green beans

Miso-Roasted Carrots with Green Beans & Soba Noodles

The half-circle of blinding, turquoise ocean is this love’s primal scene. That this blue exists makes my life a remarkable one, just to have seen it. To have seen such beautiful things.

from ‘Bluets’, Maggie Nelson

I’m reading Maggie Nelson’s cult novella Bluets at the moment. 240 short stanzas ruminating on love and life and loss and philosophy, and the colour blue. Part autobiography, part meditation, part long lyric poem. And it is making me notice blue everywhere – in the slash of sky outside my window, in my daughter’s startling eyes, in the flash of the train coming past, on the underside of the birds that squawk in the wattles by the train line. Continue reading “Miso-Roasted Carrots with Green Beans & Soba Noodles”

Two Salads: Green Beans & Asparagus + Potato & Dill

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 much later. And even though I’m pretty fucken tired right now I’m enjoying being awake – the kids are both sleeping, S is reading in bed, there is a cool night breeze through the house, and I’m eating deliciously gingery pfeffernusse.

We got home this morning from a trip up the coast for the long weekend. We stayed in a cute cabin in the hinterland and spent a few days visiting markets, hanging at the beach, buying books, playing on swings, walking through gardens, and watching movies. It was a most lovely way to spend Easter. We are pretty well too – toasted homemade hot cross buns for breakfast, fresh bread and olives and cheeses and boiled eggs for lunch, takeaway fish ‘n’ chips on the beach for dinner. Continue reading “Two Salads: Green Beans & Asparagus + Potato & Dill”

Sweet Potato Quinoa Salad with Kale Pesto

Summer in Brisbane is not for the lighthearted. By the time W wakes up from her morning nap and we get ready to go out, it’s so hot. We walk slowly down to the pool, the parasol our traveling circle of shade. After lazing in the water and playing in the grass, we walk slowly back home, one of us drinking icy-cold coconut water and the other craning her head back to see the crows in the trees.

The best time of the day is early in the morning, when the sun is still low and hasn’t built up to its midday strength, when everything feels fresh and clean, and not yet wilted beneath the sun. We like to get to the market early on the weekends, take our time with the shopping. By the time we’re finished up and heading home, the sun is strong and the market is busy. Continue reading “Sweet Potato Quinoa Salad with Kale Pesto”

Herbed Quinoa with Almonds & Cranberries

Over the last couple of months, since the weather has warmed up again, we’ve been in the habit of taking W for an evening stroll through the streets around our house. Sometimes it’s a quick spin around the block, other times we’ll walk for an hour or more as the light settles slowly into the horizon.

On Friday night as we were strolling through the park on top of the hill behind our house, the sky in front of us was blazing pink and it was all so steeped in lovely that we decided to come back the next evening for a picnic. Continue reading “Herbed Quinoa with Almonds & Cranberries”