This day happened a few weekends ago but I am so far behind on this blog it’s amazing we’re still in the same season at all.

This day was a warm spring Saturday and it started out as I’m sure many Saturdays do for families all over the world, with a trip to Ikea. But when we arrived at Victoria Gardens we discovered Ikea didn’t open for another hour, so we stopped for mall coffee (mall coffee! Why can they never get it right?!?) then took a wander through all the other homewares shops, looking for inspiration for our new house. Somewhere during the course of that hour, Madeleine managed to take BOTH of her shoes off and toss them away so, while Mr B went and got a haircut, I spent another 20 minutes retracing our steps and asking in all the stores if anyone had found one or two teeny, tiny neon-orange plastic sandals.

We made it to Ikea five minutes before opening time and, seriously, it was like the start of a race up there! Hoards of families and pregnant couples milled around the entrance with barely-concealed anticipation, before SIRENS sounded (I kid you not!) to signal the imminent opening of the store. Next minute we were off and running and following those bossy floor-arrows as though our lives depended on it. Time gets all warpy in Ikea so I don’t know how long we were in there but, when we finally emerged, it was time to get on with the ‘real’ day.

Madeleine was as grizzly as only she can get when more than an hour overdue for a nap. So While Mr B took the car back home and organised our purchases, I pushed the pram all the way from Little Audrey to Carlton Gardens, where we were meeting up our friend Tonia to check out the Finders Keepers Markets in the Royal Exhibition Buildings. Madeleine was asleep before I’d made it half a block. During that walk the day transitioned from freezing to positively balmy, and by the time we’d all met up at the markets we were starving and ready for a late al fresco lunch.

A quick walk through the park and a spot of illicit flower-picking (by Madeleine), across the road to Lygon Street, and we hit up our favourite dumpling central. I’ve always enjoyed dumplings, but both my pregnancies have sent me into dumpling overload. I dream about those babies! Afterward Mr B ordered Madeleine a baby choc milk to go, and it was HUGE, but that didn’t stop her going absolutely to town on it. By the time we got home she was soaking wet and coated in chocolate milk from head to toe.

Mr B and I disagreed on her need to change but I won that round so, a quick wardrobe adjustment later, we joined up with more friends and all headed up to the Travelling Samovar for iced tea and a second spot of illicit flower-picking (again by Madeleine) in their pretty little courtyard. (The courtyard is also pictured at the top of this post from a separate visit, because I couldn’t resist showing my little gardening angel and Oliver the dog, so happy about his invitation to the tea party). Nobody was hungry for dinner that night.

And there you have it. A simple Saturday.

This dispatch is brought to you by Madeleine Bulger, aged 15 months. Because while we both believe food should be fun (and N2 Extreme Gelato is nothing if not fun), when it comes to ice cream, Madeleine is serious. And she is IN CHARGE.

We actually wanted to do this post for a couple of weeks, ever since we were first lured in by the food theatre that makes this place so fun, and got a taste of the strange concoctions and impossibly-creamy goodness of N2′s new Melbourne iteration. I made plans to return with my camera, pronto, but one or two (hundred thousand) Melbournians got in the way.

We took Mr B down Brunswick Street for a taste of N2 gelati on the weekend, only to find the little shop so thick with would-be gelati-eaters you couldn’t see the counter, and punters were piled up three-deep all the way out onto the street. A few days later Madeleine and I wandered past in the afternoon to much the same scenario.

So on Thursday when we woke to pouring rain and fierce winds rattling against the windows, Madeleine and I were of one mind: “Perfect weather for gelati!”

We timed our visit to arrive bang-on opening time which was lucky because, Melbourne weather being typically contrary, the sun came out while we were walking and enticed folks out of their homes and into our little world of gelato. We made it before the crowds and even before they were ready to serve, so I joined a small group waiting on the astro turf while the N2 folks set up, and Madeleine raced up and down a graffiti-lined corridor squealing with delight, keeping all of us entertained.

And now for the theatrical part: liquid nitrogen. Every tub of gelato is as fresh as they come, made to order while you watch as clouds of gas pour over big mixing bowls and across the workbenches.

We ordered the crème brûlée flavour from the ever-changing menu because, duh!, so I had the added fun of watching them blowtorch a crispy toffee topping over my ice cream.

Which was all leading up to this:

Oh. Em. Gee. Am I right?

The peppermint tea (served in a beaker, naturally) is there because Madeleine and I do rather appreciate a palate cleanser.

We sat on more astro turf in the cafe area out the back to eat, overlooking a windy laneway full of muddy puddles that were apparently (and annoyingly) calling Madeleine’s name. After she had finished our gelato, of course, which she all-but inhaled.

So there you have it. Weird science. Food theatre. Tasty, creamy gelato in strange and wonderful flavours. Graffiti. Astro turf. Adorable babies. That, friends, is the N2 Extreme Gelato Melbourne experience. See you there (but make sure you arrive early).

You like bagels. You like burgers. Now imagine combining the two. Genius! That’s what you’ll find at the Round the Way food truck: toasted bagels with a range of delicious fillings. It’s breakfast, it’s lunch, it’s any meal you darn well want.

We cruised on over to Round the Way at the farmers’ market on the banks of the beautiful Lake Wendouree on the weekend, on our way to visit Sovereign Hill. I was in a brunch mood and was dreaming about a classic toasted sesame-seed bagel with cream cheese (my go-to breakfast from the Thompson Cafe downstairs in my building when I lived in SoHo).

Unfortunately the friendly Round the Way fellas were way too sophisticated for that so, instead, I ‘settled’ for a slightly sweet filling of orange and chia-seed cream cheese. Let the person who didn‘t get so stuck into her bagel that she forgot to photograph it until half way through the meal complain about that!

Other options on the menu for the day were mixed berry cream cheese; smoked salmon with capers, red onion, fresh dill, rocket and cream cheese; a good old BLAT; grilled sheep-cheese with rocket, tomato and beetroot pesto; and a grilled chicken bagel with spiced Cuban rum, lettuce, tomato and lime mayonnaise.

Oh and freshly squeezed orange juice, to perfect the breakfast experience. We took our juices and bagels down to a bridge by the lake so Madeleine could watch the swans, and I promise I didn’t throw anything to the ducks. Not even a crumb.

I’m eating my way through the wares of all the food trucks in Melbourne. Here’s where I’m up to so far. The things I do for you guys.

Once upon a time a little family was driving along a drab and dreary section of Lygon Street on their way to buy groceries. Suddenly, amid the gloom of traffic and medium-rise building construction and set against the backdrop of a new and used tyre warehouse, they caught a glimpse of the shiny new Trailer Made food truck.

So we parked the car and decamped for a mid-afternoon lunch.

One of Melbourne’s newest food trucks, Trailer Made doesn’t stick to just one style of food or any particular region, instead serving up food inspired by the owners’ travels throughout Europe, China and Korea, visiting street vendors and hawkers’ markets.

Case in point: on the menu today were latkes (a kind of potato cake normally enjoyed during Hanukkah) served up with smoked salt and slaw; spiced chickpeas with Turkish yoghurt and cucumber salad; Israeli chicken skewers with corn sauce and cous cous; and a beef bun that had sold out by the time we got there.

We found a grubby little park not far away, complete with a teeny-tiny playground that made my little girl very happy indeed, and turned the afternoon into a last-minute picnic.

I invite you to admire Mr B’s order of Israeli chicken, smothered in a homemade chilli sauce and definitely admired by Madeleine (who later helped herself to fistfuls of corn and giant couscous). The salad was amazing too.

My potato cakes were full of crispy goodness and I had to share more than I would have liked to with a hungry and adventurous little toddler. Thanks to Baby B2 growing happily in my belly I skipped the aioli, but I’m thinking the bed of slaw under the latkes may have been even better without it. Have you ever had salty slaw? Holy moly!

And also, this was THE BEST iced tea I’ve ever tasted. Even including all those iced teas I downed on my road-trip through the southern states of the USA. Rose water and pomegranate were in there, I don’t know what else. I’m going to start experimenting at home because I can’t wait for Trailer Made to roll back my way before I have more.

Trailer Made is all about being responsible and inclusive. “Amy and I have put our heads together to come up with ideas for what we think is important for a business today,” Chef Casey Norman says on the Trailer Made website.

“Biodegradable packaging, locally-sourced menu and catering for vegans, vegos, meat eaters, coeliacs and the diversity of food lovers.”

And the sprinkles on top of our impromptu foodie afternoon? My old friend the Brûlée Cart was parked right next to Trailer Made! Behold, once again, the perfect toffee-crack (and behold, one greedy baby trying to steal ALL THE BRÛLÉE from her father).

I love living in the “food truck heartland” of the Inner North. Food trucks make me so happy. Here are some more I’ve been sampling, if you’re interested.

ps. Sorry about the slightly dodgy iPhone photography. I hadn’t thought to bring my camera with me on what was meant to be a quick shopping trip to Safeway.

It’s a food truck. That sells crème brûlée. Honestly I could stop right there.

But I won’t.

Only a couple of weeks old, the Brûlée Cart debuted amid the patio lights, floating flamingos and historic buildings of Trailer Park, a weekend gathering of food trucks in the Village Melbourne precinct.

Village Melbourne is the relatively-new kid on the old Belgian Beer Cafe block, on St Kilda Road. There’s food and wine, music, theatre, comedy and special events a-plenty. And on weekends throughout August and September, there’s a curated gathering of food trucks! I took myself and my taste buds down to Trailer Park on the weekend and joined the line for a takeout tub of burnt cream of my very own. The flavour choices were classic French vanilla, nutella and strawberry, and salted caramel. Apparently they change regularly. After not a little internal debate, I chose the salted caramel.

They pulled out a blowtorch and set the toffee then and there while I watched, and followed it up with a generous grind of black rock-salt to finish things off. That added nice little bit of theatre to the usual food truck experience, I thought.

Oh and the dessert itself was sublime. The custard was sweet and sloppy (just the way I like it) and full of flavour.

And the best part? The toffee crust was thin, beautifully set, and cracked exactly the way it was supposed to. See for yourself.

ps. The Brûlée Cart was put on the road through crowdfunding. It’s such a clever world we live in these days, don’t you think?

ps2. More food trucks!

A new teahouse has opened up around the corner from my house. It happened very quietly, with little fanfare beyond a handful of “likes” on Facebook, but you can’t sneak anything with “teahouse” in its name past me in coffee-dominated Melbourne.

I have been peering through the window watching the fit-out develop and reading the “Coming Late June” signs on the door (that hearbreakingly changed to “Coming Mid July”) with impatient interest. Then last week I was walking Madeleine home from the park when what ho! the doors were open! The owners were smiling, the samovar was steaming, so in we rolled.

Owned by three friends united in their love of tea and travel, the Travelling Samovar is like everyone’s best version of an imagined stopover on the Spice Route. The menu boasts approximately one billion different teas* complete with tasting notes. But if you’re lazy (like me), just ask the owners for their advice. Their passion for tea spills over throughout the conversation, and it’s so contagious. I tried the “Calcutta” tea-tasting, a trio of Indian teas (Darjeeling, Assam and Chai), with tea-infused shortbread on the side as a palate cleanser.

There’s a light lunch menu as well, and can you imagine anything better on a cold winter’s day than cumin-spiced tomato and sweet potato soup? It was sublime. Madeleine preferred her toasty cheese fingers, the pleb. We followed our lunches up with a poached fruit salad and buffalo-milk yoghurt, that we shared.

On another day, I ordered a light rosebud tea sweetened with honey, alongside a moist, sticky Persian love cake and a generous dollop of rose-petal cream. On this Madeleine and I both agreed, so we actually had to order a second cake because she ate ALL of my first one!

We returned to the Travelling Samovar as a family on the weekend and tried the antipasto platter, the ratatouille tart, a generous slice of Russian Napoleyon slice, and some more teas. You’ve got to do this not only for the tasting but also to watch all the amazing, traditional preparation methods that they use, depending on the tea.

* May represent a slight exaggeration

ps. Yes, they do have an old samovar. And yes, they do use it.

ps2. That weird sticky-up bit of hair on top of my head? That’s because I cut my own fringe AGAIN and it went horribly wrong AGAIN. Don’t talk to me about it.

In between feeling sick ALL OF THE DAYS, Madeleine and I love nothing more than to rug up and get out and about and walk the streets of Melbourne. Sometimes she sleeps, sometimes she sits up in her pram and sings, which makes everyone else walking the same streets smile and I think it is a wonderful talent to make strangers smile, don’t you?

Here are some snippets of our wintery walks, brought to you by the letter I for Instagram (this is me if you want to say hi or follow).

Some mornings the fog is so thick the city seems to disappear, and it is as though Madeleine and I are alone in our little bubble of love and sore throats.

A couple of weeks ago it was so cold and the clouds had that funny look I remember from when I lived in New York and I indulged in a delicious fantasy that lasted the entire way along Lygon Street and down Rathdowne Street that went along the lines of imagine if it snowed in Melbourne! But it didn’t.

We like to eat out, me and my little two-teeth girl. And now that she is finally growing a few new chompers, Madeleine loves to experiment with new lunches every day. It is so much fun to watch her face as she tastes something new.

Where and what do we like to eat? Top to bottom: pizza and fizzy water at Brunetti’s in Carlton; jaffles and baby beets by the fish pond at Grub in Fitzroy; rosebud tea and Persian love cake at the brand new Travelling Samovar in Carlton North (this place is so lovely it deserves a whole blog post of its own, coming soon); and a take-away mini raspberry cupcake from Sweet Source, also in Carlton North.

And just like that, last week the weather went all mild on us. Suddenly sunny and 16 degrees after lunch, we couldn’t believe how balmy it felt. I introduced Madeleine to the joys of the park: the swing, the seesaw, the slippery dip… But what she loved most of all was crawling around in the bark and getting gloriously muddy and filthy. As you do.

ps. Giggles and kisses with dad, over a teeny-tiny mug of hot chocolate which cannot be seen in this photograph because it had been spilled all over yours truly.

Folks, I put it to you that Babes on Grill are the actual Spice Girls of Melbourne: young, good looking gals who also happen to have some serious skills behind the BBQ grill.

The babes have been popping up with their smoky menus at venues indoors and out all over the city for the past year and a bit so, when Madeleine and I heard they’d be at the Queen Victoria Market, we rugged up and marched on over for a fresh and flavoursome lunch.

However, we discovered a little more than we had bargained for, arriving at the tail end of a heated (literally) competition between the babes and TV chef Miguel Maestre to outsell one another on chicken rolls, for charity.

We joined the line for the girls. Gotta support the sistas.

Babes on Grill were serving up chipotle chicken hot rolls with barbequed free-range chicken, crispy slaw, guacamole, tomato and pepper salsa, and Kewpie mayonnaise. Sisters or not, who could bypass that?

But while the girls were busy grilling up my chipotle chicken, that wily Miguel turned on all his charm to win Madeleine over to his side. He was all over her with the “Aw what a cutie,” and “Come on! You want me to win this challenge, don’t you!”

Madeleine was fascinated. And in the end, a crazy Spaniard in a bow-tie was too much personality for one baby to resist: she gave him her seal of approval in the form of a high five. So much for sisterly solidarity, Little Miss.

I won’t tell you who won the competition, you’ll need to watch out for upcoming episodes of The Living Room on Channel 10 to find out.

Although this photo may give you a hint as to the outcome.

But I will tell you my hot chicken roll was ah-may-zing. I wolfed it down in approximately one minute. With or without the TV cameras, I’ll be first in line the next time these girls pop up again in my ‘hood.

Just before I left the market, I spotted another food truck, one that had been around for more than 60 years. So I figured I should try out the wares on sale, in the name of good reporting and all that. The things I do for you guys.

ps. Have you sampled the Gumbo Kitchen wares? Tried a burger from THE Mr Burger? Want still more Meals on Wheels?

At some point during the past six-to-eight weeks, while I was busy not noticing things, autumn arrived. Last thing I remember, it was the end of summer and the heat was still oppressive but a handful of leaves had started to change colour and they felt like a promise, a promise of cooler, happier days.

Then a pea-soup fog of sleep deprivation and sickness settled over my head and I stopped seeing anything beyond that which was needed for survival each day. At one point I didn’t leave the house for an entire week. Meanwhile the season I love the most rolled in and on and through Melbourne, without me.

Today the fog lifted. Madeleine has been generous and given me three relatively good nights’ sleep in a row, and all I have left of my virus is an irritating occasional cough. The difference is incredible. It’s like the world is back and bigger and more beautiful than ever. Could it seriously have been here all along?

It turns out I missed watching most of the leaves turn orange and red; they skipped all the way to brown while I was in the fog. But they are still lovely. So, less than two weeks before the beginning of winter, I have at last managed to celebrate autumn.

After a two hour walk through the falling and fallen leaves, Madeleine and I stopped in at the Little Creatures Dining Hall on Brunswick Street for a big lunch and a rousing game of peek-a-boo with Madeleine’s toy keys. I’ve been subsisting on Vegemite toast for the past month, and I can tell you I ate ALL of this meal (apart from the bits Madeleine stole, mostly fries).

How beautiful is the autumnal woodland they created inside the dining hall for Good Beer Week? Lunch felt like a cosy forest picnic. With heaters.

On the banks of the Merri Creek in East Brunswick, Melbourne, is the prettiest, sweetest-smelling city dump you will ever find. What was once four-and-a-half hectares of landfill has been converted, metre by metre, into an oasis of green, sustainable paradise.

It’s called the Centre for Education and Research in Environmental Strategies, or CERES, which is a handy acronym since Ceres was the ancient Roman goddess of agriculture. (How long do you think it took them to make that one work?)

I took my ever-so-green parents to CERES while they were visiting last week, for a stop-off at the organic market, a wander through the nursery and shop, a peek at the farm, and a leisurely lunch at the outdoor cafe while listening to live music.

Behind us, children slid joyfully down a dirt slope on their backsides, landing almost under our cafe table with squeals of laughter (and a few anxious “Mummy I’m stuck!” pleas from the smaller children, half-way down the hill).

Other littles watched the free-range chickens with delight, and bus-loads of school-children could be seen at one workshop or another as we explored the grounds after lunch. Glancing around the market and cafe, I don’t think I’d ever seen so many string bags and braids in one place (and I used to live in Glebe, people).

Later Mum and I (and a sleeping Madeleine) strolled over to an old red train-carriage that had since been converted into an intriguing gallery space.

There was an exhibition inside the train carriage called Forest by artist Stefanie Robinson. The name is kind of (and I imagine intentionally) ironic, since the exhibition comprised mostly paper. Long, narrow strips of paper falling from the ceiling almost to the floor, through which you had to wander to see. From a vine twisting along the ceiling, woven nests of blue and brown also hung among the paper forest, and such was the installation and the space that you never could step back and get a view of the whole thing. Like a real forest, you could only really see it and appreciate it from inside.

Reading about this exhibition later, I learned that Stefanie had made the hanging nests from objects found in the landscape after natural disasters, such as Japan after the Tsunami, and country Victoria after the bushfires.

I went in alone and it was beautifully quiet, just the rustling of the paper and the sound of my footsteps, which I instinctively tried to soften. I don’t know why.

Also like a real forest, this exhibition was intended to evolve and grow over time. I wish it had lasted longer because I’d have loved you to be able to see it, too. I contacted Stefanie later that afternoon to ask if I could include some photos I took from inside her dreamlike forest on my blog, and she kindly said yes.