Cinnamon apple almond cake
With a cool easterly blowing off the Great Dividing Range behind our house, a baking window appears between January heat waves, and temperatures at Nundle in the high 30s (40C+ in other areas of south eastern Australia). I have almost finished an online Kids Gut Health Masterclass and I am keen to put some of my learning to work, making a healthy school holiday snack for our boys. Focussing on wholefoods, Anthia Koullouros's book I am food is an excellent companion to the Kids' Gut Health Masterclass. I flick through it looking for inspiration and my eyes fall on the Cinnamon apple almond cake
View full article →Prune and oat slice
This Prune and Oat Slice is an absolute winner in lunch boxes. Whenever I try something new I am inevitably disappointed with boomerangs. You know, the lunch box contents that come home uneaten. Not this slice, 100% success rate. Our boys have two weeks left of school and if like me, the inspiration for lunch boxes wanes at this time of year, give this recipe a go. As a bonus its ingredients are mainly pantry staples, butter, caster sugar, plain flour, baking powder, oats, and golden syrup. And if you don't have prunes in the cupboard, substitute another dried fruit or softened fresh fruit. If you'd like to experiment with the texture you could substitute wholemeal plain flour, or even buckwheat or brown rice flour for the plain flour, and rapadura sugar for the caster sugar. Next time I might try adding cinnamon and ginger to the base and crumble too. Duncan enjoyed it heated with a dollop of ice cream for dessert.
View full article →Banana and cashew nut bread (just don't mention banana)
Rather than toss bananas "on the turn" into the chook bucket, they are destined for Banana and cashew nut bread. Just don't tell our eldest son...who doesn't eat bananas. Even though he ate them as a baby and a toddler, he developed a dislike for the smell and texture of bananas, and at different times in his life hasn't even been able to stay in the same room as someone eating a banana. Now when bananas are squished beyond recognition and baked with butter, brown sugar, eggs and flour, they become extremely palatable for him. We just call it butter cake, with a knowing look between the parents.
View full article →Making curds and whey
If you like the flavour and texture of homemade yoghurt and labne, you might like to have a go at making curds and whey. I am reading Anthia Koullouros's book 'I am Food' and this week followed her instructions for separating curds and whey. It's a simple process, starting with one litre of high quality, full fat milk, unhomogenised if possible. We are lucky our local grocer sells Peel Valley Milk's Gold Top Milk, from a dairy just 20 minutes drive away. It is unhomogenised and when you open the screw top lid there is a lovely layer of cream to spoon out.
View full article →Shortbread for homemade Christmas gifts
A collection of antique Scottish hand carved shortbread moulds sitting on our kitchen dresser motivated me to experiment with making shortbread for homemade Christmas gifts. I'd given the moulds to my father-in-law Terry for Christmas many years ago, and after his passing they were handed onto me. Shortbread is a favourite of our youngest son and I knew he would enjoy a few pieces of shortbread in his school lunch box. I love that you can Google the name of a chef you trust, in this case Anneka Manning, and the dish you want to make, shortbread, and a recipe appears. For the first batch I made Anneka's recipe and for the second batch I added almond meal, after reading Gerda Foster's recipe in A Year of Slow Food, to see what difference it made (I like the addition of the almond flavour).
View full article →Christmas cake kicks off Festival of Christmas Baking 2017
With the calendar turning over to November it's suddenly appropriate to make Christmas cake and kick off our personal Festival of Christmas Baking 2017. If you'd like to bake along, I'll share the recipes for our Christmas baking here. There are so many recipes to choose from to build anticipation for Christmas Day, take along to end of year functions, and include in your family traditions. You really have to start in November to work your way through them.
View full article →Nine decades of dairying ends for Nundle Hills
This week Nundle will lose an icon of its agricultural landscape and a veteran of the dairy industry when Derek Hill sells the last of the dairy herd on Bukit Padang, a dairy established his father, Edwin Pritchard Hill, at Bowling Alley Point in 1930. The herd of black and white Friesians, jerseys, and Aussie Red dairy cows won’t amble up from the Peel River flat pastures to the dairy twice a day, the glow of dairy lights won’t be a comforting fixture for early morning commuters, and milk trucks won’t make their way along the Nundle Road before turning into the dairy driveway. Derek, who is nearly 85-years-old, and has lived on Bukit Padang for most of his life, says the intrusion of Chaffey Dam and the loss of a further 24-hectares for storage following its expansion, and the stress of maintaining staff stability, contributed to closing the 87-year-old business. Derek says he has no regrets about closing the dairy and the family will remain on the 629-hectare property and run a 200-head breeder beef herd.
View full article →Spring cleaning with Rhonda Hetzel
October is the month for spring cleaning, according to our friend, and simple living author and blogger, Rhonda Hetzel. We met Rhonda through her writing in Slow magazine, and regularly reference her 2012 book 'Down to Earth' for natural cleaning materials and methods, and kitchen garden recipes. Rhonda found herself a source of frugality and sustainability knowledge after retiring early as a journalist and technical writer to live on the Sunshine Coast with husband Hanno and chronicling their grow-your-own, do-it-yourself skills and habits. We’ve been advertising on Rhonda’s blog, now in its 11th year, for several years and she even visited our store. With a healthy dose of spring energy resulting in random decluttering and repairs, I thought it was time to talk to Rhonda about how she approaches spring cleaning methodically.
View full article →Carrot cupcakes for a picnic morning tea
We met our friends Derek and Kirrily Blomfield and their sons Patrick and Reilly for a walk to kick start the spring school holidays on their property, "Colorado", at Caroona on the Liverpool Plains, NSW. Kirrily suggested I bring morning tea and she would provide lunch. So thinking of something that would travel well, I cooked an old favourite, Carrot cupcakes by Matthew Evans.
View full article →CWA Awareness Week celebrates women in small business
Social media is also an opportunity to find your tribe and be social. For me that’s foodies, photographers, writers, retailers, country people, Destination Tamworth (#tamworthnsw @tamworthnsw), Tamworth regional businesses, and events. It has lead to opportunities to teach writing at workshops, work on cookbooks, and form interesting connections. You never know who’s watching. The Australian Women’s Weekly included me in a story on Country women in the online sphere, Sunrise presenter Edwina Bartholomew is a great fan and posted a boomerang of a boot jack, viewed 24,000 times, for a while I was on ABC New England North West talking to Anna Moulder about food, and last year after writing a story on Tamworth for Country Style I took over the Country Style Instagram account for a week, posting twice a day.
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