Guacamole recipe

We haven’t done anything with lemons for a while, and our lemon trees are still lemoning for all they are worth. The lemons as yet are still unripe, but the green skin recalls to mind one of the tastiest things in the world, the avocado.

Although the avocado has been in Australia since the late 19th century, it first become popular in the 70s. One of the recipe books from this time in a private collection we know of refers to them as “avocado pears” and “alligator pears” due to their skin texture. This recipe book says the very latest way to serve them is halve the avocado pear, destone it, pour some vegetable oil in the hole, garnish with salt and pepper and serve.

We’re not sure if that recipe really captures the beauty and tastiness of the avocado, and we’re also fairly sure that eating an avocado stone amount of oil is not really very healthy.

So instead, we wanted to share our favourite way to eat avocados, guacamole. Plus, it another use for lemons, so everybody wins.

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Soncha’s White Dress, a garment layered with history, love and tradition

Soncha Iacono is a Melbourne artist who is a Heritage Hill regular.
Last time she was here, she was wearing an amazing white skirt, layers upon layers of different laces, doilies and scraps of fabric. I asked her about the history behind it and the story was so beautiful that I wanted to share it with you. It speaks of love through generations, of passing on skills and traditions, of keeping old memories close while forging new ones and it represents the coming together of a number of strong, amazing women in material form.

Since we’re coming up to International Women’s Day (March 8), this seems the perfect opportunity to introduce you to Soncha Iacono’s White Dress.

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Dips dips dips

As the final word on picnic food (for now anyway) a reader has emailed us a couple of favourite dip recipes that he likes to take on picnics (thanks Ned!). They all look delicious and pretty healthy, so that’s two wins in one! Plus, all three include some lemon juice, which means they’re all instant Heritage Hill favourites. You can eat them with all sorts of things – toasted turkish bread, water crackers, rice crackers, on sandwiches or toast, on slices of raw veggies (carrot and hummus are particularly great together), on fresh bread or anything else you have handy…

Hummus
juice from 1 squeezed lemon
1/2 cup of tahini
2 cloves garlic—roughly chopped
14 oz (400g) canned chickpeas, rinsed and drained

Put everything together in a blender and whizz.
Stop whizzing, taste. Adjust ingredients to taste. (Some people like a little salt in it too)
Eat.

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What makes good picnic food?

So, as you know, we’re gearing up for our very first Sundays in the Sun event, which will be filled with musical guests, fun events and BYO picnic, and so that got us thinking, what makes good picnic food?

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Safeguarding ‘granny skills’ for the next generation

Today we came across a fantastic project that we wanted to share with you, called Dirty Girl Kitchen. Dirty Girl Kitchen was started by Rebecca Sullivan to ensure that skills, talents and recipes from previous generations would not be forgotten and instead are continued to be passed on to young people around Melbourne.

This great paragraph comes straight from their website:
Dirty Girl Kitchen aims to bring those communities of women from our multi-cultural Australia together and share worshipful skills (in which Rebecca has called ‘granny skills’). You know, all the ones that involve getting ‘dirty’.

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We three kings…

Wandering around the garden today, we came upon a trail of glitter leading into the sun porch.

 

Intrigued, we followed it, and found a single hand crafted crown…

 

From there, we found two more…

 

We had a children’s party on the weekend which had a jumping castle, food, entertainment and a craft table. We’re assuming that these were carefully made by someone who left them in a quiet corner to dry and forgot to come back for them.

Not wanting all that hard work to go to waste, they’re now displayed in pride of place amongst our Christmas decorations in the office.

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Home made games – Picara

Making things at home, as opposed to buying them in a store, really is fulfilling. Whether you’re crocheting a rug for a friend’s baby or creating chutney from a haul of tomatoes from the guy next door, whether you’re cooking a cake as a gift or taking cuttings from your garden for a friend, making it yourself is always super satisfying.

It’s important to teach this idea of home made to children too. So here’s a quick game you can make with your kids (Or they can make themselves) to play on a rainy or boring day.

It’s an ancient game called Picara, and it’s super simple to learn.

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