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.

Melbourne

Right at the end of semester, late enough that I could conceivably get *all* my work done for the year before I left, I had a conference in Melbourne to attend. And one day in the middle of the year I got an email about cheap flights between Melbourne and Hobart. So I decided that Andy would meet me in Melbourne and together we would go to Tasmania for a purely holiday trip.

While I was in Melbourne, almost all of my time was spent at the conference - from dinner on Sunday night, a meeting all day Monday, welcome drinks that evening, conference followed by Women's Drinks on Tuesday, and then the conference dinner on Wednesday. Thursday I wagged, since Andy had arrived, and we did a little exploring.

I made sure that we were near a Lord of the Fries for lunch. I had a Mini Mark burger and Andy got a chicken parma burger (which he didn't love, actually). The real star of the show was the "French Canadian Fries", aka poutine, aka chips covered in vegan cheese and gravy. 

Then it started raining, which was boo. So we decided to skip seeing a beach (any beach - Andy's request) and instead took the tram to Prahran Market where we sought out the Mister Nice Guy's Bakeshop stall. There were a handful of cupcake varieties, some cinnamon buns, brownies, and raw cheesecakes, and it was legitimately difficult to decide what to get. In the end I got a full sized Chocolate Peanut Butter cupcake, because duh. Andy tried a bite and said it wasn't any better than my cupcakes, which was a nice compliment and probably not true. It was good. Very good. And gluten free - my attempts at GF baking are never that delicious, that's for sure.

We also grabbed a half-dozen baby cupcakes to bring back with us. We were staying with an acquaintance who invited us to have dinner with her, her partner, her son and his partner. Since they are wine people and we would have embarrassed ourselves trying to choose a proper bottle, and since I love cupcakes, this was our contribution to the dinner. These are - vanilla lavender at the top, apple pie in the middle, and "unicorn" at the bottom. 

I think these were generally enjoyed by everyone. I had a Unicorn cupcake, which I suspect contains no real unicorn. It did contain rainbow sprinkles, both on top and in the batter (like Funfetti cake!). And the pink icing tasted like some kind of berry-ish thing. Andy had one of the apple pie cakes. He thought they were overpriced, but he's a bit grinchy sometimes.

Here's another shot of cupcakes from another angle, because cupcakes. 

Friday morning we headed straight to the airport and then had almost a full week to explore Hobart and its surrounds. I'll post about that soon. 

Prunes!

When I was a kid, prunes were synonymous with pooping - it was my Grandma's surefire remedy for constipation. "Pruuune juice" was always said with our noses scrunched up.

A few weeks ago after yoga class, we all went over to the teacher's house for breakfast. We had oats, and there was a little pack of prunes, so I had a few. And they were yum!

So I bought a pack. And then I saw a recipe in Celebrate Vegan for Seitan with Prunes, a Persian dish. I thought it sounded interesting, but we don't have any seitan and gluten flour is a bit of a hot commodity at the moment. So I made it with tofu instead.

I also added some yellow capsicum, just because. And served it over rice. This was SO MUCH BETTER than I thought it would be. The tofu simmered away with the prunes, some spices, and a little bit of stock. As it simmered, the flavoured seeped into the tofu, the liquid thickened, and the prunes softened into a delicious goo.

So different to our usual meals, but so very good. I'll never scrunch up my nose over prunes again.

Hey Buddy

Andy and I grow bananas, and so far we've had two plants with fruit on them. The first bunch of bananas took SO LONG before they were ready to pick - like 3 months or so. We cut off one hand at a time, rather than chopping down the whole bunch, so for 8 weeks or so we had fresh bananas from our back yard, rather than a glut all at once.

We have another bunch on a new plant, and it gave me a second opportunity to try eating the banana blossom. We did this with the first plant, but forgot to record anything about it. It's a weird looking part of the plant - a strange spear that looks nothing like a flower. The fruit forms underneath each petal, but after a while they stop producing. So we cut the flower off and eat it.

Start by peeling off the red petals. They are probably tough - I didn't actually try to eat them, but the whole internet says to get rid of them, and who am I to argue?

I tried to save two of these as fancy-pants serving bowls for our salad, but Andy tore them up and put them in the compost before I realised.

Underneath each petal are these little bunches of what would have become bananas (except that they don't, this far in - otherwise leave the flower in the tree!!). Supposedly you can eat these, if you separate out the stamen from the outer bit, but it sounds like a lot of work so we haven't tried yet.

This white thing is the part we eat. If you don't have a banana plant on hand, supposedly you can substitute cabbage in its place. Shred this as you do for cabbage.

Immediately put the banana blossom shreds into a bowl of water with lime juice. This is meant to keep it from browning. Mine went sort of gray anyways - the colour of a banana peel that's been cut, actually. It's not the most appetising appearance, but when it's covered with dressing it's not so bad.

I found this recipe and planned to sort of follow it, and then didn't really. Ours was an Asian-inspired salad based entirely on what we had in the pantry, fridge and garden, and it turned out really nice.

Tropical Vegan Banana Bud Salad

1 banana bud, shredded
1 yellow capsicum, cut into matchsticks
2 spring onions, chopped
1 green chilli, finely sliced
2 Tbsp. perennial coriander (aka culantro?), minced
3 Tbsp. vietnamese mint leaves, roughly chopped
1/4 c. crushed peanuts

Dressing:
1 Tbsp. hot water
1 Tbsp. brown sugar
1 Tbsp. soy sauce
juice from 1/2 a lime
2 cloves garlic, minced

In a small bowl, whisk together the ingredients for the dressing. In a large bowl, toss together all the salad ingredients. Pour over the dressing and let it sit for 20 minutes (or longer) before you eat it.

This salad mostly tastes like fresh Asian salad, because of the herbs and spring onions and so on. But the banana bud tastes a little bit like banana peel does, in a pleasant way. That isn't a great description, I know, but trust me. We served ours with some Vietnamese asparagus & mushrooms with rice noodles. 

Trying new things

Though I have basically ignored Andy's silly request that I avoid buying new cookbooks until I have tried *every* recipe in *every* cookbook we already have, I have been making an effort to try lots of new and exciting things. Because trying new things is good - it keeps us from getting in food ruts. And with a little bit of forward thinking, it isn't any more difficult than relying on old stand-by meals.

Here are a few new things we've been eating...

Beans and Greens, from The Urban Vegan. I used kale and cannelini beans, and added capsicum to the pan. Served on Creamy Polenta, from Let them eat Vegan! Both delicious - the polenta will probably be our new go-to polenta recipe because it is yummy. 

No-Fu Love Loaf, from Let them eat Vegan! Made from lentils, bulgur and oats, it is really the flavourings that make this a stand-out loaf. It's so yummy. Andy topped this one with a fancy pattern of BBQ sauce, tomato sauce and mustard. 

Okay, I cheat. This is also No-Fu Love Loaf - so not an entirely new thing. We really love it, and it's easy to make on a Sunday and leave in the fridge for later in the week. Last time I even made a double batch and put one loaf in the freezer. We cook ours on the BBQ - here with a jacket potato, and some kale with miso dressing.

Corn Pudding, from The Happy Herbivore. Though this cookbook isn't our favourite in the way that LteV! is, this recipe is a winner. It's like a silky, soft quiche full of corn. 

This is BBQ tofu in Classic Marinade from The Urban Vegan. But we've had that before. The new thing here is Muhammara, a walnut and capiscum based sauce. I spooned some on the tofu in the last few minutes it was on the BBQ. It was a yummy combination - a tiny bit spicy, but with interesting depths of flavour we don't usually eat. 

Mac-Oh-Geez! from LteV! I killed our blender a few weeks ago, so I made the nut-free version that used tahini instead of whole cashews. It was really nice - subtle, rather than cheesy, but super saucy. 

Here's the Mac-Oh-Geez! again. I added broccoli because that's how we roll. Oh, and Andy and I ate the whole pan in one go...

Too Good to be Tofu Burgers, in loaf form, from LteV! We used okara instead of tofu, and added a shredded carrot, and cooked our loaf on the BBQ with some pumpkin, beetroot wedges, and corn. As with the Nofu loaf, the flavour of this is something magical. 

Fruity Cereal Bars, from The Happy Herbivore. Mine didn't quite work out like they should have. Maybe my pan was the wrong size, but I needed more than half the batter to fill the bottom of the pan, which meant that instead of a solid layer of cakey stuff on top, mine was more of a crumble. I threw walnuts around to make it look a little more full on top. I used rosella jam for these, and they made a good afternoon snack. I wouldn't rush to make these again, but they were nice. 

 I have started ticking the recipes we have tried, and I am still woefully far away from getting even one entire cookbook under my belt. But nevermind - my copy of Asian Vegan Kitchen arrived yesterday so I have even more new recipes to try!

Banana Streusel Muffins

When it's not apple, pear, or mandarin season, I like to keep a stash of muffins in the freezer to bring in to work for a mid-morning snack. Andy eats his with his lunch, but I'm usually starving by about 9.30am. I try to hold out till 10 or 10.30 so I don't get hungry for lunch too early, but regardless, I would be nowhere without my morning muffin.

Last weekend I decided, after some serious deliberation, on Banana Streusel Muffins - combining an adaptation of the streusel recipe from the 'Pecan Streusel Coffee Cake' in Urban Vegan with an adaptation of 'Wolffie's Banana Blueberry Muffins' from La Dolce Vegan.

But then, a hiccup. We didn't have enough flour. Andy offered to pick some up on his way home from Bunning's, the hardware store mega-chain.

But then, another hiccup. We remembered the grocery stores don't open till 11am on Sundays. This was at about 9am, and we had people coming over for lunch at 12. I decided to just go to the shop afterwards, but Andy saw my determination  to bake and called his friend Tom, who was coming for lunch, to borrow some flour.

Thanks again, Tom! (I repaid him in a muffin.)

I'm glad we did borrow the flour, because I wouldn't have felt like walking to the store in the afternoon. And these muffins were a delicious success, so it would have been tragic not to make them. Andy and Tom both thought they had apple in them - I guess because the flavours are all typically paired with apple. But just bananas here!

Banana Streusel Muffins

1/2 c. chopped walnuts
1/2 c. raisins
1/2 c. brown sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. flour
3 Tbsp. grapeseed oil

2 c. flour (I used half white and half wholemeal, so I could call them muffins instead of cupcakes and feel like I eat healthy)
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
3/4 tsp. salt
3/4 c. sugar
2/3 c. non-dairy milk
2 lady finger bananas, or 1 large banana (I used bananas from our tree!!)
1 tsp. fresh grated ginger
1/4 c. grapeseed oil
2 Tbsp. molasses

To make the streusel, mix all the ingredients in a bowl and set aside.

Then preheat the oven to 190 (375F). Lightly oil a 12 cup muffin tin. In a large bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, salt, and sugar - make sure there are no lumps left. In a jug with a stick blender, or in a proper blender, combine the milk, banana, ginger, oil and molasses and blend until smooth. Add the banana milk to the flour mixture and stir until combined.

Drop spoonfuls of batter into the muffin cups, filling a bit less than half full. Then put a spoonful of streusel mix. Top with another spoonful of muffin batter.

Bake for 22 minutes, give or take a few, until they are golden and cooked through. Probably put your muffin pan on a baking tray, because when I made these, this happened.

Andy seemed to enjoy scraping the hot toffee off the pan and eating it, and after letting the muffins cool for about 20 minutes they came out pretty easily. My advice is to loosen the edges while they are fresh from the oven, but don't take them out until the streusel hardens up a bit - otherwise you will lose your tops!

Bacon Cake with Satay Ice Cream

I recently made a batch of Peanut Butter Chai Ice Cream from Let them eat vegan! I thought the mix was really tasty before it went in to the ice cream maker. Andy said it tasted a little bit like satay sauce, but we both liked it in frozen form.

It's creamy and rich and you just need a scoop to feel satisfied.

Then the other day I made a coconut cake. I got home at 7.30 at night, and had to have a cake made before I left for a research trip at 6 the next morning - you see, cake is an important data collection tool. So I was in a bit of a rush, and out of cocoa powder. I threw together the Coconut Heaven Cupcake recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance, in whole cake form - something I have done many times before. This time, though, I saw the coconut oil and thought it would be great. I let Andy lick the bowl as I put the cake in the oven, and he thought it tasted a bit.... bacon-y. I didn't want to admit it, but he was kind of right. The coconut oil gave the cake a strange aftertaste that really does taste a bit like bacon.

It wasn't overpowering or terribly unpleasant, so I brought the cake anyways, but had leftovers to bring home. To mask the bacon flavour a bit, we had a piece with ice cream.

Bacon cake with satay ice cream. Surprisingly delicious.