the coughing started towards the end of matt moran‘s masterchef theatre at the good food and wine show. as matt moran arranged raspberries atop a creme base, the one sharp point at the back of my throat grew into a great spluttering fit. i don’t think it caused too much disruption; the applause for the raspberry tart drowned me out.

but i have been coughing for just over two weeks now. at its worst it was the kind of cough that brings up brown and lumpy from my lungs. now, the germs seem to have all gone, but i wake up at four in the morning, still coughing, and the only way to get back to sleep is to watch cindy crawford’s informercial (“i never thought i’d be in an informercial…” she says, not batting an eyelid.) and read another chapter of “snow“.

having only vicariously experienced the good food show of previous years via grab your fork, i asked helen for some tips. “bring a backpack… get $25 worth of samples,” she offered helpfully.

so we hit the ground eating, deborah and i: lavosh bread topped with figs and white cheese, unusual jams — strawberry-balsamic vinegar-black pepper — on bite-sized scones, little cups of ready-peeled crabmeat, south australian pasta sauce made with south australian tomatoes, pomegranate green tea, chocolate…

for me, the show was all about chocolate. five minutes in we had found an organic chocolate stand with samples of buttermilk chocolate (“it is very sweet,” warned the samplegirl. and it was.) then we found the lindt stand, where a lady distributed raspberry lindor balls, and right behind her stood another lady handing out orange lindor balls. then the adora stand, where you present your hand, palm up, and the kind counter ladies filled it with callebaut chocolate buttons. the ikea stand missed a great opportunity to supermarket their range of swedish food (they were selling kitchens) but there was an enormous bowl of daim candies for the taking. not an hour into the show, we were walking down the aisles, woozy and lightheaded. but not one to let a feeling of unwellness stop me from eating chocolate, i plundered the sample trays of the three or four other organic chocolate stands, a generous hunk of a triple chocolate cookie and a teaspoon of wattle seed white chocolate mousse.

we sampled savoury for a bit — dried figs, fish tofu, curry on rice (twice!), corn chips — and then we bought the donna hay magazine show bag. curiously, it contained no donna hay products (besides the magazine, which irritates me), but was startlingly value for money. $7.95 bought us a couple of mini samples: a small packet of cardboard corn cakes and a tiny bottle of shower oil, but also a host of full-sized products like a pump pack of liquid hand soap, a tin of moroccan spice flavour rub, a 750g carton of raw sugar, a dozen dishwasher tablets, a pack of disposable plates edged with blue daisies, and a loaf of bread (!). [edit 22/06: and a three-pack of chocolate brownie-muffin bites, and a bottle of fiji water.]

across the aisle, the delicious magazine showbag upped the stakes with gourmet samples and a bottle of wine and a coffee voucher and a lindt chocolate cupcake, but you only got the showbag if you took out a subscription to the magazine. fair enough. but in a glorious twist of fate, deborah bought herself a subscription, and then handed me the cupcake. thanks, lady!

and so it was this moist, dark cupcake with the lush chocolate ganache that sat in my lap during the matt moran cooking show, though it didn’t really make it past the first few minutes. being in row g, we missed out on the plate of salt and pepper squid that got passed ’round the early birds up front, but he sure made it look easy, cleaning the squishy beast. “even simple enough for donna,” he quipped. then he picked up his cookbook several times, stroking the cover gently, like a proud papa.

the theatre disgorged right by the glitzy display of curtis stone’s new cookware range. silicone sheets with shallow star-shaped moulds for making wafers. double-walled glass ramekins. nice, and of course, we need more celebrity chef cookware. but the bright yellow C logo all lit up like broadway gave us the giggles.

we did a last lap around the exhibition hall, to buy the things which we’d been listing in our heads. there were other things we might have bought, at special show prices, if those prices hadn’t been tied to unmanageable quantities like five tins of powdered stock, or four bottles of soy sauce, for $10. (though at the kikkoman stand, we learnt that a teaspoon or a tablespoon of soy sauce in a dessert such as a lemon tart could really bring out the… tartness. when quizzed further, the counterman admitted that a tablespoon would actually be a lot, and the recipe developer actually recommended more like a teaspoon. perhaps the recommendation should actually be no soy sauce whatsoever in your dessert. anyone care to try this?)

so for me, what ended up in my shopping bag were three bars of single-region lindt dark chocolate (and a coupon for a free lindt macaron at the lindt cafe) for $5; the $25 adora chocolate showbag containing one each of their sixteen truffles, a dark chocolate bar, a bag of chocolate-enrobed turkish delight (from iran), and another mini belgian chocolate bar; and a carton of the organic triple chocolate cookies sampled earlier in the day.

way earlier. a week ago, i asked helen if two hours would be enough to see everything. wisely, she’d said to budget for three. as we left the exhibition hall, an announcement came through that the show would be closing in 15 minutes. i guess this means we’d been there close to six hours.

the show closed at six, but by five, the exhibitors had already begun scrubbing down their counters, and the samples were long gone. en route to the exit though, we were stopped in our tracks, because the good man at king island dairy was still handing out little tubs of chocolate creme dessert. what it is, is pure thick cream (53% milk fat, no vegetable gums or whatever) combined with belgian chocolate. genius.

i immediately wanted more, but it was dark outside, and there was a healthy walk to the buses ahead of us, and how were we to know that halfway through, it would begin raining sideways?