Al fresco dining
DREAMING OF SUMMER IN THE WET
This is the last part of my lucky dip. On the opposite page of the radicchio caesar salad recipe was this lovely picture of a table in a Tuscany garden. Well it was supposed to be Tuscany because the section I had turned to was a lunch in Tuscany. I suspect the setting is actually somewhere in Australia but that's in a way, the point. You can be in Australia and pretend you are in Tuscany.
Anyway - it is cool and very wet here at the moment, so there is no way we are going to be dining al fresco. This week. This is Melbourne - by next week we could be sweltering in 30 degrees or more. So I'm dreaming of summer.
In the summer we try and eat outside as often as we can. There is something about eating outside that makes you feel as if you are on holiday. And indeed here we are on holiday earlier this year in a couple of beautiful outside settings:
Now our own outside settings are not quite as idyllic, but they are pretty good. If I was arty enough I could probably take a photo that looked a bit like some exotic spot.
In Melbourne, at the end of the summer we have a food and wine festival and a feature of it - to which I confess I have never been - is the long lunch. Very very long tables in picturesque settings around the city, in the suburbs and out in the country. Here are two of them to give you an idea. Don't know whether the hats came with the meal.
They're pretty pricey but it's a nice idea.
At the moment we are in a very wet spring, coming out of a wet winter, but even so there have been days where one can sit outside and have a quick snack at lunchtime. And soon we shall be able to have a meal out there - hopefully next week even, when English friends visit and we are planning a family barbecue.
Dining outside is somehow special. Alas there are the mozzies, wasps and the flies to contend with but there are ways around them and they don't seem to be quite as bad these days.
Looking forward to summer. And the next lucky dip.
Oh the menu by the way for the Tuscan lunch was: Artichoke and bean dip with grissini, Grilled polenta with roasted capsicum and olives, Chicken with pesto and mascarpone, Potatoes, beans and peas with garlic, Radicchio caesar, Campari jellies with citrus said, Panpepato. So very today and yummy. Quick, easy, but delicious. And special.
