Onya Magazine: The Best Vegan Eats In Melbourne

My sweatshirt really says it all ❤️ (Naarm is a word in the Woiwurrung and Boonwurrung languages of the Kulin nation which is the Traditional Place name for Melbourne).

Continuing on from my best Sydney vegan eats article earlier in the year, Onya Magazine have just published a follow up - the best vegan eats in Melbourne, the city of my heart. So if you were wondering where we ate and what our favourites were on our last few visits, here they are!

Honestly, I would walk (well, I’d also have to swim some of the way too, gulp!) back to Melbourne for some of the food we enjoyed last time we were there. The city has some incredible plant-based places that are truly exciting, indulgent and very, very delicious. Everything you want when you’re on holiday and feel like spoiling yourself!

The oyster mushroom “calamari” at the Green Man’s Arms, Carlton. Exquisite! Even Tom (who normally hates mushrooms) dug in!

Rereading the article has made me very hungry and wish we could just hop on the 86 tram and head up to Red Sparrow or Brother Bon for dinner tonight. Hopefully our next visit isn’t too far away…

pear and blackberry streusel muffins (vegan)

In summer and autumn, one is spoiled for choice with different seasonal fruits to use in baking - but winter?

At the start of June, I bought a large box of the last of the blackberry harvest from a local farm. They have been sitting in the freezer, added to breakfast porridge and weekend crumbles, but I wondered about using them in something else. Pears are also plentiful in the supermarket at the moment, particularly the “Odd Bunch” ones, the imperfect specimens that come into their own in cakes, bakes, crumbles and smoothies.

I decided to try this particular wintry (or autumnal, strictly speaking, I suppose) fruit combination in these muffins and it was an absolute winner! Sharp yet sweet fruit set in a vanilla-heavy batter not unlike birthday cake, topped with an indulgent and moreish streusel mixture. Winter elevenses have never been so tasty!

You can of course use whatever fruit you prefer - any kind of berry, fresh or frozen, would work well in place of the blackberries and you could use apples interchangeably for the pears. You could also use all pear (or apple). You want 230g in total of fruit, whatever combination you end up using.

You could also add nuts to the streusel mix if you like - walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts or pecans would be lovely. Nuts can burn easily, though, so be careful!

Pear and blackberry streusel muffins

Inspired by The Full Helping (I love her recipes!)

Makes 6 jumbo “Texas” muffins, probably 12 regular sized ones

Streusel topping

65g plain flour
50g dark brown sugar
65g cold butter (I use a vegan one called Nuttelex Buttery)
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon or mixed spice (I used a Gewürzhaus blend called Hot Cross Bun Spice, which appears to be only available at Easter) [note: only use 1/2 teaspoon if you prefer a subtler cinnamon flavour]
A pinch of sea salt

Muffins

1.5 cups of frozen (or fresh) blackberries + 1 small pear, peeled and cored (230g fruit in total)
350g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1.5 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon bicarb soda
320ml soy milk + juice of half a lemon (or buttermilk if not vegan), combined in a large jug + allowed to sit and coagulate for at least 5 minutes
120ml sunflower or vegetable oil
170g caster or raw sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preheat your oven to 180 C and line your muffin tin with cases/liners or squares of baking paper you’ve cut to fit.

Blitz all streusel topping ingredients in a food processor using the pulse function until the mixture is combined and resembles breadcrumbs. Scrape out into a bowl and place in the freezer until the muffin mix is ready.

Just to note, the streusel mix makes way more than you need but it doubles as a crumble mixture, so keep it in the freezer for when you next feel like a crumble and you’ll have dessert in an instant. Half the quantities specified if you don’t want leftovers but you’ll probably have to make it by hand, smaller quantities are trickier to do in a food processor, I’ve found (certainly in mine!).

Prep your fruit for the muffins - peel, core and chop the pear into small pieces and measure out the blackberries. Set aside.

Combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl.

In the large jug where you’ve measured out your soy milk and lemon juice (or buttermilk if you’re not worried about this being dairy free), you should have a slightly thick and lumpy milk now. Use a small whisk to bring it all together, and then add the oil, sugar and vanilla. Whisk well to combine.

Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and add the contents of the jug. Mix it together very gently with a spatula until just combined - Delia Smith recommends doing it in a slow figure of eight and this is what I usually do. It’s fine if there are a few small lumps but you don’t want to over-mix otherwise the muffins will be tough, and who wants that?

When the mixture is nearly combined, add the fruit to the bowl and gently fold it in.

A hilarious moment from Schitt’s Creek which ensured I will never be able to say “fold it in” with a straight face ever again! | Source

Once everything is combined, divide the mixture between the muffin containers - I use my favourite giant Texas style pan which yields six muffins.

Sprinkle as much or as little as you like of the streusel mixture on top of each one - I erred on the side of generous.

Bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes depending on the size of your muffins - mine took 30 minutes for a skewer to come out clean. Start checking at around 20 minutes is usually my advice, depending on how hot your oven runs. You can always put them back in for a few minutes, but scorched muffins are a sorry sight indeed!

Allow to cool - they were great warm but I enjoyed them even more a day or two later when they were firmer. Keep them in a container and I’ve found they last very well, over a week - but at that stage, they benefit from a quick warm up in the oven or microwave.

Savour them with a cup of steaming tea or coffee, and revel in the many consolations of winter.

onya magazine: The Best Vegan Eats In Sydney

I went to Sydney for work in January and needless to say, the food was AMAZING.

My late lunch at the Flyover Fritterie and Chai Bar in Redfern - just one of the many amazing things I ate on my Sydney trip!

I've been vegan for just over a year and while I wasn't short of options in Sydney, I did need to know where to go and do a bit of research beforehand. Many "best Sydney vegan eats" articles and Youtube videos I came across were pre-pandemic and so sadly, but not surprisingly, many places I liked the sound of were no longer in operation. Which meant searching out on my own, and I found some incredible places!

As I ate my way around the city and slowly amassed a list of must-trys, places I definitely wanted to return to with Tom on our next trip, I thought that surely this information would be useful for others too.

I’ve never quite lost my journalistic instinct - I pitched the idea to Sandi at Onya, and she said yes almost immediately! This made me extremely happy because “pitch something to Onya” has been on my writing resolutions list each year since about 2011!

My favourite Sydney vegan eats is available to read now, and excitingly I’ve got a whole vegan series for Onya in the works. I’ve just filed Melbourne and Hobart, unsurprisingly, will be next. I hope you enjoy!

this summer

The view from Wendy’s Secret Garden in Sydney, where I was a few weeks ago.

The longer I put off writing a catch-up post, the longer the draft gets! And now we’re at the end of the Australian summer. I saw autumn leaves scattered on the pavement on my walk the other day and almost groaned out loud in indignation! I love autumn but I’m really not ready for summer to be over just yet.

But that’s the thing about the seasons, you can’t stop them from turning. They have their time and then have to give way for the next one. All we can do is make the most of them.

It has been a summer of fun, hard work, adventure, sun, books, words, friends, music, planting and harvesting. A summer of being brave, of being curious, of filling the well.

Grab a drink - warm or cold, depending on what it’s like where you are - and get ready for the mother of all catchup posts!

Favourite experiences of the summer

Every visit to the beach. Lying on a towel, refreshed from the ocean, a warm breeze drying my skin, looking up at that brilliant blue sky.

Shakespeare in the Gardens. This was a wonderful evening, watching one of my favourite Shakespeare plays, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, performed in the open air, under the trees which lit up as the sun set and night came. Tom and I sat happily among a few hundred other people on picnic blankets, having a lovely time. I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed a Shakespeare performance so much - the language was so beautiful and poetic, and I didn’t find myself switching off like I usually do with Shakespeare because the language is usually a bit too ornate, even for me! It was such a lively and engaging performance. I hope this will become a summer tradition for us.

Sydney. My first time in the city since November 2019, and what a joyful reunion it was. I went for work and so spent most of it doing research - site visits and working at the archives. I didn’t really tell anyone I was there apart from two friends, who I was overjoyed to see again. The rest of the time I spent alone, working, reading 200 year old letters and documents, deep in thought about my project, writing until 1am, soaking up as much art and culture and history as I could. It was my first time away from Tom in over three years too, so that was very strange! But despite missing him so very much, I had the most incredible time. I have to say, being able to travel interstate freely again feels wondrous! It’s crazy to think that this time two years ago our state’s borders were still closed to most of the country. It feels surreal now. But it ensured I didn’t take a moment of being in Sydney for granted.

Elizabeth Farm in Parramatta was one of the highlights of the trip. It’s an incredible place, where time has stood still, where history is made tactile and immersive. The chairs can be sat on, the beds laid on, doors opened, objects can be touched. It was as if the Macarthurs had slipped out to tend to the sheep, and I was just wandering around, looking at their lives. The guides were amazing, particularly one who had heard of my subject! “You’re the first person I’ve encountered since 2008 who’s heard of her!” she told me. This particular lady was very lovely and generous with her time, and showed me many hidden gems that other visitors walk right past.

The Art Gallery of New South Wales remains one of my favourites: Wednesday was late opening night, so when the archives closed at 6pm, I packed up and walked right over! It was pretty busy, hence my mask. Wandering around a gallery is one of my favourite things to do, with someone or alone, so I had a lovely time. I particularly enjoyed the From Here, For Now exhibit (and took selfies with the Tracey Emins, above!), the Daniel Boyd exhibit, and the 20th Century Galleries in general, particularly 15 gunshots… by Xiao Lu. The perfect Artist Date, really. My mind was buzzing with ideas, concepts and inspiration. The Sydney Festival was also getting started but I sadly didn’t catch the Frida Kahlo immersive biography, as it was booked out (unsurprisingly)!

Instead, on my last day, as the rain poured down and I could swear I saw steam rise from the hot pavements, I immersed myself in Brett Whiteley’s Studio not far from where I was staying in Surry Hills. It was AMAZING. I didn’t know much about Whiteley at all before this trip and now I’m a bit obsessed! I also visited Wendy’s Secret Garden, the stunning natural wild garden in Lavender Bay that is owned and maintained by his widow, and that is open to the public.

Working in the archives in Sydney was incredible, as expected. Having been prevented from visiting them in person for years because of the pandemic and all the interstate travel restrictions that existed for the longest time, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever get there again before my thesis was due. I was deeply grateful to be there. The staff were kind and helpful, and I saw everything I wanted to see. There’s a lot of boxes of “documents relating to the settlement of Tasmania” in the Mitchell Library, which aren’t very specific so one has to sift through so much stuff in case there’s a hidden treasure in there. And I did find some! The whole trip was so fruitful for my work and I returned to Hobart absolutely itching to start putting everything together.

Mona Foma! It was fantastic. We watched lots of great musical acts, drank fabulous wine, and really let our hair down for the first time in what has felt like years. Well, it has been years! I didn’t wear a mask once. It felt so wonderful to be out again, properly, seeing live music for the first time since January 2020, to mingle with fellow humans and seeing everyone happy and buzzing (it was a great crowd, no dramas or weirdos, and no insurmountable queues). It felt like a return to old times, but with everyone more mindful, more conscious that being able to do this - go to a festival, see live music, dance in a throng of people under the stars - was something we really used to take for granted. We now know how easily those joys and privileges can be taken away.

Reading

I wrote a separate post about Rebecca May Johnson’s Small Fires: An Epic in the Kitchen which is one of my books of the year so far - it’s just so brilliant and intriguing. I wish I could write about food and life in the way Johnson does, taking the everyday act of cooking and following a recipe and linking it to classic literature, psychology, histories of oppression, philosophy, the self, and what the food we cook says about all of that, and us.

I got some wonderful cookbooks for Christmas and have been steadily cooking my way through them for most of the summer - see the Eating section for more!

I am a huge fan of the Sydney Review of Books and so when I saw their latest anthology of essays, I knew I would love it - and I did. Open Secrets, Essays on the Writing Life is a collection from a wide variety of writers - some known to me, some not - about various aspects of their writing lives. Some are about one memorable turning point, others about the contents of their days and brains as they navigate the ups and downs of writing. As a writer, you cannot help but feel seen and understood reading a collection like this. Most of them were pandemic-tinged, unsurprisingly, which still made for fascinating reading. Standouts for me were the essays by Lauren Carroll Harris (boy, did I relate hard to that one), Laura Elizabeth Woollett, Fiona Kelly McGregor and Eda Gunaydin, but I particularly loved Oliver Mol’s essay, “La Vida”, which was an odyssey-like journey from Sydney to Barcelona, where Oliver is trying desperately to write a book he’s been thinking about for years, now he has the freedom to do so, and finds he cannot. And yet, around every corner, are coincidences and signs that he is being encouraged and supported, that he is a writer, even if the actual writing is proving temporarily elusive. I wiped away tears and felt viscerally in my body the self harm Oliver does to himself in a fit of helplessness and confusion at his perceived inability to cope, as my younger self had similar moments. And I rejoiced in his eventual realisation that “our only objective is firmly, and with great attention, to continue; to kindly, sincerely, try” (p.121) and how he learns to write without pressure, without expectation of outcome, meaning or purpose. Highly recommended!

Speaking of Sydney, I had a wonderful time walking through the bookshops there. So many favourites! Elizabeth’s in Newtown welcomed me back like we’d never been apart and, predictably, I spent hours there combing their packed shelves for treasures. During my trip I read Fiona McGregor’s A Novel Idea, which is the photographic documentation of McGregor writing her novel Indelible Ink over several years, which was fascinating; Between Us, a Women of Letters book that I didn’t have in my collection; and The Courage to Write: How Writers Transcend Fear which covered a lot of familiar ground but was still a good read, I think I’m just addicted to books about writing, really.

The Guardian: Why one woman is drumming for 100 hours over 10 days - we caught Chloe Kim’s final hour of her performance on Sunday at Mona Foma and she was quite extraordinary. This is a great article about endurance in art and music performance.

I am a huge Fawlty Towers fan but I think remaking it is a truly terrible idea - and I’m not the only one.

I’m enjoying Jessie Tu’s modern analysis of classic 1990s films for Women’s Agenda - she’s done Sister Act and Mrs Doubtfire so far.

This New Yorker article was….bizarre.

Vanity Fair: Monica Lewinsky shared 25 life lessons on the 25th anniversary of her name, and life, becoming one of the most scrutinised/villified of the late twentieth century (and all the years afterwards). Monica would be one of my dream dinner party guests; she seems like an incredibly grounded person who is empathetic, intelligent and a lot of fun. I loved all her tips but particularly #22.

The Conversation: ‘Something that happens in fiction’: romance writer Susan Meachen’s ‘fake death’ reminds us that the author is a construct by Ika Willis - OMG, Bad Art Friend, hold my beer. The romance writer who faked her own death and came back to Facebook as if nothing had happened is next-level twisted. I enjoyed Ika Willis’ literary studies take on it!

Also on The Conversation: an interesting analysis of the potato shortage that plagued Australia for much of the summer and Melanie Saward’s favourite fictional character is Queenie.

The Spectator: What a voice Plath had – stern yet somehow musical, long-vowelled, bear-like: Radio 4’s My Sylvia Plath - on 11 February it was 60 years since Plath’s death, so I also spent some time on the wonderful Gail Crowther’s website, especially Sylvia Plath, Safe Spaces, and the Violation of Women.

Finally, Room on the Broom, many times over, with our darling niece - we got it for her for Christmas and she is OBSESSED. It’s a wondrous thing to have a child in your life who loves to read as much as you do. I think it needs to be encouraged at all costs!

Listening to

At the start of the year, I decided to mix things up a bit with my writing music, which was almost completely dominated by my beloved Ludovico Einaudi and Nils Frahm. Every month, my most played artist on Tidal was Ludovico, by a mile! Nothing wrong with that of course, but when January 1 clicked over, I was suddenly seized by a desire for new and different, to shake up my creative practice a bit. If I listen to the same things, watch the same things, absorb the same things, I won’t be changed. My work won’t expand in the ways it needs to.

So I made a new writing playlist for myself - nouveau pour l’écriture - full of new piano discoveries, mostly by women composers and performers. Sophie Hutchings, Grace Ferguson, Alice Baldwin, Poppy Ackroyd, Olivia Belli, Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch, and more! It’s been wonderful to surround myself with the sounds I love but with new melodies and energies. I highly recommend all of them.

I also made a Sydney playlist - something I love to do when I travel is make a playlist of songs I hear while I’m there. In a cafe or bar, in a shop, on the street, in the hotel lobby. Shazam on the iPhone is a godsend! These songs will always make me think of this trip!

As for podcasts…..there have been a few.

The First Time: Summer Series - A beginning & Claire G Coleman and Summer Series: Helen Garner

Books and Travel: Solo Walking the Camino De Santiago Portuguese Coastal Route with J.F Penn, Thoughts From the Pilgrims’ Way

The Creative Penn: Writing Tips: How Character Flaws Shape Story with Will Storr (Will Storr’s work was recommended by my PhD supervisor)

The Art of Work: Classicist and bestselling writer Dame Mary Beard on what she has learnt about power - this was an excellent interview with a woman I very much admire. She said something that has stayed with me in the weeks since I listened to it: that resilience is a very underrated/undervalued virtue these days, that life is tough and of course it would be great if the world only had nice, supportive people in it but the reality is, it doesn’t. You’ve got to carry on regardless.

The Imperfects: Santa Claus - A Special Vulnerability House - this was hilarious. Glenn Robbins playing Santa Claus, getting worried phone calls from Rudolph because the sleigh is in a no standing zone…genius!

James and Ashley Stay At Home: Digging into shame with Hayley Scrivenor and all the mini-episodes about Ashley’s new novel Dark Mode, which I can’t wait to read!

Writer’s Book Club Podcast: This kept me company while I was in Sydney. The Kate Forsyth episode was the standout one for me - I will be listening to it again, with a notebook alongside. I also very much enjoyed the Hannah Kent and Nigel Featherstone interviews.

The Rich Roll Podcast: my friend Mary, who I was lucky enough to see while I was in Sydney, got me on to this! I loved the Seth Godin, Mel Robbins and Rick Rubin episodes.

Akimbo: Once I heard the Rich Roll interview with Seth, I needed more so I listened to his own podcast, particularly enjoying the Genius, It’s not about the chocolate and Blogs and Platforms and Permission episodes.

All The Small Things: Natasha Lunn on love and friendship and Is wellness just another fashion trend? with Rina Raphael

The Guilty Feminist: Phoebe Waller-Bridge at the Royal Festival Hall

Daisy is Insatiable: Shahroo Izadi - I’ve been really captivated by Shahroo and her work, but I’m not going to list all the interviews with her I’ve listened to over the summer because I’ll probably look like a bit of a stalker, haha! But this one was probably the best.

Wellness with Ella (formerly the Deliciously Ella podcast): I’ve got back into this in a big way! Really enjoyed all the episodes I’ve caught up on, especially Happiness, Change and Emotional Resilience, Jay Shetty: the untold journey, Ella on finding purpose and putting mental health first and Jake Humphrey: the power of optimism.

Eating

The cinnamon scroll from the all-vegan Sydney patisserie, Miss Sina. Run, don’t walk!

Obviously, the food in Sydney was AMAZING. I’ve written all about my favourite Sydney vegan eats for Onya magazine - as I ate my way around the city and slowly amassed a list of must-trys, places I definitely wanted to return to with Tom on our next trip, I thought that surely this information would be useful for others too. Once a journo, always a journo - I pitched the idea to Sandi at Onya, she said yes almost immediately, so now there’s a whole vegan series in the works. Melbourne, unsurprisingly, is next!

But here’s what else I’ve been cooking and eating at home over the summer:

• For Christmas treats, I made vegan gingerbread truffles, Nigella’s sticky vegan gingerbread and the now famous Oreo brownies

• Tomato orzo one-pan bake (from The Green Roasting Tin with a few amends)

• Spicy tempeh sushi and a vegan cheese platter for Christmas Eve Eve (sushi recipe from Veganomicon, which I picked up in NYC in 2015)

• Rick’s pasta for Christmas Eve dinner - we were inspired by The Holiday and how Miles and Iris eat “Christmas Eve fettuccine” - like them, we ate pasta, popped some bubbly and celebrated being young and being alive!

• Caesar salad with crispy chickpea croutons from Moby’s Little Pine cookbook, one of my Christmas presents

• Asparagus and romesco aioli pizza, made on the barbecue - a variation on a recipe also in Moby’s Little Pine cookbook

• Jerk lentil burgers (from Natural Flava)

• Pickled avocado - OMG, life changing! Great to put on burgers (from Cooking from the Spirit by Tabitha Brown)

• Sweet potato curry with jollof rice (from Natural Flava)

• Potato and broad bean quesadillas - broad beans grown by me!

• Silken tofu summer breakfast bowls - these are so wonderful! If you want a refreshing and delicious summer breakfast, you have to try them.

• Mexican rice bowls with black beans, guac, corn, salad, etc - these have been a staple meal all summer ever since I had a delicious similar meal at Bad Hombres in Sydney. So filling, so healthy, so delicious!

• Callaloo pesto pasta (from Natural Flava)

• Roast carrot and sweet potato rice paper rolls with homemade satay sauce

• Mango coleslaw (from Natural Flava)

• Tempeh “shwarma”, something I just made up and it was delicious!

• Butterscotch pudding from Moby’s Little Pine cookbook (really nice!)

• Muesli tahini flapjacks/breakfast bars

• Deliciously Ella’s orzo (risoni) recipes from the app - we tried a mushroom miso one and a red pepper tahini one, both amazing!

• Chargrilled broccolini with pesto linguine

• An EPIC quinoa salad I made up, featuring green beans from the garden, roasted pumpkin, and tofu ‘feta’ which was amazing. I made it for my friend Anne who came round for dinner one baking hot night. Served with an Imago sourdough baguette alongside, it was quite the feast.

I also made apricot and vanilla jam and dried apricots (on the dehydrate function on my air fryer) with the four or so kilograms I got from a farm across the river. No fruit on the family trees this year! Most jars of the jam have been given as gifts, I have one left for me. And the dried apricots were the best ones I’ve ever had, and made my garage (where the air fryer lives) smell like my grandparents’ house did.

Drinking

A Red Corvette cocktail at Wrest Point’s Birdcage Bar, which I hadn’t been to or had since perhaps 2003. It tasted just the same as I remembered and went down all too easily!

I got hooked on bubble tea while I was in Sydney - I know, why did it take me so long to try it? Gong Cha was my favourite place to get one and I was delighted to find out they have a branch in Hobart too. QQ Passionfruit is my favourite flavour, followed by Lychee Oolong.

Above, me with an Aperol Spritz at Mona Foma! A bright drink to go with my bright outfit, haha! They always make me think of trips to Berlin.

Finally, pandan soy milk at Han Phuc Vegan in Sydney - surprisingly good! Sweet, creamy and refreshing.

PICKING

Over the summer I’ve harvested strawberries, potatoes, garlic, peas, green beans, broad beans, zucchini, and silverbeet on the regular. The caterpillars got my kale, boo. We also have random pumpkins taking over the entire garden! Beetroots are starting to look good and soon we’ll have even more potatoes. The fig tree’s branches are heavy with fruit that’s slowly going from green to purple. The tomatoes are plentiful but still green on the vine. Never mind, I have a great green tomato pickle recipe if they don’t end up being coaxed into their fullest, reddest expression.

Watching

The Crown (BluRay and Netflix) - we decided to watch the entire series again before embarking on Season 5, so we went right back to the wonderful Claire Foy and Matt Smith beginning. Seasons 1 and 2 really are the best, in my opinion!

We had a bit of an Edgar Wright season and watched Baby Driver (Amazon Prime) and Last Night in Soho (Amazon Prime) back to back. Enjoyed both very much, but I preferred Baby Driver out of the two.

I’ve got back into Call the Midwife (ABC iview and Binge) in a big way, as it’s a bit of a comfort watch for me - well, I say that, every episode is hard-hitting in its own way. Every episode makes me cry, even if it’s just a routine birth where nothing goes wrong! It’s an emotional release of sorts, I think.

Wearing

I’ve been wearing this running top I got in Sydney non-stop - it even kind of works with my Kemi Telford skirts!

I’ve also been wearing this beautiful perfume that Tom got for Christmas and it’s been my scent of the summer, though I can see it working well for winter too, with its smoky and leathery notes of oud and amber. I also love Goldfield and Banks’ Sunset Hour which smells of peach, mandarin, raspberry and ginger - absolutely stunning scent for warm weather. Confession, I have nearly all of the Goldfield and Banks range! They make incredible perfumes. Seven years ago, the perfume tray on my dressing table was nearly all Jo Malone bottles and now I’m well and truly in my Goldfield and Banks era! I am happy to skimp on makeup but on scent, never.

Other favourite wearables this summer have been our ally-friendly Always Was Always Will Be shirts from Clothing the Gaps, replacement running shoes (I just bought exactly the same ones!) and this jumpsuit from Tassie designers Keshet, very much a head turner like the one I bought this time last year! As seen on me in the pics at Mona Foma 💚

Grateful for

A fun start to what I think is going to be an interesting year.

Quote of the SUMMER

“Seek joy” has really been my quote of the summer, as it was the attitude I decided to go into this year with. But this quote really spoke to me when I came across it in the pages of a book that I now can’t recall the name of.

I’ve been thinking about this concept of belonging to yourself a lot, particularly as 2022 ended and the new year began. It’s now been over a year since I stepped away from personal social media and I can see how much I’ve changed. How much kinder I am to myself, how much stronger I feel, how unafraid I am to set boundaries. Stronger in the broken places too - some difficult things that happened now belong to “last year”, or even the year before. Time has given me the gift of perspective, and perspective has given me strength.

So, that has been the start to my 2023. Working hard but also taking every chance I can to enjoy life.

If you’d like to hit the button below and let me know what you think, or what you’ve been up to in 2023 so far, please do - I would love to hear from you.

I hope you’ve had a fun, relaxing and memorable summer, or a restorative winter, depending on where you are in the world. Stay safe and well, until next week, when normal programming will resume! xx

Please note: this blog post has affiliate links with retailers such as Booktopia which means I may receive a commission for a sale that I refer, at no extra cost to you.

hot red epic

I started reading Rebecca May Johnson’s Small Fires: An Epic in the Kitchen while I was alone in the house for a few days, with only my own appetite and whims to cater to.

One night, I cooked the hot red epic as Johnson calls it (p.89) - the recipe she cooked a thousand times, the recipe whose origins she is determined to discern but which prove murky. The recipe that made her think about what it means to make a recipe over and over, to “put your own spin on it”, and how recipes are affected by their historical context, their ‘source text’, the material circumstances that produced them, their language, their authorship. How a recipe can be a “siren-text, an ‘I’ that also speaks as ‘we’ and ‘they’ and ‘you’.” (p.97).

I was surprised that the hot red epic was just a simple tomato pasta sauce. But, as with all simple things, deceptive.

I didn’t have enough olive oil. Once it was cooked, served and tasted, I found I needed some capers and a pinch of chilli flakes for it to go from “fine” to something more interesting. Was it my supermarket own brand tomatoes, that still said Italian on the label? Should I have gone for the posher ones? I wrote this isn’t something I could see getting obsessed with in my journal as the saucepan soaked.

But the next day, I recalled the thin slices of garlic, the tomatoes, the richness of the (barely two tablespoons, as that’s all I had left) olive oil and yes, now I could see why one would want to perfect it. The simple things often elude us.

Three nights later, I was alone for dinner again, and I saw the homegrown garlic bulbs I had dug out of the garden drying on the kitchen window sill. The jar of living basil next to them. Another can of plum tomatoes in the pantry. Suddenly, all I wanted was to cook the hot red epic again. It was a siren call.

This time, it was undoubtedly richer and more unctuous as I used the full six tablespoons of olive oil. Though it was now a little too on the oily side for me. And I still needed the punchy tang of capers.

This should be the end of it, I wrote.

But no.

I still have garlic, basil, tomatoes and I’m going to make it again, this funny thing that’s wormed its way into my brain somehow, that good cook should have decent tomato sauce in their repertoire. I will try again. I will challenge myself to eat it without capers.

Finally, I see why Johnson was so compelled to keep trying this recipe again and again, a thousand times, and then wondered about everything that lay underneath it. How it became a hot red epic.

Why do we cook? is the question Johnson seems to be asking throughout the book and I liked how she tried to answer it.

I can feel myself getting slightly obsessed

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