Inspiration from art

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.

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enjoy

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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

Travel

"Travel is the story you tell yourself about yourself." David Prior Once a year the Australian Financial Review puts out a seriously glossy Fin! Travel magazine - inserted into their AFR Weekend edition. This weekend is that weekend. Normally I flick through it in about five minutes - even less sometimes - and discard because it's full of ads for expensive watches, cruises and hotels with articles about holiday experiences which are - well - just decadent and out of my reac

May 17

The sounds of silence

"a clear, definitive sound connected to your past can bring back details you might never have remembered again." Danny Wallace/The Guardian Yes I know - this painting by Giorgio de Chirico has absolutely nothing to do with kitchens and sounds. But it started me out on this particular post, and introduced me to a series of paintings by an artist I knew little about. And honestly I don't really like his paintings, but they are arresting. I really felt I should say something

Apr 15

Pretentious or sublime? - musings

“I'm tired of 'pretentious' just being used as an excuse to dismiss anything that fucking expects you to have a brain.” T.J. Kirk Please excuse the language in the above quote, but it was the one quote that I found that kind of expressed the same feeling I get occasionally - most recently and most specifically after seeing Paolo Sorrentino's latest film, La Grazia . last Thursday. I saw the film with my friend Clare in the city. There were a mere half dozen people in one o

Mar 29

Stunningly and simply beautiful or pretentious?

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." By now you will have realised that I am a sucker for beautiful things. Appearance is sometimes all. But of course, what I think is beautiful is not necessarily what you think is beautiful. So that's one thing to bear in mind as I launch into today's musings. The second thing you will have realised by now is that I am an ardent admirer of the work of Nigel Slater - both as a recipe creator and foodie inspirer and also as a writer. A

Mar 13

Mary Cassatt - what's missing?

"Women should be someone and not something." Mary Cassatt I've been looking at this painting by Mary Cassatt - the American Impressionist painter - or rather the detail - on the right - of the full painting on the right. It's this week's Met picture in my desk diary. Because a cup of tea is involved - the painting is in fact called A cup of tea - I thought I really ought to be able to use it in some way for a blog. But I know I have done bits and pieces - indeed entire p

Feb 26

We cannot do perfection

"Natural timeless motion." Tamara Adler Every now and then I change my computer's desktop wallpaper, choosing a photograph from my own collection. This is the one I chose yesterday. It must have been taken in autumn because there are berries on the hawthorn tree outside my window. The bird sits behind my computer, behind the window and its flyscreen - hence the hatched pattern across the picture. The bird is an Eastern rosella - a small but a stunningly beautiful bird th

Feb 22

Arty brioche

"Rather a piece of bread with a happy heart than wealth with grief." - Egyptian proverb So it's the Met's first day of the week - Sunday - and facing my new week of happenings - actually a few this week - is a detail - the brioche, the flower and the peaches - from this painting - La Brioche - as painted by Edouard Manet in 1870 and now hanging on the walls of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Well it's food, so I ought to be able to write something about it. Firs

Feb 8

Is anyone impervious to advertising?

"A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself." David Ogilvy I noticed that the Coles Magazine now has a new section - Coles Finds . No that's not strictly accurate. It has always - well for some time now - been there, but usually just a page, with a scattering of products. Now there is a whole three or four page section which is presented in the same way as any other of the sections in the magazine - and crucially - near the fr

Jan 21

Sunday - ending or beginning?

"Time flows in a strange way on Sundays" Haruki Murakami This year's Met diary has disoriented me somewhat because it begins its week with Sunday. In years gone by, and my feeling is, almost everywhere, mostly we think of Monday as the first day of the week. And the Met has previously followed that tradition. I am now into the third week of my diary, and I have only just adjusted to the fact that the day that says Saturday on the page, is not Sunday. To explain - for exam

Jan 11

Ombre - from Monet to cakes

"To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment." Jane Austen Once again I am trying out a new technique to combat lack of inspiration. The idea is to randomly pick a photograph, a picture, an object ... and extemporise upon it, hoping that in some way there will be a connection to food. I find this kind of thing makes you think a little, explore a little and look at things in a different way perhaps with an eye to detail, perhaps t

Jan 4

Bagatelles

Bagatelle: "a thing regarded as too unimportant or easy to be worth much consideration." Oxford Languages So yes 'bagatelle' is a French word for a trifle: "The French word bagatelle , from the Italian word bagatella , means a trifle or little decorative nothing." Wikipedia And this is an oddments post - full of trifles. A bagatelle trifle is also a specific French Canadian dish of which the magazine Saveur says "The typical bagatelle in La Beauce is a child's delight o

Oct 27, 2025