Breakfast included in the package

We're very lucky to be living where we live.  Within a few blocks we have access to a range of market and organic produce shops and dry ingredients stores to purchase without packaging.  My supermarket shop now is not much more than cat food (unavoidable, for this cat anyway) and non food items like loo paper.  Knowing what ingredients we're eating is important to me.  Having worked in food manufacturing and a dairy I'm probably more aware than most that most of these large companies don't put nutrition and welfare of animals as the top priority. Executive bonuses just don't work that way.  Processed food in my opinion is becoming more cheaply produced and more expensive to buy.  The nutritional value of some products I suspect wouldn't rise much above the consumption of the packaging.  Making your meals from scratch, meaning purchasing quality ingredients and knowing what's in your food is a good path to good nutrition.  But even saying that, it'...

Having owned chooks in one of our previous properties, we have some of an understanding of what good animal care is all about.  They taught us well.  On a cold frosty morning in Tasmanian's winter (and summer sometimes) I would take out a bowl of warmed oats for the team which was greatly appreciated on the icy ground.  Our chooks were pets and we had the more colourful varieties of bantams, whyandotte etc.  They were good at providing us enough eggs and keeping the grasshoppers from our veggie patch which came in plague proportions one year to their delight.  They were also dynamite on huntsman spiders - another great reward!!  Our neighbour's standard Isa Brown's known for their egg production eventually evolved into a more colourful variety complete with bouffant head feathers thanks to our free ranging and very neighborly tribe.  Sorry about that guys!  I was reminded of these days at Saturday's visit to Bungendore's southern harvest farmers m...

Autumn, still very much with us as the crunch underfoot of curled and browned leaves is the soundtrack to my walks at the moment.  I headed into the city on this sunny day for a meander around the shops.  No real intention for any great purchase of significance but a coffee and some eggs somehow made it onto the day's agenda.  Sitting outside in the morning sun at Via Dolce with the orchestrated sounds of Bolero floating over the gelato bar was as good a start to the day as any.  Such an Italian feel to this little corner wedged in amongst the noodle bars and burger joints.  Reminded me of a bygone era of Lygon Street in Melbourne's outer suburb of Carlton.  A recent trip there to indulge in some happy memories amongst the Deli counters left me saddenedd to see that time had moved on without me and the family owned Trattorias under the old Victorian verandahs are all but almost gone.  The replacement Korean Gelato bar just didn't quite have the same vi...