The June List

Good morning! Hope everyone had a great weekend, or long weekend in our case. I have been hoarding links for the past couple of weeks but hadn’t had a moment to pull them all together, so here, a week or so late, is the June List. Happy reading…

• Classic lemon vanilla pound cake from Chasing Delicious 
• Now that winter is here, and our fire glows through the night, it’s a good time to ferment things. In particular, yogurt. Once you get into a rythym/habbit of making yogurt it’s easy, rewarding and economical. Especially when you have a household like mine, that goes through the stuff like nobody’s business. You really don’t need any kind of contraption or formula to do this, just a small pot of natural ‘Greek-style’ yogurt to get started, some milk, a nice warm spot and a thermometer. Here’s a great DIY post on the subject by David Lebovitz
• I loved this article about Sydney’s real food heros, published today in Good Living
• A beautiful potato and cheese pie by the always beautiful Mimi of Manger
• A nice little recipe for almond coconut bars. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a stash of these on hand for afternoon tea…
• Mikkel Vang is one of my favourite photographers; he photographed Mum’s studio a couple of years ago, I happened to be there and was really impressed at how he worked and since then,  the incredible images he consistently produces. So of course, I loved reading this post from Aran of Canelle et Vanille, about the photography course he recently ran in Sweden. Lots of beautiful images of Sweden in all its summer beauty. Please PLEASE can I come next time?
• While we are in Europe, lets just pop over to Dublin via Local Milk. Some gorgeous armchair travel here and a great insight to the city’s pumping food culture
• And still on things Irish, have you visited the lovely Imen’s blog Farmette recently? Please do, it’s always gorgeous, particularly this post on linguine with kale and grapefruit (yes really) 
• The program for our region’s winter festival has just been released and is fantastic. It runs from July 30 to August 4 so please come and see us for Frostfest 2013 (or any other time!) 
• Here’s another photographer I greatly admire. Melbourne girl Brooke Holme is seriously clever and her blog is a very pleasant place to spend some virtual time. Full of gorgeous food and lifestyle images, plus a few amazing weddings; like this and this one 
• Can’t wait to try this Pear and vanilla jam by Veggie Mama
• Oh Lady Cakes is just the most gorgeous baking blog. I’m very keen to try this recipe for single serving deep dish apple pie. Lovely story too.
• So far we’ve had lots of pretty pictures, a bit of globe-trotting and some sweet treats but now it’s time to get a little more cerebral…starting with Eat This Poem’s tribute to Karl Kirchwey’s A Roman Garden and a rosemary and olive cake inspired by the poem.
• Like Eat This Poem, Paper and Salt matches the blog author’s favourite literary works with recipes and puts it all together just beautifully. In this particular case we have a blini stack with a honey and orange filling inspired by Anton Chekhov and his memoirs of  a trip to Siberia in the late nineteenth century when he wrote about Blinis that there, “crisp, lacy, and as plump as the shoulders of a merchant’s daughter.”
• This french blog is eye candy plus
•  A polenta party in Italy’s Valle D’Aosta, via my new food blog crush, Appalachian to Alpine