Denmark WA

We drove to Denmark from Albany with the view to see what was there and visit the cheese and chocolate places that we had seen advertised. What a nice place, it did have a bit of a hippy vibe to it and I could imagine people travelling there from Albany on the weekends to shop, browse and have coffee.

S and I went into several dress/clothing stores and in one place I was able to pass on some information regarding the Creswick Woollen mills that we visited way back near Ballarat.

I was able to buy Warren another long sleeved shirt for driving (so that his arm doesn't get sun burnt), I also bought myself a sleeveless vest as the evenings are getting cool. Two more tops made it into the shopping bag at another place, at $10 each I couldnt leave them there could I, plus they were in colours that I wear.

fantastic lunch at a cafe on the street and we sat and watched the world go by and chatted to people as they stopped for their dog to get a drink, there was a drink bowl on the corner, how neat and thoughtful is that?
This was my lunch.

I ordered the vegetable fritter, thinking that was all I was going to have but it came with salad and a nice chutney as well, price $6.50, not too bad and it tasted good, always a bonus.

We went to the cheese factory and we did buy some cheeses but it only had sales of cheese and a cafe. Off we continued to the chocolate place.

The gardens were incredible and dotted around was the story of chocolate.

After we had walked through the garden we went inside and J ordered coffee for us and they gave us samples of their chocolates (above). I bought some fig jam and a port.

Visitors on our lawn

Warren has had a couple of magpies in the garden over the past week or so. These turned up this morning. He gives them a little bit of cheese to eat.

I got some grated cheese and threw out on the lawn.

Then one became two, we think they are young ones as they appear to have down on their chests although one is bigger than the other.

This is how close they were to the patio, they stayed for awhile, ate the cheese, I didnt like to give them any more. I did burn some toast later and instead of going in the bin, Warren put it out on the lawn for them.

A trail run for the Jeep

Of course, Saturday, the first weekend day that we had the Jeep we had to take it out somewhere. We were out of ginger sauce so that was the first port of call, well after we had gone to the shopping centre and Warren got his birthday present, a Tomtom GPS.

It does sound like a truck but once on the main highway, it purrs along nicely. Lot of traffic then we realized that it was a long weekend for Brisbaneites due to the Ekka. It petered out after a while to normal volume of traffic. We had our usual scones, jam and cream with coffee at the Ginger factory. the price is the same $7.50 but I noticed that only one scone is served last year it was two to a serve cause we used to order one and an extra coffee. Still good value. It had started to rain so we bought our usual six bottles of sauce and left o go to Mapleton. Warren wanted to check out a trail bike ride that he had found in one of the magazines.

GPS told us to go a different way that I would have gone but Warren says, lets follow it, it knows where we are going. As he didn't know the name of the place he had just entered Mapleton Forrest road. Oh My Goodness! thank goodness it was a 4WD as one place we had to put it into 4wd then he asks if I wanted to drive! No thanks we would have still be there as some parts we were going travelling about 10 KMH but it was interesting driving through very wooded areas and although it was dirt road and very rutted, it was not the bone shaking ruts. Thank goodness though nothing came the other way. We decided that it was a type of forrest road as no one lived there and I think we were going through National park.

We found the bike area when the trees thinned out and it was about nine kms from Mapleton but most people would come from the other way. There was some young lads there and we asked them what the track was like, they were just packing up their bikes, they reckoned it was pretty good and well signed so we will probably take the bike up one time.

From there we went through Montville, that was very crowded as it s the yuppie place to go on weekends and then came into Maleny for lunch but we couldn't find a park in the main street so we went back to Maleny Cheese and shared an Antipasto plate and a ham and cheese pie. hummmm should have just ordered one thing. We bought some yummy yoghurt to take home, i love going to that area there is just so much to see and spend money on. Great cheeses, milk, yoghurts just to name a few things.

An easy meatless dinner

I like to have a meatless meal every now and then, it fits in with the budget and I do think that we (humans)eat too much meat. Coming home the other day after camping, I was catching up with emails, blogs I read and a couple of forum,s I usually spend the first hour after breakfast doing this but four days worth takes awhile.

Anyway on one of the forums, a recipe had been posted for Honey dipped Pumpkin, I read the recipe in full and thought that sounds good and even better, I had not taken any meat out of the freezer, had most of the ingredients needed and a neighbour had given us some pumpkin a few days before so what else could I make for dinner?

The recipe called for 300 gms of penne pasta, wow that sounded a lot so I cooked the same as I would normally cook for us. I didnt weigh the pumpkin but just cut up the piece I had into bite sized pieces. Some oil, honey (oops I forgot, used the last not to worry there was Maple syrup) garlic, humm must have used that too, sweet chilli sauce and a bit of ginger sauce will do. Mixed together and over the pumpkin and roast. I went to the garden and picked parsley, basil and spring onion and chopped finely (they were in the recipe!)

Drained the pasta added the pumpkin with the rest of the sauce, added some grated cheese, recipe had called for 100gms of ricotta but I thought grated cheese would do just as well. folded thru the chopped herbs, bit more cheese on top and that was dinner done.

Out of ten, I would have given it about a 6, pumpkin should have been cooked/roasted a few minutes longer, forgot to add the pine nuts, I did have some in the cupboard and yes the ricotta would have been better than grated cheese. Would I make it again, yes with the ricotta and pine nuts, it was tasty, different and filling. Oh by the way, I checked the recipe later and it was for six people, thank goodness I cut down on the pasta and oil. I rarely make a recipe strictly to the letter, I add a bit or delete something, I use recipe as an idea and then go from there. Next time I would probably add some greens as well, either beans or peas, to beef up the vege and add to the colour.