BLOG: White Enamel Pie Dish

Bring Christmas spice scents into your kitchen

If you're looking for a simple recipe to make and package for friends for homemade Christmas gifts, or to take to a gathering try making a batch of Pfeffernusse. While reading Matthew Evans 'Summer on Fat Pig Farm' I came across a recipe for Spiced biscuits, described as 'Almost like a Pfeffernusse'. This lead me on a search to find out what Pfeffernusse is and a morning of biscuit making. With ground cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and cloves the mixing and baking really does bring Christmas spice scents into your kitchen. It is very satisfying rolling the smooth biscuit dough into small balls, and once cooked and cooled they had a lovely chewy texture and of course the delicious spice flavour. 

Sharing the #buyfromthebush love

Christmas has come early to the bush this year in the form of simple but effective social media campaigns, #buyfromthebush and #buyregional. This is an immediate leg up for country online retailers like ourselves, who by simply adding the hashtags #buyfromthebush and #buyregional to our social media posts, or registering on the NSW Government #buyregional online hub, are linked with potential urban customers who would like to support regional communities facing their third year of drought this Christmas.

Home butchering fills the freezer with lamb

Duncan has added home butchering to his skill set. After helping friends Gibbo and the Worleys butchering home grown lamb, and picking up tips like wiping the carcass with lemon and herbs, he has been butchering our own lamb for about 12 months. At first he was limited to hanging the carcass in our shed (winter only), but after buying a tall fridge he now has the flexibility of hanging a carcass at a consistent temperature and can home butcher year-round. Our knife wholesalers, Tawonga, are a source of butchering tools, a New Zealand made saw, skinner, boner, and knife.

Walnut and Tarwarri Lemon Syrup Cake

Back at the house Teree tells me to take some lemons from June's renowned prolific producing lemon tree. I remember a recipe for Walnut and Lemon Syrup Cake and give it a go, naming it Walnut and Tarwarri Lemon Syrup Cake. It involves boiling the lemons until soft for about an hour, before processing the lemons with eggs and syrup to create a batter to add to the walnut meal and bicarbonate of soda. The result is a light, gluten free, nutty textured cake, and a deliciously tangy lemon syrup with subtle undercurrents of cloves, cardamom and cinnamon. At the end of the week I tell Teree about the cake, "I'm going to miss that tree, the lemons are amazing," she says.

Gathering memories for Heritage Festival

In preparation for a presentation I was giving for Tamworth Regional Heritage Festival, I interviewed the last McClelland to own our shop, Tony McClelland, aged 80. Tony’s earliest memory of the old store is when he was about eight, being with his grandfather Bill McClelland dressed for work in a suit. Odgers and McClelland Exchange Stores was started by William McClelland and John Odgers in the 1890s, about 40 years after gold was discovered at Hanging Rock. The partnership exchanged gold for credit at the store to purchase goods. It was a general merchants selling all the basics that people needed. Goods like potatoes, sugar, salt, onions, dates, and flour were bought in bulk and repackaged in paper bags.

Welcoming our Rayburn wood stove to the family

Parsnip and curry soup with wholegrain bread

As the weekend approaches I start to contemplate what I will cook with a little extra time in the kitchen and hungry boys to feed. My starting point is often the collection of recipes I've torn or bookmarked from magazines and newspapers over three decades. That is how I came to cook Parsnip and curry soup, and Wholegrain bread. The Parsnip and curry soup is an old recipe I've never tried. The Wholegrain bread recipe is a favourite I go back to time and time again. I enjoy using a rattan bread proving basket for the second rise. The basket gives the dough a uniform shape and leaves a concentric circle imprint, which remains during cooking. The result is a rustic loaf, with a light dusting of flour, that looks like it could have come out of an artisan bakery. If I don't have honey in the house I have substituted treacle for a flavour alternative. I also experiment with flours, sometimes using Wholegrain Milling's stoneground organic spelt, rye, or lightly sifted unbleached flour.

Introduction to Biodynamics at Glenmore House

Sophie Hansen's 'A Basket by the Door' honours seasonal ingredients and comfort food

'A Tree in the House' Nundle book launch

This week we hosted the most beautiful gathering of women from north west NSW on our Odgers and McClelland Exchange Stores verandah for the Nundle launch of 'A Tree in the House' by author, photographer and friend Annabelle Hickson. The beauty came from the patina of our 1891 building, Virginia Creeper covered verandah, and Fowlers preserving jars and enamel vessels, including jugs, mug, sugar bowl and Turkish coffee pot, filled with roses, dahlias, sedum, and wind flowers from the Tenterfield gardens of Annabelle, and Mandy Reid from White Cottage Flower Farm. We gathered every available table, chair, and bench at our shop and created spaces for conversations on our verandah, then spilled onto our neighbour Mark Delahunt's Jenkins Street Antiques and Fine China verandah, borrowing chairs from Jenkins Street Guest House. Beauty also radiated from the warmth and openness of the 40 women, who had travelled from Moree, Gunnedah, Scone, Tamworth and surrounds, and the supportive and inspiring atmosphere created by the possibility of imagination.