...and MORE food!

In case you were wondering, we have discovered "Vintage Cheddar" cheese, which is significantly tastier than the so-called "Tasty" cheese.  I did notice that our local grocery store has Havarti and Swiss, along with a few other "higher end" cheeses, though at a higher cost as well, of course.

This past weekend we took a trip to the Queen Victoria Market.

There are markets allllllllll over Melbourne, but this is the largest and it has everything you could ever want available to buy.  We went mostly just to check it out, but we left with lots of goodies!  We were there relatively close to closing time, so the workers in the fruit and veggie areas started screaming and yelling about their $1 bags, trying to get rid of some of the day's stock.  It was quite amusing, actually.  We ended up with a bag of 8 gold potatoes, a bag of 6 onions, a bag of 12 avocados, and a bag of 8 apples...all for $4!!!  It was a total steal. 

In addition, we purchased a kilo of dried black beans so that we can prepare proper "Mexican" dinners from now on.  The fruit/veggie places are all open and outdoors, but inside there are places to buy various meats and cheeses.  The meat went on sale late in the day as well, and many butchers were selling trays of meat that would feed 4-6 people for $10/tray. 

We had an impromptu dinner party Sunday evening that involved Erik grilling prawns on the barbie (yes, they actually do call the grill "the barbie"), which I'm quite disappointed that I did not document in photos.  In my opinion the prawns were not as good as some of the shrimp I had earlier this summer in the States, but I really couldn't get over the beady eyes of the prawns as I was peeling them, so I could be biased.

Tonight we walked to a local place called Sam's Cafe.  On Tuesday and Wednesday nights they have "Parma Night", where you can get chicken parmigiana for $6 at 6pm, $7 at 7pm, and so on.  The only catch is that you have to buy a drink.  We showed up at 6pm and got a table rather easily.  The chicken parma was pretty darn good, and it came with fries and a side salad for that price as well.  Seeing as tipping is not common in the service industry here, Erik and I had a yummy, filling dinner for two for less than $20.  Not a bad way to spend a Wednesday night!