… again the emerald green pallu of her sari tucked in at her hips, across her breast, and cough it up over her shoulder a hush of paprika and burnt honey across my face. — from ‘Wrap’ by Aimee Nezhukumatathil India is unrelenting and wildly beautiful. It is an endless array of colour and […]
I’ve been down in Melbourne all of this week house hunting for what is turning out to be a very imminent move down south. Which means I’m equal parts excited, tired and anxious. So I’ll leave keep it short here and leave you with this loveliest of smoothie recipes – the ideal meal when your […]
“I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.” – from ‘Notes from Underground’, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Brisbane summers are not for the feint of heart. By August spring is on the wind, and well before the new year summer has made herself good and comfortable. The air is […]
Summer has settled into Brisbane. The days are long and languid, the sun glaring down from electric blue skies. There is a moment in the very early hours of the morning when I wake up with the slightest shiver and pull the blanket up over me from the foot of the bed where we’ve kicked […]
In these days of food blogs and online savvy, I’m relatively picky when it comes to buying cookbooks. I have a few on the shelf that I refer to time and again and though I’m always flipping through the glossy pages of cookbooks at the book shop it’s only rarely that I’ll purchase a new […]
Given the refugee crisis engulfing Europe – and the world – at the moment, writing about milk and oats seems totally trivial. The first time the heartbreaking image of little Aylan Kurdi lying dead on the beach came up in my feed I couldn’t look away. There was something about the way he was lying […]
During our recent Balinese sojourn we stayed in Penestanan, an area just on the outskirts of Ubud. Our house wasn’t accessible by car – to reach the area from the main road below we had to climb a long flight flight of stairs shadowed by tropical plants. Once up the top everything was interconnected by […]
Ubud has a whole raw, organic, health food thing going on. Fueled, I imagine, mostly by the expat community and the tourists coming through, the town has yoga studios, health food stores, organic restaurants, and raw food cafes. While I generally eschewed the raw food restaurants in favour of actual Balinese food, one of the […]
A few weeks ago S planted spinach, parsley and coriander seeds. They started sprouting just before we went down for a flying visit to Victoria, and by the time we got back were coming along quite nicely. This past week we’ve been enjoying the baby spinach – the first of our spring crops for this […]
I am an avid tea drinker. Our kitchen bench is piled high with teapots and jars of tea leaves. Morning isn’t really morning for me without a cup of tea. Or morning tea. Or afternoon tea. Or bedtime. You get the drift. Tea. I like to drink it. So when, on our recent trip to […]
