Lady Lost... in Melbourne

Garden me good

For such a vibrant cultural city, one that thrives on lane ways, hidden pockets and hipster secrets, the Docklands precinct at the west end of the city is a strange anomaly of Melbourne. New Quay was designed as a food and wine mecca, and yet, now in its eighth year, the precinct is still as lifeless as the plant life in the Yarra River. The apartment towers valiantly resist the buffeting of the wind tunnels for which the region has become known, and the tumbleweeds bouncing down the walkways around the water are mostly undisturbed by human traffic. That is, of course, with the exception of Friday night work crowds desperate for a cold beverage to drown another week. 

But believe it or not, the intention of this post is not to condemn. Because finally, there is a pocket of true joy in this mass of wind, concrete and strange dwellings. Urban Reforestation has created an urban garden, and a charming one at that, at North Wharf in Victoria Harbour. Consider all I said about New Quay relevant to the Victoria Harbour precinct also. 

But back to the garden. This installation is based on something the Docklands as a whole lacks: community. Through a charmingly-developed site, and classes and workshops, UR – the brain-child of 25-year-old environmentalist Emily Ballantyne-Brodie – is campaigning for vibrancy in this pot of soullessness. Good on them! Classes include balcony gardening and worm farming, as well as bread-making and pickling. And in the meantime, you can visit the garden in your lunch break and spend time in the chill out area, the sand pit, see the worm farm or read the community noticeboard. Or visit their shopfront next to Safeway on Merchant St and admire the cute-as-can-be citrus tress, chilli plants and gardening tools, and – if you're anything like me – lament the lack of gardening prowess you possess, but buy a plant anyway (and post reminders around the house: feed and water. prune. shade. feed and water).

Hey, this may just be worth leaving the Paris-end of town for.

LL x

(image above is an artist impression of the community garden).

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake

 The remainder of that nursery rhyme talks about a baker man, baking a cake as fast as he can. Well, I know how that baker man feels. In our kitchen, we were two baker girls, going as fast as we could to get our menu prepared for ThreeThousand's Laneway Market at the Laneway Festival on January 30. This post has taken a little while to come. Mostly because I was still reeling from the flying flour, flicking butter and lines of people waiting to pay good money for our baked goods. 

What started as an eye-opening trip to Costco, ended with a beautiful looking stall, a table full of baked items made from our own hands, and an eventual sell-out, two hours before the market closed for the day. Success, down to which I put our professional signage (thanks to a designer friend, and matching decor. We looked like we had done it all before, even though inside, we were running on instinct and adrenaline rather than experience. The biggest seller was our mint-choc brownies (or Brownzillas, as we called them on the day, an ode to Bridezilla who were playing the festival). The secret to these delicious treats is to use almond meal instead of flour. And a mixture of dark chocolate and mint chip milk chocolate. What results is an incredibly moist and minty chocolate indulgence. Gluten-free too! Just find any brownie recipe and make those adjustments to reap the reward.

I look back on the day with fondness. It was fun. Sitting there, one hand gloved for food hygiene's sake, other hand poised to take people's money, we didn't expect our stall to be so popular. But it was, and we fed on the compliments that ensued as patrons bit into their purchases before they'd even left our table. The free mini donuts was an extra incentive (we called them Dirty Free donuts... after the Dirty Three... see what we've done there?!). But 12 and 36 hours earlier, things were not so easy-going. Baking partner Penny and I didn't trust our respective kitchens (and ovens), so we trotted off to our mothers' homes instead. Penny's first. Her mum floated around the kitchen, interested in what we were doing, wanting to chat about work and boys as we tried to measure cups of flour, tablespoons of lemond and grams of sugar. So we sat her down with a plate of peanuts to shell as we got on with lemon slices and nutty biscuits. Quiches, brownies, lemon slice and nutties complete after a few hours of solid toil, we headed home. I took corners like an 80-year-old with severe anxiety so as not to disturb the baked beauties on the drive home. Night two at my mum's. Her housemate (is it a little wrong to call 56-year-old friends sharing a house, housemates?) and housemate's boyfriend (again, is it wrong to refer to girlfriends and boyfriends when they've been through menopause?) were hovering with intensity, asking question after question, offering advice (that we didn't want nor take) and angling for taste-tests. So, we gave them a burnt pastry and sent them off to drink a bottle of wine and fall asleep in a drunken pastry stupor. My Mum passed on her recipe for delicious, tried-and-true club sandwiches (we decided would be called Eddy Club Sandwich Ring for the day), we finished our pastries and blueberry muffins (that were delicious, thanks to the addition of sour cream in the recipe), and headed home – exhausted, and over the sight of flour and sugar. But done, and ready for the day ahead. 

As I said, we sold out, the crowd open and appreciative of homemade goods. We would not have been so successful had we been sitting at the Big Day Out or Good Vibrations. I think we may have ended up in the middle of a 'keepings off' game with blueberry muffins, or a utensil fight with our tongs and spatulas. But at the Laneway Fest we found a polite and discerning crowd, preferring to pay $5 for home-made spanakopita than a greasy burger, or bucket of chips and sauce. And for that we are grateful. It made the shopping trip to Costco seem worth it.

 Melbourne has a plethora of markets at which ordinary people (like us) can try their hand at selling home-made goods. Whether it be food, clothing, badges, art or the like. Here are a few less intimidating ones to get started (don't get drowned out in the Rose St Artist Market or St Kilda Esplanade Market before you've established your product and brand!):

Blackbird summer market, Fitzroy Indoor at Newtown Worker's Club. An intimate setting that won't be affected by the weather.

Fitzroy market A new community market looking for stallholders. 

Craft Hatch Become a member of Craft Victoria, and enjoy their support, as well as their incubator market in the heart of the city.

Sisters' market in the Brunswick Town Hall. 

Thread Den's North Melbourne Market  Relatively new, but has been so popular it is now a permanent, regular event.

If you have any more suggestions, please comment.

Happy baking, crafting, buying or selling!

LL x

Heigh Ho Heigh Ho, off to Costco we go.

Alarm bells should have started ringing as soon as I got out of my small hatchback, surrounded by station wagons, four-wheel drives and shuddering Falcons from the ’90s, to grab a trolley wider than anything I had ever had to steer before. With my hummer-like shopping wagon, I waited patiently at the double-door elevator until the doors parted, and it was like they had let the cows out of the transport vehicle. That is not a direct comparison between the people who shop at Costco and cows. It is merely a visual aid. Maybe. I closed my eyes while the packed trolleys stampeded past and then let me and my wide eyes roll into the elevator and be taken to the entrance of a new world. 

Costco is like being transported directly into a middle-of-America Walmart that has been injecting steroids into its bulk-buy arms to within an inch of its life. As I wheeled the hummer around the aisles – often taking the corners too close, mind you, and collecting a stack of bulk-buy biscuits, or a lost small child in the process – I could hardly remember for what I was there. We – no, I wasn't alone. If I was, I may have never found the clarity of mind to get out alive. We, my best friend and I, are about to hold a baked goods stall at the upcoming Laneway Festival in Melbourne, and we were in Costco to save money on essential ingredients such as flour, sugar, puff pastry, blueberries, eggs, butter and milk. Anything more specific would have to wait for the supermarket (*sigh*, the modest, easily navigable supermarket). 

Past the brown-painted tin gazebo on sale, left at the DVDs, right at the yellow and green canoes. We found the produce section and got down to business (with eyes still wide as if held with toothpicks). Lemons, tick. Spinach, tick – 1kg bucket of such, double tick. Tomatoes, tick. 

To the flour and sugar section... through the flat-screen TVs, past the appliances and beyond the diamond counter and to the... Wait. Diamond counter? In Costco? "Will you marry me honey? Yes? Great. Now, if this ring doesn't fit, we need to take it back to Costco and have it adjusted. Yes, love of my life, I bought your ring at Costco. I just happened to be there looking for that 10kg sack of rice we have in our cupboard, and I couldn't help but think of you and our future. You (and our sack of rice) make me so happy." Ridiculous, no? Oh no... that pales into insignificance as you peer into the counter and see, among many sparkling treats with hefty price-tags, one oversized piece of bling on a ring for.... wait for it... $169,999! That's right. You'd receive only one dollar change out of one-hundred-and-seventy-thousand dollars. Not even the hideously oversized square diamond would ease the pain of knowing my future husband bought my ring at Costco.

So my shopping/baking partner and I got what we could (which was actually not much. There were so many items for sale, yet nothing we actually needed or wanted. Funny that.) and headed out. Alive and emotionally intact. Just.

I recommend a visit to Costco (you can peruse without buying a membership) if you enjoy people watching (you may get lucky enough to see a family arguing over which box-of-100 to buy: Bounty or Cherry Ripe?) or buying in bulk – for whatever reason one needs to purchase 10 kilos of something rather than one. Don't go there for the architecture, flattering lighting, boutique groceries or modest package weights. Nothing of the sort exists in Costco. And if it all gets too much for your widened eyes and you start seeing stars, never fear. You can head to the Optometrist counter and have them checked. You think I'm joking? 

Once our thundering hearts have calmed down from this experience, we shall begin baking for Saturday's Laneway Festival (come and say hi if you are there!). I shall report on those adventures next week.

Love. 

LL x