Eating Well And Cheaply In Sydney

It's easy really. Just find some friends who invite you to stay at their place, then juggle the dates so they coincide with your friends' OWN holiday.

We had the pleasure of "minding" John and Emma's place, along with full "help yourself" rights to the pantry. We didn't overdo it, of course, but one night I DID make bread. And then set the table with marinated feta, a few relishes, a real tomato, and basil from the garden. It looked pretty awesome.

Sadly the bread was pretty much a dud. Didn't rise overnight like it should have - we put it down to dud yeast, and added more very late on in the process. But the other sachets of yeast from the same box seemed fine, so who can tell?

So the NEXT day, I made more bread (with good yeast this time) and what do you think I found to put on it? EGGS, it is! Poached eggs, freshly startled out of John and Emma's own chickens. We were under orders to collect and use the eggs. Jeff found out that if a chook is sitting on the eggs, you have to hose it down to discourage it. So he was on chicken-hosing duty, while I was the main collector. I tried to poach the eggs really nicely (the Short Black Cafe in Camberwell is the best egg-poaching venue I've ever found, so I wanted them to look like that). Not a huge success, but still lovely.