vacation | I am NOT an urban hippie

So I am sitting here eating some of the excellent unpasteurised romano goats cheese we get from our local cheese coop with my mother’s pear paste on it and contemplating our weekend just gone.

As often happens we had a busy weekend. And it was a weekend of contrast as they often are with moments of simple locavore eating to visiting a high end Japanese restaurant.

It started simply enough with homemade pancakes. I have never understood why people buy pancake shaker mixes. After all 1 cup of self raising flour, 1 cup of milk and an egg mixed together and left for 20 minutes can’t be to hard. The tricks are to leave it for 20 to 30 minutes to bubble then make sure you use a little butter to fry it in. Yes you can use a little oil if you want but for the best pancakes you need that buttery goodness.

Slather them in good Canadian maple syrup and some of our home made chestnut paste, scoop of ice-cream and good cup of coffee and you have a fairly expensive cafe breakfast for next to nothing and faster than you can drive and then park and line up for a table at the cafe.

We had a busy day on the Saturday, the plants for the winter veggie bed are going in with us being away the next day we had to get as much as we could of the normal weekend done.

However in the evening I hit a little snag. A. is still gathering bottles for her bottle wall so off course my neighbour and I are ‘forcing’ ourselves through drinking anything that happens to have a nice bottle. At the moment it a battle between the cointreau and the Bombay sapphire gin. So after a few cointreau with ice at his place I made the rash promise ‘oh yeah come on over and have some home cured bacon for dinner’ be done in about 30 minutes…

Ok so half cut and dinner to make. Thought about simple bacon and eggs but then noticed the selection of stuff in the fridge from the ceres box and thought oven baked omelette I can do this. Just hand me another drink…

So I whipped up the omelette(recipe at the bottom of the post), some home cured bacon (another post)and a nice big green salad. A side of A.’s sourdough and not bad for dinner at all.

On the Sunday we headed up Daylesford which is a spa town in the high country about an hour and half from Melbourne. It is a pretty place and I know if well having gone to high school there when it was just another poor red neck town. This was long before it became the trendy day trip from Melbourne. The trip was eventful with lots of people selling their wares via honesty boxes along the side of the road. Unlike many of the honesty boxes I grew up around these where a little over priced and I am guessing aimed at the day tripping city folk. Hey can’t blame them for trying.

The restaurant was a Japanese fusion restaurant and as A. and I have spent a bit of time in Japan so we were interested in what their take on the food would be.

Even though the restaurant had rated very highly in its reviews we where both underwhelmed to be honest. Food was ok, service poor it just didn’t work for the two of us. However it was full and people seemed to enjoying themselves so maybe it was just us. For the money I would say people should pay a little bit more and go to the excellent Kobe Jones in Melbourne much better value for money. Great for a special occasion.

The day was good though spent with A.’s family the kids played with their cousins, that adults and. A. drank a ton of the plum sake (that was good). I had a nice local pilsner ale. Life can’t be too bad.

Afterwards we headed to the Chocolate mill which was very cool and well worth a visit if you are in the area. I recommend the hot chocolate with chilli on a cold day. A. also got to look at some bottle walls they had added to the building allowing her to see the finished designs in a building and what she would like to do and not do.

On the way out we looked at the community garden. I can’t believe how much Daylesford has changed in the 25 years since I went to high school there. This is a great piece of work the community garden and they should be justly proud of this thing they have created. As I drove out via the route our old school bus travelled all those years ago and saw the turbines of the two windmills I was already preparing a post in my head on how this town has changed. The pros and the cons of these changes because there always are pros and cons. More on that later.

The final part of the weekend was visit to my parents place. Just a quick visit as we were quite close to my parents place they like to see the kids and all I have to hear is ‘PAAAAA…’ as my daughter ran to her grandfather and gave him a big hug to know that this was the exactly the right thing to do. Family is the most important thing in the world

As I sat and ate a simple dumpling soup my mother had made I must admit that as uncool as it is I liked this simple meal a lot better than the Japanese.

Yep my life is hard … better hand me another bit of that cheese and pear paste to tide me over.

Have a great rest of the week all.

Recipe for drunken baked omelette.

One large onion
4-5 gloves of garlic crushed (as much as you want really)
1 Red or green capsicum/sweet pepper
Some bacon fat and/or a bit of vegetable oil
Handful of mushrooms quartered
Handful of small tomatoes quartered
Handful of spinach leaves
Cup of milk
10 eggs
½ cup of crated parmesan cheese
Teaspoon of fresh ground chilli
Salt and pepper

In large enamelled or heavy base frypan that you can put in an oven or under a grill fry the bacon fat/oil onion, garlic, capsicum till just softening. Add mushrooms and tomatoes and when they are cooked throw on the spinach leaves till wilt and add the chilli. Stir through

While the other ingredients are cooking mix eggs and milk with salt and pepper to taste with a fork till a little frothy.

Once the spinach has wilted add the egg mix has cooked for about 4 minutes then sprinkle parmesan (or another cheese) on top and put in a preheated hot oven for around 15 minutes or until eggs are cooked through. Serve with a nice green salad, some fried bacon and bread.

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So on the first day of this blog I challenged myself to do one blog each day for the month of March 2012. In many ways the month has gone by very quickly but when I look at what I have blogged I realise I have done some things in this time.

As luck, chance or fate would have it I have headed back to my home town today to help my parents out with a local event they are involved with. I would like to say that it was planned out and that it was some sort of natural progression to my rambling. Sorry but no it just happened to turn out that way as some things in life do.

I grew up in the flat plains of the central highlands of Victoria. Bitterly cold and wet in winter, baking hot and dry in summer but heaven when the weather was in between. The earth here is a rich red volcanic variety here. Full of life and the land is farmed heavily. The people I grew up with where the salt of the earth, and as unfashionable as it is to say they are rednecks.

Life revolved around work on the land, family and community and this lead me to many of the ideas and modalities that I live by today. My parents had little but they had their little piece of land and there was always food, good food to be had. Raw milk and cream from Jersey or Friesian cows, lamb from their flock, ducks and chickens. Lots of vegetables, and huge abundance of fruit from their orchard. Sometimes even wild game.

The house was warmed, water heated and food cooked on a wood stove. This entailed us spending our Saturday or Sunday morning’s cutting wood in the bush and made my daily chore of cutting a barrow load of wood a little more meaningful if you didn’t want cold food, cold house and cold showers.

Many hark back to days like this and many people who read this blog would take the opportunity for this life if they could and at times so do I.

But unlike many who look for this sort of life I know that while it has its joys and was in many ways a great way to grow up it was DAMN hard work at the same time.

Added to that was I was only half redneck. My mother’s family is German. Refuges from the old East Germany. My grandparents came out to this country with 2 small children and suitcase. Their courage and hard work, their culture and European way of looking at the world was what built the other half of my mind.

The mindset and ideas I grew with on both sides of my family have followed me in my travels all around the world. It has shaped the cooking I do and how I look at food. How I look at my family now I am a father. And it has shaped what I believe is a particularly practical type of environmentalism and cynical if realistic view of things

You will no doubt hear more about my past in other blog postings as it has shaped my mind and as such will shape parts of what I write.

So here I am on day 31 and back in my home town. In many ways not much has changed. My father and the other men of the town primarily drive ute’s (pickups to my American friends). Community is still strong and when we where setting up for the event at the old Mill that is the only thing that makes this old town worth mentioning in the Australian Lonely Planet Guide people just help. My father uses his ute to move things around woma bake cakes. Children like me return from where ever they might be to help out.

My father’s land though a little smaller as he has sold an acre here and there to pay for trips to Europe is still productive. No cows any more but an abundance of vegetables, fruit, chickens and still a small flock of sheep. They cook with gas and use electric for hot water but the house is still heated with wood. They live well and very gently on the earth.

Community is still strong as emphasised when a neighbour dropped by this evening after I had arrived with a 20 litre bucket of green tomatoes as they had an excess and they know my mother makes awesome chutneys and preserves. Even now nothing much is wasted here.

My daughter loves this place and so do I, we will always come back.

So this is my 31^st blog. I am surprised I go this far. I said at my first blog I was not sure how this would go.

I was not sure if I would have the discipline to write every day or have something to write about. I never intended for there to be many readers to start with but I invited a couple of people whose opinions I really valued and read my posts and said keep going. In time I have attracted a few people who seem to like what I write or at least some of it.

So where to from here? I have finished the goal I originally set myself but I am finding that I enjoy writing this blog. I have found some amazing blogs that I follow and the community here has some amazing people doing some amazing stuff. Basically I still want in!

So yes you will see another post tomorrow. You will probably not see a blog every day but I intend to keep blogging.

To keep myself motivated and to show I am committed have just signed up for www.iamnotanurbanhippie.com

Hopefully I can keep writing something that is meaningful to you all and I look forward to seeing hat you all have to say.