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

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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Last Friday was the community launch of the Berrima Primary School Children's Garden and I was invited along in my capacity as Convivium Leader of Slow Food Southern Highlands.


We are lucky in the Southern Highlands to have one school that has been awarded a Stephanie Alexander Foundation grant and this is it!

Congratulations go to the enthusiastic parents and teachers who made this
possible.

The launch was well attended by parents, teachers, volunteers in the garden and other interested parties.

We were told of plans to incorporate the time children spend in the garden to various subjects - Maths, Science, Environment, English - all great ideas and fun at the same time.




The architects who have been engaged to help with the project showed us their plans for a new kitchen (part of the requirement for getting this grant) and how this could be used by the school, families of the students and the community. This will be a wonderful facility.

Slow Food Southern Highlands were asked to "partner" the Berrima School Garden and we are thrilled to be able to do this.
Our FoodPath tours will from time to time visit the Berrima Childrens Garden to have a look at their wonderful vegetables and maybe even be able to buy some to take home.

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Come on a tour and share the experience with like minded people - book now from the Tours page of the website.

Well, it has happened!
Yesterday was our first FoodPath Tour and we had a great day.

The producers were wonderful and made us feel welcome.
Dave met us at the raspberry farm and gave an interesting talk on their business - how they started, how they are going and what their plans are. Nicki told us about the jams and vinegars that they make from just fruit and sugar, so that they have product to sell all year round.
If you can get hold of any, try Cuttaway Creek Raspberry Vinegar with oysters - that is how they serve it at Bilsons restaurant!

On to Berrima Ridge where they produce and sell real free range eggs. Four thousand chooks roaming free during the day scratching in the dirt and having dust baths as they love to do.

We saw the mobile hen houses where the chooks go of their own accord to roost at night, protected by the Maremma dogs. We saw where they lay their eggs & how these are collected manually 1500 every day!

Warren showed us how the eggs are washed by machine & then graded into sizes. Finally he gave us a demo of their new Italian pasta making machine - a great way to use up surplus eggs.





The lunch at Eling Forest was scrumptious. Check out the photos.

Cherry tomato tart and onion jam tart with Eastern Fetta (from Small Cow Farm).

Seared Japanese scallop with Green Pea Veloute and Kipfler Potato.

I had Duck Liver Pate with Cumberland Sauce & Toasted Sourdough. Yum!

On to Small Cow Farm after lunch to see Lesley and Mark. Here we sat around a large table and Mark told us about cheese making and their business. They are doing extremely well winning lots of prizes for their cheese. No wonder - look at the luscious brie on the right!

After a leisurely talk and taste at Small Cow Farm we moved on to the Robertson Cheese Factory where we heard from Michael & Cressie about their developing sheep's milk cheese business. Zoe was our host here and she had put together a fine spread of antipasto to finish up the day. Zoe told us about her goat's milk cheese and gave us all some to take home.
All in all a very stimulating and interesting day.

The next tour is on Sat 15 May. Let us know if you would like to come?

Don't forget these producers are farmers who are busy making a living and we are very lucky to be able to visit them on their farms with our FoodPath tours once a month.

What a great lunch we had today at Centennial Winery. Put on by the ABC Delicious magazine. It was a regional producers meal and all of the producers from our FIRST FoodPath tour tomorrow were there.
See the happy snap!



There were displays of the produce used and Robin Murray the Chef spoke between courses about how he had prepared the meal using the fresh local produce.

Countdown time now until our very first tour tomorrow. I will report back afterwards & take some photos.

We were featured tonight on WIN TV News! A good story about the start of food tourism in the Southern Highlands - great exposure for us. Come and join us.

Lots of enquiries coming in from various websites - some we don't even know about! Everyone is as excited as we are and the support is unbelievable.
We had a request last night for a tour including small children, so we are working on an itinerary for the July school holidays. We will post it on the Tours page when it is finalised.

Please let us know if you have any requests?

What a great opportunity from Tourism Southern Highlands this morning! Thanks Steve (pictured right)!

A journalist and camera man from WIN TV were in the area (because Tony Abbott was cycling through) and we were invited to be interviewed with one of the producers on our first tour that is running this Saturday 17 April.

After a mad ring around all was set up and we went to the Berrima Ridge free range chook farm to see Anne & Warryn. Anne and I were interviewed and were able to explain what we are planning and why.



The TV crew said to keep in touch about how we are going because they might come back and follow a tour around for a couple of hours. They asked us to stay in touch - how exciting!

Check out the Maremma dog in the photo (left) with his head in the food bucket! Anne fed the chooks to get them to gather for a photo shoot. They thought it was Xmas because they are normally only fed at night.


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"Congratulations on your wonderful new venture ‘Food Path’ ! I’m certain Culinary tourists will flock to the Southern Highlands to experience so many diverse food and wine offerings.

Maybe I can travel the distance in the not too distant future to see it all for myself then mention on ABC’s Night Life, my Albury Wodonga newspaper food column or my local ABC radio program here.

Good luck and please let me know how it goes.
Best regards

Barb Lowery"

How exciting - Elise Pascoe was the first person to book in to our first tour scheduled for Sat 17 April - in 2 weeks time!  You will probably remember that Elise was associated with the Good Living Section of the Sydney Morning herald for many years.

What a wonderful start!

We have had an enthusiastic response from many friends and others we have contacted by email and already our April and our May tours are filling up.

Support like this has been very encouraging and we are looking forward to our first tour.


Alfonso Ales, Chef at Bilsons Restaurant has also wished us well and offered his support. He agreed that I could tell you what he wrote after the day we organised for him and several other chefs last September.

Have you found any wild mushrooms lately?

There have been some around after the recent rain.

I have been wanting to go out gathering because there is something magical about that, but unfortunately I have been too busy.

We were lucky to find some fresh ones yesterday at the Picton Creative Traders Market. They were still covered in pine needles!

We came across a Czech girl who had a stall with her mother. They make a range of delicious pickles using traditional recipes. This included pickled wild mushrooms and also fresh saffron (pine) mushrooms and slippery jacks.

I am generally very nervous about wild mushrooms because some are deadly - but last year I learnt how to recognise the pine (saffron) mushrooms and the slippery jacks so I knew I was in safe territory. We had them for dinner sliced and pan fried with garlic and onion. Delicious.

PLEASE do not gather or eat wild mushrooms unless you know what you are doing!