Start at your doorstep, and keep on going - Harborside picnic with apple pie mistress Natsuno Kotori

Its Natsuno San!
Yellow is exactly the right color for this sunny lady, who I just met today.

By day she is a writer for Sydney's Japanese News Magazines.
In her 'other' life, she bakes golden french-style pastries and cakes, from her home in harbor-side Sydney.  'Arielle's Organic Cakes'.

 

She is also a master of 'Value adding'.
Why just have a grey interview in an office building, when you can have a picnic at the park in front of her apartment?
Why just two people?
She invited Mrs Umeyama along too, who is doing beautiful work getting the Japanese Seniors of Sydney connected and having fun.
Then I just tell my story once, and have more time for important things.
Like Apple Pie.

How was her pie? It was amazing. The pastry was flaky and stretchy, the chantilly custard was delicate.  The apples fragrant, not soggy, and because it was high in deliciousness, low in sugar, it tasted like food.

That meant I could just keep eating and eating it. 

For my first 7 months in Sydney, I stayed in Balmain, which has a reputation as Cafe Heaven. 

Its true there are excellent bakers, but most of them spoil everything with toxic amounts of sugar, so I only get to eat a mouthful.

Going back up to her apartment, she invites me to nibble the street trees. Lovely mulberries!
There was another rather wonderful surprise on the ground, sweet-scented sweet peas, just rambling around.
What do sweet-peas smell like? Easy! They smell of childhood Christmas. The dizzyingly wonderful smell of fresh plastic:  barbie doll hair and blow up swimming pools.
So terrible, that when you grow up and can do anything you like, most of the childhood desires have vanished.

Permaculture design: Stacking, increase edge, useful diversity

But I think there is something kid-like in Natsuno's delight in baking.
Her equipment cupboard is a kind of toy box for grown-ups, all these lovely tools and treasures.
Note the 'stacking'.
You just have to look at someone's cupboards to see if they enjoy cooking, or actually cook.

If you don't know where things are, or spend all your time searching and failing, cooking is a discouraging act.

Helping people re-arrange their kitchen so that harbor side picnics happen every day, that is one of my dreams in life.
Little by little.
Lets see how long it takes me to hold such workshops in my new city of Sydney.

 

Natsuno and her husband have moved 3 times, each time her kitchen getting smaller, and her view getting better.

What can be seen on her balcony?

There are herbs in pots.
There are punnets of Asian greens, sprouting from seed.
There are colorful lorikeets flying in for a feed and a squark, and there is a view of a very, very beautiful city. 

Keep your surroundings as beautiful as you can. 

It just might be that it makes its way into the taste of your cakes.

Order cakes from Natsuno: 

arielles.cakes@gmail.com

Cremorne Point, Sydney.