Travels and Inspiring Times

Melbourne Wine and Food Festival

If you’ve been wondering where I’ve been, I’ve been in Melbourne, and then Queensland with classes, Melbourne Wine and Food Festival, and launching my new book! I’m not going to talk to much, just give you some wonderful photo’s to show you how inspiring it all looked. Diggers built (or grew) an entire organic vegetable and fruit garden in the centre of the city. It was beautiful. Truly – beautiful, this is what a city should look like, and gracious, glorious Melbourne rose to the challenge. Mind you this was the brain child of the brilliant team at Melbourne Food and Wine, and brilliant it was. People wandered through, I and others cooked from the garden (but not as much as we could, as much of the crop grown for demonstrations were destroyed by Melbourne’s hail storm), and on lookers ate. It reminded me of Union Square Farmers Market in New York – beautiful, real, sustainable food in the heart of a city. I love this concept – using space and water to grow our food, and infusing an organic and living dynamic into a city. 

Up till now, Australian Chefs in general, have been very slow to truly walk a sustainable and organic path – some have, but many just pay it lip service. What truly stood out for me at the Wine and Food Festival, was most of the chefs from overseas – Alex Atala, Thomasina Myers, Dave Chang – very, very top people in the world – were seriously talking organic and sustainable. It wasn’t a catch word or in thing to do (a phase) as so many Australian Chefs seem to approach it, but a very necessary, essential road to take. Alex Atala spoke about providing the native inhabitants of the Amazon an income for local and traditional foods (he buys from them for his restaurant), and thus they are less likely to sell their land for soy crops which are devastating the Amazon at an alarming rate. Thomasina Myers talked about the loss of fish stocks in the United Kingdom (something we have yet to fully see here in Australia, but are well on the way), and Dave Chang just blew my brain with his general brilliance. Then onto Brisbane to launch my book at Wray Organic – I can tell you, Queensland is very lucky to have Deborah Wray – the stores are amazing and I was lucky enough to visit each one, and meet many, many wonderful people. 

One final photo – there I was in Melbourne, in an Anglican Church Hall, in the kitchen and there in the cupboard were these beauties… now, I love pink, love old china, have hunted high and low for something like this, and there they were – just for looking, not for having, but filling my heart with joy…

For now,  I’m onto the Whole and Natural Foods Chef Training Program as we prepare the kitchen and program for this exciting 4 month course. You’ll be able to follow it on the website, and of course I’ll be posting some idea’s for Autumn cooking (I love Autum!).  But now, as I write, it’s  Easter Weekend,  with Mum’s 90th birthday and afternoon tea this afternoon – I am making sponge cakes with passion-fruit and banana, with a very special treat from the Organic Farmers Market on Saturday – Merri- Bee Farm Raspberries – I had 2 punnets (Bee only had 4) but being the sweetest and most delicious things I’ve ever tasted, I can understand why Nessie ate 1!!