Chocolate Trails

What I usually do when I get behind is sweep everything off the desk and start over. So I will not write about the hot chocolate that I drank in New York two weeks ago (though you can refer to these articles from New York Magazine and Citysearch). Nor will I write about the Melbourne Chocolate Tour, which I planned to go on when I first arrived here, put off, then missed my chance until at least March, 2006.

Instead, I will write about my culinary experiences during the past few days, in the Mornington Peninsula of Australia. The beach towns here are reminiscent of the Hamptons--if you rolled back the overdevelopment of the Hamptons by about 25 years, and if the produce on the North Fork of Long Island were slightly more colorful than apples and potatoes. I visited the local Boneo Market, where I picked up some French seedy mustard, marinated sun-dried tomatoes, giant squash and various fruits. I also made it to the Sunny Ridge strawberry farm; $5 Australian (a little more than $4 US) is well worth it to pick your own half-kilo (a little more than one pound) off the bushes, and all of the strawberry-, chocolate-, and/or wine-based items in the shop and cafe are incredibly enticing. Fish and chips abound--along with the particular Australian food product known as the dim sim (a cross between an eggroll and a dumpling, dropped in the deep-fryer). The upmarket beach town of Sorrento has some great restaurants and a bakery selling one of my new favorite foods, pink and blue marble bread. And, supporting the theory that Australia has some of the best food in the world, trips to the supermarket in Rye (the town where my boyfriend's family has a house) have turned up things like fresh mozzarella bocconcini and self-saucing chocolate pudding in a can.