The beetroot is in my roots, borscht in my bloodline. My great grandmother was Ukrainian. The story goes that during a pogrom in the early 1900s she stabbed a Russian solder who was attempting to rape her, then escaped with nothing but a pair of brass candlesticks. I can’t vouch for the truth of this […]
Not that long ago, a special occasion called for booze and parties, wild costumes and late nights/early mornings. In these present days of small children and being all grown up, special occasions are mostly food-based. Afternoon barbecues, civilised early dinners, pancake breakfasts, brunch. Which is alright by me, truth be told. I like going to […]
South of my days’ circle, part of my blood’s country, rises that tableland, high delicate outline of bony slopes wincing under the winter, low trees, blue-leaved and olive, outcropping granite- clean, lean, hungry country… From ‘South of my Days’, Judith Wright It’s the first day of winter today. After a warm weekend the cooler weather […]
“The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious. The beet is the murderer returned to […]
Now that we are a month into autumn, night comes early. By the time we are sitting down to dinner on the front verandah the shadows are long. By the time we finish, it is well and truly dark. So even though it is barely 8pm as I write this, I feel like it is […]
“It is often mild distraction that moves the imagination forward, not uninterrupted concentration. Thinking then works by indirection, sauntering in a roundabout way to places it cannot reach directly.” From Woolf’s Darkness by Rebecca Solnit Sometimes I wish that I had more time to myself. More time in which to read and write, to think, […]
About three years ago I had the pleasure of travelling across western Queensland with the food writer Matthew Evans, on a food writing tour. We drove 800km inland under flat blue skies into cotton country, where green fields stretched into an endless horizon and at every door we were greeted with fresh scones. After trading […]
If anyone should ask, tell them mandarins. Tell them eucalyptus sap that rubies on the bark. Tell them snow crunch and grass burn and skipping a hosewater rope. If anyone should ask, tell them bluebottles, cuttlefish, sea glass and wild raspberries that charge blood for fruit… From ‘Such riches’, Michelle Dicinoski
