This week we are delighted to welcome Sam Shelley and Catherine Miller to the Guest Blog! Both located in Tasmania, Catherine has an ace blog Little Glowing Lights (remember her house tour here?) and Sam runs his own photography and graphic design business. They have joined forces and created Island Menu- a gorgeous blog full of food photography and irresistible recipes based around the local produce of Tasmania. This week Sam and Catherine will be sharing some of their favorite Spring recipes- yum! -Jenny x

Island Menu is a Tasmanian based blog featuring recipes cooked, written and photographed by Samuel Shelley and myself (Catherine Miller). After a number of chats about food photography and how we both really wanted to see what we could do (most of these at the pub!), Sam sent me an email… ‘let’s just do a blog’! And why not. We are not trained chefs, far from it, but we both love cooking and taking photographs. Bringing the two together has been a really fantastic experience over the last few months.

The focus of Island Menu (and the reason for the name) is our intention to use and feature fresh, local and seasonal Tasmanian ingredients, and sharing on the blog the process of sourcing them. This can be as simple as going to Salamanca market on Saturday or the Farm Gate Market on a Sunday for fresh vegetables and fruit, or as wild and woolly as Sam travelling on a boat to Pedra Branca to fish for striped trumpeter!

Both Sam and I feel we are so fortunate to live in Tasmania where there is such a great variety of produce available: fantastic cheese, our own grown flour, fresh fruit and vegetables, seafood… you name it and no doubt its grown or produced here. It is a beautiful place and through our photographs we hope to share that with people.

Now the weather is changing and spring is here! Woo! Even if it can be a little fickle here in Tasmania, we are excited about exploring this island a little more and seeing what the sunshine brings. This week we have a number of easy and (if I may say so) delicious recipes to share with you celebrating spring and that time of year where everything feels all new and exciting again.

- Catherine