Making a Winter Fair

The school has changed its format for the midwinter, Christmas, event. This year, it's to be a market like a European Christmas market, with entertainment, food, things and the traditional room for the kids to sell off their own old toys before Christmas. It'll be held in the school, on a Sunday and the hope is that more fathers and parents who might not often be at the school - will drop by.

In a burst of nostalgic rightness, I volunteered German christmas baking, and telephoned Omi for her recipes. Baking delicious aromatic spices when it's dark and cold outside, perfect! Not what I'd ever do in Australia, part of this whole year's thang. A delightful book arrived full of Swabian gutzl-recipes and history, with Omi's handwritten recipes (and margin notes re the costing of same!), some of aunt M's own recipes with her very pragmatic, hilarious notes. Treasure. So I set off and baked a practise batch of something. One day, The Pumpkin and his small friend O made a round of 'staghorn buttons', with currants for button-holes, the dough rolled in cinnamon. Great. And icing the cutouts was most of the fun.

Then, in an interminable meeting one evening, it became apparent that there were just too many biscuit bakers already underway. So, in an easy sideways leap, I went savoury. As is my want. I decided to do three relishes, which could conceivably be part of an Australian christmas dinner, and might be interesting here too: caramelised onions, a pineapple chutney from Queensland and watercress pesto. Relish Australia is born.

The boys cried on the sofa - as I sliced enormous Spanish brown onions on 3 evenings, and spent hours caramelising them with sugar and vinegar in Stephanie Alexander's recipe. Somewhere, there is a photo of my mascara running black down my face, and a big wide, winter-white skinned smile!Our little room ponged of onion for days! LMM chopped cashews and watercress all over the kitchen, green specks, and I whizzed them with garlic, olive oil, parmesan and lemon. A search of ABC North Queensland's site gave me a recipe which worked well with tinned pineapple from South America.

With an enormous vase of eucalyptus leaves on my table on the day, I was one of the few savoury types (!) in a room with divine cakes, pastries and miles of gorgeous biscuits. Crepes from Madame I. The day was a flurry of people, conversations, children, the crowd all really into this event. The Pumpkin had a sleep with his narni, under the table; the Bean scooped a pair of moon boots. And Relish Australia sold out by 1pm.

Update: There have beeen frequent winter walks along the Dinosaur Park, aka Lee Fields, with the Bean on the moon boots, the Pumpkin oh his pedal-less bike, me with i-pod, walking briskly! We are approached about the moon shoes every time, they're an absolute cracker.