stage, I'm feeling great. Except for the sledgehammer pounding the back of my skull. The party is ok... average bar in Southbank, poor nibbles but at least the alcohol is free. Oh, that's right, I'm a wreck, so I'm not drinking.

During the course of the evening, some smart-alec, sober(ish) person (not entirely sure who), manages to mention the trash-talking and dance-off challenge of the previous night to assorted senior work folk, particularly those in charge of the "happy end of year work congratulations" and the Kris Kringle. Oops. You know how the story goes... the music is turned up, the crowd is chanting, (we somehow get a third participant in the challenge) and somehow a bad movie cliche has become my life.

How does it end? Would I disappoint you? Of course not. Winner, by unanimous crowd verdict...

Me.

Rock the house.

Quick hits

Before I go...

...if you called your baby daughter "Dezyre", what sort of life would she lead?

...if you had to buy a $20 Kris Kringle for a childish and arrogant, but entertaining, male work colleague, what would you buy?

...is it wrong to enjoy watching "So you Think You Can Dance?"

How I operate

So it has been two weeks since my last post. Nothing much has changed since then, I've actually been pretty busy without having too much interesting to add... a few highlights though...

Saw DJ Krush a week and a half back, at the Prince of Wales. He's a Japanese "instrumental hip hop" DJ/producer, playing a lot of laidback, chilled beats, good for both late night kicking back or casual background tunes. Great gig, I've missed him several times over the past few years so I was glad to finally catch him live; unlike many DJs, he was actually busy behind the decks, scratching, mixing and messing with the tempo. His gig even branched into some hectic drum'n'bass.

Spent a day or so up in, of all places, Wollongong, for work. It was only for one night and one day, but it was a fun excursion... nice to be out of the office, see some different scenery. The trip reminded me of how I dislike Sydney though; I'm not sure why, but I always feel very claustrophobic and stressed when I am in Sydney, even if it is just while I'm in a car traveling somewhere else. I had a good meal overlooking the beach the night I was up in Wollongong, and then headed back to my "work-approved" accommodation, which typically, included a double bed that was too short for me, a TV with bad reception and bad technicolour manchester. I forced myself to get up early (these days, early is before 7am), and I went and had pancakes for breakfast down at a cafe on the beach foreshore. More than anything else on my trip away (more than the flights and packing a bag), this meal made me feel like I was on holiday...a lovely summer morning, waves gently crashing on the sand. Mae the rest of my day pretty easy, which is good, because most of it was spent traveling around steel mills and related heavy industry.

The reason I was up in Wollongong was that I'm currently engaged in a small "IT consulting" style project (yep, back to consulting, I'm one of those twits), for an actual customer, not just my regular employer. This is quite unique for me since, for the last few years, the vast majority of my work has been for internal business units of the company that I work for, rather than external clients. So it is nice to face a new (small) challenge. But it has made me realise that, despite all my best efforts to slack off and take it easy while at work, I'm actually quite good at my job (otherwise I wouldn't have been the one going to Wollongong), and I think our customer sees that too. What all that means is that perhaps the new year will be the right time for me to stretch my legs a little and test the waters beyond my current employment.. stagnation does no one any favours, and I can't really see my current level in the organisation, nor my salary, changing very much unless I do something about it. The good aspect about this is that I don't particularly feel that I HAVE to move jobs (in amongst the somewhat repetitious workload, I do get to interact with a number of outstandingly good-value people who have become close friends), which I think is in fact the best time to move jobs since there is no pressure on you; you can take time to write the CV, source some opportunities and take any interviews in a more relaxed manner, which I find ends up more successful any way.
So bring on the new year, and we'll see what new opportunities arise (perhaps I should check my long term horoscope in the newspaper ;-) )...