this week

A sourdough donut eaten the sun in a quiet, leafy corner of a city park is a pleasure I don’t indulge in enough.

On a current hiatus from social media, I’m finding myself wanting to blog more. So I thought I’d try something different here and do a little newsletter-like update of things I’ve done and thought about during the week.

So without further ado, this week I’ve been:

Grateful for

My health and my safety. To live somewhere untouched by severe floods and war. Moving back home has not been without its challenges, but there hasn’t been a single day that I’ve not been unbelievably grateful to be here. I don’t feel I have anything of value to add to the horrific, terrifying events currently unfolding both in Australia and overseas. But there are many ways we can help.

In awe of

Olia Hercules, Alissa Timoshkina and all the food writers in the UK who have banded together for #CookForUkraine. I have Hercules’ first book Mamushka on order.

The community in Mullumbimby who are coordinating an incredible local rescue operation in their flood-ravaged region, where landslides and broken roads have left countless people stranded. This was sobering reading.

Reading

An old favourite, What Helps by Satya Robyn, a book I often turn to when things feel overwhelming.

I discovered the American poet Jane Hirshfield in January and have just finished her 2020 collection Ledger. How her poems manage to be so confronting as well as consoling I do not know, but I loved every minute I spent with them.

Devotion by Hannah Kent, a writer of beauty and integrity who never disappoints me, whose lyrical power keeps growing and growing, and whom I’ve been fortunate enough to interview!

A pile of Flow magazines I “borrowed” from my sister.

Listening to

My inner autumn and inner winter playlists on TIDAL.

James and Ashley Stay At Home: How to remake the world with Sarah Senteilles, author of Stranger Care

Writes4Women: Heart of Writing, Nikki Gemmell on her new memoir, Dissolve

The Diary of a CEO: Fearne Cotton, THIS is how to build confidence and set yourself free

Wild with Sarah Wilson: All the Ask Me Anything episodes

Ludovico Einaudi, Max Richter, Nils Frahm, Sophie Hutchings - all their albums, on repeat, always. Perfect writing music.

Eating

The Nacho Average Nachos from Charity Morgan’s amazing book Unbelievably Vegan - this is the fourth time I’ve made them in two weeks. It’s our new favourite summer meal! Lots of prep, admittedly, but you get enough of the fixins to get about 8 servings out of them. The queso is quite out of this world. Everything I’ve cooked from Charity’s book has been delicious but this dish has been the stand-out so far.

I made Tasmanian culinary icon Sally Wise’s vegan coconut blackcurrant ice cream which turned out beautifully. I was delighted my basic ice cream maker I bought in 2013 still works! I will experiment with a salted caramel flavoured one next.

There’s also been our standard pizzas on the barbecue (I will write you the recipe at some point as they deserve a post of their own), this new favourite zucchini pasta, and as I’ve had a few nights working late, curry from the freezer!

Picking

I grew these!

Strawberries, chard, kale, spinach, a few figs, a handful of tomatoes. I also finally successfully grew my own garlic! The green beans are back with a vengeance so I’ll look forward to picking those next week. The potatoes are also starting to look ready to dig up, but they might be a few weeks more yet.

Watching

Pam and Tommy (Disney+) - I really didn’t think this would be for me, but I am OBSESSED. Also adoring all the 90s music.

The Electrical Life of Louis Wain (Amazon Prime) - not only starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Claire Foy, but Taika Waititi and Nick Cave as well, so what’s not to like? A biopic about a little-known (to me at least) eccentric inventor and artist in Victorian London that is hilarious, sad and utterly charming. A refreshingly diverse cast too. We loved it!

Wearing/applying

This jumpsuit from local Tassie designer Keshet which has elicited many comments from friends and strangers alike. You can see it in the first photo with the donut too!

This is my SPF - I wear it every day, in every season.

This is the perfume I wore this week that got the most “you smell great” remarks.

Thinking about

Covid. Floods. Incompetent public officials. Ukraine. Peace. War. Mental health. Climate change. Insecure housing. All the biggies.

Favourite experience/s of the week

Spending time with my sisters - I had dinner with one and her family on Saturday and got a pedicure with another on Sunday, such little things I couldn’t do for many years - and going for a run on Tuesday morning after we’d had heavy rain the night before, inhaling the incredible scent of dripping eucalypts. I also got a Wordle in two guesses (that’s only happened twice).

Same time next week? Wherever you are, I hope you’re well and finding things to savour. Thanks for being here xx

a jelly-fish

Visible, invisible,
A fluctuating charm,
An amber-colored amethyst
Inhabits it; your arm
Approaches, and
It opens and
It closes;
You have meant
To catch it,
And it shrivels;
You abandon
Your intent—
It opens, and it
Closes and you
Reach for it—
The blue
Surrounding it
Grows cloudy, and
It floats away
From you.

— Marianne Moore (“A Jelly-Fish”)

This morning I woke up from a disorienting dream about someone I haven’t thought about for a long time. In the dream, an encounter was recreated and, unlike what happened in reality all those years ago, I left. I had to swim through a pool of jellyfish to get away. As I tried to cross the pool, and avoid the jellyfish, they multiplied. Not necessarily more dangerous, just harder to avoid. I found that if I swam slowly and carefully, and ironically didn’t fear them, I could pass through safely.

This afternoon, I drew this.

Bad memories are a bit like Marianne Moore’s jellyfish, aren’t they? Visible yet invisible.

But if they’re memories now, then you have already survived. There is nothing to fear. And even if they do show up again, you can swim through.

zucchini pasta

This isn’t the prettiest dish you’ll ever cook, but it will certainly one of the tastiest. It’s a great recipe to have up your sleeve this time of year when zucchini (or courgettes, I use both names interchangeably in my house!) are in season and plentiful. If you grow your own, no doubt you have them coming out of your ears and are trying to think of ways to eat them. This mixture would also be a lovely dip, once cooled, or enjoyed with chunky pieces of grilled bread. Goodness, I feel hungry just writing these words!

You need to use quite a bit of oil in this recipe but that’s the secret to the creaminess of the sauce, and the reason the zucchini go so beautifully soft, as they are effectively braised with the onions and garlic. It’s not greasy at all, I promise!

Zucchini pasta

Serves 4

Good quality extra-virgin olive oil
2 onions, finely chopped
3-5 zucchini (depending how big they are), chopped into cubes
1 garlic clove, crushed
Chilli flakes, a pinch or two
Salt and pepper
2 tablespoons vegan sour cream (or ricotta)
Fresh basil, finely chopped or torn, as much as you like
500g dried pasta (penne or rigatoni are my preferred shape for this dish)

In a saute pan, a wide and shallow one you’d use to cook risotto or this pasta, pour in enough olive oil to cover the base, enough for the vegetables to paddle in. Place over a low-medium heat. Add your onions and a pinch of salt, stir, then leave to stew slowly. I probably should have warned you, this is the kind of dish you make on a balmy summer evening when you’ve got music playing and some other nice thing to occupy you - a book, a lover, anything where you won’t feel too impatient waiting around for something to cook.

I find the onions take about 15 minutes, you don’t want them to brown, just stew and soften. Add the zucchini, salt, garlic, chilli, black pepper, give it a good stir, then replace your lid and leave to simmer slowly over a low-medium heat until the zucchini are juicy and, when you stir them, starting to fall apart. It takes anywhere for 20 minutes to a full half hour.

Now cook your pasta, which will give the zucchini even more time to braise and soften. Drain it once it’s cooked to your liking, reserving a cup of the cooking water in case you need it.

Add the vegan sour cream and basil to the zucchini mixture, stirring well, then the pasta, stirring well to coat it thoroughly in the sauce. Add some of the pasta water if it seems dry. I like to add a final grinding of black pepper. You could add some Parmesan too, if you like.

Serve and feel inordinately blessed in your garden’s summer zucchini glut this year.

my favourite books of 2021

As it’s March tomorrow and having a blog post with 2021 in the title signifies being somewhat behind the times, I thought it was time to finish this one which I’ve had sitting in my drafts since…December 2021!

I’m going to switch things up this year and disrupt the structure of previous favourite books of the year posts. I really like how Roxane Gay writes her year-in-reading retrospectives where she writes in depth about a book she really loved, her favourite of the year, and then comes up with pithy one-line summaries for the others she enjoyed.

So, let’s give that a try!

My Favourite Book of The Year

Recipe for a Kinder Life (2021) by Annie Smithers

In what was a less-than-kind year, this book was truly balm for the soul.

In Recipe for a Kinder Life, chef Annie Smithers takes us on a tour of her property in country Victoria where she and her wife Susan are attempting to live as sustainably as they possibly can. They grow food for their own consumption as well as for Annie’s restaurant, and keep a number of animals for their eggs and wool (not to eat). Living this way means having to think about so many things you never need to worry about if you’re a city-dweller who gets all their food from an online supermarket. Things like weather, water, soil health, pest control, to say nothing of the physical labour, planning and daily maintenance that goes into a successful large-scale garden. Annie reminded me of something I too have learned from growing my own food - you have so much respect for the journey a vegetable or fruit takes from seed to table when you’ve grown it yourself, and you’ll never waste anything again.

But this is not just a book about growing your own food, a journey to self sufficiency and how to live the good life. It’s about a kinder, sustainable life in every sense of the word, right down to the hours you work, how you manage your time, how you prioritise, and how you can craft your life around what you value without burning yourself out. Annie shares the lessons she’s learned in this arena, especially after a long career in hospitality and restaurants, which entailed often working unsociable hours. It all comes at a price and Annie encourages you to ask yourself if you’re prepared to pay it.

The book is not instructional or didactic in any way - Annie tells the story of Babbington Park, sharing what she and Susan have done and why, what has worked for them, what hasn’t and what they still have to learn. The reader is free to take from it what they will. But you can’t help but be inspired by Annie’s vision and hard work, and the desires and values she’s designed her life around: to tread gently on the earth, treat resources with reverence, and live in a sustainable and kind way that ripples out beyond your own household.

I have a feeling this book will be a great companion for the next chapter of my own journey to a more self-sufficient, sustainable and kinder life. If you read it, I hope you get as much out of it as I did!

The book everyone was talking about which is 100% worthy of the hype

Sorrow and Bliss (2021) by Meg Mason

A sumptuous, riveting, clever novel with a shock ending that I can’t stop thinking about

From Where I Fell (2021) by Susan Johnston

The book that made me ache with rage and recognition

Dissolve (2021) by Nikki Gemmell

A beautiful and harrowing book set in two places I’ve lived

The Cookbook of Common Prayer (2021) by Francesca Haig

An incredible novel every Australian should read

After Story (2021) by Larissa Behrendt

The book I bought the day it came out and in which I made the most notes and annotations

The Luminous Solution (2021) by Charlotte Wood

A marvellous and moving meditation on nature, politics, art, power and truth

Orwell’s Roses (2021) by Rebecca Solnit

A library book I loved so much I bought my own copy and bought more for friends

The Details (2020) by Tegan Bennett Daylight

The book that changed me

Bowerbird (2018) by Alanna Valentine

A powerful and confronting book I read in one sitting

Misfits: A Personal Manifesto (2021) by Michaela Coel

A gripping, well-crafted tale of domestic bliss gone wrong which I adored from start to finish

Magpie (2021) by Elizabeth Day

A marvellous novel with a bizarre ending set in Tasmania that is also about writing, life, ambition and legacy

Wood Green (2016) by Sean Rabin

A collection of beautifully composed short stories that was arresting and haunting, and surprisingly modern

Tell It To A Stranger (1947, 2000) by Elizabeth Berridge

A book that inspired me to watch a film that has a perfect and moving ending (Big Night)

Taste: My Life Through Food (2021) by Stanley Tucci

A witty and charming romance about identity, language, belonging, and a couple that doesn’t believe in love

A Lover’s Discourse (2020) by Xiaolu Guo

A book that comforted and uplifted as the year came to an end

These Precious Days (2021) by Ann Patchett

quitting social media: an experiment

At the start of January 2022, I decided to have a somewhat permanent break from social media.

I didn't announce it nor did I particularly plan it ahead of time - it was a combination of the lingering effects of some stressful events at the end of 2021 to top off what had not been a vintage year anyway; and despair at what felt like a maelstrom of anger and fear everywhere I looked online around the time of the omicron surge in Australia. For my mental health, I knew something needed to change.

I was also increasingly dissatisfied with how many hours I knew I was losing to basically what is the psyche's equivalent of the pokies.

Don’t get me wrong, I think there are some great aspects to social media. It’s not a bad thing in itself. But what many of us don’t appreciate is that the companies who own the platforms (Facebook/Meta/Zuckerverse, etc) designed them deliberately to be as addictive as possible. Therefore, trying to get some semblance of balance in your usage of social media is so much harder than you’d think.

So, I disappeared. Cold turkey.

Has anyone noticed? I have no idea! But what I have noticed is an incredible difference in my mental health, my stress levels, my equilibrium, my energy, and my creativity. It might be a combination of other changes I’ve made (more about those later) but I can’t recall ever feeling this clear-headed in my entire adult life.

Connection with others is what fuels me. And I value the connections I’ve made on social media over the years very much. But many of them have been taken offline - I now have two penpals who live in Melbourne, both of whom I follow on socials, but during the lockdowns we started writing letters to each other, which we’ve continued. As a result I know far more about what is really going on in their lives than what they choose to share publicly on their grids - and likewise they know far more about what’s really going on with me. That is real connection. That is what I want more of.

The video below (please forgive the portrait mode it was shot in, I know it should be landscape!) is a little stream-of-consciousness ramble I recorded three weeks into my break. Another month has passed since I recorded this and I still feel no real need to return. I am missing the connection and interaction with others but I know with a bit of effort this can be sourced elsewhere. And I think more and more people are catching on. Perhaps blogging is about to have a big renaissance.

Stay tuned. This is an interesting, and exciting, experiment. 

• VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

  Hello everyone! It’s the thirty-first of January, which means I have been off social media for three weeks today. And, as I've alluded to in previous videos, I've been so surprised by the fact that I haven't missed it at all.

  I feel calmer, I feel less panicked, I feel less anxiety, I don't feel as angry or tense or on edge. I don't feel like my attention or focus is compromised. I feel clearer in the head and more alert. I've been able to choose where my energy goes and that's incredibly empowering.

  I really thought that I had a handle on my social media habits. I really thought that I chose when I looked at these various platforms, that I chose the time of day or the period of time that I allowed myself to have a look but I really didn't appreciate how many hours each day I was clocking up, refreshing and losing time when there wasn't really anything new to see and, more to the point, there wasn't anything new for me to say or share! It was just very basic stuff that I'm not sure people are really all that interested in and it's not content I want to devote my precious time and creativity to. I want to use my creativity for my creative work and so to have this time back, this brain space back, feels like such a gift.

  And it was a gift I was able to give myself with basically no effort. All I had to do was make the decision. It's amazing what a transformation it has been.

  I didn't realise that the average social media user spends 2.5 hours a day on the various platforms – that’s 15-18 hours a week? That's a part time job! So when you think about it that way, that’s 15-18 hours a week that you could get a part time job, that you could use to learn an instrument, to train for a 10K, to write a novel, to build websites, to exercise, to start a garden, to spend time with your family - all of these things that we think we don't have the time to do, we actually do but it's making a choice to use your time consciously and to make conscious choices. That’s something that I have advocated publicly for a very long time, but it was always within the health and fitness context. I’m slowly appreciating that making conscious choices is something that effects every aspect of our lives - physical health, mental health, wellbeing, financial freedom, financial health, career, everything! We have far more choices than we think we do. We have more power than we think we do.

  I guess as I've gotten older, my life is just more and more about wanting to live in integrity and really wanting to live my values. Having had this little time out to figure out what those values are and articulate them for myself and know deep within what I want to stand for and how I want to spend my time and the difference I want to make…if everyone could have this kind of epiphany, I wonder what kind of world we’d live in.

  I'll leave it there for now. I don't know when I'm going to go back on these things. I don't know if I'll go back at all! We shall see. Thank you for listening.

Would you like to share your thoughts on this post with me? Please do - I’d love to hear from you!