Winter weekend at the Beach -

FAMILY WEEKEND
WONDERFUL FOOD AND FAMILY TIME!

Family holidays or weekends can sometimes be difficult,  but for some reason our holidays seem to work quite well.  The reason could be that we all enjoy eating and preparing good food!  There are a few cooks among us - all loving the ritual of preparing a meal from scratch and using the freshest ingredients as we are also quite "health" mad!  Even the three little grand-daughters eat well!.... There are two aged two and a 7 month old who, as you can imagine create a lot of noise!  Throw a couple of Shih-tzus into the mix and happy chaos reigns!

The family spent the past Queen's Birthday weekend  at Narrawallee Beach - 3 hours south of Sydney.  Chilly weather inspired warm hearty meals and soups! 

Narrawallee Beach is also 5 minutes from a little town called Milton.  Milton was celebrating their annual Scarecrow festival and judging by the number of scarecrows I saw,  I think they take this festival very seriously!  

There is an excellent butcher in Milton who took my order and then asked quietly whether I had lots of people staying!

My daughter-in-law Kristiina, wielding her chopping knife,  took multi-tasking to new heights! 

When I got home from the butcher, she had chopped masses of vegetables and homemade chicken stock was on the go,

 Two salads were being prepared     

and the beginnings of a delicious Bolognese sauce which she makes using Italian sausages which I had just bought!    

The Bolognese after the Italian sausages were added.

The weekend's meals included - Lamb Shanks with delicious creamy polenta which everyone took turns in stirring! 

Grandma's chicken soup, 

a BBQ, Pea and ham soup and more!  We always sit down to all three meals at a properly set table and seem incapable of "grabbing a sandwich", even after numerous attempts to implement a rule which cuts out lunch and allows everyone to do their own thing.    Most of us love cooking and we all love eating while sitting down together, enjoying the food, wine and banter.  

On one of the evenings,  my son whizzed up a delicious humus - homemade is so much more delicious as the store bought varieties usually contain preservatives.

  Breakfast is always a fruit salad - using mostly papaya and mango,  natural organic yogurt, boiled eggs and toast.  Occasionally, Kirk,  my son-in-law prepares a big cooked breakfast on the Bbq which always goes down well. Of course, with all of this cooking comes a huge amount of clearing up and cleaning.  This task is shared fairly I think - a couple might disagree though!!

In between all of this eating,  I walked on the beach. One evening was particularly beautiful.. see below

the colours were startling

Given to me by a good friend and a source of amusement to the little girls!

Early morning..

and this was sunrise - courtesy of my jet lag!! 

On the way home to Sydney,  we stopped off in Bowral to have a look at the new house... next post will bring an update on the progress! 

Thank you for stopping by and I would love to hear your thoughts, so please feel free to leave a comment!...