Join Jill and Nick as they take you behind the scenes to see where your food actually comes from!

We are running a Preserving Workshop at Eling Forest Estate, Sutton Forest with Stephen Hogwood of the 1910 Bottling Company on Sun 20 Oct 2013. Steve is very knowledgeable and a great teacher. This time he will show us how to bottle fruit using the Vacola system.
Finish with a light lunch including many of Steve's products.
During the next month we also have a private class and this is always available if you have a group you would like to bring?
Eling Forest Estate is a beautiful venue with a historic house, B&B accommodation, a Cellar Door Cafe and a Winery. The workshop is run in the restaurant kitchen in the historic house. Details provided on booking.

DTE: Sun 20 Oct 2013
Time: 10am - 1pm
Price: $105 pp

Group size 8 - 12. Minimum numbers apply.

To book contact us - www.foodpath.com.au, m: 0419 617 021, e: info@foodpath.com.au

Sadly today was our last Preserving Workshop with Steve Hogwood of the 1910 Bottling Company. He has got busy in Sydney as his business continues to grow. But all is not lost - if you have a bunch of friends or workmates and you would like a class, we can put one on for you...... we just need 8 - 10 people.
We had a great Pickling Workshop today at the Cheese factory at Robertson. Lots to learn and everyone had fun. This was a new venue for us and it was good, lots going on. We had some cheese and bread from Ian in The Cheese Room for lunch with a range of Steve's pickles - gherkins, onions, radishes, eggs, cauliflower, chillies and sauerkraut.
No doubt about it Steve has lots of information to share. Everyone in the class today was a repeat customer - now that is a good recommendation!
Contact us from the website www.foodpath.com.au if you want to register your interest.

After nearly a year Steve Hogwood has decided to move his Preserving Workshops to Sydney. Sad news for us. However he has agreed to run workshops for FoodPath in the Highlands if we have a corporate or a group booking - minimum 12 people.
Our workshop next Sun 23 Oct is to be our last - so if you have been meaning to come, this is your chance! A Pickling Workshop from 10am - 1pm. Will be fun. Let us know if you want to book?

www.foodpath.com.au

Another fun session with Steve Hogwood at the Fruit Bottling Workshop last Sat 30 July.

The 1910 Bottling Company makes a great product - look at these!

This time we were bottling pears and I was asked to judge the best. This was not easy I can tell you! I had to look at the pattern, the number of air bubbles, whether the jar was packed to the rim with fruit, etc.

Sizing up the finished products

There was also a team challenge where everyone combined their newly learnt skills to pack a large bottle. So - we ended up with an individual winner and also a winning team. Check out the photos!

Paula won the best jar award

The winning team

Next time Steve is going to introduce you to steam canning as well as covering the boiling method. Steam canning is what you do to preserve vegetables. This is a great way to use up extra produce from the garden or when you buy a case from the greengrocer when the price is right.

Buy when the fruit is in peak season and preserve for a rainy day

Bookings are coming in for the next two workshops so don't delay.
In October Steve is going to teach us how to do pickling. Contact us from the website if you are interested.

Today we had another Fruit Bottling Workshop with Steve Hogwood from the 1910 Bottling Company and again everyone had a ball. The feedback was excellent! Some want to come back for more!

Steve has a range of topics he can teach - preserving lemons, pickle making, etc. Today they bottled tomatoes. It was nice to see everyone roll up their sleeves and get to work and have fun doing it.

The people in the group to-day came from far and wide - Huskisson, Falls Creek near Nowra, Currajong in the Blue Mtns, Sydney and on local - and you should have heard the chatter! They got on very well.

There is a real move back towards learning the old traditional skills and adapting them to or current times. Steve was full of information and all comments were extremely positive.

We are looking forward to the next one - on Sat 30 July, 10am - 1.30pm. Contact us from the website if you would like to come.

• Wow, what a busy weekend we had - 3 tours in 2 days!! We are just coming up for air.
  

  
  

  On Sat we had a private group who did 2 FoodPath tours - a Farmers Market Tour in the morning and a Food Focused Walking Tour in Bowral in the afternoon. 

  

  
  

  

  
  

  How special to have Jim there with his fresh hazelnuts! This only happens for a short period when they are in season. Jim does not grow commercially but the locals know where to find him - one of the benefits of coming on a tour to the markets with FoodPath :)

  
  

  

  
  

  Someone said to me "why would anyone want to pay to go on a tour to the market when they can go themselves?" Well, the advantage is that you get lots of background information and local knowledge from Nick and Jill which enhances your experience - while you get to know who the local producers really are. When you know - you can continue to support them which will help you and will help them! 

  
  

  Small producers do struggle and we are very keen to support them.

  
  

  

  
  

  It was a big day on Saturday but it was fun and the feedback was great. 

  This private tour was a present to a bunch of family and friends - what a lovely idea? 

  We are getting more and more requests for gift certificates. 

  A FoodPath tour or workshop is certainly something different and this group said that every year they choose something they can do together as a family. 

  
  

  

• FoodPath Culinary Tours with a Difference

  
  

Well our first Market to Table Tour was good fun!
First we met at the Bowral Producers Market where we took the group to meet the producers and to buy ingredients for lunch. Saw Steve Hogwood with his bottled fruit (he runs our bottling workshops monthly). Nicki was there from Cuttaway Creek Raspberry Farm with her raspberries. So fresh - they were divine. We bought some for lunch. Also some raspberry vinegar, and the girls bought some jams to take home.

Highland Gourmet Potatoes at the Producers Market in Bowral

Pasquele and Dianne were there with their huge range of potatoes. Patricia (our Chef) loved the potatoes so much she drove out to the farm to get some more for another cooking class a couple of days later!
We found some local garlic which was very exciting because the Southern Highlands is not normally a big garlic growing area - but this might be changing.

Garlic grown by Pip at Hilltop, a village north of Mittagong

Patricia decided on spatchcock for our lunch. This came from Thirlemere Poultry - a free range poultry supplier that has been going for nearly 50 years and mostly sells to the restaurant market. We are very lucky they come to Bowral to the market.

John comes to the Bowral producers market every month

Of course we included some mixed exotic mushrooms from our famous mushroom tunnel.

Wendy is a regular at the market with the tunnel mushrooms

Then back to the historic Fitzroy Inn in Mittagong for our cooking class.

The Fitzroy Inn in Mittagong has a great kitchen for classes

What I loved about this was that it was interactive - but Patricia was encouraging and everyone happily got involved, including Nick. She made it look easy!

Everybody got involved which made it such fun

It was very clever how Patricia managed running a class but at the same time getting the meal together and ready on time for us to sit and enjoy together.

The chocolate and Raspberry tart tasted as good as it looked!! Fabulous!

Nice to relax and enjoy the result of our labours with the group - thanks Patricia and the Blue Bowl Cooking School for a great day!

Let me tell you this was a fun day and I thoroughly recommend it! Would be great for a family group, a corporate group - and guys as well as girls. The Market to Table tour and cooking class will be running every month - on the 2nd Sat. Check the FoodPath Tours page or the Blue Bowl Cooking School website for details and to book.

Well we are still in recovery mode!
On Wednesday this week, 9 Mar we had two things running concurrently. Fortunately Nick could be at one and I was at the other.
First we had a film crew come to shoot one of our Fruit Bottling Workshops for the program Sydney Weekender. We got a group of nine women together to make up a class at the Howards Lane tasting room out of Mittagong - a beautiful setting looking over the vineyard.

Fruit preparation for bottling with Steve

Steve Hogwood from the 1910 Bottling Company ran the workshop and Kath and Emma from a new business DeliSH kindly brought along one of their hampers to provide lunch for everyone to share.

Mike Whitney complete with apron!

While this was going on I was at the Visitors Information Centre in Mittagong to host the Mushroom Tunnel Tours. We had two tours which were well attended.

Noel explaining about his mushrooms

We travelled by bus to the entrance of the tunnel. From there the group walked the full length of the tunnel (650metres) while Noel told us about the mushrooms and about his business. It was very interesting and as always very popular.
We are hoping that Noel will let SH Tourism and FoodPath host a further 3 tours to the tunnel during the year - fingers crossed!

Exciting news - Channel 7 is coming to the Southern Highlands next week to film one of our Fruit Bottling Workshops with Steve Hogwood, for their program Sydney Weekender!

This will take place at Howards Lane vineyard in their tasting rooms, a lovely setting looking out over the veranda to the vines and the bush beyond. Wallabies come down in the late afternoon to graze.
We have discovered a nice connection - there is a portrait on the wall of a lady called Sophie Corrie who owned the land at Howards lane vineyard in times gone by. She published one of the earliest books in Australia on fruit bottling and preserving in 1893 - and we are now running Fruit Bottling workshops there! A nice connection?

We have just prepared a program of tours and workshops for the next 6 month and these will be on the website any day now. We have between 4 and 8 activities on each month!
We are introducing  series of workshops on Sunday afternoons - check the program for details. These will be run by excellent teachers -
- Fruit bottling and food preserving with Stephen Hogwood
- Wine education with our resident expert Linda Lambrecht, and
- Cheese appreciation with Nick Padol, Cheese judge.
Our regular tours continue as before - the food focused walking tour in Bowral, Moss Vale farmers market tour and our regular day tour on the 3rd Sat. However we have changed our tour on the 2nd Sat.
We have joined forces with Patricia and Kristal from the Blue Bowl Cooking School to put on a "Market to Table" tour every 2nd Sat. FoodPath will take a farmers market tour in Bowral first and then we will move on to the historic Fitzroy Inn in Mittagong, where Patricia will provide a cooking class followed by lunch, using the ingredients purchased at the market. Should be fun!
We also have chestnut picking on 26 Mar. This is a seasonal activity and we were lucky to get the opportunity. We also wanted to get a group together to do berry picking - but because of the weather the only berries were blackberries. Maybe you can let me know if you would have liked to go blackberry picking? I was concerned that we would not get the numbers.

Lots of exciting things coming up! Please spread the word and we look forward to catching up with many of you during 2011.

Dress designer extraordinaire Charlie Brown came on one of our FoodPath Tours a few weeks ago and is coming back for more, bringing her family with her this time! We are looking forward to having her and have planned a great day on Sat 2 Oct.
We are spending the morning at a unique bush setting at Kangaloon where we will have morning tea, a walk and talk, a fruit bottling workshop and share a long table light lunch.
After lunch we go to Burrawang to watch the daily milking at a dairy with a brand new facility. We will hear from the Farm Manager and watch the goings on from a viewing platform overhead.
After the milking we go to the Small Cow Farm for a cheese tasting workshop with our award winning artisan cheese makers. They will have product available for sale.
Bookings closed for the morning activities but last minute spots available at the dairy and the cheese tasting.
Ring Jill on 0419 617 021 or email jill@foodpath.com.au
  

On request we have developed an extra FoodPath Tour on Sat 2 October - the Sat of the long weekend.
We are offering this in 4 options, in case you don't have all day.

Well we are exhausted now - two FoodPath events in two days!
Yesterday we had the Mushroom Tunnel Tour (see separate posting) and today we had our first corporate event - a team "bonding" event I guess you could call it.

A group of 10 who worked in a State Govt Dept came down from Sydney for a day out from their work.

FoodPath put on a Fruit Bottling Workshop for them with Steve Hogwood, who has a new business called The 1910 Bottling Company.

The venue was the old kitchen in Hopewood Country House event building.
Steve spoke about the history of bottling fruit as a preserving method and how this has changed over time.

We had tastings and he had some bottles of his wonderful fruit available for sale.

I am sure the group enjoyed it - we did!


Hopewood provided a beautiful setting and stunning garden.  The group had time for a wander through the garden before they set of for a nice lunch at Milton Park.

 I am generating a list of options for corporate groups so please, tell your friends?