Lady Lunchalot

One of my favourite places in Melbourne is the Queen Victoria Markets. This place has everything you could ever need to indulge in any food fantasy imaginable.

I can clearly remember the first time I walked through the doors of the deli section when I first moved to Melbourne seven years ago. I was absolutely stunned. My mouth fell open in awe - I’d never seen, smelled or heard anything like it!

The scent of cheese, salamis, bread and marinated vegetables hit me in the face the second I walked through the doors. I felt like I was making a pilgrimage! This was heaven!

The vegetables and meat are exceptional. Yesterday I bought some artichokes, beetroot, fennel, and a bunch of other stuff I’ll cook tonight. V exciting…

Now to get the Blogathon cooking underway, I am starting with a lamb tagine in the slow cooker.

My first blogathon entry! I’ll be blogging every 30 minutes over the next 24 hours to raise money for World Vision.

If you’re shopping for Asian ingredients Footscray is definitely the place to go. Barkly Street is jam-packed with Asian grocery stores that are overflowing with bamboo steamers, granite mortar and pestles, aisle after aisle of pickled, dried, and frozen goodies as well as the obligatory cardboard boxes full of knobbly identifed vegetables by the front doors.

I went to Footscray today and stopped in at the Footscray markets. This is one of the best places to buy meat, seafood and veg in Melbourne. It’s unbelievably cheap and the quality of the produce is exceptional. Especially the huge range of seafood!

Today I bought a stockpot to boil my preserving jars from one of the Vietnamese supermarkets. It was just a cheap aluminium one for $20, but should do the trick. I also picked up some lemongrass, ginger and wombok cabbage, as well as a huge bag of cardamom seeds for the piddly sum of $3.50. So cheap!

I picked up one of my favourite Footscray treats from the Victoria Bakery on Leeds St. They have a warmer full of BBQ pork buns by the front door. I think they’re called Bao? Pao? I love those things. I get one every time I go to the markets. So soft and sweet. Mmmm…