There were plenty of lemons and limes at the farmers market this week. Feeling inspired by the Gourmet Farmer and the 100-Mile diet, and also keen to start filling our pantry, I thought I would try my hand at a bit of preserving. I have been stocking up on jars from garage sales in preparation.

This morning I made a small batch of preserved lemons. There are a lot of recipes online but I chose to use Ottolenghi’s recipe because they added rosemary and chili which I thought would look nice in the jars as well as add great flavour. It was very quick to prepare; now we just have to be patient and wait four weeks until we can try them.

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I just made these Greek-style roast potatoes to accompany Lakshmi’s famous (to me) buttermilk-thyme fried kalamari. I recommend you try the potatoes — so yummy!  The kalamari recipe is simple: clean and slice up the squid, marinate in buttermilk, batter in flour, thyme, salt and pepper, and fry. Yum!   Serve with a nice greek salad.

Reminds me of a great taverna in Patmos… (images after the break) Continue reading…

After a hard Easter weekend of work on our Mountain property we decided to treat ourselves to a day a of wine tasting in Stanthorpe (AKA the Granite Belt). The drive from Kyogle to Stanthorpe is quite enjoyable. You see a dramatic change in landscape as soon as you cross over McKellar Range. The terrain out west is more typically Australian — quite dry with lots of gum trees. Continue reading…

On Saturday the 28th of March we celebrated Earth Hour with a great bunch of friends and some wonderful food.  We had a delicious BBQ (including North Carolina pulled pork) and then took a roady up to the top of Balmoral Hill to watch the city go dark. Unfortunately there were many lights still on; especially disappointing were all the big wealthy houses immediately around us still glowing bright. On a positive note, there were several other people partying in the dark and our friends all got into the spirit of the event. We came home and continued to eat, drink and be merry by candle light until after 11pm. Continue reading…

As we have mentioned once before one of our favourite cookbooks is Nigel Slater’s Kitchen Diaries, which takes the reader on a 12-month journey through Nigel’s seasonal home cooking.  The book is beautiful, with descriptive writing, full page images and high quality paper. To make it even better every recipe we have ever cooked from it turns out great. The dishes are never too complicated; instead their sensational tastes rely on fresh, seasonal ingredients. Our great friends Angus and Elizabeth gave the cookbook to Mark for his 30th Birthday and we think about them every time we cook from it.

Despite the recipes being based on English seasons we still cook many of its recipes here in Australia, including this amazing chocolate cake, which can be baked all year round. I have baked this cake several times now and each time it impresses everyone who tastes it. I served it at our Earth Hour party last night and lots of people asked for the recipe, so here it is. Enjoy! Continue reading…

This weekend I made the best pancakes that I think I have ever made. The secret ingredient is buttermilk; I can’t believe I haven’t caught onto this sooner. We served these light and fluffy pancakes with fresh banana, figs and maple syrup. Continue reading for the recipe.

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This New Year’s Eve we decided to get away from all the hustle and bustle. We picked up our friends Nat and Mike from Caloundra and drove into the sun to find a camping ground. We made our way to Boreen Point which has bushland camping on the shore of the largest lake on the Noosa River – Lake Cootharaba. We stayed at Elanda Point camp grounds which is lovely and shady and has its own resident kangaroos. The campsite has great amenities, but my big complaint is that in spite of their location in a beautiful natural area they do not recycle. At times like Christmas and NYE tonnes of waste are created and sadly, it was all sent to landfill.

The weather was absolutely scorching and unfortunately there was no relief to be found in shallow lake Cootharaba, which felt like a hot bath. Continue reading…

Since our last update we have been enjoying making our new home more green and trying out some of the great environmental initiatives here in Brisbane. Although we don’t have a backyard we just couldn’t bear throwing our scraps in the rubbish bin any longer so we have gone ahead and bought a Bokashi bin. A Bokashi bin is like a compost bin except that instead of decomposing your waste it ferments it using anaerobic bacteria. This is great for flats because it doesn’t smell. The QLD government is currently offering a 50% rebate for these bins along with a $200 rebate on water efficient appliances, so we have applied for both of these (we bought a water-efficient washer last month). So now with our recycling and our compost bins we will produce very little landfill waste. Through its fermentation process, the Bokashi bin also creates a great liquid plant food which we will use to get our herb garden up and running. We are hoping to give the solid waste it creates to a local farmer who we have been put in touch with through Food Connect. Continue reading…