

The guilty satisfaction of empty things
By things I mean jars, bottles, packets, tins ... all the things containing all the consumables you use in your lifetime. By...
Aug 29, 2022


Random thoughts on an ordinary day
“Whatever — the soup is getting cold." [Last sentence of a mathematical theorem in Leonardo da Vinci’s notebook, 1518]” Leonardo da...
Aug 26, 2022


So much to see, do, experience ... always
“It's never too late to have a happy childhood.” Tom Robbins Yes it's another painting from my desk diary. It's called...
Aug 23, 2022


Distant memories - cousins and food
“Ponder well on this point: the pleasant hours of our life are all connected by a more or less tangible link, with some memory of the...
Aug 7, 2022


A quickie on baskets
"A glass pitcher, a wicker basket, a tunic of coarse cloth. Their beauty is inseparable from their function. Handicrafts belong to a...
Aug 5, 2022


LOVE - the secret ingredient - really?
"spread love through cooking" Mary Frances This was going to be purely about a website - in my foodie website/blog occasional series. ...
Aug 3, 2022


Precious - in what sense?
A Simple Dish of Potato Cooked in the Earth In Which It Was Grown The photograph is of a dish devised by Ben Shewry in his Attica...
Jul 22, 2022


Renewal
"Astonish me in the morning!" Tyrone Guthrie As you know, as well as writing this blog, to entertain myself I take photographs as I...
Jul 10, 2022


When the background is the foreground
This is today's Impressionist desk diary picture from the Met. It is by Edouard Vuillard and is called MIsia at the piano. It was...
Jun 13, 2022


A moment in time - on beauty
"Beauty is an experience, nothing else. It is not a fixed pattern or an arrangement of features. It is something felt, a glow or a...
Jun 7, 2022


A tale of two Junes
"How did it get so late so soon? It's night before its afternoon. December is here before it's June. My goodness how the time has flown....
Jun 1, 2022


An ordinary day
"Subtly, in the little ways, joy has been leaking out of our lives. The small pleasures of the ordinary day seem almost contemptible, and...
May 26, 2022


Blasts from the past in the Dandenongs
Yesterday I wrote no post - the one I posted was really from the day before - because I spent the afternoon up in the Dandenongs meeting...
May 21, 2022


An English last meal
"Feasting is about how you eat as much as it is about what is on your plate. It is rarely about greed or ostentatiousness, large numbers...
May 16, 2022


Food, ambience, the company - what is most important?
"I think the taste had more to do with the fact that it was a cool but sunny day; we ate with the doors wide open, so maybe that should...
May 15, 2022


Morsels and dainties
"Life, which is hard, is about small pleasures; it's about what Victorian writers such as George Gissing and John Ruskin used to call...
May 3, 2022


A blog called Pies and Fries dies. It's not alone - why?
"Is it ironic we're blogging about blogging dying?" Gwennan Rees You probably noticed that I didn't write a blog yesterday. I was...
Apr 28, 2022


Why don't I make curry more often?
"The complex flavours of curries are governed by just three things: generous spicing; onion, ginger and garlic done just right; and...
Apr 24, 2022


Good Friday, and the Lamb of God
so many questions Let me say up front that I am not at all religious. However I was brought up a Christian - a good Church of England...
Apr 15, 2022


The end of summer
“August rain: the best of the summer gone, and the new fall not yet born. The odd uneven time.” Sylvia Plath. Today the clocks went back....
Apr 4, 2022

