Portarlington Mussel Festival 2015

Summer in Australia for many of us, means spending time at the beach. For most people, this is holiday time, to frolic in the surf, read a book and generally unwind. Although I get to do all of those things, the second Saturday of January is anything but relaxing. It's full on action as I continued this year, to volunteer for the Portalington mussel festival.

The Portarlington community shines on the second Saturday of January each year with the community run Portarlington  Mussel Festival. 2015  no exception, despite grey skies. Over 25,000 people headed down the Bellarine Peninsular to Portarlington and joined in the celebrations of this wonderful local industry.

This was my 7th year volunteering for the festival. Having put in 7 hours of food preparation on the Friday to help out the local netball team who would be running the community kitchen, I returned to my usual "gig" of cooking demonstrations. This year my marquee had doubled in size with over 150 seats. Thankfully the team had put everything together well, and after a small but important addition of a step running across the length of the cooking bench all was in order! (Thanks Ian)
With my trusty "right hand man", Fiona Underwood, we set out on the perhaps daunting task, of delivering back to back demonstrations, on the hour. This year we covered Mussel Benedict, Citrus pickled mussels, Thai coconut chilli mussels, Garlic mussels, Crumbed mussels and the traditional Mussels with tomato and chorizo. Then to finish it off we repeated Mussels Benedict as the crowd didn't want to go home!

Special thanks to Myles for the still photography, Justin Halliday for the video footage, Fiona Underwood for all her chopping, stirring and dishes washing, and the many men who solved our electrical issues on the day (I kept tripping a fuse). It certainly was a team effort.

In case you missed out, here is a snapshot of the day: #Portmusselfestival 2015