Last day of the Challenge week.
We’re up at Buxton, about 200kms east of Melbourne, so our ‘centre’ has changed. Buxton Trout which was 200kms from us is now at our doorstep! We’re up here for the ‘Leslie-Fest’ our extended family gathering that happens every 5 years. We have have brought up with us a whole bunch of left over food from the week. I did consider the left-over Marrow Beast for breakfast, but ended up frying up a chicken and corn fritter with chicken left over from the previous dinner (Bannockburn) and corn from our garden.
We ended up with a decent crop this year – about 20 cobs off the back-yard plot and 10 from the front – although this wasn’t without some trials. There were three plantings out the back in the end with the first two resulting in just a few seedlings coming up. I transplanted them to the front yard, and then reseeded the area again. It’s all about perseverance. Water of course makes the difference and our laundry greywater was essential this season. A previous year, when we had our daily bath and shower water redirected to the corn, it was enormous!
We did pick the back-yard corn a little late this year so it was a bit floury. I blanched the corn and then froze it.
Leslie-Fest lunch was an tremendous feast with the 30-odd people bringing a swag of delicious looking foods, which of course had the usual anonymity as to where they were from. I did partake in a selection of these (including a very impressive Tiramusu which I’m sure included local dairy…?), however we did cook up a couple of quiche’s with trout (from the local Buxton Trout farm), which were the focus of the meal.
Dinner was more leftovers, which wrapped up a great week.
Worth mentioning that we also made ice-cream using a bicycle contraption that uses a barrel that rolls against your bike wheel that I discovered on u-tube. Put milk and sugar in a zip-lock bag, but this and ice and salt into the barrel and ride, ride, ride. I’d attached it to Talitha’s bike, which as quite a sight with me in gumboots riding the pink girls bike with a ‘chimk-achimk-achinka’ barrel bounding around on the front.
All in all we’ve had a fantastic few weeks, with bottling of tomatoes, apples, nashi’s, fig, apricots…… making yoghurt, cheese and ice-cream from milk….. and eating from our garden tomatos, corn, zucchinis, pumpkin and silverbeet.
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