Most weeks roll on like the ones before, and the ones after. We eat and sleep and play. We work and go to the park and the library, drink coffee and bake bread. We laugh and argue and snuggle up in bed at night to keep warm in these cold, cold nights.
This week, however, this week has been a special one. Continue reading “Radicchio & Roasted Carrot Salad”
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 that looked just like the way my daughter sleeps in her bed at night and I couldn’t stop thinking of how scared he must have been in the ocean, alone, at the end. Of how he deserved to be safe and warm in bed, just like my kids.
It only makes me all the more angry at Australia’s punitive and heartless refugee policies. This is the supposedly ‘lucky country’, and it has been transformed over the last century by immigrants from Europe, from Asia, from the Middle East, from Africa. Made a richer, and a better, place to live thanks to the diverse cultures and hard work of so many refugees and migrants. This is my personal history – my grandparents came over as refugees after World War II – but it is also our collective history, our collective culture. We shouldn’t stand by as cruelties are perpetrated in our name. We may not have voted for this government, but this is our shame. We need to demand better. Continue reading “Homemade Oat Milk + Stovetop Granola”
I’ve been having technicolour dreams of late. Really clear dreams that seem totally realistic, without the surreal quality that dreams so often have. Bright dreams full of piercing sunshine and fast-paced narrative. When I wake up in the middle of the night it takes me a good minute or two to readjust to this reality and work out where I am and what I am doing. By the morning though I’ve forgotten most of the dreams. All that stays with me is a snippet or two, a snapshot image.
I’m not sure what is causing the strange dreaming. Perhaps it is the hot sultry nights we’ve been having – heat always messes with my sleeping and dreaming patterns. It could also be the fact that I am in the advanced stages of pregnancy. Full of hormones, and baby. Either way I find the dreaming both unsettling and exciting. I’ve always loved dreaming. When I was a teenager I used to write down my dreams every morning as a way to train myself to remember them better. Continue reading “Beetroot, Lentil & Cherry Salad”
When S and I drove out of Melbourne and up to Brisbane we packed the car full of our worldly belongings and hit the road. We had sent a few things ahead of us – bed, bikes, kitchen table, bookshelves – but otherwise it was whatever we could fit in the backseat. We closed the door to the house we had lived in for the past two years, handed in our keys at the real estate agent, and pointed the car north.
For the first few days in our new Queensland house we slept in sleeping bags, had picnic meals on the living room floor, and hung out in camping chairs. Even after our furniture arrived and we’d bought a few more things for the house it was always minimal, sparse. We kind of liked it like that. Continue reading “Roasted Cauliflower & Lentil Salad”
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 in his life as a Sydney food critic, these days Matthew lives on a small farm in Tasmania with his partner and son, where he grows his own veges and raises pigs. Matthew believes in good food – fresh seasonal ingredients grown yourself or sourced from your local farmers market. He believes that mass-produced food and industrial farming sacrifices both quality and ethics. During the many hours spent driving across Queensland, listening to his passion for, and knowledge of, food and food production, it was hard not to agree. Continue reading “Lemon & Lentil Soup”
