Mushrooms and Chooks.

A couple of months ago we went to a terrific mushroom growing workshop with Urban Kulture (hate the spelling!) and Mr ATMT has been turning out some spectacular harvests since. These are oysters and king oysters with some up coming pink oysters.

I do love mushrooms but find that some of these exotic types remind me a bit of offal and I get a bit ‘gaggy’ when trying to eat them. This method of cooking them seemed to eliminate my issues with that.  Stock, mushroom stock. Cannot ever have enough of this liquid gold! Some of the really mature mushies went into a pot with some carrot, onion, celery, star anise, peppercorns and ginger. Slowly simmered for a couple of hours then,

 the liquid was strained off, mushrooms sliced and fried off with some butter, garlic and red capsicum.

I cannot work out what on earth the story is with capsicum this season! This was freshly picked this afternoon and there are still a few left on the plants. Chilli and boy choy were also picked at same time.

 To construct the risotto I (well, I got Mr ATMT to) fried off the mushrooms with some butter and olive oil, added the arborio rice to cook until centre of was transparent then slowly started adding the mushroom stock we’d made earlier. After several cycles of adding mushroom stock, stir, let absorb, repeat, I added some white wine and some champagne vinegar,  then seasoned the mixture. I’m a bit if fan of adding peas to risotto so that was my mandatory add, hoping to ward off any fear of eating dead mans fingers about the meaty shrooms.

Before serving I stirred through some butter, fresh thyme and parsley, parmesan and lemon zest. Conclusion-delicious, I feel a bit brave that I did something out of my comfort zone but I’d be happy to just settle with mushroom stock alone.

Preparing for some new arrivals.

We are getting 4 new chooks tomorrow, after putting off adding to the flock (of 1) because we didn’t want to rock the boat with poor, 7 year old Rene, enough is enough. We need more cluckiness going on and we need a more efficient food waste elimination method than just the compost and one chook. I sent the afternoon preparing the chook shed with a clean out, some lime dusted around, fresh bedding in the nesting boxes, and a good old clean out.

Looks and feel much better. Do you think chooks like clean sheets like we do? Love the gold of that oak tree behind.

I hope Rene, copes all right with the new arrivals, she really is a delightful little companion  to have around.

A barrow full of rich nutrient from the chook house clean out going straight onto the veggie patch. This load will be used for top dressing my garlic beds and the brassicas in the bed at the rear.

Fingers crossed out new chooks will settle in and Rene will cope with the onslaught!

Zero waste wayside stops.

Today as I was sewing the handle back on this bag, I thought it might be nice to share how we are always ready and able to stop and have a cuppa anywhere we feel like it. Well, anywhere when we are on the road driving, can’t say this would be ideal on a tram or a bus! Zero waste,  always at the ready for road trips. We keep this little bag (that was a token gift to Mr ATMT at some function) packed with a little butane gas stove, a windshield for the stove, a billy, tea, sugar, a set of cutlery, plates, scissors, a first aid kit, sunscreen, a wine bottle full of water and a small bottle that we fill with milk and wrap in a chill pack before leaving. The mugs were being washed when I took this but we do pack those too. There is also a very old plastic bag we first got in Tassie about 5 years ago incase we need it for some reason. Sometimes we will add a nibble or two such as nuts, dried fruit, lollies or bickies as well.We usually find it easy to refill the water bottle along the way as well as rinsing out the cups ready for the next stop. The bag has a compartment at the bottom which has two little folding stools stowed inside it so we don’t even need a table and chairs available for our refreshment stops.The whole bag is quite compact and we leave it in the boot just making sure we have fresh water and milk packed before we leave home.It really doesn’t take much to think a little bit ahead to avoid visiting those horrible service centres that rob you of seeing the landscape and usually make you leave loaded up with waste.

PS. I should have taken the needle out from my mending job before trying to zip it up. Did a nice slice through my thumb which added a few decorations to the bag!

What do you do to minimise waste and to make your road trips enjoyable?

Elderflowers and pomegranates.

Well this first pic has absolutely nothing to do with pomegranates or elderflowers but I always get excited when I play with compost. We are starting to sort out the area down the west side of the house where the clothesline is and up until now I’ve had one of my 6 compost bins there. This needed to be moved to make way for a couple of garden beds for espaliers and so we can put toppings on the ground. This is the area I mean. The espaliered pear on the left is the one I planted in 2012 before we moved in. This is the thumbnail pic of way back then. So anyway, compost out of the way, now Mr ATMT could get busy building beds and shovelling crushed rock. Just about tamed this area now and the soil certainly smells a whole lot better than it did when we started out. It doesn’t look anywhere near as ‘nursing home’ as this in reality! Trust me.

This is the area when we purchased. No sunlight had touched the house for years and everything was mouldy, damp, smelly and even though it had that ‘old world charm’ feel to it it was pretty gross. We also had fencing installed between us and our immediate neighbour.

So on to elderflowers and pomegranates!

One of the first things I planted was what I had bought as an elderflower plant. The goal was to screen and offer protection from summer afternoon sun to the chook house and to create wonderful cordials and beverages. Sadly this plant has only reached one of these objectives. It has worked extremely well protecting the chook house but sadly not one berry to be had and the cordial I made from the (very pretty) flowers tasted of freshly chopped grass. Time to rethink me thinks.

I’ve started the cut back here so the winter sun can reach the chook house. This plant shoots back amazingly well.

This pic shows the floret remains where berries should form, or so I think. These are the very pretty flowers that adorn the bush prolifically but according to some lovely visitors we had at our food gardens open day, they didn’t have the right fragrance. They were quite experienced in elderflowers apparently so I’ve started to wonder if we actually have a legitimate variety. Further investigation to take place now as I love the idea of elderflower champagne.  I planted a little pomegranate bush near the doors of the greenhouse last season and it is just going nuts. I absolutely love everything about pomegranates, and will be beside myself if we actually get to harvest a homegrown one. The bush has been continually in flower for a  while so Ive been giving the flowers a tickle with a little paint brush between male and female flowers in the hope pollination will be more successful. Well, lookie here! I do believe we may actually have a baby pom in the making. I’ve found another 2 now so these are going to be watched closely to see what evolves. I have such fond memories of fresh pomegranate juice at all the roadside stalls throughout Turkey.

And a couple of tag alongs!

The coriander I have been drying to save seed from is now ready to be thrashed to separate the seeds. I always feel a little bit clever when something so easy takes place. I get better results growing it for seed than I do as a herb as it just seems to bolt quickly. The grapes in the berry house are turning in colour. These grapes taste of passionfruit and are absolutely delicious. Just need to make sure there are absolutely no little points of access for the birds who think they are delicious too. Then there is this! I planted some pumpkin seeds I had saved from a perfectly normal looking butternut pumpkin and this is whats growing. I’m going to let it continue and see what evolves, it may be something stunning. We’ll wait and see. So that’s the little catch up, if you have any knowledge about elderflowers varieties, pomegranates or dodgy looking pumpkin plants I’d love to hear from you.

In My Kitchen-March

I really should try to get my blogging mojo back I think! I miss the time focussing about what to write, planning ahead for what needs to happen and putting the ideas together to string some form of ‘story’ together. I’m finding that I’ve fallen a little into the trap of using Instagram (IG) or as I am now renaming it “Instant Gratification”. This is OK but it doesn’t really give me the same satisfaction as writing a post. Thank goodness for ‘In My Kitchen’, a forum where bloggers put up some snippets of what is in their kitchens each month. All of these blogs are linked to a common point by the wonderful Liz over at Bizzy Lizzy’s Good Things. Go and have a look at some of the great things going on.

Not a lot this month In My Kitchen as we went camping for nearly 2 weeks. I did manage to still bake bread while we were away but this time I cheated somewhat and used the oven in the camp kitchen. I baked in a pasta pot we have in the camping kitchen and it was a great success.

We brought some great bacon back from the butcher at Merimbula. This bacon is beautiful, they also had some nitrate free bacon which really appeals to me so I got some of that too. Down side is that it is packed in cryovac plastic packaging. This is a shame, but sometimes when weighing up the options an outcome that is not ideal is the result. My delight in getting good quality over what is available at home that would still be in plastic won over.Also In My Kitchen is some sourdough starter I am dehydrating. I have shared quite a bit so needed to replenish my stock. This is my original ‘Vesuvius’ starter that I began about 10 years ago. I have been making some potholders. I am using an old woollen blanket that is beyond its useful life as the thermal filling in these. I am also using up scrap cotton I had in my cupboard for the covering but I have bought a couple of extra pieces. Next week I’ll scout the op shops for suitable garments I can re-purpose. This years glut! NOT! Nowhere near any previous seasons harvests, very disappointing. I’ll be buying a couple of boxes for making passata I think. Not a lot, but the flavour is really good this year. My experiment of having half the tomatoes staked and laterals pruned and the other half just doing their thing without attention has bombed. I have not had one tomato that hasn’t been eaten even when very green in the free range plants.  Finally In My Kitchen this month is a pic of todays wholemeal bread I made and tested out a couple of different baking methods. The top 2 loaves were cooked in the cast iron dutch oven, the pumpkin seed shaped loaf was baked in a clay cloche and the bottom one was baked in my Falcon enamel roasting pan. All work well but I prefer the cast iron.So that’s the little peek into my kitchen this month. Are we going to get a peek in yours?

Lots of Up-cycling going on here.

Now that we have pretty much got the main components of the exteno done, we can focus on sorting through all of the things that have been in the shed, in the ‘Dentist’s and in boxes throughout the house. As we cleared through each area I insisted we be ruthless and tag things to go, repair or keep if they had a good purpose. Determined to minimise landfill, we eliminated quite a bit through a local buy/swap/sell site and the couple of items left from that will probably go to the op-shop. We placed a couple of bits on the nature strip and they miraculously disappeared, the op shops have received a large amount and we are left with the things that needed to be repaired. All of these have been moved into the room we used as the temporary kitchen and I’m working through them one at a time. Fly-screens, piano stool, old wooden train, cupboard, a toy cradle and a few other bits and pieces. This chair is a folding directors chair that Mr ATMT’s grandfather made. It is beautiful, comfortable and very special to us. I’ll re-glue the joints, paint it and make some new covers. These original covers were made complete with hessian backing and I am excited about giving life and purpose to it. We also have a couple of card tables made by Grandpa hiding in this pile.

For my first repair task I tackled this cute little cupboard which I believe was a chamber pot cupboard. It has been in Mr ATMT’s family for years, he can remember it being at their holiday house in Sorrento and moved to the replacement house at Blairgowrie where it was used for toiletries in the bunk room bathroom. I forgot to take a pre photo but it was pretty awful. Stained mustard yellow, rusty latches some ply wood missing. I wasn’t prepared to invest a lot of time or energy on it, so a sand, some filler and a couple of coats of paint and I think it will serve as a bedside table well.  I couldn’t bring myself to straighten the latches!I found this old woollen army blanket that certainly looks like it has seen better days but the area out from the centre is quite good so I’ll make some pot holders from it. Wool is a great thermal barrier so I’m hoping they will work well for the hot, bread baking pots. The scrap will go into the compost or somewhere in the garden that needs some weed suppression. I had a cake stand that the stand had separated from the base so a bit of glue and it’s as good as new. This is it having a bit of ‘gentle weight’ applied while the glue dries.

Then there was Mr Squiggle, Mr Squiggle is one of Australia’s iconic childrens TV programs that aired for many generations.  This Mr Squiggle was a much loved toy of our older son and  now that we need to have a few things on hand to entertain our grandson, I thought I’d see how he came up with some surgery.  He was in a sad and sorry state, legs off and his innards suffering a serious prolapse, his head attached by a thread and he was generally in need of some TLC.

With some stitching (I’m telling myself is as good as a Japanese embroiderer), a bath, a hair cut and a rubdown he is back in action. I should do a red tie just to finish him off. You know I’m not going to let him anywhere near the toy box now, don’t you! Here are a couple of items not in our room of repair but acquired from the op-shop.

A Phil & Teds stroller (I’m told that is a good brand). It makes life easier for everyone not having to unload and transport half the house when we have Charlie so I went to the op shop on the odd chance and bingo! $20.00 later, a good go over with the pressure cleaner and we are set. A little bit of sun fading but everything else is fine. This came complete with a baby carrycot, extra seat so you can fit another child in, rain cover, sunshade cover, bag and it is great to handle. Thank you to whoever took this to the op-shop.

I also stumbled on this book at the op-shop. What are the chances? Our grandson is Charlie and their dog is Baxter. Spooky…………had to get it!

Then there is the most dramatic up-cycling of all. We have moved the room affectionately know as ‘The Dentist’. It was either move it or lose it, as you looked directly out to it from the new kitchen window. By moving it we can create a courtyard area than we can access from the kitchen verandah, keep the history and still get to use the room for whatever we want.

That concrete in the middle is the original steps into the room. It has opened up the space wonderfully and I am thrilled.        A couple of chains, a couple of jacks, a few logs, someone who knows what they are doing and snap!

We have managed to dispose a lot and thankfully not to landfill. If any of the repair jobs become bigger than I envisaged they will be re-assessed and dealt with accordingly.

I am delighted with being able to keep the dentist room. I can see this being an integral part of the landscape and not just a room in the wrong place!

Now, if only I can come up with a use for THAT crystal.

New FB Sourdough Support Page.

Just putting it out there that I have started a Facebook Closed Group for anyone wanting to learn, share and chat about sourdough bread and other sourdough baked goods. I find that the big overseas groups are brilliant but it is difficult when ingredients and equipment they discuss are not available locally. Seasons and use of fahrenheit too is also a challenge, we are always arse about (or they are).

So anyway, I plan to try to post some weekly tips for anyone starting out, put some links for really good reliable information and have people share their baking results and ask questions. Although target audience is Australia and New Zealand, others are welcome to request to join. So, if you know of anyone who may be interested in learning more or sharing knowledge please pass on my link.

 

Facebook group is Sourdough Baking Australia and New Zealand, link is https://www.facebook.com/groups/SDaustralia/

Thanks, Maree.

So, 2017. What is planned?

We knew 2016 was going to be a big year and it was. Our first grandchild (I cannot believe he turns 1 on Saturday), a wedding, an overseas trip to Greece and Turkey, our exteno close to finished. In what was an unplanned and somewhat hasty move I decided to pull the plug on a job that was sending me nuts. Best decision I could have made and most importantly, yes, I have a kitchen. A kitchen with everything in the same room, an oven bigger than a pocket handkerchief and a space that is a delight to work and entertain in.

  Consequently, I find that I am spending a huge amount of time ‘playing’ in this new space. I do struggle some days trying to justify my ‘playtime’, but then remind myself that it has been a very long time since I have had the opportunity to really enjoy being in the kitchen. I love the fact I don’t have to get anxious about fitting whatever I decide to make into a tight timeline but can cruise and enjoy. That is a little hard to get used to but I’m practicing a lot at getting it right!

Because of this my vegetable garden has also been a bit neglected but things seem to be taking care of themselves pretty well considering. A bit of water has been splashed around on those really hot days but the wicking beds seem to be doing their job well. The basic food stuffs are growing  and starting to bear,  tomatoes, capsicum, eggplant, cucumber, pumpkins, chills, beans and herbs. I must add some salad greens next week. I made this little video doing a tour of the veggie patch.

 

So what are the plans for 2017?

Painting is definitely up there. The windows, both new and old all need painting. Mr ATMT is planning on cracking on with painting the outside of the house and that is huge.

We are heading to New Zealand for  4 weeks a little later in the year so I am looking forward to eating (and drinking) our way around both islands at our own leisure.

As always there will be tinkering in the garden with setting up a couple of new areas, moving an old building (the visiting dentist’s room) to create a courtyard off the kitchen and tarting up the front yard a bit.

Bread-lots more bread! I really want to focus on developing more and more skill with sourdough baking. I am concentrating on milling my own grains, using lower hydration starters and creating more baked goods using sourdough. Things such as muffins, pastries, crackers (dry biscuits) and more. These are some sourdough croissants,

These loaves are made using my home milled whole wheat and blending it with organic white flour.I have so many friends who want me to do some classes that I need to plan and work out the logistics of how this can happen.

I also want to get back into cheesemaking. I won a few awards at the Red Hill Show many years ago and have done intensive study at Gilbert Chandler University in Werribee. We dug out these old awards when moving ‘stuff’ out of the dentists room we are moving.I stopped making cheese for a couple of reasons, due to arthritis I had undergone joint fusion in my fingers so I was a bit nervous about lifting 20 litre containers of hot liquid without incident, it was overtaking our home (the old home), kitchen, lounge-room and garage and the family were having to live around all of the paraphernalia and then there was the change in health regs and it became increasingly difficult to source a milk supply from local dairy farmers. This last point is going to be a challenge still, as many of the dairy farmers have opted out of dairying due to the hammering they got from major supermarkets squeezing the cost down to a point where it was just not viable. I would never be able to sell my cheese but is a process I loved doing and friends and family that ate the results loved it. Ah, our nanny state……. one wonders how Europeans have survived for so long.

These things along with spending time with our delightful little fella will take up more time than I imagine now. I might fit in a bit of work too, who knows what the wind will blow in?

 

 

 

 

 

Corporate responsibility to advertise sustainability.

I’ve just had a little dummy spit! Watching commercial TV (that’s not all that common at our place), I have just seen an ad by Harris Scarfe where the message is clearly promoted that when something is a bit too hard to clean, a bit grubby, needs a repair, maybe you don’t like it anymore or for some other reason, you just chuck it in the land fill bin (complete with a plastic bin liner!). The example in this ad that really got me steamed was the steel frying pan that needed a little bit of elbow grease as it has lost its sparkle, was just tossed into the bin. I think it is time all advertising should be required to be responsible in the presentation of their message to ensure they promote responsible, sustainable options for purchasing, using and disposal of both the packaging and any items that are past their prime.

Australia is in the top five of rubbish creators in the world, lets knock that on the head. Not a stat to be proud of.

It would not take much effort to adapt advertising to trigger thoughts like ‘take it to the op-shop’, encourage reduce, reuse and recycle positively and if they really want to take some responsibility, accept items back and re-distribute them into community organisations. Greenpeace have some wonderful tips on living more sustainably, check them out here.

It is really important to trigger a change of thinking in people and marketing has  significant opportunity of power in doing this. Unfortunately, over the years the message sold has created some pretty severe environmental issues and high carbon footprints by promoting the disposable lifestyle many live by.

Plastic water bottles, disposable single use plastic, and packaging are making a huge impact on the environment and it cannot continue as it is not sustainable. Communities are now having to deal with how we deal with things like this.

It shouldn’t be too hard, people just need to be educated by seeing examples and advertising is a great way to do this. Things like showing a donation box that things go into rather than the landfill bin, use a compost bin or worm farm for food scraps to go in and minimising  packaging.

Which ads rile you with their lack of sustainable responsibility?

Putting things together.

We are very close to the finishing stages of our kitchen and exteno project. I’m in the process of moving everything from the temporary kitchen, the old dentist room, the shed and the spare bedroom into our new kitchen. So far all the bits are fitting in beautifully and I will have oodles of space to store everything. I’m being ruthless and items not thought about, used in 12 months or damaged are going straight to the op shop pile or tossed.  We still haven’t got water and gas connected in the kitchen but we do have it in the laundry so we have been able to clear the plastic table and babies bath out from the bathroom and can wash dishes in the laundry. This has been the greatest challenge I’ve faced with this whole experience. I really didn’t like having a loo in the dishwashing area!We can now work on plans for renovating this bathroom. The part with insulation is where we have extended the wall out from the existing room. Love the drapes? 2 shower curtains that do the job well enough. We still have to do a few jobs but it is certainly well on the way to completion and the space is working extremely well. I’m still using the 2 butane gas camping stoves and hope this box of butane cans is the last I will need to buy for home use. They are an excellent product and you can cook everything on these cookers, I suspect there may even be times when I take one outside to the verandah to cook with.  We had friends around for tea last night and I felt like doing something ‘Asian’ so went to the gorgeous Dumpling Sisters website for some inspiration. My first exposure to the Dumpling Sisters was when Celia posted about their fantastic home made dumplings and I made the wrappers from scratch. Their dumplings are great and the wrappers are oh so easy! Anyway, for this meal I made their Mapo Tofu, well, it was improvised based around what I had and what I couldn’t get locally. I didn’t have chilli bean sauce so I used black bean sauce and added some chilli sauce and some of my home made chilli paste. I couldn’t get soft tofu, so I used hard but fried it off first to give it a nicer texture. I used veal instead of beef as I had taken some out of the freezer earlier to make  dumplings with. I added fresh beans, omitted the black beans and served with chopped red capsicum and spring onions. It was delicious!Next  up was their ‘One Pot Cauli Satay’. I’m not a huge fan of satay but I love cauliflower and really enjoyed this meal. I added a chicken thigh fillet, halved the curry powder (Keens) and also added peas. This was great! Glad I cut back on the curry as I was concerned that it would be too hot, but with using half it turned out to be just right.For desert (very unusual for us) I made lychee and orange sorbet. This was absolutely delicious, served with our freshly picked oranges that had been segmented and sitting in their own juice for a couple of hours. I only made half the recipe and it was more than enough for the four of us. We still have some in the freezer for when I need a hit. This would have to be one of the easiest and lightest of deserts I have ever made. It was perfect for finishing off the chinese style  dishes and cleansing the pallette.Today I bottled my Kombucha, I added ginger to 2 bottles and left one plain. I believe this will now do a 2nd fermentation in the bottle resulting in a bubbly beverage. Fingers crossed. I made a fresh batch with the scoby and a fresh batch of sweet black tea. Like the reflection on the bottles!I love my soda stream,  I have had one since they were first released and came with small glass bottles. I love the concept and my main reason for using one is to avoid all the plastic bottles soda water comes in. We usually use fresh fruit or lime cordial that you can buy in glass bottles for flavouring. I wasn’t really happy when I read this on the side of one of their new style bottles. Why on earth would these have such a short shelf life? Some research is called for here, but I suspect I might be going back to an old fashioned soda syphon that come with metal gas bombs and a steel carbonation chamber. I’m working on getting better results with baking bread in my new oven but I must say, the Sunbeam Pizza Bake N Grill is hard to match! Still a way to go but it does taste great.My capacola is doing what it should be doing. Not smelly, no blowflies, no mould and it actually smells wonderful. I’ll watch the conditions carefully and if it starts to warm up I’ll take it our daughters house which has a very cool and humid underfloor area.We’ve been picking oranges and amazingly Rene has been laying eggs. She is over 4 years old and we thought she’d lost it but it appears we were wrong. This equates to pretty much one a day. I’m impressed!

IMK and Boonderoo’s kitchen

What a month it’s been! Open garden day which was a huge success. Our reno has officially begun (yes that means a kitchen is on the horizon), a wonderful day spent with friends on a walk and picnic at Morwell National Park. A new car because Mr ATMT had to hand in the company vehicle when he accepted an early retirement package. A trip to Greece and Turkey booked and a sensational weekend at Boonderoo farm doing a sourdough workshop. Bare with me, it could be long-winded! Thanks to Celia at Fig Jam and Lime Cordial for helping everyone share their kitchens.

First In My Kitchen are some beautiful ginger nut biscuits I made from Glenda over at Passionfruit Garden’s recipe. They are wonderful, definitely eat with caution if your choppers are dodgy!These are presented on my new little Spode Italian serving plate. Great size for when there are just a couple of you. Big plate =  big eating!

For the picnic we went on, I made a platter of Moroccan eggs (basically scotch eggs with some middle eastern spices), potato, kale, feta and chilli rolls, pork rillette, baguette and some nibbles. This went down very well.

The highlight for me this month was the opportunity to spend a weekend with some lovely, like-minded people at Boonderoo Farm on a sourdough bread making workshop. We worked hard for two full days, learned lots, got a bit antsy about understanding bakers percentages (well I did), ate the most amazing food and generally had a ball. Thomas & Gabi Moritz live on a 600 acre farm in the King Valley. They are self-sufficient, organic farmers, use permaculture practices, are completely off grid and make sourdough which is sold at several local markets. Thomas is a guru regarding wood fired ovens and has built many masonry ovens along with Alan Scott who is considered to be the doyen of brick masonry ovens. The hospitality they shared and the knowledge they imparted is impressive indeed. Thanks Thomas & Gabi, I appreciate you sharing your time and expertise immensely. Here is a sequence of a few things we covered.

A view to the rocky mountain from a mud brick hut.

Our first batch of 100% whole-wheat, freshly ground wheat dough.

Testing for the window pane in the dough. This tells whether or not kneading is sufficient to develop the gluten in the flour.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All hands on deck mixing dough here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first of our loaves out of the oven. Topped with poppy-seed and pumpkin seeds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sharing lunch outside.

Back to work, that’s a lot of baskets to fill!

Dinner Saturday night were some sensational pizzas.

Sourdough herb sticks with freshly picked herbs.

Thomas explaining how we should load the oven. Almost worked!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some cheeky bugger stole my camera and took this shot! Peter?

Fresh pitta sourdough to go with the most amazing lunch prepared by Gabi, her daughter and some of their woofing friends. Stunning!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And of course, the obligatory group shot. Not sure what’s going on with me but that’s three times lately I’ve agreed to being in a photo!

This is a sample of some of the breads we brought home. The strudel with nashi pear, sultana soaked in rum and spices was a knockout!

Finally, in my kitchen is almost, an Italian. The lovely Francesca from Almost Italian was nice enough to call in on her way to the coast. What a delight it was meeting a fellow IMK blogger. We have lots of similarities including photos going onto our blogs. But here we are, both in my kitchen. I really think she was secretly a little bit jealous of my toy oven!

The Blues Sisters