Day Fifteen - The Barossa Valley!

Greetings my Bloggy buddies! After yesterday's problems, let's see how I go with the report for Day Fifteen of our most excellent adventures! :0) Not as many photos today, so hopefully blogger won't have fits today. Here we go ...

So ... If you were to ask most Aussies when immediately springs to their mind when South Australia is mentioned, they would say ... The Barossa Valley or wine ... Or Barossa Valley wine ... If they were covering all bases. :0) And since we're in the midst of exploring South Australia ... Today we took ourselves off to the Barossa Valley. However ... In light of the above, our first stop was NOT a winery. In fact, we only visited one winery for the day. Instead, our first stop  ...

... was the farm shop of well known celebrity cook (she doesn't call herself a chef) Maggies Beer. That's her in the portrait with her co-star Simon Bryant from their cooking show "The Cook & The Chef". I stumbled across this program by accident some years ago while channel surfing & loved it. Most episodes showed Maggie (the cook) & Simon (the chef) expounding on seasonal produce from South Australia & then each cooking a number of dishes with some of those ingredients. The friendly banter between the two was fun & it was always interesting to see how they each used the ingredients in different ways. I fell in love with Maggie's no-fuss, let the flavours do the talking kind of cooking & her food philosophy, which is displayed at the entrance to the farm shop ...

Maggie has recently started to campaign for this philosophy to be introduced to food preparation for nursing homes, which I admire. So, I was a bit excited to be visiting the property of one of my heroes where her journey began & to sample her ever-expanding range of commercially available products. YUMMO! :0) We'd have needed a bigger vehicle to travel home if I'd bought ALL of the items I liked, but a few came away with us. And it was a beautiful spot for morning tea ...

This pond/dam/lake was right outside the farm shop/cafe & was so peaceful & pretty. If you look closely at the rocks on the edge of the pond, you'll spot some tortoises. There were LOTS of these critters in there & they kept us entertained while we munched ...

GB had an iced coffee & chocolate brownie while I enjoyed ...

... Coffee & a savoury muffin with chutney ... DEEEEEELICIOUS! After buying our favourite treats from the shop, it was time for more exploricating ... & I have a confession to make ... I forgot to take pics of our next two stops ... OOPS! So you'll have to take my word for it that we stopped at a winery ... Chateau Dorrien ... Where we found a nice cab sav, a couple of nice ports, a blackberry liquor & some spicy cinnamon mead. Something a bit different. :0) We then visited a cheese factory ... Where no cheese was purchased, but a lovely LARGE cheese board came home with me. Our next stop was a lavender farm for lunch ...

The lavender at the entrance to the Lyndoch Lavender Farm was so pretty with its purple haze & was vibrating with happy bees. I bought a headache balm & some raspberry & lavender jam before we enjoyed our lunch ...

Another yummy savoury platter with a lavender iced tea for me & a lavender spider for GB. It was a very peaceful spot to enjoy lunch, with wrens & finches flitting amongst the lavender & many more birds singing in nearby trees. The day was wearing on by this point, so we decided on one more stop at an antiques shop we'd passed on our way to the lavender farm ...

I didn't buy anything as it was mostly larger furniture that we can't carry home, but I loved the stone cottage that housed the shop in the front room. It was then a return trip to my Aunt's place. And that was Thursday done. :0)

We're having a lot of fun exploricating & have more plans for tomorrow ... Stay tuned to see what we get up to! In the meantime, I'm off to bed. I think we'll sleep for a week when we eventually get home! Tee! Hee! Hee! Til next time ...

BEAR HUGS!

CHEERS!

KRIS