Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Spring has (almost) sprung

I love Canberra winters. Really! Sure, they're cold and you need to wear a lot of fluffy stuff on the bike ride to work. On the other hand though, the skies are usually blue, and who doesn't enjoy an excuse to dress up in boots, gloves, scarves and hats? Anyway. August is fast disappearing and the first signs of spring are here. Our camellia tree is flowering, spotted pardalotes are building a nest in our fence, and salad vegetables are starting to reappear in our local organic shop ... yaay! In celebration of said vegetables, I'm making a rocket, tomato, cucumber and haloumi salad for dinner tonight. If you haven't tried haloumi, you must! It is a wonderfully flavoursome cheese that becomes even yummier when fried or grilled.


I'm also making something for a colleague's birthday tomorrow. It's a hedgehog slice (I use Stephanie Alexander's recipe, and won't risk her wrath by plagiarising it here) but I always use pecan nuts instead of walnuts, as it's easy to find Australian pecans but most walnuts seem to be imported. So, when I mentioned that I was making a hedgehog slice to the cool young dudes at Choku Bai Jo, they asked why it was hedgehog rather than echidna slice. Good point! We don't have hedgehogs in this country, and the nearest local equivalent is the echidna. Guess we just renamed tomorrow's morning tea ...

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