Nova Scotia in the Fall

One of my good Australian friends came to visit me and it was a wonderful excuse to see some of the wondrous glory and gorgeous colours of Nova Scotia in the fall. 

We drove through the Annapolis Valley, an area known as the main breadbasket of the province, and it still produces most of Nova Scotia's fresh produce. It is renown for its delicious crisp apples, blossoms in spring and delightful colour with the changing of the leaves in the fall.

Bella Vista

Love the architecture of the barns

Beware of dancing deers 

More fabulous farm architecture 

Fall in North America is not complete without a pumpkin (squash)

 We drove through miles of picturesque scenery, winding through hills and passing wooden churches and ended the day chatting to a pumpkin farmer who was selling his wares on the side of the road.

Blue and White Porcelain Ceramics

Some of you will know that I have been inspired by the writings of Australian author Miles Franklin who is well known for her novel My Brilliant Career, which for the most part is set in Goulburn, NSW. 

Crabapple Tree in Blossom

In April 2013 I partook in the self guided tour of Goulburn and observed many of the buildings she wrote about in her novels. 

Domestic Interior with Antiques

Indeed, it was her descriptions of pioneering Australia that set me on the path to further research Australia's history that led me to the Artist in Residence at the historic gold mining town of Hill End, and then internationally to explore pioneering history in Halifax, Nova Scotia Canada. 

"The two towers of the office rose like sentry boxes which in the long main street that ran empty in the moonlight to the south"  

Further images from my Hill End residency:

In the studio

Life in a slab hut

Textures

Fences and gates

Goulburn Post Office

So inspired I sketched imagery of Goulburn's historic buildings incorporating text from 'My Brilliant Career' that was published in 1901. 

"I bought a ticket at the Goulburn railway station"

 These sketches have recently been applied to porcelain ceramics using scraffito and mishima techniques.

Goulburn Railway Station

Earlier in the year I ran a crowd funding campaign to assist with my travel to Halifax, Nova Scotia to participate in the Nova Scotia Centre for Craft and Design's Summer residency.

"I borrowed every book in the neighbourhood and stole hours from rest to read them"

 One of the rewards for my crowd funding supporters was a porcelain ceramic vessel an image relating to my residencies. 

The Music House 

"I love the organ music and the hush that pervades the building" 

So some very lucky people received these 'one of a kind' porcelain vessels.

St Saviours Cathedral

 The shapes are inspired by pioneering bushmen's mugs, which were fashioned from recycled tin (which would've originally contained food) with a wire handle added.

"I left the train and went to the Commercial for the remainder of the night"

The Commercial Pub, Goulburn.

Sketches on Ceramics

This week I have been:

Sketching scenes of my house onto ceramics for my upcoming solo show at the Brunswick Street Gallery in Melbourne at the end of the March.

Kitchen Series

These are scenes painted in underglaze - the next step is to glaze them with a clear porcelain glaze. Im a little nervous about this next step as the blue underglaze can run if the gloss is too thick... they're in the kiln as we speak. Fingers crossed they turn out ok

Window scene of my kitchen

Sewing some of my fabrics into bags ...

Pink Bitsa Bag www.madeit.com.au/kateward

 Experimenting making my own ginger beer from scratch. The recipe is really easy its:

1tsp sugar
1 tsp dried ginger
1 sachet dried yeast
1 cup warm water.

combine in a large jar and cover with muslin (in my case chux - new and unused)

for the next 8 days add 1 tsp sugar and 1 tsp dried ginger.
(Im still at this stage)

After 8 days you divide the liquid into 2 (its now called a ginger beer plant) and you can give one to a friend or use one part to continue feeding the ginger beer plant and with the other half turn it into drinkable ginger beer.

Ginger beer plant 

To make up the ginger beer this is what you do:

Mix together:

4 cups water

24 cups warm water (this is probably about 5-6 litres)

1/2 cup strained lemon juice

then add the ginger beer plant. Bottle and seal. It should be ready to drink in about a week.

I'll let you know how it tastes!

green tomatoes 

 Ive given up hoping that my green tomatoes will ripen this year. With the continuing wet weather I was afraid they would rot on the vine. So Ive just turned them into green tomato pickle using this recipe from the ABC. As is my way of cooking, Ive 'kate-ified' it by adding some stewed crab apples and my own homemade version of curry powder.

This is what it looks like......yum. I love all the tomato seeds scattered throughout the chutney.
I plan to eat this with chunks of cheese and bread.

Autumn Harvest and Half Hearted Days

Today whilst I was driving home something red in the trees caught my eye. I slowed down to check it out and to my delight it was a wild apple tree growing by the side of the road.

It must've been serendipitous because only moments before I was thinking I should make some chutney with some old apples I had in the fridge which were perfect for jamming, but too floury to eat.

I couldn't resist temptation and I picked a basket full of the delightful tiny fruit.

Amazingly the majority were unspoilt by bugs and insects. They look like they could be Gala apples- although Im not terribly good with apple varieties. They are sweet and tart to eat.

And so cute and photogenic!

Anyway they inspired me to get cooking. Last week a friend of mine was telling me about Apple Butter she used to eat with fried biscuits (like a scone, apparently its an American thing) so I was curious to see how you make it.

I found a recipe which looked pretty easy to make and got started. I choose it because I didn't have an apple peeler and the idea of peeling each of the tiny apples was pretty unappealing....

So I cut and cooked the apples in a water and vinegar solution and they were starting to soften nicely. The next stage of the recipe called for the boiled apples to be passed through a sieve - this sounded too hard to me - so I just blended them together and then added the sugar and spices....... It wasn't until the end of the cooking that I realised that straining the mixture gives it the 'buttery' texture. Because I was in a half hearted mood I had just made thick apple sauce! Its still yummy though and now I want to make the recipe properly.

In my searching I also found a recipe for making the apple sauce in the slow cooker or crock pot which takes about 12 hours. This looks like another easy recipe :) I am a big fan of this cooking device and so tomorrow morning I will be embarking on Apple Butter #2.

Im also hoping to make a Bengal Chutney - its main ingredient is also apples. I used to make this one all the time when I sold jams and chutneys for pocket money when I was studying at Art School. I cant find my original recipe (its stashed somewhere safe) but I found a similar one on the web.

You can click on the links below to each of the recipes I am referring to :

• Apple Butter
• Apple Butter cooked in the slow cooker
• Bengal Chutney

Whilst delighting in my discover of a windfall of apples it reminded me of a movement which I heard about in London where people were sharing fruits off neglected trees in urban environments. I found a page where someone was starting to document all the trees in London called Urban Forager - a fantastic idea! I don't like to see food go to waste, which got me started dabbling with the alchemy of preserving fruit in the first place.

With a little further research, I found an article in the Sydney Morning Herald similar concept undertaken by a Sydney sider.

Hmmmm. I could be onto something here.... there's heaps of old fruit trees near where I live.

Food for Thought - as they say!