Life

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

to subscribe to the blog click here

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

6 days ago

Picking apart a quote

"The reality is that the best way to become a better cook is through failure, and learning from it to tweak the dish for next time. If you are going to take chances in life, cooking at home should be one of them. There's no feeling in the world like the one that comes from making something delicious by pure instinct - like you stepped up to the podium without writing a speech and delivered the monologue of a lifetime." David Chang I confess I almost am tempted to say - "if

Feb 5

What's a holiday?

"a time when someone does not go to work or school but is free to do what they want, such as travel or relax" Cambridge Dictionary I am currently on a permanent holiday. In the sense that I no longer go to some kind of paid job. Of course, being a mother and a wife I also have - had in part - another job. And even if I wasn't any of those things I would have little jobs - washing up, cleaning, cooking and so on. The things that need to be done in order to live an orderly

Jan 28

Self soothing

"What does self-soothing look like for you when the world is on fire? What is bringing you ease in the doom and gloom?" Denai Moore Generally speaking self soothing can be accomplished for me by going for a walk, but today my walk ended with me feeling somewhat glum, because I had allowed various dismal thoughts to enter my brain. The photograph above is not taken on one of my usual walks - I think it was taken at the RACV Inverloch resort - or nearby anyway - and I am inde

Jan 22

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

Happy days

"Happy days roll onward leading up to golden years." Alfred Lord Tennyson Every now and then I change my computer desktop wallpaper - I think that's what they call it - from a photograph picked from my photo libraries - almost at random. This is what I chose the day before yesterday - such a happy picture - of a holiday in France 20 years ago, when I was a mere 62 years old. A baby, with many of those golden years still to come. The group consists of two sets of university

Jan 6

Mission impossible? Clean out the fridge

"We start to unload and are brought face to face with our own quietly liquefying shame." Jay Rayner/The Guardian I have not made any New Year's resolutions this year, because we all know that's an exercise that's doomed to failure, isn't it? However, even though January 1 is really just another day - the next day in your life - I can't resist kind of making plans - on the 2nd. I was too busy temporarily farewelling my sister yesterday. And one of those immediate plans is

Jan 2

Guilt from browsing cookbooks

Don't be fooled by this photograph. This is not another Nigel homage, although he will get a mention or two - well more, but it's not really about him or his recipes. I also don't think I shall have much to say but I did want to say something arising from my attempt to decide what to cook for our friends coming to lunch on Sunday. And yes, I ended up with these three books and some bookmarks, but let me tell you how I came to this, and why I ended up feeling guilty. I wasn

Dec 10, 2025

Letters to Nigel Slater - a blog

"If you accept what IS, then you can simply relax and appreciate it for its specialness" Hilary Chambers I haven't written about other bloggers for a while now, so it's time, and the next one is one I have been sort of looking forward to for a while - Letters to Nigel Slater . I mean how could I resist? Having now read a few posts it leaves me a little sad and with lots of questions. It's a very plain and unfancy looking website which began back in November 2011 and eded w

Nov 19, 2025

Wasting time

"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us". J.R.R Tolkien Yesterday I was on the verge of giving all of this up. I'd found that quote above whilst looking for an economics quote the day before and I was feeling low. When you read one of those quotes - there are lots that say almost the same thing - and it's a bit corny - they drag you down a bit and I was down already because I had awoken down, possibly because of that quote, and then had gone for

Nov 7, 2025

Back to the curriculum - Philosophy

“A philosopher is a person who doesn't care which side his bread is buttered on; he knows he eats both sides anyway.” Joyce Brothers It's ages since I tackled the food curriculum series, mostly because I had covered all the subjects that were taught in my schooldays. I always determined to carry on but stalled a bit. Today is the day I continue with all those other fields of study that we now know - some of which turn up in schools, some of which are saved for further educa

Oct 14, 2025