River View Cafe - Mediterranean

I wrote about my Fragola grapevine in my garden. Well, this is where the cutting came from. This summer we dropped in to this favourite cafe of ours in Warburton for lunch with some friends. The cafe have a patio with grapevine over it. From the patio, you can get a view of the Yarra river. We had a light (light?) lunch of smoked salmon risotto, gourmet pizza and Turkish breads with dips. 

Warburton is a little countryside town in the Yarra Ranges (mountains) about 77km from CBD Melbourne. If you have heard in the news about the dreadful bushfires that is burning here in Australia, this town is still under threat from the bushfire as we speak. This town is about 45 km south of Marysville, the town that was totally destroyed by the bushfire on last Saturday. Warburton almost suffered from the same fate during the 1939 ‘Black Friday’ bushfires. The town was quite different then with a bigger population than it is today. About six hundred men defended the town and the womenfolk and children took refuge in the river. Fortunately they were able to hold off the fire until the wind changed its direction.

Opor Ayam - Indonesian

The Opor Ayam or Coconut Chicken is a classic Indonesian cuisine. The chicken is braised in coconut milk. The traditional drumstick or chicken wing is substituted with a leaner chicken breast.

The chicken is first cooked in the stock with chopped onion, garlic, coriander, ginger , grated lemon skin, cumin and turmeric. After cooking for 5 mins, coconut milk, pounded macadamia nuts and cayenne pepper are then stirred in. Tamarind juice are added to the pan and simmer until the sauce thickened.

You wouldn't have guessed where I picked this recipe. It is from the South Beach diet cookbook. After a spate of festivities, it is about time to go on a diet and shed a few kilos. This is when I will kickoff my most effective diet program. We started yesterday. The beautiful thing about this diet program is that it encourages you to enjoy your food while dieting. Not many diet program are like this. I am so impressed with this program that I often raved about it. So here I go again.

This diet was developed by Dr Arthur Agatston, a cardiologist in Florida (South Beach), where he used to run a clinic. This diet is more an education on eating good and healthy food, which you can continue to follow even after you have achieved the targeted weight loss.

You probably think what on earth is a blog about good food suddenly go in reverse with a dieting writeup, well, eating well and healthy does not mean that you cannot enjoy your food. You can pick up ths cookbook at major bookshop in town.