New Year's Day 2019

Lunch in the garden with a good book on a warm, sunny, summer's day. The book was excellent (Find Me Unafraid: love, loss and hope in an African slum by Kennedy Odede and Jessica Posner) and lunch included a few strawberries from my garden. A relaxing day although the game of squash with Lynda this afternoon was quite the opposite to lazing under my sun umbrella. 

Cheese Making

Yippee, it's the spring school holidays at last. I spent this afternoon making cheese with a couple of friends. Fortunately Mary had some experience with the cheese making process and she had the equipment, ingredients and recipe ready. Unfortunately we made a mistake in the first step! However we continued on with the process and hopefully we'll have some edible brie cheese in a couple of weeks. The photo below shows the the partially finished product.  It still needed to be turned a few times, soaked in brine and left to mature. We also made some ricotta cheese with the leftover whey. It was quick and easy to make and tasted good with crackers for afternoon tea.

Masses of Mandarins

I've had a bumper crop of mandarins this year. Although the tree is no taller than I am it has produced a huge number of mandarins. The tree looked quite droopy for a while as it sagged under the weight of its fruit. I'm eating at least half a dozen a day and I've given lots away. They are Clementine mandarins and they're very sweet and juicy. Delicious.

Irresistiblue

Mmm, blueberry cheesecake for lunch. My lovely Mum treated me to lunch today at the Irresistiblue Cafe which is situated in a blueberry orchard. The cheesecake was delicious and I learnt a few fascinating facts about blueberries:

1) There are over 200 varieties.

2) Monavale Blueberries have over 26 varieties on their property, both high bush and rabbiteye varieties. Apparently the rabbiteye varieties go pink (similar to the eye colour of a white rabbit) before they turn blue.

3) And the best part - one serving of blueberries provides as many antioxidants as five servings of broccoli. In with blueberries, out with broccoli I say!