Here's to Autumn

I know you shouldn’t play favourites, but I always thought autumn was my favourite season. That was until we missed summer. Perhaps I love autumn as it is a lovely extension of summer. After all, much of autumn’s bounty is summer’s harvest – like the gorgeous eggplants gracing our cover along with chillies, tomatoes and the end of berry and stonefruit crops.

In this issue the team celebrates in season grapes (p 67), mushrooms (p 48), kūmara (p 23) and fennel seeds (p 39).

Let’s hope the summer storms are over and autumn brings some more settled weather; our farmers definitely deserve a break! Plus, the next few months sees some great events for us to enjoy, from Flavours of Plenty Festival and the Whakatāne Wild Food Festival as well as the return of the Hamilton Central Progressive Dinner and The Great New Zealand Food Show. Find all the great local events on our events page (p 74).

I shouldn’t really complain about the stink summer, as in spring I was lucky enough to spend a couple of weeks soaking up the sun in Singapore and Penang. Read what we loved about Penang on page 51. And this spring I am taking not one but two groups to sunny Sicily. Our first tour sold out, so we quickly decided to add another, which is also filling fast.

The holiday last spring was fitted in to a very busy schedule as we worked on our second Nourish cookbook, and we are excited to launch this in June. If you are keen to be one of the first to get your hands on this beautiful book, we are taking pre orders. See below for more details.

To be honest there is always something going on here at Nourish HQ and like many we have to juggle the workload with family commitments. This is never more evident than during school holidays! On page 46 we created some chocolate spheres, a great hands-on project with the kids, be it to make homemade Easter surprises, hot chocolate bombs or as a delicious vessel for Harriet’s perfect chocolate mousse (p 44).

Vicki Ravlich-Horan Editor