Meals – Head in the Clouds – Feet in the Dirt

Freezer Restocked

OK – this is not one for the vegetarians, but we are happy to finally be restocked with beef – especially now summer is here, so BBQ’s with salads are all the go at this time of year!
I spent a few hours at my cousins place packing and labelling – and choosing how we wanted our meat divvied up. We don’t care much for roast beef, for example (prefer lamb or chicken when it comes to roast dinners) so the roast cuts I just got cut into steak sizes.
Picked up a lot of bones – some to make stock, some for friends dogs 🙂

Having learned some lessons from previous stockups, this time I am ahead of the game. Its no fun diving into your freezer with a hammer and chisel trying to get dinner out.
So – heavy linings of newspaper to soak up blood hopefully will sort out some of that problem. Sometime tomorrow or the next day before the freezing process has completed, I will take it all out and reposition so cuts don’t meld into each other – even though I have done several linings of newspaper.

Can I say dinner tonight was divine.
My lovely husband’s main skill in the kitchen is cereal (I say this in a nice way… he is marvellously domesticated and I am a most grateful wife due to the fact that he LIKES IRONING!!)(whereas I am allergic) But I am the chief cook.
However – Youtube can teach you almost anything and boy oh boy can he bbq a steak!!
So tonight I bandicooted some new potatoes and steamed them and made up a salad – all from the garden of course. We indulged in the eye fillet steaks first because they are (were) sooooo goooood!

The supermarket isn’t going to do much good out of us for the next few months!!

Cheers

Time For Pizza

G’day… There goes another weekend! They just zip by don’t they?

It rained a reasonable amount today – but not with the enthusiasm of yesterday, so we could at least go out for a bit without getting completely saturated!

First Marigold!!! Made me laugh because its such a scrappy little thing!

This completely unimpressive photo is my ‘before’ photo. In about a month I am really hoping there will be so much green with tall corn and massive zucchinis etc. It just looks a bit underwhelming right now!!

Just a little bit of weeding left to do in the duck yard!! haha

And look who I caught in action!! Screecher, our oldest chook has discovered she can fly to the top of the pallet fence and take a stroll on the wild side!! (Wing clipping night has to be soon!!)

Capture of non-remorseful chook!! Couldn’t hold camera, chicken and focus!! Oh well!

Anyway, this post was meant to be about pizza.

We enjoy pizza… we used to buy it when we lived in the city. But when we moved to Tasmania and I didn’t go back to ‘normal formal paid 9-5’ work, I learned to do lots of things that meant avoiding spending excess $$

Making pizza’s was one of those things.

Its actually pretty hard to go back to the bought pizzas once you make your own unless you are going out to the fancy-pants gourmet pizza places.

If you don’t make your own bases… here is the recipe for mine. Its pretty easy & straight forward.

In a small bowl, put one tablespoon of dry yeast, a teaspoon of caster sugar and a cup of lukewarm water.

Mix and leave until it froths up nicely.

In a large bowl sift 2 & 1/2 cups of plain flour, and add one teaspoon of sea salt flakes (I often use normal salt) and a tablespoon of olive oil (again, vegetable oil quite acceptable)

Add yeast mix to the flour and mix in – using well floured hands and bench, start to knead into dough. Takes a few minutes to get it to the nice smooth elastic consistency.

Place in clean bowl and cover with damp cloth

This whole mixture now has to be left to rise, so perfect opportunity to go down to the supermarket to go shopping and forget the icing sugar for the cake you baked the day before (yeah I know… sigh)

Aaaanyway… skipping forward

I like to break this into 3 lumps, although the original recipe says 4

Roll out to vaguely pizza shape

Add toppings as you desire… we usually have same one every time because we are boring and we like it.

In my world, a pizza is not complete without pineapple

Topped with chicken pieces and sprinkled with cheese, we have our favourite pizza!!

Do you make pizza? Is pineapple important? What toppings are essential??

Who knows… maybe we will branch out one day.

Enjoy whats left of your weekend and hope Monday is kind to you!

Cheers

Nothing Like a Lamb Roast

Despite being winter, the herb garden is still going strong

Hello!

Well… the pantry is nearly under control. Its already pretty fabulous to walk in and know where stuff is, grab it and walk out!! 🙂

Tonight we are feeling rather full and content, as I decided to to make a lamb roast for dinner. Along with the beef in the freezer, we had also bought a lamb.

First stop was the herb garden – rosemary & oregano for the cooking and mint to make some mint sauce.

I usually cut up some garlic, then stab holes in the top to poke the garlic in all over it. A bit of oil on top, garlic salt, plus the chopped up herbs and into the oven it went

Next step – vegetable garden foraging

I love being able to create a dinner almost entirely out of the garden!

I hadn’t made mint sauce in an eon… I know its supposed to go on the meat, but I have always loved it on my potatoes!!

Mint sauce is pretty easy to make – if you haven’t and want to, simply chop up a good handful of mint, boil the kettle. Put a couple of spoons of sugar in a bowl and use the hot water to dissolve it. Add your mint, then add splashes of cider vinegar to the mix and taste test until you like it. Sometimes you have to do a bit of a balancing act between the sugar and vinegar.

The thing I really love about roast lamb, is leftovers! Cold lamb on sandwiches with home-made relish!!

Ahhhh – the good life!

Cheers

Of course gravy and cheese sauce to finish it off!! That’s local lamb (Cousins farm) 5 different vegetables from my vegie patch (Potato, pumpkin, broccoli, carrot & garlic) and three different herbs – Rosemary, oregano & mint! (yeah yeah – indulge me while I have my proud gardeners moment!)

Honest and True – I Went for a Walk! (oooo – & New Chooks)

I failed to capture the seriousness of the wind today!

Oh it was a feral day out there!! The wind was dislodging all kinds of gum tree bits that bounced off the roof all day!

The rain didn’t fall either, it hurled itself down with such vigour that it created an upward spray off the shed roof!!

Would have been soooooo easy to not go for a walk. But it was the first day of my new years resolution in May and I felt like such a slacker woosing out first up because of a bit of weather!! So I put on the walking gear, said see ya to Jeff and Mana – who both suddenly decided to join me in my madness. (Actually Jeff said I wasn’t allowed to hog all the idiot points) 😀

I was all prepared to take a selfie when we got home of me totally soaking wet and cold and miserable (and another 8kms skinnier) when, Tasmania, being Tasmania, the sun came out and shined for the whole hour and ten minutes!!

We took delivery of four gorgeous new hens this morning!! I will have to ask the lady when I see her next what they are again. (I’ll write it down)

We put them in the smaller portable chook run (that we borrowed off cousins ages ago and haven’t got it back to them quite yet!)(Its ok… apparently they don’t need it at the moment)

We fished them out late in the afternoon for a run about in the yard

Meanwhile, on the other side of the fence… I have started making warm mash late in the afternoon for the girls. Happy chooks, warm bellies, more eggs.

You should add a garnish of parsley. That way your chickens know you truly care.

Within seconds I have to step back as a LOT of this gets flicked all over the place during their enthusiastic scoffing.

I had to pick up another bucket of windfall apples of course, fetch more wood and a few other outdoorsy things. It was so great coming back into the house – enveloped in a cocoon of warm. So nice I went outside several times to get cold so I could enjoy walking back inside to the fire. (yeah probably weird but little things like that make me happy)

Kept dinner simple tonight – roasted some pumpkins to make up some soup…

So far my few pumpkins have all been delicious

And I also baked a loaf of garlic/herb bread – most of which is now gone….

Fresh herbs, fresh garlic, toasty warm bread!!

Nice to finish the day in front of the fire, a movie and getting my Knitting Nanna persona happening!

Half way though a yellow pair – should match my minion beanie nicely!!!

Enjoy what is left of your weekend.

Cheers

PS you can see what we get at the end of our rainbows via Facebook

Saturday

Jeff’s slightly ‘fixed’ smile after photo #8 as niece was helpfully pulling faces, sticking her finger up her nose and dribbling cucumber – best I could do with what I had.

This morning we bid a fond farewell to Emma as we put her on a plane to go home. Its a lot quieter here tonight that’s for sure!! Apparently she is returning next holidays – not sure she has cleared that with her mum as yet!!

We managed to do a lot of bits and pieces today. The weather was again super-gorgeous, so I shoved a load of washing on

My awesome Canadian cousin (who lives in the US) sent me this t-shirt!!

We ate lunch on the back veranda and soaked up what vitamin D we could…

Everything is better eaten outside – especially if it has home made tomato relish on it!

Mana and I collected the rest of the silverbeet seeds while we were sitting out there.

I picked a few things from the garden/hothouse

Still this and that coming out of the hothouse

And treated myself to a bunch of spikey dahlias.

Mana and Jeff took the bird netting off the strawberries and dug up all the weeds – it looks amazing now

Strawberry patch – long overdue for a clean up

I cleaned up the kitchen (surfaces in our place invite random ‘stuff’ to be plonked on top of them)

And prepared part of dinner –

Grating zucchini – collecting some of the seeds from that big one. It was the best plant, so makes sense to collect those seeds.

Who keeps and reuses cereal packets?? I find them easy to recycle. The boxes are great for craft (or backing for signs at markets) and the bags are tough as nails – I bake our bread, so I keep my bread in cereal bags! I also store meat scraps/cooked bones etc in them in the freezer until either we take our rubbish to the tip (no collection here) or sometimes pop them in Ruby’s bin if I am really pushed for freezer space.

Stupidly I only recently discovered how fabulous these are to re use!!

Mana came inside and put on another batch of apples to dry

The apple trees haven’t run out of fruit yet!

Thought I better restock up on wood. So much better to do that job in this weather than wait until its cold, miserable and raining sideways!!

I like to have two or three loads at the back door

Jeff build us a couple of wood storage boxes for the back door out of pallets. It’s pretty easy around here to get hold of pallets to make various things. And the ones that don’t break apart nicely make beautiful kindling.

We store our main supply undercover next to the hothouse. We also use pallets to raise them off the ground, which saves a lot of muck & bugs when you get to the bottom layers!

We also have a foreman for this job

Dinner was a meatloaf (I tend to thaw enough mince to make hamburgers one night, then use the rest of the mix in a loaf tin the next day to make into meatloaf)(Its like leftovers you haven’t cooked yet!) along with home grown vegies and my fav. tomato/zucchini side dish. Easy (and probably healthy)

I finished the day by completing a ‘Cozy Cuff’

Getting in touch with my Knitting Nanna Self

So a bits & pieces kind of day, but definitely productive!

Hope everyone’s weekends have started well!

Cheers

PS re the band aid.

Emma decided yesterday that she needed to take this old broken jar home that she found at Magnet Mine. (Who am I to argue? My souvenir was a three foot long chunk of driftwood!! 😀 )

Since I am a klutz and can injure myself on dangerous objects (like margarine containers)(Sadly not kidding) I shouldn’t have gone near the jar. Instead I picked it up and made quite a mess of my finger

As a friend kindly pointed out, I married a walking first aid kit, so I got sorted out by my personal nurse & got a kiss into the bargain! Awesome huh?

Emma helpfully ran about taking photos of all the blood splatters and made me the fabulous montage below!!

Pottering About

Both Jeff and I have managed to catch colds (My first one since moving to Tassie) so I am not rushing around like a maniac.

Still… I started a bit of a vegie patch clean up and am still picking a reasonable amount of food. The chillies recently picked have been deseeded and added to the others in the freezer, and will be made into sweet chilli sauce at a later date.

More apples got put into the dehydrator and the pantry smells good right now!!

The zucchinis are a far cry, size wise, from my other ones, but they still go into dinners and give us a feed! (BTW I will announce the closest guess to the weight of the ‘big’ zucchini at the end of the weekend – one person is really close! 🙂 )

I picked enough silverbeet seeds to last forever and ever –

I will leave it to dry a bit more before taking it off the stems

I am also pleased to see a number of the laterals that I picked last week are showing roots. Hopefully I can ‘winter’ a few of these successfully

I have been running lots of jobs, projects & outings in my mind for the next month to get into as in a couple of days I have my gorgeous niece, Emma coming to stay for 10 days, and a lovely Japanese young lady, Mana, who will stay with us a month and help me out in exchange for food & board

Emma’s recent visit to us, hanging out writing messages to friends in the sand!

Mana on her first visit to us a couple of years ago!

It will be great fun to have a couple of sidekicks here with me. I reckon I can convince them to help fill the car with driftwood from Black River Beach while Jeff is sleeping off a nightshift! 🙂

Emma has been to Japan a few times (very lucky for a young teenager!) and Mana has lived in Australia before, so it will be fun for them both to meet and improve on their language skills!

Tomato-Zucchini Bake

Anyway – I will leave you with a side dish I love making up while the tomatoes & zucchinis are on form. Its a bit of a twist on the stuffed tomatoes. I have a lot of cherry tomatoes this season rather than the bigger ones that I make the stuffed tomatoes with.

First, get a baking dish and grate a good later of zucchini into it

Then layer with thick slices of tomato and thin slices of onion

Make some breadcrumbs, and mix some extra tomatoes up in the Gee Whizzer – I like to add some herbs and garlic salt too –

Mix the two together –

Crumble on top and add a bit of butter and chuck it in the oven for about 20 minutes 🙂

Its really easy and makes a fabulous side dish. You can add whatever else takes your fancy – I have put cheese in it, or added fresh basil on top!

Enjoy your weekends!

Catching up with Preserving the Produce

I enjoy having fresh herbs (and garlic) at hand

Time to get cracking on all those tomatoes! I needed some smaller packs in the freezer that I can pull out and use for dinner every now and again. I did a few containers of plain tomato. Then I also made up a nice big pot of tomatoes, onion, garlic, capsicum & fresh herbs – a nice ready made mix for pasta sauces.

And then in a total fit of organisation that my mother would be proud of, I even labelled and dated the containers!

Onward!

I have been wanting to make up a batch of my Nanna’s cucumber relish. I even went and bought some celery seeds from the health food shop in anticipation of getting my act (and cucumbers) together

Procrastination set in and I have been carrying around this suspicious looking bag in my purse for 3 weeks. I am sure cashiers have raised their eyebrows once or twice as I have opened it up!!

Happily the recipe also calls for apples – another 5 apples put to good use!

First Ingredients:

1&1/2 lb cucumber peeled & chopped

1 lb green apples peeled and chopped

1 lb onion chopped

1/2 lb sugar

1/2lb white vinegar

1 small tablespoon salt

Cook all until tender

Enjoying using my Nanna’s old scales when making up her recipes!

Second Ingredients:

1/2 tablespoon curry powder

1/2 tablespoon mustard powder

1/2 tablespoon turmeric

1 teaspoon celery seed

1/2 cup flour (I use cornflour to keep gluten free)

Mix all with a little more vinegar into a paste and add to relish, cook to thicken, keep stirring.

Spoon into sterilised jars

Yum. Another nice old fashioned recipe that I hadn’t made in a while.

I NEED to order more jars/lids – especially lids!!!

Last on my list today was to make up a pumpkin soup. I had been eyeing off my little stash of pumpkins and thinking about soup!

So I baked a few pieces –

First time I have bothered baking pumpkin for soup! Best flavour!

I fried up some onion and garlic, then added a litre of chicken stock and a couple of potatoes along with the baked pumpkin (sans skin of course)

Once the potato was soft, I whizzed it all up into creaminess and was pretty much done! I usually love adding coconut cream or coconut milk to pumpkin soup, but my taste test on this was pretty good so I thought I would leave it as is tonight!

All fancy tonight with an entrée for dinner!!

So I am all kitchened out today. If the weather is kind, I will have to get outside tomorrow to play!

Its only 7 degrees C out there tonight (44F) and we indulged in a fire again tonight. During the day it was on and off again warm and cool, along with sun and rain! Typical “can’t make up my mind” weather for this place! 🙂

Have a great day!

Cheers

A Ton of Weeds

It was a beautiful day today, and I didn’t care what needed to be done inside – I was going to be out in it.

My poor garden is in an appalling state! I really haven’t been keeping up – just accepting the food it gives us without maintaining it lately!

It was pretty refreshing to get in there and make a good start on prettying it up again!

One of the raised garden beds was full of self seeded broccolini and mini cabbage, a few cos lettuce that went to seed, some rogue potatoes that I never even planted there and a single capsicum that hasn’t fruited but looks quite at home.

Time to get a bit ruthless and remove it all!

ok – I didn’t have the heart to pull up the capsicum. Its trying so hard!

Found plenty of fat juicy worms! The chickens suck them back like spaghetti – but only if they are lucky enough to find them by themselves. I prefer worms in the garden working for me!

I hate twitch. Long ropey grass. I can never get it all – sometimes tempts me to move over to the dark side of chemical poisons. Resisting so far!

I tried to choose the best of the moth eaten brassicas to replant under the ‘vegie net’ It took a while to carefully inspect every leaf for grubs and eggs and me flapping my arms about and yelling at any cabbage moth that came near. They look a little forlorn after their relocation, but hoping they will bounce back in a few days.

My best friend gave me these wonderful nets. She grew some beautiful non-grubby cauliflower over summer using these! I really should have put mine up again sooner.

And yes I know I have replanted in the same spot, but I like living on the edge – we shall see what happens!

Moving right along to this mess –

It took a bit of time to pull up and remove a good portion of the unwanted plants and weeds in here – I didn’t quite get around to digging it over but there was a vast improvement by the end of the day.

A small bit of excitement at one point as I disturbed a beautiful Redback Spider. These are famed for making life uncomfortable in the old days when you would find them under the toilet seat in the outside dunny!

So I risked life and limb to put her in a margarine container and moved her to a more ‘photographable’ area so I could show you all 🙂 (Most of you are probably saying, please don’t bother next time!)

It was hard to get a decent shot of her as after her margarine experience she was a bit skitty, and wouldn’t stop the race for freedom.

There is an antivenom, but a bite will make you reasonably unwell. (and no – I don’t garden with gloves!)

OK – I did don the leather gloves for this baby –

They are the nastiest thistle around. And even with the gloves on I got stabbed right through a couple of times!!! Much more troublesome than spiders in my opinion. (Serves me right for letting the garden go so long!)

One of the nice things about working in the garden is being able to forage for lunch. I ate tomatoes and raw beans. I could have really gone wild and had a carrot, but maybe tomorrow 🙂

I gathered a few fresh eggs then came inside to wash off the dirt and get dinner on the go.

I had thawed out some mince but hadn’t made any grand decisions about what to do with it. I have saved some to make hamburgers tomorrow, but tonight I made one of my favourite Japanese side dishes, Koroke.

Mash some potatoes and fry up some mince (I like to add some curry powder to the mince.) (And don’t add milk or cream to the mash – maybe a bit of butter – if its too soft they will fall apart)

Put some some bread in the Gee-Whizzer and make some breadcrumbs, and crack a couple of eggs –

The proper colour of eggs from free ranging spoiled chickens

Mix your mashed potato and mince and form into patties. Dip in the beaten egg and roll in the breadcrumbs

Shallow fry in a pan of oil and you are done.

I usually have teriyaki chicken to go alongside this, but I wasn’t going to bother driving into town for it. (We top with the Japanese Kewpie Mayonnaise and Tonkatsu sauce)

Such was my day! I hope yours was great too!

Cheers

PS Cari asked what a Granny Bonnet was, so I hunted up some photos –

Scale – you can tell they are quite a small flower and the heads hang down.

Jam, sauce & dinner

Since there is a market upcoming (although by the sound of the pouring rain as I type, it may be a no-goer) I thought it best to drag some of the umpteen squillion bags of raspberries out of the freezer and make some more jam. Everyone seems to love it. (Except my weird husband who avoids it because he is a sook about seeds in his teeth! 🙂 ) (more for me!!)

It was important to test it –

Tick.

Moving right along to make up that sweet chilli sauce

Recipe for those who are interested:

You’ll need a long lead time if you want to grow your own chillies and garlic, otherwise its pretty straightforward.

Ingredients:

300 grams chillies (deseeded)

100 grams garlic

70 grams fresh ginger

1.2 litres of cider vinegar

2 kg sugar

1 teaspoon salt

Method:

Put your chillies, garlic and ginger in the Gee Whizzer with a bit of the cider vinegar to puree

Add to large pot with remaining ingredients and boil (keep an eye on it – horrible to clean up if it boils over)

Recipe calls for 25 minutes of simmering but I need a LOT longer (ie an hour or two) to reduce to the desired thickness

Do yourself a favour and DO NOT INHALE while cooking or even washing the pot. Seriously. Your eyes will water for a week.

Pour into sterilised bottles and enjoy.

Drizzle on cream cheese and biscuits (crackers) or very nice with spring rolls

Since I had made meatloaf yesterday I didn’t have much to do to get dinner ready, except trot down the yard to my personal supermarket to pull up some carrots –

Impressed with my carrots that I have mostly ignored all season!

Pick the first of the pumpkins It was so small but the plant has died back so why not try it? Glad we did – tasty!!

And a visit to the herb garden for some basil, parsley and oregano. Honestly – have you seen how expensive ‘fresh’ herbs are to buy in the supermarket? Even if you don’t have a garden, grab a few pots and grow your favourite herbs. You won’t look back!

I also had a taste for some stuffed tomatoes, so while the vegies were baking I prepared a few. Its another great way to make use of your excess tomatoes.

First whizz up some breadcrumbs and add some fresh herbs (or dry) and a bit of garlic salt

Get your tomatoes, cut in half and scoop out the centre.

Smush up or whizz up the centres and add them to the breadcrumb mixture then spoon the lot back into the tomato shells.

Top with a bit of basil and a smidge of butter. They will take about 5 minutes under the grill so you can do them last thing before serving up dinner.

I have no photo of dinner because I was hungry and ate it – plus it wasn’t that photogenic anyway – but it was fresh and tasted not too bad at all!

Cheers

Willing Workers – Gorgeous Guests – Nozomi

(Fair warning – long post – go get yourself a hot chocolate first)

Since our move to Tasmania nearly 4&1/2 years ago we have had pretty much a constant stream of visitors. Of course lots of family and friends have made the trip down, but also what I call our “Randoms”

Just by luck & word of mouth we have had a lot of travellers coming to stay and enjoy our little area of the world.

Today I will introduce you to Nozomi, a lovely young lady from Japan who was in the first group of ‘randoms’ that we ever had staying here.

It was one of those serendipity things. A girlfriend of mine was at the coast in NSW and spotted Nozomi and her friend Yusuke (more on Yusuke another time 🙂 ) working at an orange juice stall. She recognised them as Japanese and since she spoke the language, went up and made friends and chatted a while. She found out that they were working around Australia and were bound for Tasmania soon so she said “My friends have just moved to Tasmania, they love Japan, you should go and stay!”

They got in touch and also asked if another friend (Omi – more on him another day) could join them (Jeff was starting to weird-out at this point wondering how many I was going to try to fit in!!) and I am like, hey why not?

Sightseeing – with our first ‘Randoms’ Omi, Yusuke & Nozomi

We all had the best time. I was supposed to get them to help in the garden and whatnot in exchange for their board, but we were new to Tasmania too and we just had a lot of fun making new friends and travelling about, definitely some gardening but oh so so so much great food!

Nozomi is a fabulous cook – we were missing Japanese food and boy did we get spoiled!

The kitchen seemed to always be a hive of activity.

From these three initial guests we have been introduced to no fewer than 10 other Japanese travellers who have stayed with us! Some come and work in the garden and kitchen in exchange for food and board, others have paid us a bit of money to simply do a bit of sightseeing.

Nozomi returned with another friend about a year after her initial trip, a lovely man, Aveen, who we have become really good friends with. He is whacky and funny with a heart of gold! (I am sure more on him later too! 🙂 )

Nozomi worked hard while in Australia and saved enough money to fly both her Mum and her Aunt to Australia and treated them to a 13 day holiday to show them where she had been living and working the past couple of years! What an amazing girl!

Of course part of that trip was a 5 day Tasmanian Adventure.

We fit so much in in our five days! Beaches, hiking, national parks and wildlife! Plenty of wildlife!

Joey’s poking their heads out of pouches are always so sweet

Koala at local wildlife refuge poses for photos

And just to prove that not all Australian wildlife is out to kill you… here is a baby devil – totally sweet huh? –

And did we eat well while the family was here?? You Betcha!

Annoyingly I don’t let people eat until I have taken photos

I think Jeff may have shed a tear when they left!! He especially LOVES Japanese food! 🙂

We really enjoyed their visit – it was pretty much their first time out of Japan and they were so much fun to show around! Like little kids with their eyes open wide! It was great to be a part of that.

Skip forward a bit and Jeff and I got to go back to Japan and travel around a bit. Of course catching up with our friends was an important part of the journey.

We went down to Fukuoka to meet Nozomi, who had gotten herself married to a gorgeous fellow, Tetsu!

They were living with Tetsu’s parents in this beautiful 200 year (plus) home and we were invited to stay. It was the first time ever that foreigners had stayed here! We were welcomed and made part of the family – beautiful lasting memories!!

Family home dating back a couple of hundred years!

Every morning Tetsu’s parents take an early walk around the local rice fields and shrines. We joined in one morning and it was fantastic.

Shrines are common along fields and pathways

And of course we ate really well! Our favourite place was the ramen noodle stalls in Fukuoka!

First you choose a stall and squeeze right on in –

Then you start ordering. The portions are small so you can order a nice variety of whatever takes your fancy! The food and atmosphere are equally wonderful –

All of these wonderful experiences and new friends just wouldn’t have happened without a chance meeting at an orange juice stall and us opening our home and saying “Sure – come on down”

The directions life goes can be interesting and when you embrace it whole heartedly it often shines back on you tenfold.

We were so happy to meet Nozomi and we look forward to seeing them all again someday – they now have a baby girl who we can’t wait to give a cuddle to!