The vegie garden is looking decidedly bare and wintery now that I’ve finally pulled out the tomato bushes and collected the very last ripening tomatoes. It’s the end of a process of watching the garden build up and up in a frenzy over summer – the plants growing taller as the weather gets hotter – then watching things come down again piece by piece as the sun slips back in the sky and it starts getting chilly. Read the rest of this entry »
In April the Hungry Girls were invited to do a guest blog for Design Sponge, and we settled on this favourite salad. It’s a jumble of soft-roasted chunks of sweet potato and potato, caramelised onion, crunchy green beans and juicy tomatoes – plus lashings of parsley and just enough Spanish smoked paprika for an element of spice. Read the rest of this entry »
There’s a plum tree in our backyard, down on the fence next to the chicken coop. It’s a scraggly thing – nondescript with lots of thin branches and small leaves sticking up chaotically into the air. We were going to cut it down before we realised it fruited, and eventually decided that with its position right on the fence, the tree wasn’t taking up much space or doing any harm. It’s one of our only established fruit trees so we had to love it a little. Read the rest of this entry »
The Hungry Girls had a guest blog on The Design Files last week. We included a recipe from each of our books with a story, photographs by Leah, and illustrations by Katherine. Follow these links:
Monday – the story of the Hungry Girls
Tuesday – Cherry tomato, herb and chilli fish (Volume 1)
Wednesday – Chinese peanut and celery salad
Thursday – Quick Spanish dinner (Volume 2)
Friday – Yoghurt and white chocolate pannacotta (Volume 3)
The Wednesday recipe was a new one, so we include the blog here as well. Read the rest of this entry »
On the 7th December 2011, we officially launched The Hungry Girls’ Cookbook Volume 3! The venue was a shop called Melbournalia Home, located in a gorgeous old warehouse down a laneway near the Queen Victoria Market. Read the rest of this entry »
The Hungry Girls’ Cookbook Volume 3 has been sent to the printer, and we can’t wait to unveil it to you all at the end of this month.
More than three years have passed since we released Volume 2, and the three of us – Katherine Bird, Leah Holscher and Rachel Pitts – were just itching to do it again! It’s been such an exciting project; a real collaboration with each of us bringing our individual skills in food, photography, design and illustration. From the middle of the year we set to work gathering props and organising a series of photo shoots at Hungry Girls’ homes in Melbourne and Warrnambool – on front verandahs, in backyards and on kitchen tables to make the best use of natural light. Read the rest of this entry »
The Hungry Girls’ photographer, Leah Holscher, recently snuck back into the country after three years of life in Europe. There she based herself in England and The Netherlands and travelled just about everywhere she could – Turkey, Portugal, the Ukraine, Africa – taking pictures, pictures, more pictures. Read the rest of this entry »
I thought we’d well and truly missed mushroom season this year. For pine mushrooms it’s autumn, and now it’s July and we’ve only just managed to rustle ourselves out the door and in the car and down to my dad’s place in South-West Victoria, where we have a secret mushroom spot nearby. We found it about five years ago and going back has been a highlight every year since. I jump out of the car and skip around like a schoolkid, way too excited. My husband is the stealth hunter and gets straight to business, finding and cutting the best and most beautiful specimens over the hills. Read the rest of this entry »
This year was a first for me – I tasted feijoa. Life is short and I can’t believe I have wasted so much time already! These dusky green globules are just beautiful to cut, with a creamy yellow interior and a swirling flower pattern made up of translucent yellow-green flesh speckled with a few tiny brown seeds. Their exotic smell wafts all over the house – if you’re not a fan, you might describe it as ‘Deep Heat’, but that’s a bit unfair I think … The taste has a definite sarsaparilla twist, but after having a few my daughter and I found them irresistible. Sweet but with an interesting tang, and such a nice change from the pears, oranges and apples of late autumn and winter. We spooned out the flesh one feijoa after another, the table littered with empty shells. Read the rest of this entry »
Last weekend was the final hurrah for our old kitchen and bathroom. Now our weatherboard worker’s cottage has been stripped of its lean-to addition and reduced to four very cosy rooms, each one really having to pull its weight. We have a study/kitchen, two bedrooms/storage, and a living room/everything else. We’ll be spending the next few months building a new kitchen, bathroom and larger living space, and I’m aiming to be very calm and graceful and to take our chaos in my stride! (A wry smile from my husband.) Read the rest of this entry »
