By the sea shore

Scenes from our camping trip to the sea shore :: Tasmanian style. Too cold for swimming, there were plenty of sand dunes to play on and warm lagoons to splash in to keep the children busy.  Sometimes windy, sometimes sunny but never cold, the weather was perfect. We're home feeling sandy, smokey, tired and happy.

Goodbye, hello

After 18 months of Sundays, we've finished up our stall at the Farmers Market.  It has been a great market to be involved in and we've made some lovely friends, but it's time to move on.

Remember we did a day at Salamanca recently?  Well, as it turns out, Ross and Matthew don't need their stall anymore, as they now have a gorgeous little food store in Salamanca open every day.   At the same time, our application for a spot at Salamanca was approved so it all worked rather nicely.  For the next month or so, we'll be there every Saturday, and during the summer we will take turns with some other Bruny Island producers.  So we will get a few weekends off.  Hooray!

And while we are a little sad to say goodbye to the Farmers Market, I have no regrets that it was the right decision when I told Elsa that I would be home on Sundays.  The look on her face as she realised that we could have every Sunday together told me instantly that it's the right move.  It made me realise how kids go along with things, even though they may not like it, and that perhaps me working every weekend was having more of an impact on them than I thought.

So, we'll be at Salamanca Markets every Saturday for a while, out the front of Fresh Fruit Market and next to Harvest Feast, sharing with Bruny Island Cheese and Anne's delicious tracklement stall.

However, sharing a stall with Bruny Island Cheese is going to be a huge test of my will power.  Check out this gorgeous new cheese, Pressings, ahem, I did have one or two little tastes of that one....

Winter on the farm

Remember a while back I mentioned an exciting project I'd been working on?  It's finally out and it's totally lovely. A cookbook called Winter on the Farm.  It's such an amazing feeling to see a project that you've worked on appear in a real, live, actual book.  It's like there's a little bit of me in this book.  There's photos of all the cakes and biscuits and soups, pies, tarts and risotto that I cooked.  There's jam jars and spoons and cake plates from my very own cupboard.  And there's even a recipe credited to me.  That I'm quietly chuffed about. Yay me!

But what I love most about this book is the beautiful photographs that Alan Benson has taken of the valley throughout this book.  He's perfectly captured the chilling grey beauty of winter in my home. The fog, the frost, the mud, the cold and those wonderful bare winter trees.  But Matthew's food makes you feel so warm and cosy, wrapped up inside it's the perfect foil for these chilly winter days.

For me,  this book really is heartwarming food in the truest sense.  And if you want to read more about our valley, then you must read Steve's beautiful words here.

Rainy days

I love rainy days.  Round here it's pouring.  I think the river will burst its banks and we'll be cut off from town. No matter. We're back from the library with a pile of books and we're nice and dry inside, cosying up just fine.

Yesterday we were so excited to be given an entire frame of honey from a friend's hive.  One day our friend is going to give us a hive of our very own.  I can't wait!  The frame is very heavy, and we should get over a kilo of honey.  We cut the top off the comb with a hot knife and let the honey drain into a bowl. It is very runny and quite delicious.

While we wait there's lots cups of tea and finger knitting.  Cute pups by the fire and a new nest of pie dishes. It's a pie kind of day. Shepherds pie and apple pie for dinner tonight me thinks.  Ahh rainy days. I love rainy days.