Dream: preaching peaches

In this dream I am standing on the pavement with C and her boyfriend M. It looks like a posh suburb - the street is hush quiet, lined with tall trees. The houses are huge and elaborate, each with a long driveway leading up fancy looking gardens.

I understand implicitly that we are out to preach something. We start up one of the driveways and the gate opens in front of us. The house at the end of the driveway looks like Schloss Charlottenburg - a huge white castle like structure. After quite some time we reach the front door and knock on the brass door knockers.

An old lady comes to the door, impossibly frail looking with wispy white hair and extraordinary kyphosis. She is wheezy as she inquires about our presence. M starts saying something about god and his love, my eyes roll back in my head and I wonder why I am tagging along with some religious conversion thing. The old lady seems to listen attentively though, and M goes on enthusiastically.

Then he takes out a peach from his bag, and my eyes are immediately drawn to it. The smooth skin starts to speckle as he touches it, emitting multi coloured lights, gaining in strength as he holds it for a longer period of time. He hands it to the old lady and when she holds it, the rays blast everywhere like it's a strange technicolour dream.

Then I wake up

A fancy dinner at Aria

For our end of year farewell dinner we decided to go somewhere decidedly different to our casual Newtown Thai haunts. Aria was available at short notice and had at least enough vegetarian options for a set menu [one in each course], so Aria it was.

Amuse bouche: buffalo milk ricotta with yellow nectarine 

Just a snippet of perfectly creamy ricotta that just melted in the mouth, accompanied by a little sweet & sour note from the nectarine.

Course one: Burrata with beetroot, oregano and blood plums 
This was visually so striking, with the deep red of the beetroot and plums sandwiching a smooth globe of burrata. Poking the burrata led to cream oozing everywhere, and every bite of this dish was luxurious.

Course two: Slow cooked Cornucopia egg with broccoli, macadamia and black truffle dressing
The broccoli had been split in two, the stems deeply caramelised to a char (almost looking like a bone!) and the florets blanched and refreshed to perfection. The shavings of black truffle were generous and bound the dish together.

 The most amazingly velvety mash that came with our mains. I ate some of this on bread, it was that good.

Pre-dessert: apricot foam with muscato granita.
A perfect palate cleanser to move into the sweets.

Course three: Valrhona chocolate ganache with cherries and warm chocolate doughnuts
All the desserts looked amazing but three out of four at the table opted for this one. The cherry sorbet was an amazing accompaniment to the rich deep chocolate ganache, and the sugar dusted chocolate doughnuts brought the whole decadent dish together.

Raspberries with chantilly cream and meringue.
This was pretty as a picture and light as a cloud, but the chocolate one won hands down.

Petit Fours
So many little nibblies to go with our after dinner coffees.

Aria is really a special occasion place ($135 for 3 courses is pretty steep...) but I was happy to see that they ventured beyond the normal vegetarian options and put some thought into it. It was a beautiful atmospheric place to have dinner overlooking the harbour, the service was impeccable and the presentation of all the dishes befitting the whatever number of hats they happen to have. Now if only I could eat all the desserts...

Dreams: mangos at Circular Quay and a purple dupatta

Mangos at Circular Quay

This dream starts at Circular Quay, in the undercover walkway near the Guylian cafe. I am walking towards the Opera House when I see a tourist looking lost. I stop and ask her if I can help - she is a short Korean girl in her 20s, holding an ipad. She shows me a picture of a blue road sign, saying that she is trying to find this sign. 

I look around with her and think hard - I haven't seen any such sign around there, as most road signs in Sydney are not blue. We go into a shop and ask the shopkeeper who suggests we look in the underground part near Opera bar, so we go there too but we cannot find it. As we come up to road level again, the sun is setting and gorgeous orange rays are cast over the Opera house. I suggest to the girl that she stay and enjoy the sunset instead of looking for the sign, and walk off in the direction of the train station. 

By the time I reach the station it is almost dark. Though in real life one would have to ascend steps / escalators to go onto the platform, there are signs indicating that you have to go downstairs which I find strange even in the dream. I start walking down a tunnel like set of steps, and quickly realise that the steps have crumbled away and are highly unstable. Someone has put up ropes along the side of the steps to help people keep balance as they negotiate the rubble, but lots of people are falling over everywhere. It is so dark in the stairwell it feels like a mine. 

Finally I get down to the bottom of the steps and feel relieved that I am on a platform that looks like a train station platform. It is so dark though that I can barely see where I am going. I slip and fall next to a pile of mango skins, and when I sit up I realise I am surrounded by mango skins, piles of half eaten mango pulp and seeds scattered about everywhere. I wonder what sort of monster has been eating mangos in Circular Quay station. As I stand up again I can hear the whistle of the train approaching in the tunnel. Then my foot slips on a mango skin and I start to fall onto the tracks.

I can hear the train approaching closer and closer as I land with a thud. Then I wake up. 

The purple dupatta

In this dream I am standing at the door of a house I do not recognise. The door is fancy, one of those bi-fold doors that open outwards, rimmed with something golden and shiny. I try the doorknob but it doesn't open. I peek through the glass on the side of the door but I cannot see through. 

I am startled as the door starts to creak open. It is utterly silent around me as the door slowly opens to reveal an alarm panel. The lights are blinking red and green, and I see the alarm is still elevated. I have no idea what the code is.

The next scene I am in a swimming pool that looks like it's part of someone's backyard. It's not clear to me whether this is the house I was just at the front of. The pool is very deep and I am treading water, wondering why a backyard pool is so deep. Suddenly, a purple coloured dupatta is thrown into the pool. I look around but cannot see who threw it - in fact all around the pool there are not even any bushes or anywhere someone can hide. 

I swim towards the dupatta and feel the texture of the material in my hands. It is a bright purple, and as I pull my hand away the colour comes off onto my hand. As I drop it the colour starts to fade from the dupatta and languid streaks appear on the surface of the pool. Slowly the water colour starts to change, and I feel a sense of panic starting to seep in. What is happening?

Then I wake up