With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come. – from The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare The waratah flower, native to the south-east coast of Australia, is a striking plant. Its deep crimson flowers bloom on top of a branch whose spirally-arranged leaves are serrated along the edges. It is known to be difficult to cultivate […]
— the dusk light, the cloud pattern, recorded always in your heart and the rest of the world — chaos circling your winter boat. – from ‘Last Ink’, Michael Ondaatje The hot days are starting to roll across Melbourne, stretching out, settling in. The trees lining our street are heavy with new green leaves, the […]
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 […]
Now the leaves are falling fast… – from ‘Autumn Song’, W. H. Auden The day we made these Pear & Strawberry Muffins last week was unexpectedly lovely. The morning was the first really cold one of the year. Thick socks and hot cups of tea kind of cold. Frosty breath in the morning air, clear blue […]
“I want everything to have a handle, I want everything to be a cup or a tool, I want people to enter a hardware store through the door of my odes.” This excerpt from ‘House of Odes’ by Pablo Neruda seems a fitting welcome for a food blog. An invitation, if you will, to cook […]
It is necessary to pick 150,000 crocuses in order to produce one kilogram of saffron. Soon, she’ll crouch again above each crocus, feel how the scales set by fate, by misfortune are an awesome tonnage: a weight opposing… – from ‘The Saffron Picker’ by Judith Beveridge For a traveller to India, there is wealth of […]
“I’m not a prophet / or a stone age man / just a mortal / with the potential of a superman…” – David Bowie My first memorable encounter with David Bowie was the tripped-out fantasy film Labyrinth. To this day, one of my favourite movies. The thing is, Bowie’s legacy is so much more than […]
Christmas is done, and the New Year is almost upon us. We had a quiet Christmas up at my mother-in-law’s place in Maldon, where we ate loads of lovely food, W gorged herself on homemade chocolate biscuits, and we enjoyed the array of weather that Victoria has to offer – sweating in shorts one day […]
The crazy vegetables Uncurled Their tendrills and leaf-crowns, Throbbing bulbs, In the sub-soil The carrot With its red mustaches Was sleeping… From ‘Ode To The Artichoke’ by Pable Neruda Pablo Neruda was one of the first poets that I learned to love, and one that I still love to this day. I have several of […]
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 […]
