Heads up

Monarch cake shop (Acland Street, St Kilda) now sells its famous chocolate kugelhopf by the slice. The plum cake too.

That is all.

Marysville & the Yarra Valley

We've just spent the weekend poking our noses around Marysville, Buxton, Healesville and all places Yarra Valley. I could be wrong but I think it's my first trip beyond the city limits in about 6 months and I'm so happy to be well enough at the moment to do a small jaunt like this one.

We stayed just out of Marysville at a cottage within burbling distance of the river, along the road to Steavensons Falls.

I'd almost forgotten how lusciously earthy the world can smell; the real world of fern tendrils, humus, understorey and wet bark.

Other things very much enjoyed were:

• The wonderfully confusing sensation on my outstretched and upturned bare arm of a rosella's needle-sharp claws while its soft, plump, downy belly nestled just inches away as it pecked sunflower seeds from my palm

• Salivating upon seeing burlap sacks of raw coffee, a digitally controlled hot air coffee roaster and a Synesso espresso machine at Cellar Door in Healesville

• Mountain Ash smoked trout from Buxton (coming from someone who generally doesn't like seafood, this says a lot)

• Bruno's sculpture garden, gallery and workshop in Marysville

• The cherry tart from Marysville Patisserie

• Wandering around the waterfall

• Shitake chilli paste from Australian Harvest Fine Foods (especially combined with the semi-matured goaty goodness of Yarra Valley Dairy's chevre)

• Feeling my brain and body go limp with relaxation after the first spa bath in, well, a very long time

• The smoked smallgoods from a virtuoso butcher in Healesville

• Seeing J have a work-free weekend of relaxation, enough to shift into the sort of headspace where it's perfectly OK to bring home a bucket of Persian Fetta in olive oil and spices.
  

Most people return with photos of the places they've visited. We return with produce.