Having a Berry good time

Ahhh excuse the silly title, but the point is...on one of our days in the South Coast we took a day trip to Berry. It's only one stop away from Gerringong by train and the trick is, if using public transport to check the local train timetable as trains only run every few hours. We had a glorious day in Berry browsing through the many shops, having lunch at the Berry sourdough bakery (which I'll make a whole post on next), walking down the quiet streets and relaxing in the shade under trees. If you get the chance, I'd definitely recommend a trip to Berry!

Arriving

Walking through the quiet, leafy streets

Admiring the beautiful houses and cottages. Isn't this house just grand? One day...

One shop I spent way too long in was the Berry Tea Shop. Being a lover of tea myself, I could have spent hours looking at the selection. There were such lovely teapots, teas, teacups and well, all things related to tea! You could even sit down and enjoy a cup of tea and cake. Bliss. 

Another shop I was particularly fond of was called One Wise Owl. It was a quirky, little store off the main road which sold natural skincare, recycled clothing, purses, candles, gourmet health foods etc. And I bought some homemade raspberry jam to take home!

Has anyone else been to Berry?

Hannah x

Out and about in Gerringong

Hello! Hope everyone is enjoying a relaxing Sunday.
To continue my posts of my trip to the South Coast, here are some photos of what we got up to in Gerringong...

Strolling oh-so-casually to the shops

One morning we had brunch at a lovely cafe. I ordered poached eggs on sourdough toast with a side of Roma tomatoes. It was delicious and nutritious!

My friends pancakes with bananas and butterscotch sauce. Yummy...

General splendour

There are some cute and quirky shops in Gerringong including one particular shop dedicated to all things French. I think we spent quite a bit of time there admiring the clothing, perfumes, cards and teapots...

 One morning after breakfast, we went for a walk just out and about, admiring houses and the view! You can see Werri beach in the background where we went swimming.

On our walk we came across a picturesque cemetery on the top of a hill overlooking the water. 

And on the way back, we stopped off at the Village Craft shop. It stocked handmade crafty items such as childrens jumpers, beanies, handmade cards and Christmas gifts. I thought these "home exercises" were particularly adorable:

Hannah x

A Cottage by the Sea

Hello :) I've just come back from a most relaxing holiday spent with friends at Gerringong down at the South Coast. The weather has been perfect and over the past five days we've been relaxing at the beach, going on a day trip to Berry, reading in the sun, walking to Seven mile beach, having brunch in cafe's, visiting adorable shops, taking fun trips to IGA and even bumping into friends who were staying around the corner!

We took plenty of photos too in which I'll dedicate a few posts. To start off, here's some photos of our adorable cottage and garden. And sorry in advance for the photo overload! ( you can click to enlarge them).

On the way to our cottage from the train station. I felt quite 'aged' as my bags were so heavy I had to stop every few minutes.

Standing outside our cottage, where we stayed. Isn't it sweet?

Enjoying healthy salads outside in the sun. 

One night we had two minute noodles with carrot and broccoli and made it 'fancy' with the addition of tea lights and place mats. During our stay we ended up making most of our meals and learnt how to cook on a budget. This however led to some interesting combinations including arborio rice flavoured with chai tea. Hmmm.

Not just any fruit salad. Fruit salad with a white wine dressing. Jealous?

Dancing in the garden after lunch. The weather was just so lovely!

 Hope you enjoyed the photos, expect many more to come soon! And has anyone been to Gerringong or around the South Coast region? If so, what did you get up to?

Hannah x

Glebe Street Fair

Hello everyone! Today was such a lovely and warm day, so after waking up surprisingly early I went with a friend to Glebe Street Fair. A kilometre of road was closed off and filled with market stalls, buskers and performers all offering something quirky and unique! It was great wandering around, eating, drinking and laying on the grass in the sun (with a hat and sunnies on, of course!). And also, although this blog is mainly dedicated to all things food and health related, I've decided to add some other tidbits of my life, as it's fun to take photos and have an ongoing blog to look back on! Here's a few snapshots I managed to take of the day...

General hustle and bustle...

Eating a wholemeal wrap with roasted pumpkin, spinach and cheese. Yum!

Coffee/Chai stall

Fresh, icy-cold lemonade

Baby guinea pigs and rabbits! Aww

Is it a statue or is it a man pretending to be a statue? That is the question.

Chilling on the grass...

Hope everyone has had a wonderful weekend! 

Hannah x

P.S. Next week I'll be down the South Coast with a few friends, so I'll see you all in about a week!

A very short picnic...

Last post I mentioned that I was going on a picnic. Due to the windy and cold weather in Sydney however it only lasted for about fifteen minutes but was still fun! And since we were freezing afterwards we ended up  going to a cinema across the road and watching the latest Harry Potter film! I thought it was a great film, but don't want to wait till next year to see the next installment! But back to the picnic and I did manage to take a few photos to share...

Here's a selection of the food. We had mini-cupcakes (I made in previous post), carrot sticks, rum and sultana cookies, vegemite and honey sandwiches and tea.

Wow, I'm cool

Eating a yummy honey sandwich!

But then! I was holding the sandwich to get something else and this ibis came and ran away with it :(

So...we got revenge by chasing the birds away with sticks

We're a pretty scary bunch

When the weather warms up, I can't wait to go on more picnics! Can anyone recommend some good spots in Sydney?

Hannah x

Mini-cupcakes

Hello :) Today I was in a baking mood! I originally intended on making a particular cake, however was missing one essential ingredient so I'll have to make it another day. Never fear though, because in the end I decided to make mini-cupcakes. They're easy to make and the small size means their perfect for a small indulgence (unless of course you have about 5...which usually ends up being the case). I'm also having a small picnic with friends tomorrow so they'll be the perfect treat to take! The recipe I used is from Donna Hay via the Sunday Magazine. I usually cut out recipes from the newspaper that interest me and keep them in a plastic folder. If you don't have mini-cupcake tins then it would still work out with regular muffin tins there just wouldn't be as many, obviously.

Honey Cupcakes
What you'll need:
- 125g butter, softened
- 1/4 cup caster sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup honey (I only used 1/4 cup, but you can even omit the honey altogether if preferred)
- 2 eggs
- 1 1/4 cups plain flour, sifted
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 cup milk

Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 160 degrees. Place the butter, sugar and vanilla in an electric mixer and beat for 10-12 minutes or until pale and creamy (...I only beat it for about two minutes. Twelve minutes seems a little excessive).
2. Add the honey and continue to beat until well combined.
3. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Fold through the flour, baking powder and milk.
4. Spoon into mini-cupcake tins lined with patty cases (I didn't have any mini patty cases so just used rice-bran oil spray).
5. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until cooked. I managed to make 24 mini-cupcakes!

Here's a few I made. I also like to 'jazz' them up by putting almonds and blueberries on top when they cook as I'm not a fan of icing.

And a quick tip. Don't walk around the house like this or people will stare...

I know, I'm hilarious.

Have you been baking lately? 

Hannah x

Breakfast Challenge: Day Seven

I tend to go through phases with cooking. I'll learn a new recipe or decide to try something new and then for a few weeks cook that meal often. I've done this with stir-fry's, dumplings and risotto and then after cooking it for a few weeks, I'll move on and try something new. Now that I'm on holidays though, I'm going to try cooking with more variety, trying new recipes and going back to dishes I used to cook on a weekly basis.

This brings me to my breakfast choice for this morning which is bruschetta. It's something I used to make for a lazy weekend breakfast or lunch when I felt like something light and fresh, but for some reason I've just stopped making it. It's such a simple dish too. All I did was brush both sides of two slices of bread (I used Pane de casa) with olive oil and pan fried the bread until it was golden brown, adding more olive oil if needed. Meanwhile I chopped a quarter of an avocado, a tomato, a few olives and some fresh basil. After a few minutes the bread was cooked and I topped it with these ingredients as well as adding some sea salt and black pepper. I also served this with a few fresh strawberries I picked from the garden. Finito!

Well that was the last day of my breakfast challenge, where for a week I've tried to make something different and (mostly) healthy for breakfast each day. It's been fun and I've rediscovered foods like quinoa, which has been sitting in my cupboard but I've just forgotten about it and now bruschetta! Hope you've got a few ideas of some easy and healthy breakfast options, so now theres no excuse to skip breakfast!

See you soon :)

Hannah x

P.S. I know what you're all thinking. What am I going to eat tomorrow for breakfast? Am I going to have something new again (muffins perhaps), or go back to my usual porridge? Well I shall leave you in suspense...