You are currently browsing the daily archive for August 25th, 2007.
The view from Mart 130
Proof that we were there
Corn fritters that didn’t taste as good as they looked
Our first stop at Mart 130 proved a little disappointing despite all the hullaballoo and hype over the corn fritters. It was, in my humble opinion, rather mediocre. The corn fritters were doughy, the relish far too sweet and the spice overpowering, bacon too soggy, and the only redeeming part of the dish was the sour cream. They were a faaaar cry from the ones I had at Wrapido’s in Crows Nest, Sydney, which the Jman and I stumbled upon one day while roaming around M’s place when we visited in April.
I remember the corn fritters to be crisp, the relish/salsa was heavenly, we had crispy bacon and the sour cream wasn’t the show-stealer. I still dream of them every now and then and I’m determined to make some really good ones on my own, otherwise we’d have to make a trip back to Sydney to relive those memories.
Meanwhile, we completed our first cycling trip without much fanfare but with some good stops along the way. We visited Baker D.Chirico’s on St. Kilda (and emerged empty-handed, much to my chagrin), and Batch for a good dose of caffeine. I like Batch – it’s unpretentious and in my opinion, is better than St. Ali. Because I had a cup of bad coffee there once and memories of bad coffee seem to stay with you for a while.
The cycling route we took was rather busy today. I suppose that the weekend and sunshine contributed to the busy roads along the beach. There were also too many traffic lights along the way and got a bit annoying when I had to constantly unclip my SPDs. The climbs were few and far between but they certainly were pretty long. I reckon we got a few good climbs in and that was a nice warmup. The route was only 25km.
We’ve mapped out our next route – a 50km stretch down Beach Road and back. Now that’s pretty exciting, especially if you throw in all the food stops and strolls through the shops. All good for now. I’m just glad we’re getting some wheely action in. Finally.
The Ice Queen has FINALLY been set up! Contrary to popular belief, I did not have the shop fix it up for me; contrary to even more popular belief, I set the entire thing up myself! YAY ME!
Actually, I took it to the shop just 5 minutes away from my house. I was prepared to shell out a whopping $70 to have them fix up the Ice Queen. After all, I wouldn’t trust Little Miss Non-Engineer with an form of bike repairs, right? But when thy opened up the box and took out the parts, I took one look at it and said, “Erm, I could SO do this myself.”
As it turns out, the guys at the shop in Singapore had only removed the front wheel, the pedals, the seat post and the handlebar, and THAT wasn’t going to take rocket science to fix. So I apologised profusely to the shop guys (who were very sweet about it anyway), bought myself a JoeBlow pump (I needed it anyway) and brought the bike back home.
I took another look at it this morning and it took me a mere 15 minutes to put everything together. We’re going cycling down St. Kilda today and we’ll stop over at Mart 130, D. Chirico (according to the Jman this is Melbourne’s most legendary baker) and Batch. That’s 3 food stops in a 20km loop. Haha.
