Fifteen cents per serve for apple-kombucha-battered seafood with oven-baked Dutch cream chips and a seasonal garden salad? You've got to be squidding! Continue reading

As a vegetarian Tassievore, my quest for Tassie legumes has been a regular feature of tassievore posts. One of the first years, I grew my own black beans and cherished them so much that I ended up hording them so long that they got infested with some sort of weevil…devastating!! So, imagine my delight when I heard that Tasmanian chickpeas had been seen for sale.   Continue reading

“Mummy, why are you standing on the chair taking photos of food?” my five year old asked. “Because I’m writing about spaghetti bolognaise”. “That won’t be very interesting. Everyone knows about spaghetti bolognaise”, she told me. “But this bolognaise will be made only from food we have produced ourselves”. “Our tomatoes are much better than horrible shop tomatoes”, she replied. It is March, a great time to be doing this, with an abundance of end-of-summer veggies in the garden. My husband Andrew hunts and fishes, so we often have some form of protein in the freezer – in this case venison mince from a deer shot on a friend's farm in Oatlands.   Continue reading

Are you passionate about local food and supporting Tasmanian farmers and businesses?  We are currently seeking people to contribute to the Tassievore Eat Local Challenge as Local Food Correspondents.  We'd like to collate stories about sourcing local food - from restaurants, your garden, corner store or local market. We'd like to share profiles of people who have amazing backyard gardens, larger scale farms, or can cook up a delectable dish featuring local produce. If you love finding new things, experimenting with food or just talking to people who are, we'd love to hear from you. We are hoping that our Local Food Correspondents can submit at least one story with accompanying photo each month. If this sounds like a fun way to contribute, please email Lissa :-)  

A huge thank you to all of the amazingly generous volunteers, growers, foragers, brewers and businesses who made this fundraising dinner a stunning success!   Continue reading

This week’s mini-challenge is ‘Ask for local’. This is a great excuse to get out and about and ask your favourite shops and restaurants about the local produce and products that they sell. You might even inspire them to stock more Tasmanian products and ingredients. To give you a bit of a head start we have visited two restaurants in Hobart that do a fabulous job sourcing local ingredients. Smolt Kitchen and Tasman Quartermasters are both passionate about what our island state has to offer and they were even kind enough to donate some gift vouchers for our week 2 challenge (and Living Local feast auction!). To be in the running all the you have to do is join our Tassievore community group on facebook (the link is at the top of our Tassievore facebook page ) and share your pictures and stories with us. We’d love to hear about businesses across the state that are doing a great job of promoting Tasmania’s bounty.  

Throughout March we are celebrating our local farmers and their sustainably grown produce. As part of the Tassievore Eat Local Challenge, we are providing you with the opportunity to tour some of our most quintessentially Tasmanian farms. We'll be visiting the 2 Meter Tall Brewery in Hayes, Matthew Evans’ Fat Pig Farm near Cygnet and Whistler’s Ridge Permaculture Farm in Franklin. We also have some workshops to teach you new skills such as Working with Hand Tools in the Garden and Preserving. And of course, our anxiously awaiting annual fundraising dinner, the Living Local Feast, which will be on 2 April this year. Visit our events page to find out the details and reserve a place.

Love eating and growing delicious food?  Join the Tassievore Eat Local Challenge in 2016!  A fabulous way to support our local growers and retailers, connect with your food and learn some new skills.  This year, we will focus on 4 weekly challenges: Get Growing - Sow, Grow, and Harvest your own local produce Ask for Local - Choose to shop at locally owned business and buy locally made products Find your Food Story - Follow your food from Production to Consumption Share - Connect with other through food - swap some excess produce; host a Tassievore feast for friends or drop a tasty tassie treat to a neighbor. Connect with us online - like our Facebook Page, Join the Tassievore Community Group, and follow us on Instagram.  

The Growers Group of the SHSC released a cook book full of local favourites, many of which use local produce. There are 176 pages of their favourite recipes, local growing tips and a sowing guide. We are selling them at SLT for $12, pop in for a look at all the wonderful ways you can use food grown in Tas. 

The results are in from the third Tassievore Eat Local Challenge which was clearly embraced by hundreds of Tasmanians who increased their consumption of locally produced food and supported local businesses.  The Challenge ran throughout March, with mini-challenges each week focussed on sourcing, growing, shopping and feasting on local produce.  Continue reading