Self-Catering

On our recent trip to Tasmania (post 1, 2 and 3) we stayed in an apartment we found on AirBnB with a full kitchen. Or - mostly full. There was no chopping board, nor was there a colander. But there was a gravy boat, so... It came with a big container of tea bags, instant coffee (blech) and sugar satchets, and we found a pepper grinder (but no salt). Otherwise, the cupboards were bare.

I thought I should do a blog post on self-catering holidays, since it is our favourite way to travel. I enjoy eating out quite a lot, and Andy likes it less, but we both don't love to do it for the entire holiday. Since we flew to Tasmania, we couldn't bring our own food, so we got a bit creative. The week's meals costed more than a week of eating at home would, but much less than eating out all the time. They were a bit carb heavy, but we did so much walking we needed all the fuel. I was going to go all detailed about what we bought and how we did it, but I kind of can't remember now, and it would get boring, so I'll just list the meals instead!

Our first meal was mushroom pasta - reduced-to-clear mushrooms sauteed in Nuttelex, mixed with a jar of sauce, and that's that. I didn't take a photo, because it was nothing special.

The next morning for breakfast we had porridge, made with little packets of sugar from the tea canister, and flavoured with peanut butter. It wasn't great! We bought raisins to make the porridge more tasty the rest of the trip.

At the Salamanca Markets on Saturday, we bought some dukkah, a lemon, and a big cauliflower. For dinner that night, we sauteed half the cauliflower in lemon juice and butter, and then mixed it with pasta and dukkah. It looked like beige mush but was really quite tasty.

On Sunday we went to the Farm Gate markets and got some more fresh produce - another small cauliflower, some baby bok choy, purple carrots, fresh garlic, broad beans and potatoes.

Purple carrots with a yellow middle.

Broad beans take time to prepare, but they're worth it.

Our veggies needed some pepping up after the day at the brewery.

So we had a Sunday Roast - potatoes, cauliflower, garlic and carrot, with some fresh broad beans, gently blanched, and reduced-to-clear vegan aioli.

For breakfast one morning, we had the remaining mushrooms with a block of tofu and some garlic, perfect with toast.

One night we had chilli beans on toast - a tin of kidney beans, a tin of tomatoes, come cauliflower and garlic mixed with one of those instant-sauce packets for "chilli con carne".

Another day we had sloppy peanut noodles with tofu, garlic, cauliflower and bok choy. For this we used a bottle of "singapore satay sauce" from the "ethnic foods" aisle, topped up with extra peanut butter, obviously. I ate so much and it was so good.

And one night we had reduced-to-clear kale sauteed up with some garlic, a jar of chickpeas, and the rest of the aioli as a sauce.

 With some yummy bread on the side.

 My main advice for self-catering holidays is to plan ahead a bit, but not too far - if you buy food for every meal at the start of the trip, you might waste a lot if you decide to eat out, or you have a late lunch and don't feel all that hungry for a big dinner. Choose things that can do multiple tasks, like peanut butter for satay, and for porridge, and for toast. Rely more on convenience foods, but pair them with gorgeous local produce whenever you can!

Do you like to self-cater on holidays? What are your tips?

Tasman Peninsula

For the second day of our car hire in Hobart, we headed in the other direction (sort of), east and south to the Tasman Peninsula.

Photo from http://tasmanpeninsula.com.au/wp/

Our first stop was a town called Copping, where we had a look at this strange art. We tried to go into the cafe / shop thingie that was attached to it, but they were closed.

A mermaid and her baby riding a marlin, and behind them is another mermaid on a stump, and perhaps the Loch Ness monster??

So instead we went to Dunalley for a hot beverage. It was a pretty brisk day, but we had a little wander to look at the Abel Tasman monument - commemorating the site where the Dutch explorer planted a flag in 1642. In fact, the 371st anniversary of this was the *day* before we were there, so we missed a public reading from Tasman's journal, but our coffee was good anyways.

The monument at Dunalley.

A tiny house.

This is the area where really fierce bushfires decimated the countryside just about a year ago. It was good to see heaps of green shoots on the trees. It made them look kind of furry.

At Eaglehawk Neck, we looked out at the lookout.

We walked down to the Tessellated Pavement, a natural geological somethingorother.

Probably more interesting at low tide.

The views over Pirate Bay were pretty stunning.

Then we headed in to Pirate Bay where we explored the area around the Blowhole.

This was the blowiest it got.

This part was more interesting.

Then we went to the Coal Mines Historical Site, a former convict site, where prisoners were put to use digging coal. This is the free version of Port Arthur. The bit we saw was quite interesting with lots of informative signs, but it was raining sporadically and quite wet and chilly, so we didn't spend as much time here as we should have.

The cells for convicts to sleep in weren't even big enough for Andy to lay straight.

Then we continued around the peninsula, stopping at Port Arthur but not going in ($70 for the two of us, and we were there mid-afternoon so decided to skip it all together!). We took a little detour towards Marion Bay, because we wanted to see some good solid Open Ocean, rather than the bays and inlets we'd seen so far.

Some marshy stuff around Marion Bay.

If you look really closely, off in the far distance, you can maybe see NZ...?

From here, it was open ocean all the way to NZ, which is pretty open. 

View Larger Map

On our way back, we stopped in Sorrell at the u-pick fruit farm, thinking there would be pre-picked fruit for sale. But there wasn't, and I didn't want to pay someone to let me pick their strawberries. So we bought some strawberry liqueur instead, and then headed back to our apartment.

The next morning we returned our hire car, had some cake at Frankie's Empire, and then made our way to the airport. Sleet in Hobart saw us off, and we were greeted in Melbourne with thunderstorms that shut the airport down and nearly resulted in us missing our connection. But we made it back to Townsville in the end, not even much later than usual. As good as it was to get away, it was wonderful to be home!

Huon Trail

Map from http://www.tashosttouring.com.au/district_maps/huon_map.php

After a few days in sleepy Hobart, Andy and I were ready to head out and see what the surrounding countryside had to offer. For our first day of driving, we headed south and west, aiming to make it as far south in Australia as you can go in a little hire car.

As it was a Tuesday, some things were closed, like the Apple Museum and the Enchanted Woods wood working gallery. But we still managed to see some very cool things, and saw a bit of the country that is so very different to North Queensland.

In Franklin, we hopped out of the car to have a look at the Huon River and the boats there.

We stopped in Port Huon at "The Cafe" (the ONLY cafe) for some hot chips. They were crinkle cuts, which Andy loves but I don't.

The highlight of the Huon Valley, for us, was the little town of Geeveston. It had a free local museum about forestry and wood and big trees.

Geeveston boasted wood carvings of noteworthy locals, and I guess this is one of them? 

Andy and a slice of a 2000 year old tree.

And it had a little walking circuit that included a local artists/designers gallery and a platypus viewing station. We didn't see any platypuses (platypi?), but Andy got some good ideas for wood working things he'd like to try himself.

Also on the walking circuit was the "Big Log", which is as you can see a log from a very big tree.

At Dover we stopped for a quick squiz at some apple orchards.

And then we made it down to Ida Bay. This isn't a town so much as the location of a tourist railway ride. We got there a bit late and didn't go on the train, but did make it to the furtherest south bit of paved road in the whole of Australia.

Then we ducked back in to South Port, which had some lovely white beaches, where we ate our lunch. At the Geeveston IGA we bought some pumpkin-chickpea dip, and the Geeveston Bakery provided us with the bread (probably the southernmost bakery in Australia, too, and I'm not sure why they didn't brag heaps about that!).

We drove past the southernmost pub in Australia, but neither of us wanted a beer and Andy didn't even want to stop to let me snap a photo.

Then we headed back towards Hobart, taking a little detour down the other side of the D'Entrecasteaux Channel. Here is Middleton, which had a monument to the French guy, Bruni D'Entrecasteaux, who explored the area in the 1790s.

At this point it was getting cold, and though daylight savings meant it stayed light till about 9.30pm, we were both getting tired, so we headed back in to Hobart, landing at our apartment at about 7. If you ever find yourself in Hobart, I would really recommend the Huon Valley - so much pretty scenery!

In Hobart

This was our first trip to Tasmania, and we'd been pretty busy throughout the year and didn't really have as much time to plan as we probably needed. So we sort of decided to just wing it - see what we came across in Hobart, hire a car while we were there if we felt like it. This is a good relaxing way to travel, but in hindsight it would have been worth hiring a car straight from the airport and driving around a bit more.

We spent a few days poking around Hobart, though, which was fun in a slow way. The city feels very British, and in a lot of ways looks like New England. There were flowers everywhere, which made me sniffle and sneeze in a way that tropical plants do not.

The garden at our apartment.

Our first goal, when we arrived on Friday around lunch time, was to find some food. I had familiarised myself with Where's the Beef's Hobart posts, and wrote down lots of places we might go. Luckily the Hobart city centre is really quite compact, so we didn't need to spend hours walking around before we came upon Mo Mo Bubble Tea and Coffee House. Of course we got bubble tea - Andy a mulberry tea and me an apple tea, with pearls to fill us up.

But despite the extensive list of tea choices, I was most impressed with the burgers. I had a vegan fish burger.

It was amazingly flaky and tasted a lot like tuna salad, in a pleasant way.

Andy had a chicken schnitzel burger, which he liked a whole lot better than his chicken burger from Lord of the Fries.

After that we sought out the waterfront, and then found a grocery store. Since it was cold, and since we were in an apartment with a kitchen, we figured we would eat lunch out most days but have breakfast and dinner at home. I think I'll do a separate post about our self-catering efforts. 

Saturday morning we made the obligatory visit to Salamanca Markets. We were a bit unsure what to expect - some people said they were overrated, others said they're fantastic. We really liked the markets. We spent a good few hours wandering through the stalls looking at the wares on offer, tasting samples of olives and jams wherever we could, and basking in the warm-ish sun.

I got a pie for lunch from the Summer Kitchen Bakery stall - a lentil shepherd's pie. It came with chutney, and I liked it well enough. I've had few occasions in my life to eat a takeaway pie like this so it was a bit of an experience.

We wandered around some more, looking at things like boats.

And on our walk back to our apartment in North Hobart, we passed a vet clinic with the most adorable exterior painting job.

Sunday we headed out to another market, this one focused on produce. The Farm Gate Market was a little smaller than I expected, but full of potatoes and broad beans and Asian greens. There was a burrito stall that sold vegan burritoes, and a cake stall that sold a vegan muesli slice, but we were there early and had just eaten breakfast so we didn't sample any of these offerings.

More wandering around Hobart had us marveling at how vibrantly green everything was.

Then we happened upon a designer's market full of beautiful wood working, glass, paintings, and other works of art. And a pastry stall. I got a potato and red lentil samosa, and Andy had a kale and pumpkin pie.

And then a little bit more wandering and we discovered there was a free shuttle bus out to the Cascade Brewery, in honour of some birthday or other. There wasn't really much information around, but we each got a token for a 50cent beer, so we sat on the lawn and listened to jazz and took it pretty easy for the afternoon.

On Monday we went to the botanical gardens. My camera batteries were flat, and also I wanted to die from all the sneezing and hay fevering, so I have no photos. But they were the best botanical gardens Andy or I have visited. Lots of variety, and it was a warm sunny day, so we enjoyed ourselves even though Pete's Patch, our main attraction, was under construction. We had lunch at Dumpling World, which was all right.

The next few days we drove, getting out of Hobart to see what else was around. As beautiful as it was, Hobart city was perhaps a wee bit boring, but a great way to spend a relaxing week.