Berry

Food, food, glorious food….

/ susiecameron / Leave a comment

2016-02-13 00.05.53

These are the beautiful breakfast chia bowls from Milkwood in Berry, pretty AND delicious…

2016-02-13 00.03.11

Is this the quintessential Aussie breakfast?

How lucky are we Aussies to live where we do and have the huge range of amazing food products to choose from that we do. I shouldn’t say products actually, as that conjures up pictures of supermarkets full of packaged goods – rather I should just say amazing food. Full stop. Until recently I didn’t realise that avocado on toast was an Aussie ‘thing’ but merely something we have been doing for 20 years!Sunshine on toast! With our busy lifestyles smoothies are an obvious choice in the mornings when that extra 10 minutes of snatched sleep is often more appealing than getting up to poach a couple of eggs. The new kids on the block are chia puddings with various toppings, bircher mueslis made with nuts, almond or rice milk and fresh fruit of the season, breakfast tagines, shakshuka with it’s rich tomato and capsicum base, haloumi with chimichurri and corn fritters with smoked trout or nitrate free bacon – the list is endless. In my perfect world I would eat breakfast and dinner only and make them both AMAZING!!

Our local pub is quite famous for it’s Alpaca burger.

If like me, that brings a picture of big brown eyes with thick long lashes to mind you may not find it easy to order one, but they are good enough to have been voted one of NSW top 6 pub burgers. Our local winery, Silos, incorporates a working Alpaca farm and they produce wool, doonas, pillows and scarves as well as meat and sausages. They also sell the animals with a male going for $1000 and a female for $2500 and they seem to make pretty good low maintenance animals for a small holding as there are lots to be seen scattered over this part of the South Coast.Their meat is showcased at The Hungry Duck, Wharf Road as well as The Berry Pub so give it a go peeps!
2016-02-21 13.14.41

A little corner of our lounge is dedicated to my favourite blue and white collection.

It’s been a lovely week in The Meadow. My birthday was celebrated and enjoyed with a quick overnight trip from the youngest son making it extra special. We had an early start at the beach with Bailey and then home to prezzies and an evening in a local restaurant we have been wanting to try for ages – The Hungry Duck. A delicious 5 course degustation was consumed and the interesting flavours of sashimi of yellow fin tuna with a blood orange sorbet sounded weird but proved to be a  party in my mouth and at a mere $55 a head we were thrilled. In Sydney it would be A LOT more than that! http://www.hungryduck.com.au

A run and a swim is always a  great start to the day….!!

2016-02-28 10.04.29We had a lovely weekend with my nephew Niall and his girlfriend Sarah coming to stay. They have just arrived in Australia after living in the UK for the past 5 years or so and Sarah is still pinching herself that she is now living a mere 10 minute walk from  Bondi Beach and waking up to blue skies and sunshine most days! Sadly it was pouring when they arrived in The Meadow so to make up for it we sought shelter in the local winery and enjoyed a comprehensive tasting of their produce before checking out Haven & Space in Berry to stock up on some very well priced homewares for their new house! The next day dawned bright and sunny and Sarah took some beautiful photos (as seen below) before we headed to Gerroa for a beautiful brunch and a swim. The ocean is just the most perfect temperature at the moment and we are relishing it all the more for knowing Autumn and Winter are around the corner.Lying on the warm sand listening to the waves break onto the shore and with an azure blue sky for as far as you could see it felt as if I was on holidays!

Note to self to do this more often……

The only downside of our week was discovering that our development application has been referred to a historical consultant in Sydney who is apparently going to decide whether or not our house should be listed. Needless to say we do NOT want this as it restricts what we can do to the place. Our renovation design is classic and decidedly in keeping with the era of the building and as it is all at the back of the property hopefully despite being of ‘interest’ historically we will still get the tick of approval. Just as well we hadn’t fallen in love with the idea of a big modern glass cube extension out the back I guess………

2016-02-21 20.16.28

 

A Tricky Week.

/ susiecameron / 2 Comments

2016-02-02 16.02.04

I’m not quite sure why, but this week I fell victim to something that felt a lot like stress.

“How can this be?” you ask, when I’m surrounded by the serenity of the countryside and wake up to birds singing and nothing to do all day except tend to the veggies.

Well, life still catches up with you no matter where you are and after a week of being joined to my computer and a list a mile long of things ‘To Do’ I took a much needed day off away from technology to unscramble my brain and reconnect to the tranquility! Cam has been away being A Businessman and trying to get things in place for the big ‘End of Things’ mid March and I have been holding the fort with the Chocolate Drop and the chooks. Perfect for me to get a whole lot of things sorted out I thought. Accommodation was researched for our trips, wedding suppliers chosen and booked, meetings with the builder and architect arranged for our imminent renovation and then I started choosing tiles, taps, doors and windows,ovens, benchtops and toilets etc etc. So, as useful and convenient that the internet is, it means many, many hours on the damn computer and not much time out in the real world.

2016-02-18 19.52.19

This little cartoon resonated with me! I guess we just have to learn to unscramble our minds and see and enjoy what is right in front of us….

So I had a day off….

I felt guilty not doing some of THE LIST and a bit twitchy not being ‘connected’ but it was good for my soul and I enjoyed some local walks and a trip to Bowral. The drive was sublime. Blue skies and fields of bleached straw with little hay bales dotting the landscape. Beautiful homesteads with their deep verandas and tree lined driveways and cows, horses and alpacas grazing in paddocks that stretched endlessly into the distance. And to top it all off at the end of the scenic drive there were shops…!!

With Paris this Autumn in my mind I purchased a rather stylish pair of ankle boots to sashay around St Germain in and I couldn’t believe it when the girl told me it was the last pair! For heaven’s sake we’re still in the middle of Summer and these are the new Winter season stock – CRAZY!

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

This is a little snapshot of my most local and regular walk. Luckily this is right on our doorstep!

Funnily enough one of the things I’ve missed the most from my old life back in England is the hedgerows. Little winding country lanes with hedges of blackberries and raspberries all interspersed with brambles, huge stems of cow parsley and healing plants like nettles, burdock, comfrey, dandelion and dock leaves. You can walk for miles in the English countryside because we have hundreds of public footpaths running in between privately owned land with stiles to go over their fences making it wonderfully accessible and communal. Australia doesn’t have this sadly, which means we are limited to walking along roads and in the National Parks. The only trouble is no dogs are allowed in The National Parks so our dog walks in particular hinge on having some nice local country lanes to wander down. In our instance we are blessed to also have the magnificent 7 mile beach to walk along but there is only one small part that is an off leash dog area.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Some little Aussie hedgerow plants!

One good thing about being home alone is that I haven’t had to cook and it’s been easy to start the NEW REGIME. Instead of giving everything up simultaneously I have slid gently into my new eating plan and hopefully I will stay on track having the odd night off for a dinner out or at home with friends. My squidgy bits have to go!! I’m so lucky to have a wonderful Pilates Studio near me and a very dedicated, knowledgeable and patient teacher who knows just how far to push this old body!!! A couple of hours a week there in conjunction with some walks, stretching and a general awareness of posture will hopefully make the difference I am looking for. This young lady looks like she is appreciating the rather drop dead gorgeous view from the reformer too (makes that awful glut work a bit more bearable!!)

I finally found out where the other rock pool was in Gerringong. It is tucked away around the corner from the main beach in what was the old boat harbour back in the late 1800s. Produce came and went from here to Sydney and other towns along the coast and it’s position in a naturally sheltered bay made it a perfect place to also build a ‘Ladies Baths’ to be kept quite separate and away from the ‘Mens Baths’ of course!! I love swimming in rockpools as I’m pretty hopeless in the surf but LOVE the sea! It is a lovely place for a swim with the water being naturally replaced with the tides and always fresh and clean. If you read and believed the accompanying risk warning however you would probably think twice before entering! All this before you ever get to thinking about sharks……..

Bailey is now the proud owner of a new bed.I am hoping that it won’t go the same way as her first one which was chewed to death. She doesn’t really chew things so I think it was the fact that every morning she awoke to the holes she’d made with the stuffing tumbling out tantalisingly close that she couldn’t resist. The new model is a lot harder to ruin and I can cosy it up in winter with something snuggly.

So I’m choosing to forget her prior indiscretions and remember that

2016-02-20 22.27.36

We made it!!

/ susiecameron / Leave a comment

2015-08-13 14.06.42

Wow – a whole year in The Meadow!
It’s gone so fast, we’ve learned so much and we’re still married!! That’s got to be a plus right???

It’s amazing how quickly a new way of life can feel like home when it’s the right move. I popped up to Sydney yesterday for a Specialist appointment (and those of you that know the struggles I was having last year will be as thrilled as I was to learn that I now have almost normal lung function – I am just nudging the lower edges of normal – and that should mean less drugs if I continue improving ) and I decided to take the train up which I can thoroughly recommend . A beautiful scenic trip and an opportunity to read my book and relax all for the princely sum of $17.60 return!! I parked at the train station all day with no meter or parking ticket required. The train took me right into the middle of the city where I went a little crazy for a couple of hours buying new trainers (Bailey has ruined all 3 pairs that I own – just chewing the backs so they don’t fit properly around the ankles any more…) and soaking up all the new shops in Pitt Street Mall. Zara Home has finally landed in Oz and it brought back memories of shopping there every day for a week when we stayed in Barcelona! I was far more disciplined this time round and settled for a lovely sushi lunch with Tom instead. The choice of food overwhelmed me to be honest as we are pretty limited down here. So after loving the noise, the chaos, the choice of food and shopping I hopped back on the train where I was met by husband and hound at Gerringong for a walk along the beach and some local fish and chips – what more could a girl ask for??2016-01-08 04.57.17

We’ve decided to try and see a new place each week, weather permitting. There are so many terrific places tucked away along the coast and into the hinterland so that’s our aim for January. Kiama was our first hit and what a great little town it is. Scenically blessed with it’s coastline and together with the lovely old architecture along the main street and it’s cosmopolitan mix of homewares shops and cafes with modern Australian menus it’s well worth a visit.

Could you be anywhere other than Australia with those Norfolk Pine Trees???The Blow Hole and Lighthouse at Kiama2015-12-27 10.39.31Deer Willow is a gorgeous shop full of eclectic and unique items to tempt your shopping dollar.
The beautiful old Post Office at Kiama.

It’s rather unfortunate that I got a beautiful Kitchen Aid mixer for Christmas – something I have lusted after for years – especially when making all my cakes and desserts with a small hand held mixer (6 minutes of beating with that thing and you have serious boredom no matter WHAT music you’re playing to try and distract yourself). Unfortunate, not because I’m not ecstatic to be the proud owner of such a gorgeous thing, but because I now want to experiment with it and bake a gazillion things at the exact same time that I am attempting to lose some excess squidginess. As my ‘fat’ clothes are now ‘snug’ I can put it off no longer so I am thinking maybe I can eat super healthily 6 days a week and on the seventh I can make something with the Red Baron, then Cam can take the excess back to Sydney to share instead of leaving it here for me to eat the leftovers!

2016-01-05 09.36.45The Red Baron – truly a thing of beauty!!

Our ‘girls’ are starting to get quite brave now and travel further and further afield every time we let them out into the garden. Two of them are institutionalised and pretty much refuse to leave the sanctity of the chook pen despite their buddies clucking with joy as they scratch around in the mulch surrounding the apple trees. They seem to look longingly out at them but no matter how hard we try to encourage them they either can’t work out how to join them or they are the ones that escaped previously in a bad electrical storm and are now traumatised ?? I feel sorry for them because they are missing out on the joy of being truly free range chickens.2016-01-03 11.01.23We continue to explore the region – Shoalhaven Heads is an off leash area for dogs which means it’s on our radar with the Chocolate Drop. She loves the still water – so much easier than swimming against the surf and will retrieve a stick countless times before showing the slightest sign of losing interest. It is a great area for kids, kite surfing as well as fishing and is a little bit like going back in time to the 80’s. Simple fun never goes out of style.2016-01-09 16.09.30Tranquil Shoalhaven Heads.

As our 1st years house warming gift to ourselves we have got 3 crepe myrtle trees arriving this Friday. They are ‘advanced’ although only 2 metres tall and they will provide us with some shade on the western side of the house that we will then be able to underplant with the longed for hydrangeas. Hopefully this will all be looking established and beautiful by D Day for the Engaged One. I’m sure once the guests are on their 3rd drink they wont even notice the surrounds but I’m aiming for a perfect day for the Princess – garden design included!!

crepe myrtle

With all this thinking going on in my brain, shower time has become even more important – When I saw this I was pretty sure someone had been eavesdropping on me……….

12009750_939887089405651_8971657960063014719_n

New beginnings

/ susiecameron / 1 Comment

2015-11-29 03.36.54

What is it about a New Year that gets you thinking about your life and where it’s been or where it’s going???? Despite the hype about the ‘new you’ and resolutions each year it really is a good time to evaluate what you have and what you would like to change. It’s a bit scary sometimes but it’s always worth embracing change and seeing where it takes you. Breaking big things down into simple steps makes it a lot more do-able and as with everything the first step is often the hardest to take. How good does it feel though when you begin? To leap into the unknown and suddenly find you can do something that you had always doubted you were capable of. Despite, and maybe because of, my ever increasing years on this planet I am determined to have a go at all those things I’ve thought about over the years. Never arty at school I would love to be able to paint but I’m never going to get any closer to achieving that if I don’t BEGIN! Write that book that I believe is inside me? – well don’t keep talking about it Suz – DO IT!!!

In the same vein I have decided to actually USE my approximately 40 cookery books instead of just reading them. We all fall into the habit of cooking our favourite recipes and repeating them ad nauseam instead of branching out and trying new dishes or cuisines. After over-buying at Christmas I literally have a pantry and fridge/freezer overflowing with STUFF. Add into the mix our extremely productive veggie patch and 6-7 eggs a day from the girls and I shouldn’t have to visit a Supermarket for anything other than loo paper for the next month! We have decided to spend January literally eating from the things we have on hand and just the odd bit of meat chicken or fish to pad things out. This means we will eat fresh, healthy food in interesting ways (gotta love Yottam Ottolenghi and his veggie recipes when you own a vegetable garden!!) and as well as saving money I reckon we might lose some of those spare kilos we’ve found over the past few months!!!

2015-12-20 08.11.05

If I don’t harvest every day my veggies become turbo charged and I end up with massive zucchinis and cucumbers, lettuce that bolt to seed in the blink of an eye and what looks like about 60 tomatoes that are going to ripen at the same time. No wonder the Italians came up with tomato passata day – it’s an all or nothing occurrence in the patch at this time of year. The eggplants and capsicums are also bursting forth and I’m already sick of ratatouille after only 3 weeks…..

2016-01-02 17.24.09

The produce comes rolling in on a daily basis !

2016-01-02 17.25.21A normal sized zuke next to it’s supersized brother

With just a couple of days left before she headed back to Honkers, the Engaged One crammed in as much Aussiness as she could – trips to the beach, walks down country lanes and wine on the veranda watching the sunset and due to our distance from Sydney invitations were extended to friends that she had missed the first weekend. It was lovely to see Sally as well as Claire and Andy down here and staying overnight meant for a long and relaxed catchup.

2015-12-30 19.50.21I will have to get the cubby house done up now that the first baby of the group is on it’s way – so exciting Claire and Andy!!2015-12-28 17.08.18Cheers Girls!!!

New Years Eve has never been a big thing for us and we are generally in bed well before the midnight hour except for those days when we were living a mere walk from Sydney harbour and the fabulous famous fireworks when it was definitely worth staying awake. This year we were content to go to the local Showground for the kiddies fireworks and tumble into bed but an invitation from our friends in Moruya changed our minds and after dropping The Engaged One for one last night of fun with all her Sydney friends in Mollymook we continued South and had a wonderfully relaxing 24 hours at The Five Mile. A bonfire in the back paddock with a gorgeous view over the rolling hills and some yummy food and wine and I was a happy little vegemite as we farewelled 2015.

2015-12-31 19.08.59

The wide vista from the back paddock of The Five Mile

2015-12-31 19.11.19

Goodbye 2015 – it’s been a fabulous first year in The Meadow…..

2015-12-31 20.08.12So as we headed back to The Meadow and our last night with Lauren we were grateful for the year just gone and excited for the one that lies ahead- especially now there is a wedding to plan (and therefore an even greater reason to keep the garden weed free and well planted). It is such fun to see our very own Princess plan her special day and I can already see why there is such an industry around weddings with every little detail to be considered and costed and seemingly available online – a fact I am grateful for with the fact the bride-to-be lives overseas and can only probably get back here once before the big day!2015-12-30 17.00.02A great spot for dreaming and planning…..

So my lovely readers I wish you all a 2016 full of wishes come true, adventures begun and ambitions fulfilled; Let’s believe everything is possible until proven otherwise and explore all the wonderful opportunities that life offers.

2015-11-01 01.38.27