BLOG: White Enamel Pie Dish

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

Father's Day date and whisky cake

A couple of weeks out from Father's Day I start to keep an eye out for recipes with ingredients that will appeal to Duncan. When I was looking through some very early copies of Donna Hay magazine I came across this recipe for Date and whisky cake in Issue 10. As an American whisky lover, I thought Duncan would enjoy this cake for Father's Day. It's a really simple cake to make, simmering finely sliced dates in whisky, combining the balance of ingredients with a hand mixer for five minutes, and then folding the two together. I used plain spelt flour, but you could use whatever plain flour you have at hand. A stoneground, unbleached wholemeal flour would be lovely and nutty. Our kitchen smelled delicious as the whisky, brown sugar, and date flavours developed in the oven.

Dark chocolate brownies for deep winter

Our daughter Isabelle is visiting from Newcastle and it is time for a treat, dark chocolate brownies for deep winter. Brownies have been a favourite of ours for a long time and I can remember making brownies with Isabelle when she was younger and lived at home with us. I use Matthew Evans' Exceptionally good brownies recipe from the book, Winter on the Farm, that Isabelle gave me years ago. When I've made this recipe for kids' packs for the Nundle Country Picnic, a food, fashion and music event, I've been asked what is in them because they have a distinctive dense texture. 

Flourless orange and almond muffins

With one week left of school before the holidays I wanted to finish the term lunch boxes with a flourish and a gift of oranges became the catalyst to make Flourless orange and almond muffins. When you become known as a preserver, all kinds of excess produce find their way into your kitchen. I was arranging some jars on a bench outside our shop when Nundle local Sue Warden walked past and asked, "Have you been making pickles again?". "No, marmalade," I replied. "Would you like some grapefruit?," Sue offered. "Yes, please." Sure enough the next day Sue delivered a bag of grapefruit and oranges to the shop. I gave her a jar of marmalade in thanks. I'm inspired by a The Sydney Morning Herald Good Living recipe that I've cooked before for a writing retreat co-hosted years ago with our neighbour Nicola Worley. It's also an opportunity to use our oversupply of eggs, the recipe calling for nine eggs, and a gift of vanilla bean paste at a recipe writing workshop with Sophie Hansen and Anneka Manning for My Open Kitchen. As I boil the oranges, Gryff protests, "No not orange muffins. I've had them before and I don't like them." I am already committed and stay on task, hoping I can win him around.

Morning tea on vintage china and embroidered tablecloths

We drive past fields of cotton being harvested into large rectangular or cylindrical bales on the Liverpool Plains in north west NSW on our way to an Australia's Biggest Morning Tea, at Little Kickerbell homestead, to raise funds for cancer research. We have been invited by caterer Cathy Armstrong and artist Dr Rowen Matthews, who moved from the Blue Mountains after buying Little Kickerbell and 12-hectares in February. Little Kickerbell reconnects Cathy to the New England North West, having started school at Tamworth, and visited aunts at Gunnedah and Armidale throughout her childhood. Hosting an Australia's Biggest Morning Tea was a great way to meet the neighbours and raise funds for a charity close to Cathy's heart. "Of all the charities this is one I have the greatest attachment to because my mother Robin Armstrong died of breast cancer three years ago," Cathy says. "It's a really lovely thing to do."

Three warming winter soups