We're between cookschools series this week, and that gives us breathing space to catch up on a few things, as you do.Somehow though, whenever I finally get to the bottom of the pile of stuff on my desk, it seems to miraculously reinvent itself, as a perpetual ongoing process... Perhaps just as well, that I don't actually mind the bookwork, becos it is most definitly a constant in my life.

I've also been doing some ongoing pottering with lavash bread recipes - trying to nail one that will be useable for a wedding we have coming up in November, and think I've finally found it. Followed this recipe, but substituted half the flour quantity for the wholemeal flour that had arrived from Hislops in Kaikoura.

We met Paul Hislop and the rest of the family some years ago, when we were on a quick road trip around the South Island with the girls, and had stayed in Kaikoura, hopeful of going out on the Whale watch. That didn't eventuate becos the weather didn't play ball, but we did have the good fortune to discover both their Hislops Cafe, plus the mill where they grind this beautiful flour.

We used it in the restaurant bread for years, and then when the guys were experimenting with different breads, moved onto the all white  olive bread that we have been serving as the restaurant bread for a long time. And the wholemeal flour kind of fell by the wayside, unintentionly, just one of those things that happened.

So I wasn't even sure if Paul would still be there, when I approached him a couple of weeks ago, becos I remember in one of the last conversations we had had some years back, he had been rueing the hassles involved in trying to source wheat that fitted within their organic parameters. I was delighted therefore to discover that yes, they were still very much in evidence, and had a really good supply of wheat sorted.

So I've made both the easy bread recipe that I linked too previously, plus these crackers from the wholemeal flour, and they are superb. This is wholemeal flour at its best - freshly milled, and with a sweetness and nuttiness that you seldom taste in flours these days.

No doubt I'll be mentioning it in cookschools, even though we won't be using it specifically in this next series, and as a result I've packaged some up into 1 kilo bags, for people to purchase.

We've just had a toasted sandwich for lunch - using the restaurant bread, which, becos of the amount of olive oil in it, toasts up to be really crunchy on the outside. And while munching my way appreciatively thru it, I pondered how it would be if we added a little of the wholemeal flour to the mix. We're going to try, and will assess the results.

Want to go for a walk this afternoon, and want to also plant out my first crop of micro greens, but its currently pouring down, and I'm not sure I can get too enthusiastic about heading down below where it will be unpleasantly boggy, to dig out some worm castings to spread over the raised garden that Ricks put in for me at the back of the restaurant kitchen. Might leave that for a finer day, and instead bundle myself up in wet weather gear, and head out the door for a brisk march around the boardwalk. That will get rid of the cobwebs....