NewMarket!

I'm back home! And receiving hugs and cuddles and mmmm....  It's nice to be back. 

As a farewell to Brisbane of sorts - here are a few photos of the Newmarket Farmers Market - taken last Saturday on an outing with my sister and a few friends.  Five weeks ago this land was underwater.  Today it's the best place in Brisbane to buy your fruits and vegetables. 

Our friends did their bread-and-butter shopping, but it was a first visit for Dr Tabubil and I, and we ran around like mad things, drunk on sunshine and German sausage and home-churned butter, dodging terriers on leashes and babies in strollers and came away with our arms full of total non-essentials:

A kilo of ripe lychees
Lime and Grapefruit Cordials
Loaves of French Bread
Fresh Haloumi Cheese
Great bunches of damp mint leaves
Fresh-roasted macadamia nuts
Dukkah and zaa'tar made with aniseed and walnuts and pomegranate seeds
Portobello mushrooms the size of dinner plates
 

For dinner that night we baked the mushrooms and ate them like steaks.  We fried the haloumi with lime juice and ate it with slices of fresh valencia oranges. And we buried our noses into the arm-loads of mint between courses.

Baked Portobello Mushrooms
4 large portobollo mushrooms, cleaned
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
Fresh or dried herbs (I used basil, because it was what I had in the pantry.  It tasted fabulous)
Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. With a sharp knife, score a cross-hatch pattern in the mushroom caps.  Score an X in the base of the stem.
Whisk other ingredients together in a bowl.
Lay a sheet of baking paper in a shallow baking dish and lay the mushrooms gill-side down on the paper.  Brush the oil-and-vinegar mixture over the mushrooms, covering the entire surface.  Bake for 30 minutes or until tender.