You like what I did there with the title? Yeah, I thought so.

On Saturday Amy and I drove to the Southern Highlands to eat pork knuckle and drink wine with our lovely friend Lauren, who is bound by employment to that strange and foreign land.

After a ..well.. a snafu which involved us heading toward Sutherland on the Princes Highway, instead of Southern Highlands on the M5, and then another...well..another snafu when we didn't realise that Mittagong had finished and Bowral had started, we made it to a cafe in the main street, Lauren came and retrieved us, I spent too much money in a kitchenware store, and all was well.

For dinner, we ate an entire meal composed of pork, and bits thereof. It was quite astonishing. My stomach is still unsure of what to make of it, 24 hours later. It feels a bit like our holiday in Berlin all over again. The pork knuckle, which was tender and succulent, and absolutely enormous, warrants a post of its own, so I hope I have piqued your interest.

Today, in search of something for breakfast which did not contain pork, we drove down the road to Berrima. I had never heard of Berrima, but I would like to move there now. As long as I could buy one of the very lovely old houses, and employ a nice gardener to look after it all.

We ended up at The Magpie Cafe, next to the "longest continuously licensed pub in Australia." It was very picturesque: cherry blossoms and vintage cars all over the place.  It was also beside a store selling "Australia's biggest and finest range of knitwear." Bold claims indeed on both counts.



I got bored waiting for the waiter to take our order, and became distracted by the biggest, fattest, roly poly tabby cat I have ever seen. His name was Oscar and I played with him for a long time. The waiter had come and gone by the time I made it back to our table.


In spite of my resolve to avoid pork, I'm fairly sure my ricotta hotcakes and their accompanying banana were not entirely what my body needed. Valiantly, I made it through though. At least I did avoid pork entirely, unlike Amy who had french toast with maple syrup and bacon. No judgment here.

No judgment here either.

We went to a shop selling tea and organic jam. It was a bad idea. So was the lolly shop. But to really understand the excess of my weekend, you really do need to revisit later in the week to see the pork knuckle.

Oh sweet jesus, the pork knuckle.