Summer has come and gone even faster than usual this year! It seems our to do list is growing ever longer but hopefully the days will not be growing noticeably shorter for a while yet. We might just get on top of things before the autumn truly sets in ~ we do tend to have Indian summers after all.
I’ve just been to the Wellbeing Festival held at the Kaiapoi Food Forest. I spent some time developing gluten free, vegan, keto, and refined sugar free cake recipes to serve alongside cakes which are more soul food than health food; banoffee cheesecake for example.
In December I attended the Strawberry Fair, again at the Food Forest. The year before I sold out in 45 minutes so this year I made 3 times as much cake. All these cakes contained strawberries in some form including gluten free and vegan options. We were pretty much sold out by the end of the day, in fact we started selling so quickly we didn't get to properly photograph them. I also missed out on a strawberry daiquiri from a neighbouring stall: they had sold out by the time I had a minute to spare.
We are all still in a strange place with covid popping up to remind us of its presence every time we start to think life is back to normal. We’ve held off on our plans to open for large groups and instead continued with small tea parties and of course cakes. These have kept me so busy this summer that as per usual the garden had gotten out of hand. I think the fact that I'm still adding in and filling in new areas might have something to do with it as well. After a rainy start to the summer things have gotten really hot and dry so we spend a fair amount of time watering new plantings with the hose by hand before putting the sprinklers on other areas in the evening once the chance for evaporation isn't so high. I always apologise to tea guests about the unkempt state of the garden but everyone is so understanding and their positive comments encourage me to keep chipping away at it. I think we tend to see everything that needs doing rather than everything that is done and actually looking quite romantic. We have managed to gain a bit of control back now though, we just needed a quiet(er) week to get stuck in.
This summer we were given 1000 old red bricks and inherited a 30year old glass house. Anyone who knows me knows how much I love old and recycled stuff(especially if it's free). Unfortunately the bricks were still laid in a patio which we had to lift and load into the horsefloat - in scorching temperatures I might add. I replaced all the summerhill stone edging in the south garden for a much more traditional look. The summerhill will look better as edging in the oriental garden… eventually. The glasshouse has gone into l’orto. That was a mission and a half to get it home. After removing all the glass and cutting it into 3 sections it took 2 trips with the trailer and a lot of bracing and tie downs. ~We questioned whether it was worth it several times. A lot of the glass was already broken so we decided to put a corrugated polycarbonate roof on it and use the roof glass to make up the sides. Since Alex built a box base for it as well as adding a new roof it wasn’t exactly free but a new glass house of this size is around $6000 so I think it was worth it in the end.
I also bought a kitset barn - now all we have to do is work out how on earth we are going to build it since there is no room in the budget for professional help (Alex says I need professional help of another kind as I always seem to bite off more than either of us can chew at one time)
We didn't do much for Christmas again this year. (Although I did make quite a few Christmas cakes both fruit and 'not fruit'). We got into the habit of skipping Christmas while we had Med Foods as it was always frantic until the 24th and then Christmas day arrived and the family was so tired all we wanted to do was sleep and relax. Since we lived and worked together for so many years we didn't need to do the traditional catch up dinner thing anyway. I'm definitely going to revive Christmas celebrations at some stage though, especially now that my 3 sisters have their own homes away from the villa.
Dad has been harvesting crops and making more jams while mum has also been busy helping with tea parties and the garden. ~ Unfortunately I never seem to be able to get any pictures of the tea parties as I'm focused on the food and the service; and also to respect guests' privacy. If you'd like to see more why not book your very own tea party? ;-) :-D
Meanwhile back in the kitchen:
A beachy wedding cake...
More from the Wellness Festival...
Some Christmas cakes...
...and a few others...
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