Blessed rains and a stylish weekend

Today the rains have finally arrived.  Those much needed and much loved soaking rains that usually arrive in autumn to break the dry summer are finally here. Welcome rain!

I had the most fun weekend working on a photo shoot for SBS Feast magazine's September and October issues.  This is a picture of a set up in progress.  I really love doing food styling and want to do more.  I'm currently putting a little portfolio together to showcase some of the work I've done to date.  I will show you when it's finished.

Meanwhile, with the forecast for rain all week, out in the weather is a hardworking wwoofer from Japan getting some jobs done in the garden bless her.  This week I see gyoza and okonomiyaki on the menu!  Pass the kwepie mayo please.

What's happening in your week?   What's on the menu at your place?

High in the hills...

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.

late autumn in the garden

There's something very satisfying about working in the garden at this time of year.  The end of autumn means it's time for a big tidy up in the patch and it's satisfying because the results can be seen immediately.  Barrow loads of finished plants are piled onto the compost heap and scrappy growth cut back to create a garden that, whilst not the lush picture of fecundity of spring and summer, is a clean and tidy (ish) slate to start planting and sowing again.


Yesterday, the weather was balmy and I ripped out the last of the withered tomato plants and the remarkably still happy tomatillos.

I'm pretty stoked with this crop of tomatillos.  All self seeded from plants I grew from Paulette the season before.  I'll be making lots of salsa from these tangy treats.  And the last of the green tomatoes will sit on the window sill to begrudgingly turn red. Those guys are best slowly roasted with olive oil and oregano to draw out any lingering flavour.






Wooden stakes are pulled out and damp ends left to dry out in the sun.  The beds are weeded and given a jolly good digging over with compost and manure.  Then raked over to create that lovely fine tilth ready for sowing broad beans, spinach and mustard greens.

Meanwhile weeds, ones like nettle and dock, are thrown into a bucket along with some comfrey leaves.  These special weeds are known as dynamic accumulators, meaning they suck up certain nutrients out of the soil and store them in their leaves.  

Too good to waste, I throw them into a large bucket add some water to make weed tea.  In a few weeks I'll have a really stinky brew to dilute and feed the garden, with the sludge added to the compost pile, to be dug into the soil next autumn.  When I'll be out doing these same satisfying chores again next year.

Have you been out in the garden lately?  Do you fancy a cup of weed tea?

Apple scrumping

The temperature has been steadily dropping over these last days of autumn, and today the mercury didn't reach double figures, languishing around the eight degree mark. With winter on the doorstep, it's perfect weather for curling up in front of the fire.  But the lure of one last fruit picking adventure was too hard to resist.  Especially one as clandestine as scrumping, that is fruit looting, or ahem, stealing apples off the trees without permission from the owner.



Up into the hills and along an old dirt road stands an overgrown abandoned apple orchard.  There were hundreds of kilos of apples rotting on the ground, with plenty more still stubbornly clinging to the gnarly, moss covered trees.  Despite the steep hills, thick grass and lots of brambles we had to battle to get in there, the prize of biting into those cold apples in that fresh mountain air was utterly delightful.  


We picked at least 20 kilos of granny smith's and tiny golden delicious, and would have picked more if we could reach the higher apples. We hauled our heavy baskets back down the road, whilst we stuffed our faces with crunchy sweet apples.

Tomorrow I'll make apple sauce, apple jelly and apple butter with the loot.

Apple scrumping, stealing perhaps, but a late autumn activity of the very best kind.