Almost a year ago now, on a blustery morning last autumn, my neighbour George stopped by to deliver 30 litres of fresh apple juice. He'd just crushed it himself, made from a ute load of golden delicious apples picked from a mate's old tree.
Showing posts with label friends. Show all posts
Showing posts with label friends. Show all posts
Almost a year ago now, on a blustery morning last autumn, my neighbour George stopped by to deliver 30 litres of fresh apple juice. He'd just crushed it himself, made from a ute load of golden delicious apples picked from a mate's old tree.
The third and final day of our Behind The Scenery tour of southern Tasmania with Katie Quinn Davis saw us travelling around my own home neighbourhood, the glorious Huon Valley. A food lovers paradise, it's difficult to pack in the best of the Huon in just one day...but we gave it our best shot.
Kicking off with a coffee at the Cat's Tongue Chocolatiers in downtown Huonville, (in a part of town now known by some of the locals as SoHu). Andy's little jewel of a chocolate shop is only open Friday to Sunday with a delicious menu including pumpkin pie, fancy lemon tarts, killer waffles and ever changing specials for lunch like fried baccala or matzo soup. Andy makes everything from scratch including amazing ice-cream and great coffee too. We ducked in next door to visit Bron at her stylish shop Twigs and Daisy Chains, a modern gift shop with lovely cushions, soaps and candles and contemporary locally made pretties.
I've been having a play with my new camera lens - this one - which is a huge a proper photographers one, and the photos are amazing. Here's our weekend in pictures, the first ones using my new lens.
1. My favourite old shed, built right on the water. I would love to live here. It's like a giant houseboat.
2. Messy spring garden with lots of flowers, and a naughty chook that escaped from the pen.
3. It's finally warm enough to cook outside and we gave the campfire a good work out. Here are Elsa's vegetarian "sausages" also known as grilled asparagus. Sadly the other snags at the back cooked a bit too quickly.
4. I can't take enough photos of the lovely sage flowers growing by the back door, but this time I managed to capture a bee in flight!
5. A new mobile phone for the children, they made it themselves and to be honest the coverage is pretty good for around here.
6. Happy campers huddled around the barbie at Sunday's River's Table Event - the second in the series that was a bit of a wet and wild day but delicious nonetheless. More photos here
I hope your weekend was filled with good things too.
I can think of no better way to kick off winter than a day spent with good friends, good food and an old gramophone high in the hills. There may have been bread, cheese and apple paste along with a little blueberry port too. And laughter of course, lots and lots of laughter.
I was so very excited when Luisa Brimble asked me to write a story for her new project Alphabet Family Journal. And I jumped at the chance to write about three very inspiring families who live in the Huon Valley.
On the weekend super ace photographer Jonathan Wherrett shot the first family, a gorgeous young couple who moved to Tasmania seeking Land, Adventure and Opportunity. I think they've found all three. You'll have to wait until Issue A arrives to find out more. In the meantime, here are my shots of those clever peeps at work.
Always nice to have a clean kitchen. With floors scrubbed and benches cleared away, it's worth taking a photo or two. Although, it didn't look like this for very long. Because yesterday we worked on a photo shoot in the kitchen, and as you can see, it gets rather untidy during the process.
But working from home is always great, (I will show you the results when they're published in a few months) there is so much to learn, with the added bonus of a fridge filled with delicious things to eat.
Today the kitchen is back to normal, a bit messy and cluttered, but at least I can spend some time in the garden, instead of cooking dinner.
With a break for afternoon tea of course.
Today is another tomato story. The last for the season I should think. This morning, after a quick ride on my gorgeous new Mothers' Day present, we packed a picnic and headed to the coast. Our destination :: the gorgeous blueberry farm where our tomato patch was planted all those months ago. Our mission :: pick all the remaining green tomatoes.
Despite ambitions dreams, it wasn't a great crop this year, they got off to a slow start, and there wasn't nearly enough tomatoes to preserve. We kept hoping they would ripen, but today we called it, time to call it a day for those tomato plants.
First though, a delicious picnic that included rooster salad and rhubarb cake, sitting under the vibrant deep red blueberry bushes. Then we stripped the sad scraggly tomato plants and filled lots of buckets, about 20 kilos was the end tally, if only they were red! Work finished, we headed to the little beach across the road to enjoy the lingering late autumn sun.
We'll lay those hard green tomatoes out in a warm sunny spot and hope they will continue to ripen, those that don't will make green tomato jam or green tomato pickle.
Still a little work to do, so I guess it's not really the end of the tomato story at all.
"Make sure you get off the island regularly" was the advice I was given when I first moved to Tasmania. "You go a bit stir crazy otherwise." But I'm afraid it's advice I haven't really heeded. Mostly due to financial reasons. And because I love it here, I don't get that feeling of isolation that perhaps others might.
But get off the island I did last week. In the eight years since we've been here, it was the first time I've left Tasmania without the family to do something fun. I headed off to Melbourne, a town I hardly know, to see some of the Food and Wine Festival, to eat delicious food and hang out with good friends.
I packed a lot into the weekend, but I wish had I time for so much more. There's a lot to love. Of the many highlights, the stand outs were a trip to the People's Market in Collingwood (crab sandwiches!), dinner at Movida (jamon iberico!), a session at the Theatre of Ideas (inspiring!), supping at the Urban Coffee Farm (stimulating!) and digging the Pop Up Patch (so crate!). I loved seeing people growing their own food and re-using discarded objects to create something beautiful and useful.
But best of all, was hanging out with this sweet lady and meeting this crafty lady. The best.
It was hot, it was big, it was fun.
I now have rather a crush on Melbourne......maybe I do need to start getting off the island a little more regularly....
Three of my favourite photos that Kate Berry took on her visit. I'm so in love with these photos. Kate is such a gifted photographer. I'm so thrilled Kate, you are so clever. Thank you so much. x
See more of Kate's gorgeousness here.
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cute,
dreams,
elsa,
family,
friends,
good things,
hugo,
love
Taking over the kitchen
cooking, friends, good things, holidays, Kitchen, markets, real food, tasmania
I love it when guests take over the kitchen. I really do. I love the sharing and talking, the tasting and the excitement of eating something new when people come in the kitchen and cook.
On the weekend there was plenty of that. Foraged mussels steamed with garlic from the garden, just-caught fish, steamed and stirred through just-picked garlic scape soup. Slow roasted juicy pork ribs from a friend's pig and fresh new pink eyes fried crispy in a pan, washed down with cider from down the road and gin from across the peninsula. Food we had grown, caught, foraged ourselves, or knew who did, was prepared, shared and eaten. It doesn't get any better than that. I love that.
There was also a dog named Henry, I think I loved him the most.
On Sunday, with the boys at home feeling poorly, Elsa and I hit the road to visit friends. Afternoon tea was served on the verandah, but I couldn't help but wander through the amazing garden, a working garden, an inspiring garden and take a hundreds of snaps.
Motivated by clever border plantings, espailered fruit trees and rows of flowers for cutting, I spent the evening dreaming and planning on how I could achieve a garden as beautiful as this one.
Sometimes I get frustrated that I don't get things done fast enough in the garden. For every one job that is crossed off the top of the to-do list, another three appear at the bottom. I take great comfort visiting gardens like this, a work in project of some forty odd years, encouraged by the fact that I'm still on track time wise...
