Creating with food - Roman style pizzas

 

Spending the day in cooking school near Rathdowney today has to be a highlight for me and WMBM as we joined new friends in Pizze alla Pietro! What a treat to be taught by the experts and spend a day with Desley and Pietro Agnoletto at  Classi di Cucina Italiana. From a delightful cook-your-own morning tea, to calzone and pizzas-to-diet-for. We learnt so much - history and technical expertise all shared with  samplings of local wines from the Rathdowney area. Desley and Pietro once cooked thousand of pizzas for Uni students at St Lucia and now offer a quieter paced, intimate setting for learning the finer arts of Italian cuisine. We chose wood fired pizzas - and will return for a pasta and sauces master class in the near future. WMBM and Pietro (above) led the creation of eight delicious offerings - including a desert pizza to finish.  Desley and Pietro's property is a nature refuge that also accommodated numerous alpacas, Cairo the camel, numerous goannas and a plethora of naturally occurring wildlife!

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Interpreting site - the rusted version

I chose some materials that most evoke that part of the garden I have chosen as my "site", I set about creating texture and layers - by machine and hand stitching. Rusted cheesecloth, hand made papers, interfacings and silk were layered and stitched. Sometimes the lack of support or stabiliser increased the pull of the stitched threads to create soft mounds - mysteries that require additional exploration.

Quiet days at home

Having a few quiet days at home this week and couldn't miss the opportunity to take some "sneak peeks of peaks" - that's Double Top (afar) and The Twins (middle foreground). From Double Top the range continues into New South Wales. This is the view from my studio window (instead of facing the big tidy up it needs). A little closer is Mount Greville (below) and Mount Frazer (behind) with a little cloud snagged on the canopy. The rain has brought such a fresh look to the place - vivid greens accompanied by the riot of colour and noise in the galahs and my favourite little people, the wrens. Plenty of inspiration for the next project .....