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

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.

What a great idea - Sturt has started a Supper Club in their fabulous cafe!

We love the Sturt Cafe and so do many others

Actually it was a delicious 3 course dinner prepared by Martial and Bridget Cosyn who manage the cafe. Seared scallops, organic veal and Stephane's wonderful chocolate mousse.

Very good - we'll be back!

If you get the chance - it was good value at $65 per head if you are a Friend of Sturt. $75 if you are not. Worth joining as a Friend because you find out what is going on in the Fine Craft Gallery. Check out their website.

We suggested they change the name to the Sturt Dinner Club because it was definitely more than supper.

We joined Christiane and Francisco which was fun

Especially nice was the live music that we enjoyed (guitar and violin) which is to be a regular feature.

A wide range of smoked pork products

Lilli looking excited

After breakfast we walked to the Polish smokehouse which Nick and I discovered recently

Wednesday is the day when most of the smoking is finished and there is a wide range of products to choose from.

Made from 100% pork with no preservatives how lucky are we to have this little treasure so close by.

I know I will be a regular visitor!

Happy customers!

Last night was the first of a series of seasonal "Cool Flavours" dinners planned by the newly revamped Southern Highlands Food and Wine group. This was a Winter Regional Dinner held at Southern Highland Wines.

FoodPath's Nick Padol was asked to be MC for the night, commenting on the food that came from our local producers.
There was a good crowd - 95 people in total.

A wide range of cool climate Southern Highlands wines were selected to match the food by Will Matthews, Wine Consultant who gave an interesting talk.
Products used included cheese from Small Cow Farm, tangello infused olive oil from Sutton Forest Olives, quail from Thirlmere poultry, exotic mushrooms from the Mushroom Tunnel in Mittagong, beef from Spring Hill Beef at Burrawang, barramundi from Infinity Fisheries at Bargo and apples from the historic Tennessee Orchard at Yerrinbool.

Most of these products are available at the Producers Markets in Bowral and Moss Vale.

FoodPath has a Farmers Market Tour which will take you to meet these producers and more. They will tell you about their products, give you a tasting and you can buy food knowing exactly where it is grown and who by. Pretty special?

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?

Some of us met for coffee first then moved on to Bowral to join the rest of the group.



Twenty six people came to our Mushroom Tunnel Tour and we were very excited about that. Five chefs, one hotel manager, one events organiser and 4 staff members from SH Tourism were included in the group.



Noel told us the history of the tunnel and how he came to be in the business. He explained the details involved in maintaining a pristine environment for the mushrooms to grow in a similar way to how they did in  the forests of Malaysia.


This tour is always very popular and we are very excited that Noel has said that we can continue to bring groups of people to tunnel.

Please let us know if you are interested and we can let you know when a tour is coming up.

Check out the photos!

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!