Bright 09: Eating In in Victoria’s Alpine High Country

Here is an overview of a few of the things we whipped up while holidaying in Bright. With friends dropping in, there were 7 to 11 people for meals, which does require some forethought.

I actually love cooking for lots of people (suffering from Over Caterers Anxiety notwithstanding), and we found so many tasty things along our daily adventures to feature on the menu, and it is great fun cooking with friends – we would see something at a market or farm gate shop and start thinking about what we could turn it into later

These are in no particular order, and just photos. If anyone would like some sort of recipe, leave a comment and I will see if I can expand somewhat, but this post was going to be huge if I added more text!

Also, if somehow you haven’t heard already, this part of Australia has suffered a huge tradgedy the last couple of weeks – the worst bushfires in Australia’s recorded history. The loss of lives, both human and wildlife, is incredibly devastating. The ecological, social and economic impacts will go on long after the tv cameras have retreated, and it’s such a complicated issue – no easy answer, no simple solution. My heart goes out to those who have suffered – if you would like to donate money you can go to the Australian Red Cross or Wildlife Victoria.

Artichoke, fetta and hand-chopped basil pesto pasta

hot-smoked fly-caught trout...

.. flaked into sourcream, onion, parsley, lemon zest and juice, salt and pepper...

...and becomes the freshest smoked trout dip in the universe

this lamb was slow roasted with wild fennel, garlic and lemon

yep, we pretty much had cheese for dinner (don't worry, we had wine too!)

mushroom, tomato and spicy sausage pizza

yellow corgette, bacon and brie pizza; potato, herb and blue cheese pizza

the view from the house was terrible, too

grilled herbed farmed trout...

.. goes awful with asparagus, mash and mustard-dressed spinich

constructing picnic sandwiches

another terrible day in the Alps - Falls Creek picnic spot

a meat and 2 veg dinner.. delicious local potatoes = delicious potato salad

POM Wonderful – take one

POM Wonderful – it’s that cute curvaceous bottle of ruby red you might have seen on the supermarket chilled juice shelf recently – yep, the bottle that looks like a kind of harajuku-Betty Boop-Babushka doll – I just want to whack on some thick curly eyelashes and cupids bow lips! hhhmmmm.. I think that’s enough package fetishism for now

So, the marketing company looking after POM Wonderful in Oz/Sydney sent me an email and asked if I’d be interested in receiving some POM to try. I said yes – hello: a) I love free stuff! b) I love pomergranates! c) the bottle is so cute! (see above) d) I’ve been watching the promotional stuff POM has been doing OS (recipe comps, youtube video comps etc) and am interested in how companies are attempting to use social media to market products (although I am happy to be well, well, well out of the media-marketing game now!).

I wanted to try POM a few different ways, but first up we subject her to the Tropical Survival Treatment: fill blender with ice, add ingredient x, chuck in a whole knife peeled lime, flick switch to 3:ICE setting, blitz.

We then topped the glasses with a jeweled handful of fresh pomegranate seeds (also POM brand – get your market cornering on!). Very refreshing – I like that POM Wonderful is not too sweet.

pomergranate squared, lime, ice. hard to top

Then we added vodka for the second glass.

did I say hard to top? since when has vodka NOT improved a slushie?

Check out what other Sydney (and further afield) foodbloggers did with their bottles of POM (I wasn’t really surprised to see ice and booze featuring – how hot has it been lately?!)

Chocolate Suze

Spicy Icecream

Jenius

Not Quite Nigella

Fig and Cherry

Sarah Cooks

I guess great (and hot) minds think alike, hey?

I have another POM treatment I want to try, but I am currently laid low with the flu (man I hate summer colds and flus!) so it will have to wait until I can stand up without swaying later in the week.