Gee it’s great to back on the road again. We’re currently in Port Stephens, and what a stunning piece of countryside this is. But more about that later.

Although we could sleep in our van whilst it was being repaired in Newcastle, we still felt ‘displaced’. Consequently, apart from breakfast we were eating most of our meals out. While there was nothing to complain at in any of the meals we had, nothing was overly memorable either.

Today we packed up a picnic lunch and took it to the foreshore at Lemon Tree Passage. Our picnic consisted of slices of nice bread a container of garlic butter mixed with olive oil, a container of particularly nice chopped tomato (the type of tomato that smells like it’s just being picked off the vine), mixed with finely chopped onion and lightly drizzled with olive oil and balsamic, and a zucchini thinly sliced into rings seasoned with salt and white pepper, and some grated parmesan.

We took some baking paper and put it on an electric barbecue in the park on the foreshore, spread our bread with the garlic butter mix and toasted that on the barbecue while at the same time browning up the zucchini slices. When it was cooked we topped the bread with the zucchini slices, the tomato mix and some parmesan.

Sitting at a park bench eating it with the sun warming our backs was so much more enjoyable than any of the meals we’ve eaten out. Such simple fare, but delicious.

We followed it with a flask of coffee and a crisp, sweet apple. To top off the ambience of good, simple, fresh food eaten el fresco over-looking beautiful Port Stephens Bay, we had the company a of cheerful magpie. She sat up at the table with us as we ate and shared our bread and parmesan, (she wasn’t impressed with anything else we were eating though). She chortled away to us as we ate. Delightful!