Renovation wrap-up
‘Why didn’t you just bulldoze it?’ is a question we’ve been asked more than once about the renovation of our 70-year-old timber house at Nundle, in the Upper Peel Valley of north west NSW. We did ask both our draftsman and builder, ‘Should we knock it down?’ Their advice was that the frame of the house was solid and we could work with what we had, rather than build new. Making use of existing available materials, and hopefully saving money made sense as well. It also appealed to history. Our family has memories in these walls where we’ve raised children, had family celebrations and nurtured daily routines. Knocking the house down seemed like an insult to those stories.
View full article →Pumpkin patch to plate
There is no shortage of pumpkins in our life. Pumpkin vines has been happily reaching their tendrils across our vegetable garden over the summer and autumn. Duncan consulted a 1989 edition of Peter Cundall's Seasonal Tasks for the Practical Australian Gardener for the best time to cut the pumpkins off the vine, covering the fruit with heavy hessian sacks until the frost started to blacken the leaves. Thanks to the obscuring kikuyu and shading leaves, when Duncan cut the pumpkins and stacked them on our verandah this month, even he was surprised by the bounty.
View full article →Race against the first frost to pick red and green tomatoes
We watch the Bureau of Meteorology app for warnings of frost and when the forecast is for minimum temperatures below 5 C that's close enough to strip the tomato vines of remaining red and green tomatoes. It's a repetitive task that I strangely enjoy, hunting for viable firm tomatoes that don't have insect or weather damage. If they are damaged they are tossed aside to be cleaned up by the chooks.
View full article →Making parmesan cheese biscuits for Nundle Book Group
Nundle Book Group's monthly gathering is motivation to make Sophie Hansen’s Parmesan cheese biscuits from Local is Lovely. With the sharpness of the parmesan and kick of cayenne pepper they are the perfect snack to have with drinks, add to a chatter platter, or package as a gift. Our book group enjoyed them eaten on their own, but you could experiment topping with more cheese or tapenade. Please give them a try and even follow Sophie's advice and make the dough well in advance so you just have to slice and cook when you need the biscuits. How appropriate that Sophie is an avid reader, co-hosting the podcast @somethingtoeat_somethingtoread with Germaine Leece.
View full article →Autumn's golden bounty in baked quinces topping Nadine Ingram's chocolate cake
We have celebrated three family birthdays in the last six weeks. As a result I've been getting back into cake making and enjoying exploring a Nadine Ingram rabbit hole. We gave Isabelle the Flour and Stone baker Nadine's book 'Love Crumbs' for her birthday and each recipe is a beautifully written story about the ingredients, flavours, textures, and processes. It is a next level recipe book that you can enjoy for the writing, photography and of course baking.
View full article →Locally made leatherwork by Thabo Alberts back in store
For decades Thabo Alberts has been crafting leather. Thabo cuts all the leather using a 28-year-old pocket knife and stitches it by hand in his workshop on the grazing property near Nundle where he lives. Some of the leather that Thabo uses is from recycled polo saddle flaps and has the worn patina and softness that only use and care can achieve.
View full article →Preserving summer apricots for winter breakfasts
It feels good to be writing '1/25' with a permanent marker on the jars of the first batch of preserved apricots for the New Year. While not a great yield due to fruit fly, 10 bottles, it's still 'three weeks of breakfast fruit, only 49 to go' as Duncan sees it. We usually work our way through bottled apricots, plums, apple, and pear throughout the year. Every summer before bottling our first fruit I re-read some of our go-to references, including hand me downs from mum and dad, 1980s articles saved from The Land and Hobbyfarmer magazine. A game changer was a gift of the 1953 nineteenth revised edition of 'Fowler's method of bottling fruits and vegetables' by Joseph Fowler when managing director of Fowlers Vacola Manufacturing Co Ltd. This small book recommends the best sized bottles for different fruit and describes how to pack fruit and vegetables to achieve a 'pleasing result' when seeing bottled fruit through the glass. When I started following Fowler's instructions Duncan described my bottled fruit as 'CWA-worthy,' the highest compliment you can pay a preserver.
View full article →Rhubarb and Citrus Frangipane Tart
Our spring garden/summer harvest is taking shape with Duncan's structures of shade tunnels, stakes, trellises and netting evolving almost daily. Fruit is forming o the trees and we will be eating and preserving plums in no time. Concealed underneath apple trees at the northern end of the vegetable garden closest to our house is a planting of rhubarb, a gift from dad years ago. Spotting the crimson rhubarb stalks underneath the apple foliage was the motivation to make Rhubarb and Citrus Frangipane Tart. Frangipane Tart, made with a French almond filling, is such a standby for using fresh or preserved fruit. Tarts are lovely to make and share when you'd like to take something to a gathering because they have a sense of occasion and can be sliced to go a long way. I've made Frangipane Tarts in large round and rectangular pans, as well as small individual round pie dishes, depending on the shape of the fruit you're using and the number of servings needed. You can substitute pear, apple, stonefruit or berries. Enjoy making Rhubarb and Citrus Frangipane Tart and sharing it with friends and family.
View full article →The Farmer's Wife shares farm stories, helpful lists, and delicious recipes
The Farmoir is one of my favourite literary genres and Helen Rebanks' 'The Farmer's Wife' has been added to our cookbook shelf with its Helpful Lists from Pantry Staples and Favourite Cookbooks, to Meals for When I'm in Survival Mode, and more than 60 recipes. The Rebanks' story will be familiar to those who have read James Rebanks' 'The Shepherd's Life' and 'English Pastoral.' It is generous of Helen to share her experience of their farm, family, home and community in the Lakes District of England. As you can imagine, it is not all bucolic bliss and gives the reader insight into the realities of putting food on the table, whether it's as farmers or parents.
View full article →The Dinner Party at Windy Station
The anticipation of a golden evening at The Dinner Party at Windy Station starts long before passing through the Windy Station gates. The awe of driving through the Liverpool Plains at sunset, past expansive paddocks of bright yellow canola, grazing cattle, and large irrigation rigs, fills you with pride that this is one of the most productive food growing regions in Australia. Arriving at the 24,000-hectare property Windy Station the big agriculture theme continues, seeing the extraordinary Windy Woolshed where workers sheared 60,000 sheep when it was built in 1901. The Dinner Party at Windy Station is the first of a calendar of biannual events to bring visitors to the Liverpool Plains to experience the incredible landscape, heritage, and local, seasonal food. Windy Station agritourism manager Clare Lee brings together like minded foodies to give guests a memorable destination dining experience. Last night’s The Dinner Party at Windy Station grouped food writer, Sophie Hansen, chef Cathy Armstrong, and In Two Minds winemaker Kate Day to toast “food as a backdrop to connection.”
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