Joanne Musgrave

I have decided to take Shop Naturally in a yummy direction during the second half of 2012, as we’ll be rapidly expanding the range of organic food we sell. The goal is to become a serious alternative to Organic Plus Erina for organic & health food grocery items.

In additon, we’ve expanded in to mineral makeup with the absolutely stunning Inika Cosmetics range. There’s a full set of testers in the showroom if you’ve like to touch and feel before purchasing.

What’s the hardest part? Having to eat all the food before we put it on the shop. It’s a rough job, but someone has to do it!

James & I went for a drive down to the south part of the coast last weekend and we took a little drive past Gnostic Corner, a cute collection of ‘hippy’ shops, as James called them After my trivia learning for the day (gnostic means knowledge through personal experience) I went and had a look in Gnostic Organics and grabbed some fresh produce and a sprouter to have a play with.

It’s a quaint little store with quite a lot on the shelf that I recognised. If lived at that end of the coast, I’d probably buy it (it’s for sale), but we’ll be setting up our own little version of this Central Coast organic food store soon enough in Tuggerah.

I have just set up the ‘clean slate’ for my new blog – Organic Food Central Coast. Even though we’re selling some organic food at Shop Naturally, I have no desire to become a fully blown organic supermarket, greengrocer or butcher, so I’m going to be nice and give a free plug to all the organic butchers, fruit shops, cafes, restaurants, farmers and growers on the Central Coast that I can find.

It will be a great directory for myself and anyone else who stumbles upon it in their internet travels. While the shop will always stock stuff like coconut oil, apple cider vinegar, organic chocolate, chia seeds, goji berries, cacao powder and the like, I won’t ever be selling broccoli or steak!

If you’re strolling around looking for good fresh produce on the coast, organic or not, The Entrance Farmers Market is a good place to start. It’s on the 1st & 3rd Saturday of each month down at the Memorial Park at The Entrance.

Let me just start by saying there’s nothing dangerous about Joseph Joseph homewares. They’re innovative, funky & bpa free. The dangerous thing is that we sell Joseph Joseph at Shop Naturally, and when you have wholesale access to something, you end up with one of everything in your kitchen.

I’m just about to add new chopping boards to the range, an Elevate Jar spoon so you can scrape the last bits of …. from the bottom of any jar, a silicone steamer, a stretch trivet, a basting brush and the pink rotary peeler, plus some funky stainless steel electric scales and an electric pepper & salt grinder.

I’m testing all these homewares. Honestly……..

For a work-a-holic, this long weekend has been a chance to actually catch up on a few things. 8 months ago we moved in to our new house, and quite literally just threw our food in the food cupboard and have been hunting high & low for things ever since. This meant that I had the following in the cupboard:-

• No tinned tomatoes, tomato puree or yeast that was in its’ used by date
• 31 tins of tuna
• 14 tins of soup & asparagus that will never get eaten

So, off I went to the supermarket to stock up on things we were out of, bought new flour, tomatoes, stock and lots of other essentials and tidied up by shelves and labelled them with a dymo gun. Then I raided our Lock & Lock containers at the shop and put all the new sugar, flour, almond meal and all the other junk I bought and lined all my Lock and Lock soldiers up in a row! If you’re clever and pick containers all with the same sized lids, they fit in perfectly and there’s no waste.

I ran out of time to try and perfect my Anzac cookies recipe, but I’ll take another swing at it shortly.

With Anzac day coming up, and me with a sweet tooth and having sugar only as a ‘sometimes’ food, I trawled through a sweets recipe book tonight trying to find something I cook “Janella” – (Good Chef Bad Chef – take a yummy recipe and substitute naughty ingredients for healthy ones.)

It’s a reallysimple recipe, but they’re still in then oven, so I have no idea what they taste like.

1/2 cup self raising flour
1/2 cup rolled oats
A good splash of olive oil (I used light)
Agave nectar, enough to wet the mixture (didn’t measure it, sorry)

Roll in to little balls. Bake for 15 minutes. Watch this space!!