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

Looking for something to do in the school holidays? Our Farm Tours might be just the thing!

What a great farm we visited last Wednesday near Fitzroy Falls and we have another tour this week - on Wed 24 April.

The kids loved it!
There were about sixteen tiny piglets just two weeks old racing around. The mothers were very quiet and we were able to cuddle the babies. After feeding the pigs we moved on to the sheep - multicoloured - and some baby lambs to cuddle too. The kids helped Sam to round up the sheep so that we could have a close look. Two alpacas act to protect the sheep from foxes during the night. We saw three horses including a giant Clydesdale. Much time was spent pulling grass and feeding the horses.

To top it off Katrina and Sam have a fabulous play area for children. All in all it was a great visit.

This week we are also visiting our favourite little farm near Moss Vale in the morning. This is always popular. Alan is expecting baby goats any minute - so we may see new born goats, check the yabby trap, taste the honey, see the great vegetable garden, feed the chooks and more.

Both farms give the children a great experience.

This tour is very popular with grandparents and parents alike.

To book contact Jill on 0419 617 021, info@foodpath.com.au or www.foodpath.com.au

Price: $35 adults per farm, $15 child (3 - 12hrs) per farm. Children under 3 are free.

NB Children must be supervised by an accompanying adult at all times.

How disappointing that the weather has been so miserable for the school holidays so far. Disappointing for Tulip Time and the open gardens too - mind you the tulips are beautiful, best I have seen in my 14 years in the Highlands!
We say we will do the Family Farm Tours rain, hail or shine but it was very soggy underfoot yesterday so we have changed our minds. Not very pleasant so we have decided to cancel the tour scheduled for Sun 2 Oct. We have to give notice a few days prior.
Other options for you to consider in wet weather are:

• 10 pin bowling (Mittagong)
• Neeny's Playhouse (Mittagong)
• A range of movies at our wonderful Empire Cinema (Bowral) and 
• Bunnings are offering a free DIY Workshop for 5yr + age group. 

There is one FoodPath Family Tour to go these holidays and that is on Wed 5 Oct if you are interested? We will be visiting the free range chook farm in the morning, a dairy in the afternoon with a picnic lunch in between.

Cross your fingers conditions improve by then. Please contact us if you want to come because we have to have a minimum number.

We are happy to announce that we have been able to organise to take a group (max 22 people) chestnut picking in the Southern Highlands on Sat 26 Mar 2011. This is lucky because it is very popular.

Chestnuts on the tree

Busloads of Europeans come down from Sydney to gather nuts and cook them on the large braziers. On 26 Mar there will be 200 others there!

Roasted chestnuts

We are having a tour to the Farmers Market that morning so have decided to meet at the Moss Vale showground at 11am and travel by bus from there. Some people might want to do both tours! Farmers' Market tour is limited to 8 people.

Time: 11am - 4pm
Transport: Bus
Price: $45 (take your own picnic)
Price: $65 (lunch provided - delicious sandwich, cake and drink from the sourdough shop in Bowral).
To book contact us from the website or ring Jill on 0419 67 021.

Counting down now until our tour with Charlie Brown famous dress designer. We have a good group organised and I will report back on it afterwards, hopefully with lots of photos.

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?

How exciting - we have 24 people booked in to the FoodPath Mushroom Tunnel Tour this Wed 4 August, including chefs from two local hotels, representatives from SH Tourism, a group from Wollongong, more from Ulladulla and from Kangaroo Valley. It is nice to know the word is getting out about our activities.
Half of the group are coming on to lunch with us at Sturt, a lunch including mushrooms from the tunnel of course.
The tunnel is an old disused railway tunnel and it is interesting to see the range of exotic mushrooms grown by Noel of Li Sun Mushrooms. Look out for them at your local farmers market!

How lucky are we!
Today we had a Russian lunch prepared by our friends Tatiana and Steve. We provided the venue, they provided the food - what a great idea.
Several friends joined us.
We started with Borscht (a meal in itself) followed by two amazing pastry dishes - Coulibiak (with trout and barramundi) and Pirogue (made with pork and veal).
It is special to experience traditional food from other cultures - don't you agree?

Our FoodPath blog has a following in Russia which is exciting - because of Tatiana, I'm sure.

Hello to anyone from Russia who may be reading this.

Thanks for the lunch Tatiana!

Today we had a lunch for Slow Food celebrating "Slow Fashion". Marg Connor, a wonderful felt maker and SH local spoke to us about her felt making and how she gets her inspiration - then treated us to a wonderful parade of her clothes. Such variety and so creative it was very special. It is not just having the skills to make the felt but having the creativity to put it together into a unique garment to be worn and enjoyed. Margaret does not take orders or do commissions because no two pieces are the same.

The models were great fun and we all had a go at trying on the clothes. They came to life when they were being worn.
Slow Food now embraces fibre that is close to the earth - like felt and pottery.

This is not about food - but I wanted to share with you anyway! Marg's clothes can be found at the old Milk Factory complex and Gallery in Railway Street, Bowral. Have a look if you get the chance.

Stephan Jouin has opened a tiny coffee outlet in Mittagong main street called Jet Espresso. He is a firm supporter of Fair Trade coffee.

He opens at 5.30am (!) and reports that he does a brisk trade with commuters heading for Sydney.
On Monday nights Stephan runs a Coffee School from 6 - 10pm. Contact him on jetespresso@hotmail.com

We hope to include a stop at Jet Espresso in one of our FoodPath tour itineraries when Stephan will talk to us about his coffee and Fair Trade.

Last night we had a Nose to Tail dinner at the Centennial Vineyard Restaurant in collaboration with Slow Food Southern Highlands, celebrating the Galloway breed of cattle. The Galloway is a very old Scottish breed and is (or was) an endangered species.
Greg Stuart the breeder looked great in his kilt and gave a very interesting talk about the cattle/ Robin Murray told us how he prepared the various dishes with the variety of cuts from the beast.
We had a great night and raised money to send Chris and Greg Stuart to Italy in October as Terra Madre delegates.

The food was fabulous and included oxtail and vegetable soup shot, devilled kidney and rosemary brochette, baby carrots with beef jus gras cream, tongue and cheek soil (Robin had to explain what he meant by "soil"!) , carpaccio of fillet, horseradish cream, carrot puree, crumbed egg yolk (he said they prepared 120 egg yolks until they had 85 in tact ones they could serve - a very delicate operation), etc

Most Slow Food activities are not as grand as this - but every now and then we lash out and it was a great success.



Carol Willman (below - 2nd from the right) was there. Carol is very well known as a cheese maker and teacher and often runs Cheese Making classes at the Small Cow Farm. Follow the link for more info - www.smallcowfarm.com










We had a brush with fame with both John Olson and Reg Livermore amongst our guests. They were good sports and helped us to draw the raffle.

Last Friday a Slow Food group went to Feast@McVitty for lunch. This cafe at McVitty Grove vineyard (on the Wombeyan Caves Road) has been taken over by Anne Holloway, member of Slow Food Southern Highlands.

Anne's partner Philip Martin of Pulpit Rock Estate was waiting on table and serviced some delicious wines from his vineyard up the road.






Nothing like spending time relaxing over lunch with friends in a convivial environment.


Anne has kindly donated a $100 voucher for lunch at her restaurant to a raffle we are having this Sat at the Centennial restaurant. Slow Food is holding a Nose to Tail dinner with Robin Murray, Chef at Centennial.







Look at the stunning trees that line the driveway!

Well - the Tallong Apple Day was fun.

The Slow Food stand was packed with goodies and information. Sold out of our apples and wished we had more.

Also had home grown pumpkins, potatoes & eggs and our apple based chutneys, sauce & jam made for us by Mrs Oldbucks of Berrima and Doolan Fine Jams and Chutneys (who you can find at the Bowral Primary School market on the 2nd Sat of the month.





What was very nice was catching up with other Slow Food members who helped on the stall and spreading the word about Slow Food to the public. We had a couple of new members as a result - now 80!

Next Sunday is the Tallong Apple Festival and we will be there with a Slow Food stall to help "celebrate the apple".

We will have jars of apple sauce and different chutneys all made from fresh apples, apple recipes to distribute and fresh produce from some of our Slow Food members.





If you are in the area come along and say hello.

We will report back again after the event.





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