December 10, 2007: Brambuk Bush Tucker Cafe

And so we walked and watched. From up high...

... from down low...

and up close.

Also worth a visit is the Brambuk cultural centre. First up, there's the usual National Park information about walks, precautions and camping, and bookings for organised outdoor activities. A little further back is the painstakingly and beautifully designed Aboriginal cultural centre, sitting low to the ground like one of the local cockatoos. I thoroughly enjoyed the half an hour I spent in the late afternoon, slowly winding my way up the serpent-like ramp, reading and thinking about the past, present and future.

Unsurprisingly there's a gift shop, as well as a cafe. But what's notable is that the cafe offers something more than the soft drinks, ice-creams and soggy sausage rolls I anticipated. This is the Bushfoods cafe, where the menu features gourmet preparations of kangaroo, crocodile and emu. The vegetarian options are a little more tame, but you can still find native herbs in the soup, scrambled eggs, damper and coffee.

I tried the wattleseed damper with quandong and peach jam, and cream ($5), as well as a wattleseed latte ($4). The damper was crusty, warm and of generous proportions and though I could see the ground wattleseed all through it, its flavour was much weaker than in my home-baked muffins. Kudos for the fresh whipped cream! (Those aerosol ones should be outlawed.) The ground wattleseed was more potent in my latte, which was served scaldingly hot and drunk much, much later. I enjoyed it, though Tracy and Michael liked their takeaway ones far less.

Michael chose the vegie burger, served with lettuce, tomato, wild rosella chutney and a side of chips ($10). He liked the chutney a lot, and though the chips looked pale and undercooked they were actually very tasty.

The Brambuk Bushfoods cafe has a surprisingly diverse menu. The prices, especially if you're into bush meats, are very reasonable; probably better than any of the restaurants serving dinner. The staff were lovely, too. It's the ideal place to fill up on maps, local history and food before soaking up what the Grampians really have to offer.

December 6, 2007: Chocolate orange butter biscuits

Keen to get out of the city for some novel birdwatching, Michael organised an extra-long weekend in Halls Gap and invited a handful of friends to share a holiday house. Staggered across the four days Mike, Tracy, Lee and Daniel joined us for walks, food and drinks, spirited arguments and other robust conversation, as well as several rounds of Guitar Hero.

With a fully equipped kitchen at our disposal, much of the food was home made and all the tastier for it. Before he was awake enough to speak coherently, Mike created a hearty breakfast of scrambled eggs with fried mushrooms, onion, asparagus and toast. Then late in the night over port, whiskey and board games he conjured up a dish of sweet, warm bread and butter pudding. That boy's full of surprises.

Michael and I brought a few things we'd prepared earlier. Dinner was eastern vegetarian burgers with baby spinach salad, a choice of mango chutney or hot chilli sauce, and olive oil baked potato chunks. For packed lunches, we had a triple batch of mock tuna salad with lettuce and tomato, as well as roasted strips of capsicum and eggplant.

Then there were these chocolate orange butter biscuits. They may not look that special, as choc-chip biscuits go, but take a look at the originals over at Cook (almost) Anything at Least Once and think again. They are the perfect showcase for earthy, unsweetened roasted cocoa nibs. (I recently picked some up from one of the organic produce stands at the Queen Victoria Markets.) The candied citrus peel and buttery biscuits are plenty sweet enough without an extra serving of sugar in the chocolate, producing an addictive new rendition of the classic chocolate-orange combination. I wasn't the only one taken by these: Michael could not stop eating them, and Mike declared them my best biscuits yet.

Just don't bother trying to feed the crumbs to the birds in a fit of misplaced generosity. They'd much prefer your muesli.