I read a post on my favorite food blogger's website a month or so ago about a farmers market in Orange. Orange is a little town about 3.5 hours outside of Sydney, over the Blue Mountains and towards the interior of New South Wales. We haven't done a ton of exploring out that way, so we thought it would be good to head on out and see what's out there.
We headed out Friday night after work, and when we started off on our drive it was unbelievably hot and muggy, a thin sheen of perspiration having been a permanent fixture all day. Luckily the storm clouds rolled in, and although it helped take away some of the heat, the humidity lingered. Soooooooo we kept the windows rolled down during most of the drive and made a brief stop at McD's for an ice cream. No road trip would be complete without a fast food stop!
We rolled on over the Blue Mountains and made our dinner stop about 30 minutes outside of Orange at Bathurst, an old gold mining town. There was nothing super note-worthy there. We had dinner at an Irish pub, though that was questionable at first since upon walking into the bar I quickly picked up on the sausage-fest vibes--only two other females were inside. Yikes! But then Marcus realized that there was actually a restaurant section of the pub, so we walked around and I was relieved to find a more estrogen-friendly population. :) Don't get me wrong, it wasn't a threatening feeling up front but it's just a bit uncomfortable to walk into a country pub in my city work clothes and feel the eyes glancing my way. Anyway, we were quite comfortable in the restaurant and we enjoyed being out of the car for a little while.
Then we headed out in the dark and rain to a little town called Millthorpe where we stayed the night. Cute little tourist town.
As if this one picture indicates what the whole town was like... :) But it's the one random picture I took!
Then we headed into Orange, first making our way to the shopping center to find some sort of protection from the rain. It's been so hot in Sydney lately that the thought of warm clothes didn't even occur to us while we were packing, so I went and bought a cheap-o little boys' hoody. Then we headed off to the market!
We bought some market coffee, some bacon and egg rolls (that had masses of thinly-sliced, fresh bacon on them, they were so good!) and perused the stalls on the first round. On the second round, we picked up some corn, potatoes, mustard, jam, relish, honey, hazelnut fudge slices, pork, cider and apples. (The goods below.)
Oh yeah, and a nice native Australian flower. Loved it!
Afterward we went to tour the town and see Lake Canobolas, which was a much-glorified man-made pond. But hey, we saw it! Then we went and did some wine tasting at a few local vineyards and bought some bottles of white.
Then we slowly meandered our way back toward Sydney, stopping at Bathurst once more for coffee, then took a back road through the mountains. We sort of got caught in a cloud.
We got back home Saturday evening and crashed. It's amazing how just driving can take it out of you. We barely moved for two days and were still tired which doesn't seem quite right.
Sunday (Valentine's Day) Marcus headed out to pick up the paper while I made lemon poppy seed scones for breakfast, then we lazed around drinking coffee and tea, eating scones, reading the paper and watching the Olympics through the morning. There was one quick trip away from home to pick up a few extra dinner supplies and to get some little heart-shaped macaroons from my favorite pastry god Adriano Zumbo. But then it was straight back home to the laziness. Really, though, there wasn't much else to do since it was raining all day.
For dinner, Marcus bbq'd pork, onions and apples, I made some potato skordalia (fancy name for mashed potatoes!), and we drank the apple cider. A nice, fresh farmers market dinner.
Happy Valentine's Day!
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