I am pretty sure that the pharmacy near Mr NQN’s work knows me by now. I am the woman who rings up frantic at around 5pm and asks for 10 bottles of her favourite produce to be put aside to be picked up by her husband after work. One afternoon’s request was a little odd.

“Hello, could you please put aside a packet of fake nails and some denture glue for me? My husband will come and pick it up tonight.” I say breathlessly.

“Sure what brand of nails and denture glue would you like ma’am?” the polite man at the other end of the phone asks.

“Any kind! I don’t know!” I reply flummoxed at the question. I hesitate before answering “they’re umm… to make vampire fangs…”

“Ahh I see…” Well the pharmacist does work on Oxford Street so I’m sure people have done this before

I had been planning this True Blood dinner party for months. The timing was of course to coincide with the end of the current season of True Blood, a show that I had become wholly and completely besotted with. Mr NQN was outnumbered that evening by giggling ladies because of course the show has the best looking male cast on television i.e. a family assorted packet of man biscuits with a guy for every taste. Mr NQN of course still refers to it as “that zombie show” but I could not be deterred in my love for it. The idea for the dinner was inspired by season three’s dinner party which involved three courses of blood:

First course: “Chilled carbonated blood. Cruelty free, all willingly donated. Note the citrusy finish? This one ate only tangerines for weeks.”
Second course: “Carlo bring me that Thai boy.”
Third course: “Warm blood bisque infused with rose petals.”
Dessert: Blood Gelato

Of course the idea of serving up blood to my dear friends wasn’t going to happen. I mean they put up with a lot, the photo taking, the traipsing off to far flung restaurants in the name of a meal but serving blood to them might stretch the friendship so I decided to do a blood themed dinner party instead. Invited were my True Blood loving friends because of course we would be watching episodes of the show afterwards.

Although I do like kitsch I wanted it to be an elegant dinner party because of course vampires have a lot of money as they can glamour people into giving them their worldly goods. We used some stunning Waterford crystal in blood red and a John Rocha black cut centrepiece filled with red fruit and vegetables to carry through the bloody red theme. Just because I thought that Bill as the King of Louisiana might have these in his house.

So there were nibblies in the form of caviar topped blinis, a bloody red spicy tomato soup, a symbolic oxtail and beetroot pie with an equally symbolic black savourine salad. Plus dessert of course, in fact two, with a pre dessert of raspberry sorbet and a molten blood chocolate cake served with raspberry ripple ice cream.

I did have a bit of a True Blood encounter myself, not so much of the vampiric kind but of the Jason Stackhouse kind. Ryan Kwanten is in Sydney shooting his latest film “Not Suitable For Children” written by Australian writer Michael Lucas and one day I found myself within breathing and touching distance of him. I did breathe but I did not touch him (although I wanted to, not in an inappropriate way, well kind of…). Of course I wanted to invite him to this party but I refrained from embarrassing myself and getting a certain rejection and instead chose to admire his divineness from where I was standing. And I was a little too scattered and excited to ask for a photo (silly me!).

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One of the best parts of being a food and travel blogger is the travel component. Going on these trips allows me to visit and explore areas of the world that I’ve never set paw on previously. I know that some of you may be curious about the travel and what happens on these trips so I shall tell you a bit about them.

Some of these trips are just Mr NQN and I whereas other trips involve small groups of food and travel journalists. Most of them are really fun and lovely to be around and make group trips a pleasurable way to travel with virtual strangers, many of whom with which I become good friends after a trip and don’t regard us with suspicion in the way others do. Travel writers are generally some of the nicest people I have met and are very open minded about things such as blogs. A couple of journalists are not, although I can count only one trip in which I wanted to throw every other member of the group off the boat. I resisted, instead swearing into my scarf and hopefully counting my karmic points for not performing a murderous deed on those ghastly souls.

Everyone of course has their own angles and what they want to write and when a tourism body is hosting you (and I don’t know if many of you know this but most travel writers are hosted by a tourism body or an accommodation provider as it is very hard to fund that sort of travel whether you be a magazine, a newspaper or a blog) you always try and respect the tourism body’s agenda which is to show you as much relevant as possible. Turning up on late for a start will get you in everyone’s bad books and being polite will do the opposite. But I didn’t have to tell you that right?

After a day spent together you usually go back to your hotel room to change, do some work and have a shower and everyone reconvenes later to have dinner. It’s usually over dinner and some wine that some funny stories emerge-I remember one story that an editor shared with us about a previous trip where a fellow journalist greeted them as his usual self-all very fine and good. Then the next day that man came downstairs dressed as a woman and asked to be addressed by his drag name. He went through the whole trip as this transvestite personality only changing back to his male self before the flight back (which made me think of this fetching gentleman below who made the headlines recently for his travel attire)!

Howard the cross dressing traveller (image: www.smh.com.au)

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