What do I love about summer?

Living in the Barossa, the seasons are all about food. 

It’s tough to choose although Summer is probably my favourite season for fresh produce – everything is just so full of colour, life, and vitality! 

Fat little grapes clustered under their leafy canopies. 

Orchards of apricots, plums, peaches and nectarines on slumped branches succumbing to their sweet density. 

Rogue roadside fig trees, decades old and cascading with purple and green fruit, perfect for salads or smooshing with blue cheese. 

Sometimes I’ll venture higher into the hills for wild blackberries dodging cars on tight corners and licking stained fingers… if the berries make it home, they’ll be eaten with vanilla ice cream.

My neighbour’s bees like to visit the bushes of wild fennel, rosemary and basil in my garden.

Apple cucumbers sprinkled with white vinegar, eggplant thrown onto the stovetop flame makes for smoky lusciousness, star squash by the galaxy eaten raw with soy and sesame seeds.

BUT. My favourite child of Summer would have to be the tomato. 

Vines toppling under the weight of ripe fruit that smell of petrichor and white pepper.

My ‘death row dish’ –  Thick sourdough toast (Eleni’s or Fino please!) schmoozed with butter, topped with slices of home grown tomato still warm from the sun… sprinkled with salt and ohhhh my. Perfection.

Kylie Mansfield,
The Louise