How Lucky Are We?

Saturday morning in Sydney and it's more like late summer than mid autumn -- t-shirt weather at 7.30am.

First stop - Pyrmont Good Living Market with my friend Tan. She's splendidly enthusiastic -- a great food shopping partner, and said "Goody, goody gumdrops" after purchases twice. Bless!

Haven't been for this market ages. First stop, coffee, but no soy milk. Surely they jest, but no. But all was well just across the grass. While queueing for said coffee ran into two of the gorgeous girls from Fratelli (shouldn't call them girls I know). One just back from overseas hols. And Fratelli is all the poorer for having lost her. Always floor managed that place with grace and speed. It's just not the same any more. Lovely chat with both, then time for some serious shopping. Bought a lovely slab of organic bacon for S.O., from Orange, some lamb chops from Cowra, organic duck rillettes, and two gleaming rainbrow trout, also from Cowra. So fresh, they still had a glint in their eyes.

A punnet of lovely looking Jerusalem artichokes and some baby garlic. Oh, and a bottle of Gympie Farm buttermilk.

There was a marvellous selection of fungi, but S.O. is not a friend of the 'shroom, so passed on those until he gets an 'away' job.

Market was heaving by nine, so we shot off, and figured EQ (formerly Fox) would be pleasant, as everyone would be at Pyrmont. Good thinking on our part. Eggs from Cornucopia, a beautiful wee baguette to go with the duck rilletes, and three fab pieces of cheese -- Heidi Gruyere, Quicke's Cheddar and Woodside wrapped in vine leaves, that I can't for the life of me remember the name of! A good haul of green veg. And I had noticed some black cherries in a spiced syrup, which I figured was just the thing to go with the rillettes as well.

Home and scoffing by midday.

Of course, the man from the marvellous C'est Cheese told me about a book called The Cheese Room, which of course I had to leap on to Amazon and buy. And you know my philosophy ~ if you're buying one, save on postage by buying three. So in my shopping cart also went The Bread Bible ~ did I mention I bought a Kitchenaid ~ and Autumn in Piemonte

Last night I got the remaining deliciousness from one of the Eumundi's Smokehouse's smoked chickens and turned it into Smoked Chicken Chowder. For those of you who go to the recipe I used half a finely sliced deseeded regular green chilli, and dispensed with the chipotle business, as frankly we didn't have any. Not something I keep on hand. S.O. loved it, and he's not a fan of corn either.

So this afternoon, the sun shines and I'm reading up on bread making. I want it to be the first outing for the Kitchenaid. Although, some biscuits with the cute new cookie cutters is an option too. And something to do with that trout...