October already.....

Where does the time go?  Too fast for my liking!  I really do try hard to blog once a week but so much seems to get in the way lately.  I really must set my priorities.
So what have we been up to in the past couple of weeks.
Last Friday we joined our friends for Reef Feast Longest Lunch at the very picturesque Palm Cove.  Chefs Justine Schofield from Everyday Gourmet and Nick Hollaway, owner of Nu Nu Restaurant treated us to a menu packed with delicious and diverse courses all encompassing local produce of which we in the tropics are so lucky to have a great variety of.

The lunch is usually set up outside on the beachfront but unfortunately the wind and rain meant that the tables had to be quickly moved inside Nu Nu Restaurant.  It didn't make any difference to the atmosphere though. It was very cheerful made more so by the numerous glasses of bubbles that were consumed. I was looking forward to seeing Justine and how amazing was it that she talked to every single person at the lunch and didn't mind having her photo taken hundreds of times.  What a bright and bubbly lady she is!  What you see on TV is what you get with Justine.

We stayed the night in Palm Cove with our friends.  I can't wait for the day when we are living in Port Douglas and we can have them stay with us for various functions in Port.  We will all have the best of both worlds!
I have been busy preserving the copious amount of tomatoes that we have grown this year.  We ended up pulling out three cherry tomato plants but still have three more producing. So far I have made big batches of Tomato Relish, Pickled Tomatoes, Sun Dried Tomatoes and Pasatta.  Every morning we have been throwing cherry tomatoes in the frypan with our bacon and eggs that are just so delicious!  And still they grow!

The spinach is almost finished but I have come up with some ingenious ways of using it.  This "Gozleme Lasagne" was enhanced with the addition of spinach...

I have harvested all the carrots and some of the daikon radish so I have been thinking of ways to use them.  I made a Japanese Coleslaw for lunch through the week that was simply grated carrot, Daikon and sliced cabbage dressed with a mixture of Rice Wine Vinegar and sugar.  I then added sliced capsicum and toasted sesame seeds and tossed lightly.  I served this alongside some crumbed steak and it was both delicious and healthy.

I have just finished reading the book "You'd better put some Ice on that", which is what Bill Clinton said to Juanita Broaddrick after he raped her.

The book is Juanita's autobiography and as she says she didn't want to make it all about the rape because she also had a very interesting life until the Clinton's - both Bill and Hilary- changed her life forever.  In her book, Juanita briefly touches on Whitewater....the scandal that surrounded the Clintons in a real estate deal.  It's worth having a look at this timeline written by the Washington Post.  All I can say is thank goodness the world was spared from having Hilary Clinton as President.

Well folks, that's a wrap for this week.  After all the climate change alarmists taking front and centre stage this past few weeks this is what I say...

What's been happening.....

It's been fairly quiet around here the last week.  Philip arrived home from PNG last Thursday and has been detoxing ever since!  Apparently a lot of food and alcohol were consumed....not surprisingly...
It still doesn't quite feel like spring as the mornings have been cool and the wind comes up each day around 9.30 that keeps daytime temperatures low.  We have managed a couple of swims in the pool in the evening when the wind dies down. Even though the pool water is heated - blissfully - it's not enjoyable sitting in the pool when the wind is blowing throughout the day.
I've been trying some new recipes that were absolutely sensational even if I do say so myself.  The first one I tried is from the Everyday Gourmet television show.  It was baked rib bones with a green bean and tomato salad.  It's a hard dish to photograph so you just have to imagine how good it tasted....

The next day I made Caramel Chicken with Pickled Carrot salad from Marions Kitchen website.  It was also another winner and certainly a keeper....

At the moment I have a crockpot of Beef Barbacoa simmering away.  This is a mexican dish so I am going to char grill some corn cobs and serve the beef, corn and avocado in a soft tortilla.  Tomorrow I am going to have the leftover Barbacoa as a Budha Salad Bowl.
Did I mention that my very clever husband has installed a watering system through the garden?  It is going to save us hours of shifting hoses and it works a treat.  The garden is evenly watered throughout the wee small hours of the morning before the wind gets up and the garden is loving it.  I took a wander through the garden yesterday afternoon with my camera in hand.  It is a mass of spring colour at the moment.

Well my friends, that's a wrap for this week.  Take care xx

Master of leftovers

I think I'm fairly good at using leftovers.  It came from years of cooking for hungry men when we owned the cattle stations.  In the first few years we had very little fridge space so it was a matter of having to use up what was in the fridge to make way for the next meal leftovers.  I graduated from bubble'n'squeak to pan curries and when we could finally purchase ready made puff pastry it was like god's gift to cooks.  Anything can be wrapped into puff and pastry and come out tasting delicious.  The ringers loved those little pastry bites for smoko and they were always demolished.
I really dislike wasting food and these days, with groceries being so expensive, it pays to be frugal with leftovers.
This week I hosted a ladies lunch for some wonderful friends and I decided to make some pita breads and have a choice of fillings.  I made Falafels, Beef Fajita and one of my friends brought a cooked chook that we pulled apart and I had sides of shredded lettuce, sliced tomato and cucumber.  I also served three dressings:  Hummus, Tzatziki and Sesame Satay.  I think everyone enjoyed the informality of the meal and I enjoyed it because it was so easy.
Of course I had leftovers that I quickly turned into some really interesting dishes.  The leftover Falafels I turned into a curry made from Coconut Milk, Passata and baby spinach and the leftover pita bread was perfect to be dipped into that delicious curry.

The leftover Beef Fajita I decided to make into Sausage Rolls. I put the meat mixture into the food processor along with a little leftover gravy from another meal and processed until it was the right consistency to be wrapped into puff pastry.  I will now freeze these for another time when we are looking for a snack.

Last week we had Miso fish fillets with a side of asian greens.  I cooked extra fish so that the leftovers could be made into fish cakes that we ate with a tossed salad.  It was yummy.

So there is no excuse to waste food.  You just need to be a little bit creative and it doesn't hurt to always have a packet of puff pastry (or filo) in the freezer.

Happy Birthday Kurt

On the fifth September Kurt would have celebrated his 40th birthday.  Forty years.  I wrote on Instagram that I feel so blessed to have at least had 21 years with my first born. Kurt is never very far from my thoughts and I do feel his presence very strongly at the times when I need him the most.

There were so many beautiful messages sent to us and for that I am extremely grateful and somewhat surprised that Kurt made such an impact on peoples lives.  But then I shouldn't be surprised.  He really was a special person with a huge heart.
My youngest, Marco, arrived here on Monday, a few days before he and Philip boarded the plane to fly to Port Moresby and then on to Bensbach Lodge for a spot of Barramundi fishing.  This is the photo they sent me on their first day....

No a bad size for the first catch! They are there for the week so I am home alone and quite enjoying it.  I am waking up late and going to bed late.  Meals are what I want when I want with very little cooking.  I love my husband to the moon and back but this time apart is goooooddd......

Multiple Birthday Celebrations

It was my 62nd birthday last month and being the foodie that I am, I had to celebrate it by eating out.  The first meal was on my actual birthday and we had a birthday lunch at Salsa Restaurant and Bar in Port Douglas.  The food here is always good and well deserves the reputation that it has.  The barman made me a champagne cocktail that was so good that I could have drunk a bucketful but commonsense prevailed and I limited it to just one!
First course was jalapeño poppers stuffed with pulled pork and for seconds both Philip and I chose the Mackerel that was the chefs pick.  Both courses were both delicious and filling so no dessert needed.  Instead I had one more glass of bubbles.

When we arrived home Philip presented me with my birthday present, a bottle of Ink Gin.  He made me a gin and tonic and decorated it with flowers from the garden.  Isn't this so pretty....

The next birthday celebration meal was at Harrisons Restaurant at the Sheraton Restaurant in Port Douglas.  One a month for six months, Harrisons bring two well known chefs to Port to cook for the Chefs in Paradise degustation series. For the August dinner (number 4) we had Chefs Ben Williamson and Jake Nicholson cook us some very tasty food.
Philip and I and four other friends booked into the Sheraton for the night as we knew that with matching wines served with the various courses we would not want to drive home.

Every single course, for my taste, were perfect and I would be hard pressed to pick a favourite but if I really had to it would have been the Raw Scallop, cultured goats milk, black sesame, mint and charred cucumber.  It was so refreshing on the palate and a perfect first course. My next favourite would have been Shish Barak (lamb dumplings, fermented chilli, burnt butter, pine nuts and almonds, mint, chick peas). Wow. There was so much going on in this plate and every bite was a taste sensation. Oh. I forgot to mention the Scampi toast that was served to us as a starter.  Another beautiful bite of loveliness.

We are booked again for the last of the series in October when Chefs Ben O'Donohue and Massimo Mele will be treating us to some delicious meals. I can hardly wait......

Enjoying the outside....

How do you like my office?  It is the most glorious day with the temperature sitting on 21 degrees celsius as I type.

I'm waiting for Philip to arrive home from his ride to Mt Lewis this morning with another cycling friend.  It is quite the ride so he will be looking for some pool time when he gets home.  Thank goodness for heated pools!

On the home front it has been relatively quiet.  The marketing of the property is moving in the right direction with lots of online interest.  I shared drone footage that our agent had posted on Facebook and from that one share we have had almost a thousand views.  It is amazing what a few shares can do. 

The garden is looking spectacular and it was great to see it through somebody else's eyes this week.  They loved it and told us we should host an open garden day.  We'll see.  We really love our privacy...... 😌

My mum is now back in Toowoomba and the day before she left we had lunch at our local pub - The Highlander.  There was a very big crowd there to listen to the live music and to enjoy the "Sunday Roast". This week it was roast pork that Mum ordered and it was huge with no less than six vegetables sitting along side the meat.  A doggie bag was in order.  

I had the pork belly sitting on a potato rosti accompanied by a very tasty pear and apple salad. 

As anyone who knows me well would know, I love cooking and trying out new recipes. These Peanut Butter Biscuits were very delicious for minimal ingredients and work.  

You simply combine 1 cup sugar (I used coconut sugar), 1 cup peanut butter (I used half PB and half Tahini because I didn't have enough PB) and 1 egg.  Shape into rounds and cook in 180 degree oven for 12 minutes.  I cooked for 15 minutes and they were slightly over cooked.

The other thing I made is Nigella Lawsons Sambuca Kisses.  Another very quick and easy recipe that was perfect with a cup of espresso that had a teaspoon of Sambuca added to it.  

The last thing I want to mention is this flower arrangement that has been sitting on the outside table now for over a month.  It is simply Coleus and Azaleas.  I just keep topping up the water and adding new Azaleas when the old ones have finished flowering.  The Coleus is growing in the water. 

An everlasting flower arrangement if you please.....

So slack.....

The blog posts of late have been very hit and miss.  I will blame it on being very busy.
The last post I wrote was just before we had a night at Thala Beach with our dear friends Kate and Mike.  It was, and is always, a lovely place to stay for a quick getaway and I highly recommend it.  We all arrived around the same time....4ish....and popped the cork on a bottle (or two) of Champagne, just because we could.  In reality two bottles of Champagne is two glasses each so we didn't overindulge.  After we finished the Champers we decided to go for a short walk to Pebbly Beach.  It is a very pretty cove and we sticky beaked on all the lucky people that have multi million dollar homes right on the waters edge.  After a quick couple of photos it was time to head back to our rooms to change for our dinner reservation at 7.00pm.

The girls

and the boys

Our room at Thala Beach

We all decided on different things from the menu and each and every dish was beautifully presented and very delicious.  The restaurant is superbly situated with open air views right across the ocean. We were lucky enough to be there for the full moon and had a birds eye view of it rising over the Coral Sea. After a few too many glasses of red wine we all made our way back to our respective cottages for a very solid sleep. The next morning, and all too soon, we had a quick bite of breakfast before heading in different directions to our homes.

That same week we also had friends visit us from Geelong.  We met Lyn and David on the last cruise and straight away hit it off.  It was no surprise to find that they were heading this way to get some relief from the bitterly cold winter they were experiencing in Victoria.  They came to our place for lunch one day and after a bbq lunch we took them for a bit of a drive around the property.  They loved it as do most of our friends that come for a visit and were surprised at how large it was.  We always secretly smile to ourselves because this property is 220 acres and our Julia Creek properties were 110,000 acres and we were small compared to most!
Lyn and David also arranged for us all to have dinner at Nautilus Restaurant while they were here.  I love this restaurant very much and everything we ate from the seven course tasting menu was absolutely delicious.  This restaurant is one of Port Douglas's original restaurants and it is incredible that it is still as great as the first time we ate here in 1980.  It has had a few renovations over the years but each change has been for the better.  We really must eat here more often.  Perhaps when we are living in Port.....

After our friends returned to Victoria, we loaded up the camper and headed south to Toowoomba to pick up mum to bring her here for a mini holiday.  We always love a road trip and this one passed all too quickly.  We drove more than 4000 kilometres in ten days that was a bit too much but our schedule was tight.  It took us three days to reach Toowoomba.  We picked up mum and drove straight to Caloundra where we had a couple of property inspections lined up. Then it was on to Gundiah to have a couple of days with Marco and Suzie before heading north again.  It took us another three days to finally get home and poor mum was exhausted.  Even thought we tried to be at our destination by 4.00pm each day it is still a very long day.

Wattle was in full bloom 

Many, many cattle were being driven along the road and many more tourists!

All together we counted four different droving camps

Took a sunset walk along the boardwalk at Caloundra

Burrum Heads

So, mum is now with us until Monday when she then flies back to Brisbane and buses to Toowoomba.  We have been lazing around and chatting and just enjoying each others company,  and the only outing we have planned is tomorrow when we will go to our local tavern for lunch.

This has been a much longer post than I intended my friends but that's what I get from not posting regularly.
Take care..
xx Judi