Special August Guest: Daniel ''Parmalicious'' Taylor

Earlier this year, a certain food connoisseur (and blogger) emailed me a Herald Sun story about The Commercial Hotel in Alexandra, Victoria. She thought I might be interested to read the pub's claim to fame of having 30 different styles of Parmagiana, and she knew me too well.

After reading the story and confirming that the pub is the highest ranked venue on http://www.parma.com.au/ I helped organised the two and a half hour road trip with friends (thanks for your help Janelle!) for August.

Once there, another mate Brad tried to convince us to go to Yen Lai Rice Inn Restaurant across the road, but we kindly said: Why not give The Commercial a go first?

They do have other things on their menu, but there was only one section I was interested in: and that was the 29 parmas (I'm not counting the vegetarian one).

Looking at the parma menu it suddenly hit me: normally if I go out for a meal at a new place it's a good bet to go for the parma cause really, you can't stuff it up too much. But here, I was confronted with a choice of parmas and didn't know what to do.

They all look so good, and since I was only going to order one (unfortunately) it was a tough choice. I considered ordering one of the crazy versions, just because they had them, but I had to fall back to my other meal selection technique - which is going with the house selection.

So I ordered 'The Commercial Parma' consisting of a free range chicken breast topped with housemade Napoli sauce, tiger prawns and a special cheese mix.

The breast was nice, thick and juicy - well crumbed and not at all soggy. The cheese mix was great and the prawns quite big. The beer battered chips were big and crunchy and the only quibble I had was that half the chips were under the parma (I prefer them on the side).

In saying that, the salad was a fresh mix of lettuce, onion and carrot with good dressing - so all in all a very tasty meal.

I definitely will be going back at some stage and trying something different. Maybe I'll make it on a Thursday, which is Parmagianaday when there's a $15 parma and pot special.

The atmosphere of the venue is great - a big, country pub with a fireplace warming the dining room, great service, friendly staff and a relaxing environment. An awesome place to eat parmas.

Oh, and extra points for calling it a parma - not a parmi/parmy.

Pictured below are the Commercial Parma, Nacho Parma and Aussie Parma ...

And have a look at the website: www.commhotel.com.au/parma.html

Noice Buns

You know I have a ''thing'' for hot cross buns - I have already confessed that I'm one of those people who start buying them as soon as they are stocked embarrassingly early in the supermarkets (usually January).

And you now know that I have another ''thing'' for cinnamon. Mmmm cinnamon.

So my discovery of the delicious fruit buns available at the Trevallyn Gourmet Bakery at a mere 90 cents a pop each was a joyous one. They are so close to hot cross buns (minus the cross) it's not funny. It's seriously delicious.

And you can buy them all year round.

And in six packs.

Hmmm, maybe this wasn't such a good discovery after all.

Cinnamon Girl

This is my favourite spice. Hands down.

I adore its warmth and earthy tones that work so well in sweet and savoury dishes. At the moment I'm drinking it in chai tea. I'm sprinkling it in my morning porridge. And this morning I had it not only in fruit toast - but also in the cinnamon butter served with it.

I've never had cinnamon butter before - but i'm pretty sure the name covers all the ingredients. It's simple, but lovely. And I think something I'll whip out at home to impress when it comes to fruit toast, scones or pancakes.