Those gifts and impulse buys
"You shouldn't have anything in your pantry that you wouldn't want to cook with." Alison Roman I have two lovely daughters-in-law and two lovely sons, who, because of my love of food and cooking, often give me foodie gifts and hampers. This year for my birthday I was given this glorious Italian 'hamper' - which also included a Graham Swift novel in Italian that the local library had serendipitously been throwing out, and a bottle of Italian pinot grigio - but my husband go
Jun 30
Tech problems
"For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press three." Alice Kahn The expression on the guy's face is a bit like I feel. So I'm going to vent a bit. You are probably not interested in the problem and my attempts to solve it, but I feel the need to rage at the machine. You may have noticed you are not getting any emails telling you I have written yet another brilliant piece of triviality. I only realised after a few days, whe
Jun 26
A missed opportunity
A couple of days ago, this brochure arrived in our letterbox. Of course I was not excited, but I did think that it might have some information inside that would be useful for a blog. And it did but not in the way I thought it might. I should explain that Woolworths has been undergoing the same renovation process that Coles undertook some time ago, and that I'm sure is happening everywhere, with variable tweaks made according to the physical size of the store and the demogra
Jun 25
I don't like turnips
"They are often considered to be rather a boring low-class vegetable - at the very least one that can taste strong and coarse" Beverley Sutherland Smith We never really had turnips on their own when we were children but they did appear in stews. I was not a fan - not the extreme of hatred, but I would avoid them if I could. Interestingly I hated their close cousin swedes much more. Today I still don't go for turnips - considering them somewhat tasteless and not worth the
Jun 24
"The unexpected joy of making lemon peel preserves" Wix AI
For a while, when AI was new for Wix there would always be a suggestion or two for a post title - gleaned from past posts I guess. The above is one of them and it's so AI in it's phrasing, don't you think? I guess I use words like 'joy', 'comfort' and 'fusion' often, and so they appear in these rather quaint potential post titles. 'Unexpected' seems to be a favourite Wix word too. Do I use that one a lot? I don't think so. Wix no longer does this, although if I want ins
Jun 23
Nigel's fry ups
"The fry-up has always appealed to me, in particular the bits that stay put at the bottom of the pan, the crusty scrapings that brown rather too much." Nigel Slater Uninspired as usual of late, I did my own kind of lucky dip by just picking a page from Nigel Slater's Tender volume 1 - and came up with A fry-up of pumpkin and apple to accompany a meaty supper - well why not I thought. Another enticing recipe title that sets a scene. I thought he might have some more fry-up
Jun 22
20-06-2026
"a magic number refers to a numerical constant with no explicit explanation of its meaning." Md Abdul Halim Rafi It was David who pointed out the potential magical significance of today's date - it's my birthday for one thing, so significant if only to me, and it's not really that significant anyway at my age - just another day that I am thankful to be here for. Nevertheless that's some number isn't, so I tried to track down its meaning amongst all the crazies out there who
Jun 22
Lucky dip - Kubbeh hamusta
"A recipe that adapts to its environment, but never forgets where it came from." Elli Benaiah/Beyond Babylon There are so many tricky and just picky issues about this particular recipe. It comes from Sami Tamimi and Yotam Ottolenghi's book Jerusalem - a word that evokes a whole range of emotions these days - mostly not good. Although Sami Tamimi - a Palestinian and Yotam Ottolenghi - a Jew of mixed heritage, are no longer official business partners in the Ottolenghi empire,
Jun 19
Titbits
titbits - " a small piece of interesting information, or a small dish of pleasant-tasting food" Cambridge English Dictionary I'm a bit late in the day with this so it's a this and that kind of post. With today's title titbits - sometimes spelt with a hyphen - tit-bits and by the Americans as tidbits. Which you might think is just because of pronunciation, but apparently has something to do with a long-ago root word of 'tyd.' But I won't go there today. When I looked up ti
Jun 18
For the coffee table or the kitchen? Or both?
"it cannot be called merely a cookbook but perhaps more appropriately referred to as a work of art." Gail Cooke/Goodreads It's time to 'review' this book that I acquired some time ago now in a kind of opshop in country Victoria. I 'read' it and put it on my desk to write about some day, and here I am. It is indeed gorgeous as a book. Gail Cooke, who wrote in Goodreads went on to say: "It is among the most beautiful books I've seen with a flower and food bedecked cover so
Jun 17
Cauliflower cheese soup
"It has something of the Welsh rarebit about it." Nigel Slater Often I have a vague idea of what to do for dinner, and then I either go with what is to hand, or search around my cookbooks and the net to find the answer. Today I thought I should probably use the last bit of cauliflower that I have in my fridge before it goes off completely - small brown spots are already appearing. And when vegetables are getting to that stage, then soup is the answer. There is some leftov
Jun 16
A surprise mushroom bourguignon
"I always argued that most of the things people thought they liked about meat they actually liked about the sauces and braises and spices they were cooked in" Deb Perelman/Smitten Kitchen Last night we were invited to dinner at my son's house - for a French mushroom dish - his wife told me - when the invite was issued. A lovely surprise in itself but the meal was also a delicious surprise. I should say here, that although my younger son does indeed cook quite a lot, he most
Jun 15
The worth of the Michelin star
"Michelin is the only guide that counts." Paul Bocuse Well not any more surely? It's probaby your favourite TikTok influencer if you are young, or Trip Advisor, Broadsheet or The Age Good Food Guide if you are older. Maybe it's even just word of mouth. And surely like any critique of any form of art in the broadest sense the judgement is always subjective. Yes Michelin inspectors, are trained, expert and anonymous, but my limited understanding is that for each restaurant
Jun 14
Breadsticks or grissini - maybe ficelles?
"Bread - the founding food of civilisation ... the two plus two equals five of culinary evolution" Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall Not that breadsticks are what we first think of when we think of bread. But then as he goes on to say - bread has many forms: "Bread is also like humanity itself. We come in many different shapes and sizes colours and guises, yet underneath the skin/crust, we're all made of the same stuff. And the trick of achieving happiness and harmony is surely
Jun 13
Lardy cakes
Lardy cake isn’t lardy cake if you hold back." Kimberley Killebrew/Daring Gourmet The lardy cake above is my inspiration today - it's Tom Hunt's version of this traditional British cake from The Guardian - and now having searched the net for variants - one of the best I think. It came from a link in Felicity Cloake's Guardian Feast newsletter, in which she was bemoaning the loss, or at least scarcity of traditional British bakery treats such as this. Potentially unhealthy,
Jun 12
Reflections on a small piece of quiche
"When we eat, we travel." Mina Holland This was my lunch today. A small piece of leftover quiche, so being otherwise clueless - partly because I have not been writing of late - otherwise occupied - and partly because it's an interesting exercise to do every now and then I decided to consider in a more analytical way than usual what my lunchtime quiche. As you know by now I make quiche a lot. It usually begins with some kind of leftover which might well offend the purists,
Jun 10
World food photography awards
"Food is the great leveller, the great unifier and photography captures this so powerfully,” Awards Founder, Caroline Kenyon I don't have much time today, as I'm preparing for tomorrow's lunch, so here is a sort of taster of some of the amazing photographs that won prizes or were highly commended in this year's World Food Photography Awards. This is not the overall winner, although it is the winner of the sponsor's prize. The major sponsor this year is Tenderstem® Bimi® B
Jun 5
Spanish-style - well any '-style'
If you have read yesterday's post, you will know that this is one of two dishes that I am currently considering for our lunch on Saturday. It's from the delicious. book More Please, by Valli Little, and for some reason I assumed that it was a Spanish dish. And so today, I was going to 'research' this Spanish dish and do one of my kind of analyses of a traditional dish. However, when I checked my Spanish cookbooks - Claudia Roden and Robert Carrier being the authors - and al
Jun 4
Rediscovering Valli Little
"our sincere thanks to a woman who changed the landscape of Australian food." Jane de Graaf/Nine On Saturday I'm doing lunch for our lunching friends. We take it in turns to cook lunch every month or so. So I am in early planning mode, and have started looking for inspiration. I decided my starting point would be winter and so I began with Delia and Diana Henry - as I mentioned yesterday. Diana was a bit of a disappointment and Delia did have a couple of things I thought
Jun 3
Moods and leftovers
"such a dish is always ... made more scrumptious by the knowledge of its unpromising beginnings." Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall I see I have used this photograph - the frontispiece to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's most wonderful book - Love Your Leftovers - a few times. It's because, in so many ways it epitomises comfort does it not? Even the fact that it's in a cup and you can picture yourself in some comfortable chair with as many layers of clothes on as you can fashionab
Jun 2