Going to a wine bar and not having any wine might seem like a silly thing to do but allow me to plead my case. This wine bar, The Wine Library on the Woollahra end of Oxford Street reportedly has some very good morsels to eat on offer. These delicious sounding bites also come at some very reasonable prices too  – and Woollahra is not an area known for value particularly in boutique shopping or property prices! I was also on the verge of a cold so I say no to a glass of wine which I know is kind of like going to a steak house and not ordering steak but sometimes a girl just wants to eat. My buddy The Second Wife reports being very pleased with the wines that she had. And this post is a combination of two visits, the first with the fabulous The Second Wife and the second with  the lovely Petrina from Donna Hay.

And where is the kitchen? Well it is right behind the bar! The open kitchen where food is prepared is a tiny area and the chefs tells the other customer about how different it is cooking out here whereas in a kitchen they never see much action. Case in point, a tipsy customer comes up to the chef and complains about the toilet door loudly and then lurches back to her seat. The chef look bemused by it all.

“Hmm chicken baguette with fennel pollen mayonnaise” I say drooling. The Second Wife, who it must be said is the perfect partner in crime ( we can get up to so much food mischief!) readily agrees to both the lobster roll and the chicken baguette, a serve of sweet potato chips and a witlof salad.

Chicken baguette with celery and fennel pollen mayonnaise $10

We start with the chicken baguette which has been cut in half for us. It is generously filled with tender chicken and mayonnaise and the bread is a white sourdough baguette. I end up eating the filling out of this as the bread is quite thick.

Lobster roll $15

The lobster roll is next. It is filled with tiny morsels of real lobster meat. It’s not bad but I think I prefer the chicken roll more as the lobster morsels are very small and appear to be more of the leg meat than the larger tail meat. Unusually, there isn’t the fennel pollen mayonnaise on this, it tastes like regular mayonnaise here. We check the menu and indeed, this one is supposed to have the fennel pollen mayo but the other one does. In between visits the price has gone up a few dollars from $12 to $15.

Sweet potato chips $5

The sweet potato chips are well salted and paper thin and crispy and very good and moreish!

Witlof salad $9

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That is the sound of some readers who having seen the rather bizarre title of today’s post, may have gone elsewhere for fear of what they were going to see. But lean in closer Dear Reader, because I’m glad that you’ve stayed and I’m going to share with you a rather unusual recipe today. Yes raw brownies with a chocolate avocado frosting.

I have a bit of a fascination with raw food stemming from one person. Demi Moore. I know, very random but when I read in a trashy mag (i.e. the Oracle ) that she subsisted in a raw food diet I was suddenly sold on it. OK I know, the chances are highly probable that her youthful looks are more based on a combination of a few other factors that have nothing to do with her choice of a young husband. But considering I’m all kinds of hopeful about everything I choose to believe that it has something to do with it.

Delicious Raw Honey from Walkabout Apiaries, Milawa

I got the recipe from my wonderful friend Hannah from Wayfaring Chocolate who posted about how good these were. They were easy enough to whip up and even better they need to be eaten while frozen although they never quite freeze up hard. They are also vegan, gluten free and dairy free.

And the taste? Well it’s pretty good! It’s not the same as a gooey fudgey baked brownie but of course that’s nothing that a truckload of butter, sugar and eggs won’t fix. It does satisfy a chocolate craving, even if there is actually no actual chocolate in it. And there is icing too. Can you see how hard it is working to convert you? The icing, made out of avocado, honey and cocoa is actually pretty good and not at all “avocadoey” and gives it that more cake like quality. I would recommend perhaps putting this in a smaller tin, it was quite thin by the time it was all spread out. And best of luck not eating the medjool dates before they go into the mix!

I looked in the mirror-so far no Demi Moore like moments and I didn’t get the urge to post a picture of myself in a bikini and put it on twitter. Perhaps some things are best left to the experts!

So tell me Dear Reader, which celebrity or person (said as if the two were mutually exclusive) would you like to look like when you get older?

P.S. And I have to say a big congratulations to Lauren W. who won the auction for a dozen of my cupcakes and she chose the baby booties cupcakes in a pale blue. I am afraid that I let you all down a bit when I said that I’d let you know when the auction was on. When I had a look at Sabrina’s site, she was having technical difficulties with the software that she was using so I didn’t want to send anyone there just then and by the time I realised that it was fixed the auction was over! But in fantastic news, we raised $8,269 for Second Harvest Japan!! That’s over three times what she was aiming for and if anyone wants to give you can do so here.

And here is a message from Second Harvest Japan:

“Thank you so much for your efforts to raise fund for our disaster relief operation in Japan! We are SO grateful for you all. I’m so touched that all the bloggers got together and concentrated their energy on this. I think this inspires other people to participate in support for people in the affected areas.”

Congratulations on your baby Lauren and thankyou for supporting the people of Japan

Raw Brownies with Chocolate Avocado Frosting

Adapted from Wayfaring Chocolate and here

• 1 cup (110g) walnuts
• 1 cup (150g) medjool dates, pitted
• 1/3 cup (30g) cocoa powder

For frosting

• 1 avocado
• 70 g/2.5 ozs raw honey (the honey makes them non-vegan though) or agave nectar
• 30 g/ 1 oz. cocoa powder
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• dash salt
• dash cinnamon

1. Combine walnuts, dates and the 1/3 cup of cocoa powder in a food processor and process until the mixture, according to the original recipe, “looks like potting soil”. Pat this into a loaf tin (I placed this in a 2x20cm square pan but found it a bit too thin).

2. In the food processor, whiz the avocado, honey or agave, second lot of cocoa, vanilla, salt, and cinnamon until smooth.

3. Spread the icing over the brownie base, then put in the freezer for about an hour to set. No matter how long the brownies stay in the freezer, they never become rock-hard.

Once a week Mr NQN and I go over to my parent’s house for dinner. Much of the time my mother cooks but occasionally she and I will cook together and she shows me how to make dishes that we grew up eating and the results end up on the blog. Going back to the house I grew up in is always fun in a nostalgic way. Gone are the Duran Duran posters that used to plaster my walls and ceiling but there are still fun things to show Mr NQN including pictures of me growing up and various phases that I went through with fashion.

As a child of the 80s I have a much more embarrassing photo album than most. As someone with poker straight hair, the typical hair of the 80s teenager was of course volumes aplenty of curly hair and if you weren’t blessed with it naturally, it came via the frying of the locks with a spiral perm.

One evening, after we had come back from my parent’s house I found myself tagged in facebook by an old high school friend who lives overseas. It was in a photo from high school. Are you ready for it? I will warn that it simply screams 80s (see my sweater and pink pants). There I am looking quite unlike me now on the bottom right of the picture.

Sydney Girls High School-class of 80′s fashion

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