November - 2025 2/2

Welcome to my blog/journal/whatever

This is the real guts of this website. The old website and its archived posts is still available at its old url. Newcomers might like to dip into it every now and then.

Welcome to you all. Amazingly I still don't seem to be running out of ideas on what to write - well occasionally - but I have my writer's block strategies to turn to - see the text on the right. Check this page for the latest posts and if something interests you just click on it. It's easy to leave a comment and I love to read them. And now you can subscribe to the blog and get emailed notifications of new posts. And sorry I just don't understand Facebook.

"We are not here for long. So let's at least make ourselves something good to eat."

Nigel Slater

"I was born hungry, not a cook."

Julia Child

"One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well"

Virginia Woolf

Writer's block

Every now and then I can't think of a suitable topic and so I have devised a few strategies to get around this.

Lucky dip

The first strategy I devised is to go to one of my three cook book bookshelves, close my eyes and pick a book. Close my eyes again and pick a page. It's really quite an enlightening method of getting over writer's block.

'A word from'

My second strategy is to devote a post to the thoughts of one of my favourite cooks. Hopefully it will introduce them to you

Or

I shall choose a picture I have come across and extemporise on that.

A second kind of lucky dip

I have been thinking about first recipes in cook books - so I shall choose a book not quite randomly and then look at the first recipe for inspiration.

Comments I love reading your comments. Just add a name - any name - it needn't be yours, add an email, ditto, type in your comment and hit the Comment button. Done. Wix sends me an email to tell me what you said, so I can respond if needed. Mostly I just read and enjoy. If you would like to subscribe to this blog and get notifications of new posts then click here. It's free - just a way of knowing what I wrote about today.

enjoy

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Economics, food, the curriculum

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery" Charles Dickens Economics is actually the third in the PPE trilogy of high class degrees - Philosophy, Politics and Economics, but because it was the turn of Economics on Friday, in this year's VCE exams I'm skipping Politics for now. The three are inextricably linked of course, as are food an

Nov 5, 2025

Indian cookbooks - then and now

"Books, even cookbooks, are written for a diversity of reasons and it is often more profitable to enquire why they have been written than analyse their contents in an uncritical manner. " Shylashri Shankar/The Peepul Tree I guess this particular post stems from one of those books on my desk - The Food of India - a large beautiful book which I picked up from the op shop for a song. Like it's companions in this series from the Murdoch stable on various world cuisines, it feat

Nov 4, 2025

Recipe problems - they still exist

"If you learn a recipe, you can cook the recipe. If you learn the technique, you can cook anything." Michael Symon That cookbook I was planning for the grandchildren - well I'm still working on it, although having been treated to dinner cooked by one of them last night - butter chicken, pumpkin masala, naan - I sometimes wonder why I'm bothering. I also wonder what is the best approach. I think I am aiming, in a less grandiose way, to do what Michael Symon says in his open

Nov 3, 2025

Aubergines on top of yoghurt

"the composition is inspired by Yotam Ottolenghi’s unbeatable formula of flavoured yoghurt base + roasted aubergines + vibrant toppings." Ixta Belfrage This is Ixta's Aubergines with lime yoghurt and tomato, cinnamon and chilli oil - a recipe from I'm not sure where. Anyway I thought her words might be an opening into a post - most likely I thought - about how everyone was copying the technique. You know the one - I talked about it recently - a base of something creamy. yo

Nov 1, 2025

ROSEMARY'S

RAMBLINGS

daily musings on food