Sunday 22nd Jun '08

I caught up for lunch with Marissa at a Vietnamese restaurant that has recently opened on Albany Highway in Victoria Park, Toto's.

We shared the stuffed chicken wings for our starter. They were a bit smaller than what we've gotten at other restaurants but still just as delicious. For our mains, Marissa had the wanton noodle soup with barbecued pork. I had my usual favourite Vietnamese dish - Bun Bo Hue. Yum!

There was one turn off at the restaurant (besides the small portion of chicken wings) - one of the young waitstaff was wearing his jeans so low down that you could see practically his whole backside in his boxers. Not to mention he had long unkempt hair that's typically stylish of alot of Asian guys. We caught him pulling his boxers and jeans up and then handling plates and food **shudder*. We mentioned something to who we believe was the owner or manager of the restaurant as we paid our bill and I think he was well aware of this particular person. Despite this, we had a really enjoyable lunch.

Afterwards, Marissa and I went to her parents' place to have a coffee and I had a look at how their garden was going. They've got two properties side by side and being long blocks of land, they have two really large vegetable gardens. Mr and Mrs Pelle gave me some fresh vegetables for dinner and some garlic bulbs to plant in my own garden.

Back at home, I made my first attempt to make French Onion Soup from scratch. I was planning to use some beef stock I had bought last week but unfortunately someone had left the pantry open and Simba had sniffed out the carton of beef stock and polished off what he didn't get on the carpet. I used some vegeta stock and put lots of garlic, onion and thyme (fresh from my garden!) to try to create a strong flavour to compensate for not having the beef stock. Once the soup was done, I ladled it out into an ovenproof mug. I toasted some wholemeal bread and covered the top of the soup with slices, then sprinkled grated parmesan over the bread. I had run out of tasty cheese, which was a pity because no doubt that would have really lifted the flavour of the dish. Garnich with some cracked black pepper and thyme sprigs...voila!