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Chai chocolate chip biscuits

Don't you just love it when new recipes hit your email inbox. Immediately I am transported (read distracted) into the kitchen, imagining new dishes to try my hand at cooking, inspired by seasonal flavours, and expanding my skills. If a recipe title includes the word chai, it grabs my attention straight away. It is the beginning of spring, yet chai holds its allure. A recipe for Chai chocolate chip biscuits posted by ABC Life last Wednesday had me reaching for my phone to make a shopping list and I made the biscuits on Sunday. The recipe author Thalia Ho, of Butter and Brioche food blog, introduced me to a new technique called pan banging, literally banging the baking sheet against the oven rack several times during cooking to help the biscuit dough spread during baking. For the first time I used a small ice-cream scoop to measure out the biscuit dough, a tip I picked up from customers buying ice-cream scoops in our shop, resulting in eye-pleasing, uniform sized biscuits.

Reducing electricity bills

Reducing electricity bills is not a topic I would usually cover on our shop blog.  In the past two months there have been two free State Government energy education workshops in Tamworth, Demystifying Energy for Households, and Introduction to Energy Management and I went along to boost my energy literacy. No one likes opening up an electricity bill and feeling deflated to spend a large chunk of money, only to forget about conserving energy until the next bill. In line with the waste hierachy Reduce, Reuse, Recycle we try to be conscious of simple energy conservation, turning off lights when we aren't using rooms, installing heavy drapes to keep out the winter cold and shading western windows from summer heat, but now we are ramping up our knowledge a notch. We're taking steps to install solar to power efficient heating and cooling, and improve the comfort levels of our 125-year-old shop building.

Cooking with honey

Pear, fig and nut loaf with black leaf and ginger tea

A drizzly day always inspires me to turn the oven on and bake, helping to warm the house, fill it with comforting smells, and have a warm, delicious cake to share with my family. It is the last week of school in NSW, so it has the additional bonus of providing a nutrient dense lunchbox filler for our boys' recess. With a folder full of recipes I have collected over nearly three decades, it's also a welcome opportunity to try a new recipe that I have been wanting to make for a long time. Cakes with fruit, nuts, and spices always appeal to me, so a Pear, date and hazelnut recipe from The Sydney Morning Herald (June 19, 2007) beckoned to be made. Determined not to leave our eight acres on this particular day, I substituted ingredients, making it a Pear, fig and nut loaf. With the boys at school, come time for a cup of tea I toasted a slice of loaf and spread it with butter for a warming afternoon tea. With Duncan cutting a couple of slices as well, when our son arrived home from school he asked, "Where has all the cake gone?" We'll just have to make this recipe again.

Talking Threads: clothes with history

Pumpkin fruitcake

Carrot cake with chai spices and honey mascapone cream

The call went out on Messenger for help with catering for more than 20 schools visiting our town for a Zone Cross Country at the Golf Course and Bowling Club. This started a baking frenzy among Nundle Public School parents, anticipating about 700 runners and their families in our town of 300 people. Within minutes replies came through offering cupcakes, muesli and fruit biscuits, savoury cheese and vegemite scrolls, blueberry muffins, and soup. Even friends without children at the school donated baking, including pies and sausage rolls from Jenkins Street Guesthouse. I used the opportunity to flick through my collection of recipes and baked a recipe I had saved from a June, 2014 Home Beautiful, for Spiced chai carrot cake with honey mascarpone cream. It was a selection of recipes from Eleanor Ozich's My Petite Kitchen Cookbook (Murdoch Books). At the top of the recipe is a quote from Eleanor Ozich, "I particularly love making this cake in the colder months."

Our autumn garden in Country Style

Duncan and I had the opportunity to reflect on our autumn garden at Nundle in April @countrystylemag's 'In the garden' by Georgina Reid of @theplanthunter. Echoing the story, I've picked our medlars and crabapples for making jelly/paste to serve with pork or poultry. The medlars are softening, bletting, before making the medlar jelly. Our autumn garden looks sub-ideal right now (many of the photographs in this post are from our archive). Our district is in drought, with some landholders reporting the worst water situation in 18 years. Others have seen springs dry up for the first time in living memory. Trucks loaded with hay come into Nundle past the shop daily, and trucks loaded with cattle leave weekly. However, as I compile this blog post it is raining. Soft, slow, drizzling rain that will help grow feed, and lower temperatures and demand for stock water. Here's an extended version of our answers to Georgina's questions about our autumn garden.

Promoting regional events

Our town of Nundle, in New England North West NSW, is coming into its peak event season, autumn. We have three major events within three months, Nundle Country Picnic on Sunday, March 11, Nundle Go For Gold Chinese Easter Festival on Saturday March 31 and Sunday April 1, and the Great Nundle Dog Race on Sunday, May 6. Local businesswoman Megan Carberry is holding a Nundle Scrapbooking Retreat on Friday, March 9 to Sunday, March 11 and asked me for advice on promoting her event. I thought this might be an opportunity to share ideas with a wider audience.

Fig and almond friand slice

It was the last day of the school holidays for our boys today, but I went to school representing our Parents & Citizens Association at a Staff Development Day on Play is the Way, a games-based behaviour education program developed by Western Australian Wilson McCaskill. Our P&C catered for the 47 teachers, support staff and parents attending the workshop from north west schools at Premer, Attunga, Woolomin, Dungowan, Moonbi, Tintinhull, Inverell, and Nundle. I made a Fig and almond friand slice to contribute to the morning tea. The recipe, from Australian House and Garden, called for dried figs, but it would work equally well with fresh figs. The wild fig tree in our neighbours paddock is covered in figs, however they are still green and hard. I am hoping they will ripen. The Fig and almond friand slice was delicious, with a definite nod to friand nutty flavour and airy texture. I was happy watching it disappear off the baking tray when we mingled for morning tea.