The Ginger Factory

 Its school holidays and already they are winding down so I invited my daughter to a girls only lunch date thinking we would meet about halfway between us. But she suggested going north to the ginger factory about 70 kms from my place, she would pick me up and drive.

Oh boy, it was school holidays and the place was packed, only obe tabke available so we made a beeline for it. I love their ginger scones served with ginger jam and cream, thinking that we would have half each only to discover that she doesnt share my love of ginger.

The cafe is surrounded by big trees and palms, it does have a roof and also huge fans to move the air around. Lunch was pretty good, we had ordered a grazing plate and a poke bowl plus my scone. 

Then we walked the gardens, which has been quite a small area but it has been extended and now is a great ramble especialy for kids as through the trees are dotted cut outs of dragons and dinasoars.

We were particularly taken by an art display of colourful umbrellas.

Several lanes had these hanging above

Cool through the nature walk with different flowering  bushes. A small train goes through the park and then there are some shops on the side. We didnt shop as we didnt want or need anything. A pleasant way to spend a few hours.

Meatless Monday

 Not often we have a meatless meal but I saw this on one of the cooking shows and decided to give it a go.

It was called a mushroom pie. Five ingredients.

As usual I did change the recipe a bit!

So first cook off onions and mushrooms, they didnt give out quanties but it looked like about three onions and maybe 500gms of mushrooms.  The pie bit was a flat bread and they wet it with water and put it into a pie dish that had been lined with baking paper. Next went in some ricotta cheese and spread over the bottom, add in the mushroom and onion mixture. The flat bread came up the sides a little and was molded over but it didnt cover the whole top. Oven for forty minutes, that seems a long time to me as everything was actually cooked. Served with a dollop of ricotta.

I had some of the ingredients so I set to work. 

No onions so I did have a couple of spring onions and half a can of sweet corn, did have mushrooms.  Cooked them.

No flat bread but there were a couple of wraps so prepared the tin. No ricotta but some tofu in the fridge. Whizzed up a red pepper, garlic and the tofu with some olive oil to take the place of the ricotta. Red pepper was getting a little past its prime so cut and threw in with the mushrooms. The wrap only covered the base of the baking tin so I added anither wrap on top, pierced a few holes and added some parm cheese, only baked it for 20 minutes.

This was left over. The wrap on top went crispy with the parm cheese. Followed the recipe to a T, at least I had mushrooms! 

Todays lunch was left over musroom pie in scrambled eggs. We didnt eat the bottom wrap. Def would make again with proper flat bread, not as many onions are orginal recipe used.

Board game

 Warren decided to make a game for when we hosted Christmas. He went to Totworld and luckily thet had trivia questions so that was the biggie out of the way.  We found small animals which he glued to bottle tops making the tokens. The rest he did himself.

Its upside down on the table. Needed a couple of tweaks but it was good fun and took roughly ninety minutes to play, cant remember who won. The questions were all Australian trivia , so some of us learnt a thing or two as well. The questions had three possible answers so didnt need to think too hard just pick 1,2 or 3.