This weekend past was the Brisbane edition of the Good Food and Wine Show. Now, some of you may recall that this is the event for which I travel to Sydney for. Mister and I had a nice long weekend in Sydney in July for it this year, and we see no reason to miss out on the local version too. I must say, I was slightly apprehensive about going - we missed the Brisbane edition in 2009 because the 2008 edition was rather lacklustre and disappointing. Also, the 2010 Melbourne edition was rated poorly by my parents.
Nevertheless, tickets in hand and a queue spanning the entire Brisbane Convention Centre, we lined up for entry at 10am on Friday. The first issue of annoyance was upon attempt to collect our free show bags from the Info booth, just inside the entry door. It took us no more than 15 minutes to filter through to the front of the line and within that brief time, they'd already given away all of the free bags. Talk about poor planning. In fact, there were food and wine stalls who had very limited stocks of products, or had already run out of things by the time we'd made our way to see them - and this was only the first day of the show!! Whilst we were compensated with vouchers for free mini bottles of Oxford Landing wine, it certainly wasn't a balanced compensation. How unprofessional and disorganised. We, on the other hand, flounced around like old pro's, with our wine tasting glasses suspended from our necks by way of neoprene glass holders on lanyards. These are such a glorious invention which work well within the bounds of gravitational law - your glass is always at the vertical, no matter how much you sway.
My boasted aim of "in by 10 and half drunk by 10:30" wasn't far off the pace - the morning began with a short sharp knock back of a chilled Coffee Baileys, and on to the stalls we ventured. That hour of the morning was not going to be considered too early for tastings of roast lamb, duck legs, Chilean wine, coffee, sauces, chocolate, sake and umeshu, biscuits, cheese or fortified wines and spirits. In fact, that 10:30am rapidly tended towards noon. By this time, there was a strong need to sit down, rest the feet, have a cuppa and offload the haul of purchases. This called for a picnic in the underground carpark of the Convention Centre! My mother, in all her preparedness, had packed a flask of hot water, tea and coffee supplies, and some buttered pumpkin scones.
Round two was another two hours of tasting, drinking, fighting for stepping space amongst the idiots who bring young children in pushers and old dodder'ers with their Good Food shopping trolleys purchased as memorabilia merchandise.
Within the entry ticket price, we were reserved a seat at the celebrity theatre session for George Calombaris and Gary Mehigan. The show was entertaining and witty, and yet for the life of me, I really can't remember what foods were prepared on stage - obviously it was a highly memorable and informative session!!
I think by this time my tastings of moscato, chardonnay, pinot grigio, shiraz, merlot, muscat and many more varietals had sufficiently numbed my memory cells of a week of hell at my place of employment (of which there are only 14 more remaining, and four of those are holidays!) and had inspired me to remain as brainless as possible about anything else in the rest of the world that wasn't to my benefit on that day, in that state.
By the time we were Tom-Tom navigated out of the city and back to the confines of suburbia and domesticity, the belly was bulging and the pores were almost seeping. And nothing could have topped off a day of culinary delights like a bacon, egg and sauce sandwich for dinner!
Oh yeah, and if you need to know about other life events - my job is destined to end on 11 February; I had a job interview two weeks ago and haven't heard anything official about the result (though, if I continue to hold my breath for it, I'll end up looking like a Smurf!); My big birthday plans for 19 February are well underway; I'm still making my way though nearly every food stall and restaurant at Sunnybank's Market Square (it's like a not-so-little China!); Christmas is nearly here and I have no need to panic - the presents are roughly selected and the tree is ready to go up.
