Last of the family meals

I've been lucky enough to be the recipient of more home cooking: home made pizza, and this chicken and vegetable hot pot from my daughter in law.

I also cooked them a dish my daughter taught me, but which, of course, I have changed:

Chicken clay pot rice:

Ingredients:

2 chicken breasts in bite sized chunks
2 lup cheong ( Chinese sausage), in thick slices
1/2 handful dried shiitake mushrooms, sliced after soaking ( or buy slice and soak)
1/2 handful dried wood ear fungus (sliced after soaking)
2 tablespoon dark soya sauce
1  tablespoon matchsticked ginger
1/2 tablespoon sugar
 1 teaspoon sesame oil
1/2 teaspoon cornflour
1/2 cup scallions, diced
 3 cup Jasmine rice
 7 cups stock and water that mushrooms and fungus have soaked in
2 tablespoon oil
 salt
pepper

Method:

Marinate chicken, sausage, mushrooms and fungus in ginger, soya sauce, sesame oil, scallions, sugar, salt, pepper and cornflour.
Steam rice in rice cooker with 6 cups stock and mushroom water.
Heat oil in frying pan and cook chicken mixture until almost cooked ( 3-4 minutes).  Add 1 cup stock and bring to boil.
Spoon chicken mixture on top of rice, cover and cook 10 minutes.
 Serve. (I served it with steamed broccolini and diced salted duck egg)

I was taken again to Metro Bakery and Cafe in Mt. Gambier where, despite us confusing matters with a change of order, they were polite, hospitable and generous.  When you add  to that the fact that our meals of Thai prawn curry

and Bruschetta with goats cheese, olive tapenade and spinach

were very tasty, you can see why we keep coming back.  When will other food establishments learn that being pleasant to customers and providing good food is good for business?

We also visited Molten chocolate cafe, where I bought some of their beautiful chocolates for my chocoholic husband.  So pretty!

 I had the mint chocolate drink which tasted a bit chemically and was very thin and watery for drinking chocolate, but my daughter- in- law's Italian one, which included nuts, was much better.

On my last night in Mt Gambier, we visited the Barn Steakhouse in Mt.Gambier, where we ordered steak, of course.  My filet mignon was cooked just as I ordered it (medium rare) and very tender, but my son's (medium) was a bit overcooked.  On the other hand, he found his mushroom sauce very tasty, while I found mine a bit salty.  Maybe it was the bacon round my steak that made it salty?  We all, however, enjoyed the desserts:
Gooey chocolate pudding and ice-cream:

and Eton Mess:

Back in Melbourne, I tried my hand at chicken stew for some of the family:

Then, I was introduced to a barbequed chicken roll, with salad, chilli sauce and sauce from Jenny's Hot Bread in Camberwell. 

The queues confirmed what my taste buds found out.  Jenny's food is great!

And lastly, we tried out the yum cha at Secret Kitchen in Doncaster.  The food was great:

(yes, these are chicken feet)

(and yes, we ordered much more than this).

However, the service was very peculiar.  We got a mass of savoury offerings, then nothing, then a dribble of desserts, then nothing, then a dribble of savoury things, then nothing........  I think they would have made more money if they had kept an even flow of offerings.  We got fed up with waiting and left - full, but not full enough!

And with that, it was goodbye to old friends and family, and back home, with the firm intention of eating less and exercising more after the gluttony of the last two weeks.