The Great Outdoors – Foraging and Shinrin-Yoku

August 7, 2023 / sbaskitchen / 2 Comments

My dearest Gary once said that I am at my most relaxed when I am outdoors.

A month or two back I was on a mission, that mission to find somewhere where I could forage for pine mushrooms. This meant time out with a special friend, who, I must say, I’ve had a few adventures with. Maggie is loads of fun and loves a bit of adventure, so a date and time was set.

On the day, I met Maggie at hers, transferred my baskets to her truck and we headed off, chatting, laughing, catching up and looking for a suitable place to forage. Many plantations were off limits due to logging, but when we had almost given up, the last one on the list was logging free. She parked the truck, we gathered our tools (baskets and knives, and entered the edge of the plantation. As we collected our bounty of mushrooms and pine cones we both found ourselves becoming more and more relaxed in our surrounds, wandering off in different directions, and coming together again, this led us to chatting about forest bathing and the benefits afforded by such a simple pastime.

I was a little surprised to hear that Maggie had never foraged for mushrooms and wasn’t game to try the ones that I had collected. But that was Ok, I brought them all home and cooked, pickled and dehydrated them, Mushroom Bourguinon anyone?

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A visit with friends to help prune the vines

July 28, 2016July 28, 2016 / sbaskitchen / 2 Comments

Another busy week in SBA’s kitchen and beyond…

Last weekend we were invited to visit with friends for the pruning of the vines in their little vineyard – well I should say so that Gary could help with the pruning of the vines! The weather was freezing. We were up very early on Saturday morning, about 5am as we had a long drive ahead of us. We quickly packed, had a hot drink and even remembered to put in the sponge that I had baked, which is fondly referred to in our family as Nana’s Chocolate Cream Cake. We arrived after a 3 ½ hour drive, Gary did all of the driving, while I studied for my next French lesson. When we got there, Gary headed straight down to help John and George in the vineyard, while I enjoyed the warmth of the family home, a lovely hot cup of tea and a great catch up with Vicki.

At lunch time, Vicki and I prepared some salad, while John cooked beautifully tender steak and toasted some rye bread, and we all enjoyed a steak sandwich for our lunch while standing around the open fire outside the cellar. As soon as they had finished eating, the men headed back to work. I went down and took a few photos before heading back up to

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the house with Vicki. That night we enjoyed a wonderful meal of slow cooked pork belly with roast pumpkin, potato and fennel, and steamed broccoli and beans. It was delicious. We spent the night at our friends’ home before returning home on Sunday.

The view from our room on Sunday morning

But before we left we enjoyed a lovely hot breakfast and witnessed a lovely rainbow.

Back home we started to prepare for the arrival of my sister and three friends on Monday.

While Sonnie and one friend arrived early afternoon, the other friends arrived early evening, all having traveled from Melbourne. Gary and I had spent the time since returning home preparing for their arrival. Gary had the yard and house looking wonderful, and all of the breakfast food had been prepared – poached fresh and dried fruits, homemade yoghurt, Véronique’s Brioche, a cob of grainy bread and a really nice

Crunchy Gluten Free Granola, which I had put together just to have something crunchy to have with the yoghurt and fruit.

For dinner that night, we had decided to prepare smoked ribs. So I prepared a rub, and the ribs were smoked for about seven hours in our smoker. I also put in some sweet potatoes and other potatoes to be used later for soup making etc. I wanted to serve the ribs with a simple potato bake, so made it using chicken stock rather than the usual cream and milk. It is not quite as rich, but just as delicious. Then I wanted a salad, a kind of coleslaw but with fennel, apple etc. So when I set to making that, I took the mandolin out and set a large bowl ready. I didn’t think I had enough fennel, but was soon to find out that I had plenty and quickly went looking for a larger dish, which turned out to be a roasting dish. The recipe changed as I was making it, there was no cabbage needed, so that went back into the fridge. I had bought crème fraiche to make the dressing, but didn’t touch it, instead I used horseradish cream, blood orange vinegar and some amazing fresh extra virgin olive oil. The resulting salad was a delicious Fennel, Apple and Orange Slaw. With everyone here and around the table we served up the meal. The conversation was loud and at times absolutely hilarious – thank you Sonnie and Anna….

The next morning I was up early studying again, before everyone else was out of bed. I had set the table for breakfast the previous night after everyone had gone to bed, so all I had to do in the morning was set the brioche in the oven to warm, slice the bread, put out a plate of sliced cheese, as well as the yoghurt and stewed fruit. People slowly started to appear and when we were all ready, we sat down to another great meal time of food and great conversation. I had to quickly excuse myself (and leave them to clean up) as I had my French Lesson at 10:30. You know, I think I am starting to get it a little!

Anyway, French lesson done, and eggs from my teacher, I decided to stop at the farm gate on the way home for some more to send home with our guests. Lunch was easy – the Fennel, Apple and Orange Slaw left over from the previous night, sliced ham, homemade bread, and one of the smoked sweet potatoes roughly mashed, topped with some homemade cheese, diced red capsicum, finely diced green chilli and a sprinkling of piment d’espelette (French chilli powder) and baked in the oven. The general consensus was that the salad had developed in flavour and improved even more since the night before.

We had a lovely relaxing afternoon and evening together, wandered around the garden, sat in the sitting room with the heater on, enjoyed some homemade liqueurs in the evening, lots of chatting and laughing.

The next morning we were up early, some of our guests had to be on the road by 8 am and we wanted to make sure that they had had a good meal before the road trip back home. We made bacon and eggs. That is bacon and egg sandwiches, as well as fried eggs, poached eggs, tomatoes, bacon and toast. Everyone returned home with a dozen fresh eggs, a bottle of my homemade Worcestershire Sauce and a bottle of my homemade Tomato Sauce. We can’t have them leaving empty handed, now, can we…

So my friends, that is what has been going on here.

Not much time in the garden, I’m afraid, but did get a bit more work done on the “Grand Old Dame”, still plenty more to go though.

Until next time…

Bon appétit!

Links:

Crunchy Granola

Nana’s Chocolate Cream Cake (with gluten free option)

Fennel, Apple and Orange Slaw

Véronique’s Brioche

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A ride to market

June 28, 2016June 28, 2016 / sbaskitchen / Leave a comment

What a glorious day it was on Sunday; the air was crisp, the sun was shining and there was barely a breeze. The perfect day for a bike ride, and with a little farmer’s market on in the next town, that’s where we headed – Stratford.

It’s a relatively easy ride along a “rail trail”, that is if you are used to riding a bike and are fit – I am neither! The scenery is beautiful, as is the bird life along the way. At one stage we stop alongside a paddock where a large flock of black swans are feasting, and among them are two beautiful ducks. We couldn’t resist getting the camera out and trying to get a photo, even though these gorgeous birds were some distance away.

After a few distractions along the way, we finally make it to the market which is set up in a little park, nestled on the banks of the Avon river. It is a very small market, just a few stalls, a honey stall, second hand book stall, craft stall where we find a gorgeous gift for our beautiful great neice’s second birthday, an apple stall and a bag of beautiful crisp red apples are purchased, there’s also a bric-a-brac type stall, a native plant stall, an art stall and finally the vegie stall. I have bought vegetables from this stall holder before and they were beautiful, they keep fresh for much longer than normal, probably because they are much fresher than what you buy at the shop! I walk along and decided to get a couple of leeks – I have leftover cooked chicken in the fridge from last night’s dinner, so will probably make a chicken and leek pie during the week. Then I choose some salad. I want a cabbage, so they climb onto the back of the truck and find a lovely one for me, and finally… I cannot resist the beautiful bunch of coloured carrots that’s laying on the table – I know I have plenty of carrots at home, but these are different. We chat to the stall holder and he tells us that people get confused when they see the white or cream carrots, often thinking they are parsnips!

All done, we load our purchases into the basket on my bike, the apples go into my husband’s backpack, and we head off home. I soon discover a problem with the load in the basket on the back of my bike… For a relative beginner bike rider, I find it throws me off balance in certain situations, and almost come to grief as I struggle up an incline. So decide if faced with that scenario again, I’ll get off and wheel the bike. We stop as we cross the bridge over the Avon so that I can take some photos, but I don’t think that they do the scenery justice, I just love this place.

Further along the track we look across to the mountains and there are little specs of white, I wonder if it is snow?

Finally back home from our 20 km round trip, we put the bits and pieces away and head to the garden for a while, where I begin to think about what to do with those beautiful carrots for our dinner.

Until next time…

Bon appétit!