Taste Tests

The best perk of being a food blogger is getting to eat lots of scrumptious things (usually for free) and then writing about them.

My personal favourite though, is receiving fresh produce or condiments to experiment with in my cooking adventures.

Tea glazed pork chops with tea poached pears {gluten free}

Posted on August 2, 2012

Behold a thing of beauty! A juicy and shiny glazed pork chop.

Hubby and I are big fans of pork, and our all-time favourite way to eat pork chops is with a sweet mustard crust. However, after creating this tea glaze, I think we may have found a new favourite.

Just the other day we were chatting to friends about our favourite foods and the question came up: “If you could only eat one animal for the rest of your life, what would it be?”

There was much deliberation around the table but then my mate Matt piped up first with ‘Cow. Definitely cow. I love steak.’

His fiance Kate was next ‘Lamb chops! How could you never eat those again?’

Then hubby chimed in ‘Yep, cow for me too’.

‘Really?’ I said. ‘You’ll never eat bacon ever again?’

He shook his head. ‘No! I change my mind. Pork. I mean, pig. I choose pig’.

Me too, pig is it for me: pork chops, porchetta, bacon, iberico jamon…. crackling!

But I digress. Today we are going to be talking about tea… (more…)

Can you guess what these are?

Posted on May 7, 2012

Baby cucumbers? Zucchinis?

No, but good guesses. (more…)

Banana bread with blood orange marmalade glaze

Posted on January 28, 2012

I had a few pesky overripe bananas in my fruit bowl last weekend, and when that happens there is only one thing to do.

Make banana bread.

I’d also just received a jar of Beerenberg Blood Orange Marmalade. I’m not a marmalade fan at all, but this one is much sweeter than other ones I’ve tasted, so I decided to tweak my usual dense and moist banana bread recipe and top it with a sweet glaze. (more…)

Three sparkling “winetails” + a giveaway!

Posted on January 25, 2012

Update 3/2/2012: this competition is now closed. Congrats to the winners: David, Vici and Nicole.

Forget cocktails guys, winetails are the new black.

Not that I’m an expert or anything, but I did have a fiddle around making my own cocktails using Yellow Tail sparkling wine, and had some great results.

Win 6 bottles of Yellow Tail Wine!

Those recipes coming up in a minute, but first, make sure you are signed up to my email newsletter as I’ll be sending out competition details on Friday for how three lucky readers can win 6 bottles of Yellow Tail wine. Giveaway is exclusively for subscribers! Sign up right there in the sidebar -> -> ->

Right. Now that the admin is out of the way, let’s take a look at these winetails… (more…)

Aussie grown garlic from Anarel Farm

Posted on January 17, 2012

I absolutely despise seeing bleached bulbs of garlic at the green grocer labelled ‘China’ or ‘Mexico’ when we can grow beautiful fresh garlic here in Australia (not me, mind you. But wonderful green-thumbed people can).

That’s why when I saw a story about Anarel Farm Garlic on Celia’s blog, I got very excited.

Diana and Ian Ditchfield are small scale farmers who grow their garlic in the NSW Central Tablelands using no chemicals. They sell direct to the public and send the garlic to customers via Australia Post, however, after chatting with Diana on the phone I realised it was only a short drive to her Sydney home, so I collected the garlic myself.

I just love meeting the people behind the product and Diana is so obviously passionate about growing great tasting and sustainable produce. It was lovely to meet her and be inspired to take better care of my sad plants. (more…)