this week

Is it really summer? Tasmania hasn’t got the memo. I’ve put the winter sheets back on the bed, we’ve had snow on the mountain and yet I harvested this giant bowl of strawberries! It’s so odd.

A lot of people I know have finished work for the year and I hope this week might hold some slowing down for me and Tom too. I don’t wear this as a badge of honour, I will just share in the spirit of how I’ve always tried to be online, which is as honest, authentic and unguarded as one dares to be on the internet - it’s hard for me to rest. It’s something I feel I have to earn, and I am never entirely sure if I have. There is a dark side to being driven, ambitious and disciplined - you are afraid to ever stop in case the momentum disappears. This is something I really want to work on over the next year. And there I go again, using the word work and making it a project!

Favourite experience/s of the week

Babysitting our nephew, who is nearly three months old and the sweetest little boy. I had Bach’s Brandenberg concertos playing when he was dropped off, which I switched to Baby Shark, thinking that’s what he’d prefer…. but his dear little face screwed up and he seemed a bit restless! I put Bach back on and he was much happier, and barely made a squeak after that. He’s such a placid, happy little guy! His big sister came by after she was finished at the dentist and, a bit like me when I was her age, went looking through the pantry for things to eat. I keep forgetting to get kid friendly stuff in - all I could offer was dried apricots and vegan banana bread, which was low-sugar and had too much cinnamon in for her palate! One of my aunties had a similar pantry when I was a child - only healthy snacks, no junk food. I adore that aunty and must have subconsciously modelled myself on her for, 35 years later, I am now the aunt with healthy food in her pantry…and who plays Bach when the kids come round! I find it highly amusing. Spending time with the two youngest of our nieces and nephews is always the highlight of any week, they are the sweetest children.

Speaking of children, another high point of the week was hearing that a dear friend of mine had a baby girl on Monday. She sent me a video of baby sleeping and I could not cope with the cute!

Reading

My weekly trip to the library - always a joy to spot your own book on the shelves! It never gets old :) And what an honour to be next to Captain Sir Tom.

I received an ARC of a new memoir, All My Wild Mothers: Motherhood, loss and an apothecary garden by Victoria Bennett and I am quite spellbound by it. Poetic, compelling, heartbreaking yet hopeful, it’s beautifully written and I am quite in awe of Bennett’s strength and resilience, creating something beautiful out of life’s inevitable grief and harshness. I’m planning to read the rest during the day rather than at bedtime, as I read until nearly 1am the first night I picked it up!

Ann Patchett’s These Precious Days was one of my favourite books of 2021 and this week I read This is The Story of a Happy Marriage, an earlier collection of essays, just as interesting, funny, moving and incisive about life and the human condition. She is fast becoming one of my favourite writers.

Continuing to dip in and out of Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath which I mentioned last week and am enjoying so much. Also nearly finished with Stolen Focus which is terrifying and reassuring at the same time!

All other reading was PhD related! Particularly enjoyed getting my teeth into this.

Listening to

This week I participated in an Inner Peace challenge on Insight Timer which I wasn’t expecting to get as much out of as I actually did. There were so many enlightening moments of comfort and wisdom, including this week’s Quote!

TIDAL put together a “new for you” playlist, showcasing brand new tracks from all my favourite artists and there are some bangers on there! Especially loved this one from Ben Böhmer and this one from Matthew Halsall. Tom and I are still deciding on our Albums of the Year - sometimes we pick the same one, but most years it’s different. A lot of albums I’ve discovered this year were in fact released last year!

Best Friend Therapy: Dreams - why do we dream? How can they help us? And what on earth did Elizabeth’s dream mean? This was a fascinating episode which involved some “live” therapy as Emma worked with Elizabeth to interpret the hidden meaning in a vivid dream she had had. I found it really useful to view everything and everyone that appears in your dreams as various aspects of your subconcious, not the literal people (very reassuring!).

The First Time: Masters Series: George Saunders - such a lovely man whose wise, reassuring insights into the craft of writing are revered not just by me but by so many. I really enjoyed this and it encouraged me to pick A Swim in A Pond in The Rain again, which I’ve dipped in and out of infrequently over the past year.

Otherwise, just a shit ton of Christmas music! My Christmas playlist heavily favours the Bing Crosby/Ella Fitzgerald/Louis Armstrong/Brat Pack versions of the modern carols, but there’s also some jazz instrumentals, Taylor Swift, Julia Stone and a gorgeous rendition of my favourite Coventry Carol by Kate Miller-Heidke, Jess Hitchcock, Alice Keath, Marlon Williams and Paul Kelly. I also love the King’s College Cambridge choir and Kate Rusby’s The Frost is All Over.

Eating

I made a gorgeous vegan Victoria sponge for a dear friend’s birthday on Tuesday - I used this recipe from Tesco as a base and it was brilliant. I’ll test it a few more times before I write it up but I thought it was a real winner! With fresh strawberries from my garden, it was such a delicious treat. Most of it went home with the birthday lady but I think there’s a piece left in the fridge…

Otherwise, because it’s been so damn freezing our dinners have been mostly of the warming and comforting variety, not quite what I expected for this time of year! The poor lettuce in the fridge may end up getting turned into soup at this rate! I made my favourite soup this week, as well as the following:

Tinned tomato risotto - a household favourite we hadn’t had for some time. As delicious, comforting and easy to make as always!

A pasta I made up - roasted tomatoes, walnuts and basil blended and tossed through wholewheat spaghetti.

Breadmaker bread made with Australian bush herbs, sun-dried tomatoes and green Sicilian olives.

Rachel Ama’s roast cauliflower curry from her book One Pot: Three Ways - we also had the Quinoa Pad Thai from the same book this week.

I made one of the most ambrosial meals I’ve had all year this week, one evening when Tom was out. I had read about a delicious-sounding tomato gochujang pasta in Sonya’s newsletter which I didn’t think would be quite to my beloved’s taste but that was right up my alley. I had a perfectly sized portion of pasta for one in a packet waiting to be used up and, in anticipation, I bought some Lauds cultured oat butter from Hill Street Grocer which, sidenote, is also incredible.

The recipe is from Joy Cho and I followed it to the letter but I veganised it - using the above mentioned butter, nutritional yeast, vegan “chicken style” stock and oat cream. To be honest, the only thing I missed was the Parmesan. Otherwise, it was stunning. I didn’t even take a picture of it, that’s how keen I was to tuck in. With this plate of pasta and an episode of Belgravia on ABC iview to watch, I was in heaven. There was enough sauce for another serve, but instead of cooking more pasta I just thinned it out with more stock the next day and had it as a creamy spicy tomato soup. Incredible. I will be making it again and in all honesty I think even Tommy would like it - his tolerance for chilli is a lot greater than it used to be!

Christmas cooking is in full swing! I’ve made a pear, apple and harissa chutney and Nigella’s vegan gingerbread so far. I’ve just got the vegan brownies and a few other things to do. I hope I don’t run out of time!

Drinking

We enjoyed a gorgeous Gibson ‘The Dirtman’ shiraz from the Barossa with our Friday night pasta - we were lucky enough to visit that winery back in January 2020 (where the picture is from!). Always a winner! It was the most I’ve enjoyed a bottle of wine for a while.

Something I’ve really enjoyed about blogging again is writing about my life rather than just captions for photos, which is what I did prior to stepping away from social media this year. I would have loved to have written about our trip to Western and South Australia in the way I do now. Is there an argument for doing a retrospective post? Or shall we just use it as an excuse to recreate the trip…?

PICKING

Gorgeous homegrown strawberries! I managed to get 350g into this bowl, which I used in the aforementioned birthday cake, in smoothies and then froze the rest once they started getting soft in the fridge. It’s interesting how homegrown fruit deteriorates faster than what you buy at the supermarket (is it the lack of chemicals, I wonder?). There’s more fruit to pick now, and birds to shoo away from them! But the pinwheels seem to be doing the trick for now.

In the side garden, lots of silverbeet and spinach shoots are coming up, the potato tower has another load of compost added, and tiny peas are starting to appear on the vines. I’ve planted more peas and beans, and I’ve noticed rogue tomatoes, potatoes and what looks like pumpkin starting to peek through. I just need the weather to warm up and maybe things will really spring into action.

Watching

SO many Christmas movies!

Last Christmas - We all know the Wham! Christmas anthem “Last Christmas”….but what if someone really did give you their heart?! I won’t say too much more as I’ll spoil it but if you love Christmas movies, especially Christmas movies set in London, you will adore this. Tom and I discovered it last year and it was wonderful to watch it again this Christmas - we laughed and cried throughout this watch of it. It’s a beautiful film that perfectly captures the London we lived in. Full of beauty….but also piles of garbage that one inadvertently falls into. The cast are wonderful and Emma Thompson is, as usual, magnificent. A must watch for the festive season!

Die Hard - which I found surprisingly enjoyable! Tom enjoys movies that aren’t Christmas movies strictly speaking but that are set at Christmas, which this movie is…and it’s really good fun, which I wasn’t expecting.

The Holiday - my pick, as it’s one of my favourite Christmas films, and which we both really enjoyed! This Christmas Eve we too will be having fettuccine, popping some bubbly and celebrating being young and being alive!

Happiest Season - another Netflix discovery of last Christmas, which we were saving for a rewatch. Hilarious and heartbreaking all at once, you’ll need tissues for this one too. Dan Levy steals every scene he’s in!

About A Boy - one of our favourite films (and soundtracks) and another one that has a few Christmas scenes but not technically a Christmas film but it always feels like one!

With a week until Christmas, there’s still time for more Christmas favourites….stay tuned!

Quote of the week

“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” - Joseph Campbell (mentioned in one of the Inner Peace meditations this week)

If you’d like to share your thoughts on this post, or anything else, with me, please do! I hope you’re finding things to enjoy at what I know can be a tricky time of year for many (it has been for us too) and staying warm or cool, wherever you are! 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.

the last two weeks

The usual excuses, my friends! I seem to have blinked and it’s another Friday. And how is it October tomorrow?! I promise I will get back to more regular posting soon. I have two weeks to catch you up on, though there hasn’t been anything too exciting to report. Except…

Favourite experience of the last two weeks

The birth of and meeting my new nephew. Holding him, stroking his silky cheeks and downy head, marvelling at his tiny ears and fingers with those miraculous little specks of nail on them, watching his eyes flutter open and look at me. He is beautiful. I can’t wait to get to know him.

Reading

While it feels like I’ve been working non-stop (and I have!), I’ve also been reading a lot. My brain feels like it’s had some hearty meals.

I read Blueberries by Ellena Savage which I thought was excellent - so inventive, clever and affecting. I watched quite a bit of Parks and Recreation while I was reading it so somehow found myself reading this book in the voice of April Ludgate as it’s quite dry and cynical in its humour (I thought), which added to my enjoyment (though some parts of it, the first essay in particular, are not funny at all). At the same time, it’s so poetic and fragmented, and really pushes your perceptions on what you expect to find when you pick up a memoir. In fact, I started the book halfway through, because I opened the book at random and was so intrigued by what I saw, I read from there, and then went back to the beginning…which added to the slight disorientation, never quite knowing what to expect. What does it mean to write about yourself, your body, your traumas, the way you live in the world? These are questions which, on reflection, I’d like to have grappled with in a more intellectual way in my past work. The toothpaste is already out of the tube in that regard but these questions still really interest me and I love seeing how other writers play around with them. Savage is really clever and creative in how she straddles self-enquiry and enquiry about the world at large. I really loved it!

I also read Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder which I devoured in mere days. I was intrigued by a mention of it in one of Jen Campell’s videos and thought I’d check it out at the library. All I have to say is WOW. It’s a very clever and utterly surreal novel that has an element of fairytale about it (which are, after all, incredibly dark stories). It’s about an exhausted, rage-filled mother of a young child who starts turning into a dog. As in…she is literally turning into a dog. She starts growing fur, prowling the neighbourhood at night, killing small prey, and eating a lot of meat. Even her child gets in on the act! It was quite a trip to read this on Day 1 and 2 of my cycle, I have to say! Of course, it is an extended metaphor and a very, very clever one. I think every woman, mother or not, can relate to that rage that is so deep it’s in your bones at the sacrifices and behaviours that are expected of us, with or without children. Fabulous. Highly recommended!

I also started reading A.S Byatt’s latest short story collection Medusa’s Ankles which I’ve been dipping in and out of - again, very surreal fiction set in a recognisable world.

The Guardian: I enjoyed this piece on Lena Dunham, this one on writing the story of Australian history, this one on how more doctors are writing about the harsh reality of practicing medicine in this country but I particularly loved this one by writer Sarah Moss, who wrote about buying herself a small gift when at a low personal ebb:

Maybe we’re allowed to find small joys, in proportion to our situations, on a burning planet with the ancestors howling in our ears.

I was gutted to read of the death of Hilary Mantel, whose command of and passion for the craft of historical writing has had such an impact on my own work these past few years. I highly recommend all of her Reith Lectures which make for fascinating and compelling listening, in one of which she says:

You don’t become a novelist to become a spinner of entertaining lies: you become a novelist so you can tell the truth.

What an incredible human and writer she was, and what a legacy she leaves.

Sydney Review of Books: Hypocrisy, bruh! which introduced me to another (previously unknown to me) literary controversy surrounding a book I will probably never read but the real-life drama was very intriguing!

The Audacity: Not Your Gilmore Girl: A Meditation

LitHub: How dealing in facts helps fiction writers hone their craft

Listening to

Wellness Unpacked with Ella Mills: Manifesting, creating your dream life and adaptogenic mushrooms and How to lead a more fulfilled life, let go of perfection and the power of a daily gratitude practice - both very good episodes but particularly enjoyed the latter one. I should have liked to have known Sarah when I lived in the UK, I think we would have had a lot to talk about!

The Atlantic: How To Build A Happy Life: How to forgive ourselves for what we can’t change - a new to me podcast and I really enjoyed this episode.

BeWILDered: Elizabeth Gilbert gets Bewildered! Loved this one, it’s fascinating to hear what Liz has been up to and how much I relate to a lot of what she says!

The First Time: Masters Series: Sophie Cunningham - a very enjoyable window into the craft and work of a writer I have always been curious about but whose work I don’t know well. Maybe the time has come for a deep dive?

Eating (and cooking)

So many delicious things.

Creamy pumpkin risotto, pictured - absolutely scrumptious.

I made Deliciously Ella’s spiced cauliflower and cashew pilaf traybake, which was utterly divine. It’s a recipe from her new book, which I haven’t got yet - I got this recipe emailed as part of her newsletter (but I found a link online for it for you). I’ll definitely be getting the book, as hers are some of the ones I cook from the most often (and if you know me, and how many cookbooks I have, that’s saying something!).

Fennel, walnut and sun-dried tomato pappardelle from Special Guest by Annabel Crabb and Wendy Sharpe, a book on whose brilliance and delicious recipes I have waxed lyrical several times before. This is my favourite recipe from that book and one I love to make when fennel is cheap and plentiful.

Yellow split pea dhal with loads of greens from the garden and chilli - I wanted to use up a huge bag of yellow split peas that I bought during the national lockdown of 2020 when red lentils were nowhere to be seen. This cook-up helped me stock the freezer and the dhal was so nourishing and warming.

Speaking of a cook-up, I made Jamie Oliver’s pasta e ceci soup and a loaf of bread for my sister and her family for when they brought the new baby home from the hospital. I’m planning on making a vat of that soup for us too, as the sample I tasted for seasoning was very delicious indeed!

Vegan sausage rolls to watch the Grand Final with….which we ended up not watching much of at all! Sob!

We cheered ourselves up with nachos for dinner, which were heavenly as always. I used wombok cabbage instead of lettuce for a winter variation and we didn’t have any avocado in, but oddly that seemed not to matter - in fact, Tom told me he preferred it without.

I’ve also discovered Biscoff spread which is somehow vegan (how?!) and has proved to be very dangerous indeed. I made a version of peanut butter cups with it (with Biscoff instead of peanut butter, obviously) all of which disappeared far too quickly. I also made a vegan chocolate cake for a celebration and put dollops of the spread in the middle of the batter before baking. It was unbelievably good.

Vegan banana bread also made. It’s compulsory when there are spotty bananas in the fruit bowl, am I right?

Watching

We finished the whole series of Parks and Recreation for perhaps the second time this year. One of my favourites!

We finally watched the film Citizen Kane which in all honesty I had never seen - and I was astonished at how many Simpsons jokes and homages I suddenly understood, after all this time. Ahead of its time - absolutely. The greatest film ever made, as so many have claimed it to be? Not in my opinion. But worth watching all the same.

We also finished The Thick of It series which made me almost yearn for my former British workplaces in a very, very weird way. Though I don’t think I’ll ever yearn for the one that had its office inside Paddington station.

We’ve just started watching The Newsreader, which is on ABC iview here and I believe is also on BBC iPlayer in the UK. It’s just brilliant. If you liked Morning Wars (which is what it’s called here, because we have a show called The Morning Show, which is what it’s called everywhere else), you will love this - I think it’s even better, in many respects. We’re two episodes in and I’m already hooked. The series is set in Australia in 1986 and there’s something quite surreal about watching something set in a place and time when you were a young child and realising how much of it you remember.

Picking

Rainbow chard, silverbeet, cavolo nero. I also picked a big bunch of celery for my dad. In the garden itself I planted some broad beans and marked out a spot for my potatoes. Soon it will be time for spring planting!

Moving

I’ve felt like doing a lot of yoga this week - I really love Jessica Richburg’s channel on Youtube. She has a lot of lovely gentle practices. I don’t know if it’s a coincidence but ending my work day with some gentle yin yoga has also coincided with me sleeping better than usual. So I’ll be curious to keep that practice up!

Noticing

Magnolias in full bloom, everywhere. How the air when you go outside at night is fragrant with jasmine and wattle flowers. How alive everything suddenly looks and feels after a long winter. And yet, the minute you change your bedsheets back to the spring and summer ones, the nights suddenly dip back to a freezing two degrees!

Quote of the week

It had to be Hilary, of course. There were so many I could have picked but this one felt apt:

“The things you think are the disasters in your life are not the disasters really. Almost anything can be turned around: out of every ditch, a path, if you can only see it.” - Hilary Mantel

If you’d like to share your thoughts on this post, or anything else, with me, please do! Wishing you all a happy and safe weekend, filled with enjoyable things xx

this week

Tempus fugit baby! I couldn’t resist snapping this in the Kensal Green Cemetery when we were in London a few weeks ago.

Time flies, and never more so than when you are jet-lagged! Time has taken on a strange quality since our return. Case in point, I had a phone call earlier in the week from a tradie, organising a time to come around.

“Is this Thursday any good?” they asked.

“July the seventh? Yes, that’s fine,” I said.

“No, this Thursday - June the thirtieth,” they replied, to my embarrassment. I honestly didn’t know what day it was. I still don’t, really!

I’ve always found coming to Australia harder in terms of jet lag and adjusting to the time. At least I’m no longer wide awake at 3:30am every day - that got old very quickly, especially seeing I had to present a paper at a conference on one of those days! It really is a miracle that I was coherent.

Unsurprisingly, the minute my conference was over I was hit with a little cold - cough, congested nose, the usual. We took RATs and they were all negative. So the past week has been all about laying low and taking things slow. The cold seems to have passed now and I’m back to wanting to hit my 10,000 steps a day and Do All The Things.

I really am gobsmacked that Tom and I have managed to dodge COVID with our international trip, Dark Mofo and my conference. But we have taken, and will continue to take, every precaution, regardless of the fact that there are hardly any mandatory ones in place anymore. I’m not convinced that’s a good thing but I know I’m in the minority on that score. I guess time will tell!

And as for the other terrible thing that’s been in the news this past week, I echo the words of Ann Friedman:

“My dominant feeling is still anger but lately the rage comes in flashes that punctuate an overall mood that I can only describe as ‘shrug’. It’s settled over me like a thick blanket. I’m just letting the algorithm autoplay. I am skimming the headlines but not clicking the articles. I’m sending some expletive-laden texts but mostly I’m annoyed. I’m tired. I’m resentful of having a body that’s capable of getting pregnant. Whatever. How can I feel both of these things simultaneously? Such hot rage and such deep resignation? Screaming, but also shrugging?

…I’ve been preparing for things to be so much worse my entire reproductive life. And many, many people in this country have long been living the so much worse future that some of us have the luxury of dreading. Despite the demanding emails and blaring alarms of this moment, it’s not a departure or a regression. It’s a continuation.”

Ann’s weekly newsletter comes highly recommended by me, FYI.

Favourite experience/s of the week

Being reunited with my family - those unaffected by COVID at least - who I’d missed very much while we were away. It was particularly wonderful to see our two-year-old niece again, who had grown and progressed a great deal in the five weeks since we’d last seen her. She performed a play of The Three Little Pigs for us, and then got Tom to join in as the Big Bad Wolf, which was so adorable - though he definitely adopted aspects of Negan from The Walking Dead in his portrayal, which was hilarious! I was crying with laughter.

Several cups of tea on a sunny afternoon with a good friend, with whom I could decompress from the trip and some various other things that I won’t be able to write about for some time, if ever. Oh, how I look forward to my old age and being able to write a give-no-fucks memoir! In the meantime the “careful or you’ll end up in my novel” sign I have on my study door will suffice.

Making the submission deadline for a journal I’ve wanted to write for for at least ten years, if not more. The theme for one of their upcoming issues had my name written all over it so I felt I had no choice - overseas travel, stress, jet lag and imposter syndrome be damned! I had a half-finished draft of something I started writing in 2016 sometime that I thought had a kernel of goodness in it. I ran with the original idea but completely rewrote it. I had my usual crisis of confidence on the final read through, but pressed send on the submission anyway. There is nothing quite like the hopeful feeling that follows putting your hat in the ring. “If you’re not failing, then you’re not trying,” my lovely brother-in-law reminded me of last weekend. If they say yes, fabulous - life goal unlocked. If they say no, I have a somewhat decent story I can send somewhere else. Whatever happens, I tried. It’s a good feeling.

Reading

Anita Heiss: Five quick Qs and writing tips from author Kathryn Heyman - Anita’s blog is one of my favourites and I particularly enjoyed this interview, especially Kathryn’s answer to the fifth and final question. Start small. Lower the bar.

Oliver Burkeman: The news [is not equal to] your life

The Guardian: “He died in his 30s living the life he had dreamed of” - I can’t wait to see this film, which has just been released in the UK. I hope it gets a showing somewhere in Australia!

The Audacity: Why Are You Stranded? by Nicole Zhao

The Age: Scott Morrison’s downfall marks end of Howard-era ascendancy - seeing we left Australia less than 48 hours after the election, I’m still getting used to the idea that we have a new PM (thank goodness!) and I’m catching up on all the commentary. This is by Richard Flanagan who, as always, is right on the money.

Wintering by Krissy Kneen - I bought this book last spring but was saving it for winter, and it didn’t disappoint! I tore through it greedily in a few days. I sometimes grow weary of the Tasmanian Gothic trope so prevalent in our literature but there is a reason it works - Tassie, particularly its remotest parts, can be very wild and unnerving. It’s the perfect place to set a domestic thriller, really. I really enjoyed this book, set in a familiar landscape in a town not too far from where I grew up; the creepy shack and the ‘widows’ Jessica befriends when her boyfriend goes missing; the quite clever and haunting symbolism. If you like books set in Tasmania and you’re after an absorbing winter read, I highly recommend this!

Listening to

WILD with Sarah Wilson: Julia Cameron, how to live The Artist’s Way

The First Time: Masters Series: Michelle de Kretser

Better Reading: Catherine Deveny on honesty, dyslexia and being an ‘arts tradie’

And thanks to Glastonbury, we’ve been playing some of our favourite acts all week - Jessie Ware, Pet Shop Boys, Primal Scream, Wolf Alice, Crowded House and of course Macca!

I also discovered this incredibly soothing album of Bach keyboard concertos which I’ve had on repeat all week - so much so that Cyprien Katsaris almost knocked Ludovico Einaudi off top spot for my most-played artist on TIDAL in June. But not quite! Ludovico had the edge thanks to that 17 hour flight from London to Perth - he and Nils Frahm were the only reason I got any sleep!

Eating

It’s been such a treat being in my little kitchen again! With many new cookbooks and lots of ideas from our travels, I’ve had lots of fun cooking this week. It’s definitely, and subconsciously, been a week of spice.

This is a Sri Lankan style jackfruit curry - I found I’d somehow acquired four cans of jackfruit in my pantry and was keen to use it up. Cooked low and slow for two hours, the jackfruit becomes meltingly tender and takes on a similar texture to pulled pork (not that I’ve ever tried that, so I’ll have to take peoples’ words for it). I loosely followed this recipe but put my own spin on it - I added diced sweet potato and frozen green vegetables, and instead of sugar I diced half an apple that I had leftover from porridge that morning, which cooked down beautifully and added sufficient sweetness. I also used Kashmiri chilli powder instead of cayenne pepper. So I can’t claim this was authentic or even that close to Dini’s original recipe but it was so delicious! I even made the roasted curry powder. We ate this over several nights and I think there’s still some in the fridge…

I also made the cauliflower, cashew and coriander soup from Rachel Allen’s most recent book, Soup Broth Bread which Tom got me for my birthday. I could happily have soup for every meal, especially this time of year, and this one was particularly delicious. It gets its fluro-yellow colour from the hearty tablespoon of turmeric! Perfect for keeping winter colds at bay. I daresay I’ll make this again but I might swap half the cashews out for yellow split peas next time, for more fibre!

I made Nigella’s vegan gingerbread which is as sticky and delicious as it was when I made it at Christmas, but the deep spicy flavours feel more appropriate for colder weather! It is one of those bakes that only improves with time and so every time we cut a square to have for elevenses or with an afternoon mug of Bengal Spice, it’s even stickier and more moist than it was the day before. At Christmas, I think it lasted a few weeks. I can’t see it lasting that long this time, to be honest! It’s so good. Vegan or not, if you love gingerbread or ginger cakes, you need to make it.

Only I would attempt something like Dishoom’s house black dal with jet lag - but it was completely worth it. I couldn’t find deggi mirch chilli powder so used Kashmiri, and it was fine. I also added a lot more tomato paste and used vegan alternatives to butter and cream, also fine, if not better. It takes hours and hours to cook but if you’re home anyway it’s not that big a deal - you just have to remember to go back and stir it every now and then, and also ignore the old sock smell of cooking lentils. But once you’ve made it, you’ll be rewarded with so many delicious dinners and lunches, especially if you double the recipe as I did. And if you find yourself with a small amount left, not quite enough for a meal on its own, you can turn it into a spicy tomato soup with a tin of diced tomatoes or passatta - which I did for lunch!

Watching

Dr Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (Disney+) - a Marvel film rarely disappoints (I still don’t know what they were thinking with Eternals?!) in terms of fun and escapism, and we both really enjoyed this one. The first Dr Strange movie is one of our favourites in the entire franchise so this had a lot to live up to. I missed the grounding wisdom of Tilda Swinton’s Ancient One and think it needed an equivalent character, as things did get a bit loopy. But still enjoyable! My favourite scene was with the Illuminati - if you’ve seen it, I’d be curious to know if you agree!

Obi Wan Kenobi (Disney+) - I’ll watch anything with Ewan McGregor in it. And I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this, as I find Star Wars as a whole quite hard to get excited about (mostly because it all goes over my head!). The acting in it is quite brilliant, particularly from the children.

Man vs Bee (Netflix) - a surprisingly compelling show, we watched all nine episodes in one sitting (they’re only about 12 minutes each, admittedly) because each one ends on a bit of a cliffhanger. Rowan Atkinson plays Trevor, a recently divorced man who needs both a home and job - he finds both by house and dog-sitting for a wealthy couple who are off on holiday. The designer house is full of priceless art and the dog has a very particular diet and routine. Add to that, Trevor is a tad obsessive about things - we learn that he got fired from his job at Asda due to a supposedly “evil trolley”. So when a mischievous bee flies into the house and Trevor can’t rid of it, you just know disaster is afoot! I was surprised by how enjoyable this show was, and by the twist at the end. Highly recommended!

Quote of the week

“Anything worth having has its price.” - Joan Didion

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creamy curried parsnip soup with black rice

This soup has a lot of happy memories.

I used to make it a lot when Tom and I were newlyweds, in our tiny basement flat in Pimlico, when the air was freezing, autumn leaves were raked up in proud piles in the streets, it got dark at 3:30pm and parsnips were plentiful.  A £1 bag of them would make a vat of this soup and on dark late autumn and winter nights, we would cosy up on our dilapidated old couch and watch movies, pressing pause so we could return to the kitchen for another ladle. I discovered this soup thanks to Shaheen’s Allotment2Kitchen blog all those years ago but I, in true Phil style, made it my own by adding coconut cream and garam masala. Since moving back to Australia, I’ve adapted it further.

We used to make the soup with wild rice, which I never had a problem finding in supermarkets in the UK, but it doesn’t seem to be a thing here. However, black rice is available and it makes a lovely contrast with the fluoro yellow of the soup. You can just use brown rice if that’s all you can find, but black rice does seem to be widely available in Oz and I think it adds interest, contrast and extra health benefits, as well as being super filling!

Parsnips are a sweet root vegetable so the earthy notes of curry powder and turmeric are a perfect partner. You’ll note I’ve refrained from adding heat here – most unusual – but the natural sweetness of the parsnips combined with the spices and rice are so well balanced I feel that adding another flavour component would throw the whole thing off. But I am, as always, willing to be proven wrong.

Until the other night, I hadn’t made this soup for a very, very long time. I don’t see parsnips available in the shops here very often – another reason I’d like to grow them myself when we eventually have a home with space for a bigger vegetable patch – so it hadn’t been on my radar for a while. But then I saw some proud specimens in the grocers after work one night, and not at an exorbitant price (I do miss being able to buy a kilo of them for £1!), so I grabbed them, with the sudden thought that it might be nice to wander down memory lane and try this soup again.

Such a lot has happened these past ten-and-a-half years, but one spoonful of this warming, comforting soup last night and we were right back there in that little flat, with everything that hadn’t happened yet still to come.

creamy curried parsnip soup with black rice

1 ½ cups black rice (or wild rice, if you can find it. Brown will also do)

Olive oil
2 medium or 1 large brown onion, chopped
1 large garlic clove, crushed or finely chopped
4 large parsnips (approximately 1 kilogram), peeled and chopped
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon garam masala
2 tablespoons curry powder (I use medium)
1 x 400ml can coconut cream
3 teaspoons vegetable or “chicken style” stock powder (I use Massel chicken style)
Enough boiling water to cover

 Place the black rice in a saucepan, add 2 cups water, cover and place on a high heat until it comes to the boil. Reduce to a simmer for approximately 30 minutes until the water is absorbed and the rice is tender. Turn off heat, place a tea towel over the top and replace the lid (I always do this with rice, it absorbs any extra moisture and makes it fluffy) to keep warm. Set aside.

 While the rice is cooking, make the soup.

 Put the kettle on to boil. Get a large stockpot out and drizzle a little olive oil on the base, then place on a low heat to heat up. Add the onion and garlic and fry for a few minutes until starting to soften. Add the parsnips, turmeric, garam masala and curry powder and cook for a couple of minutes, until fragrant but not turning brown. You can add water if it’s starting to stick.

Add the tin of coconut cream and stir to combine. I usually swirl out the can with boiling water and add that too, but be careful – boiling water makes cans very hot to touch! You can make up your stock separately in a jug with boiling water from the kettle but I usually don’t bother (don’t want the extra washing up!)  – I add the stock powder to the mixture in the pot and then top up with the boiling water so everything is covered and the stock powder has dissolved.

Either way, everything should now be in the stockpot (except for the rice) so stir well and bring the whole lot to the boil. Turn the heat down once it reaches boiling point, and simmer on a low heat for around 35 minutes, or until the parsnips are tender. My test is to see if they fall apart when pressed with the wooden spoon.

Puree the soup, either with a handheld blender (easiest, as you don’t really have to wait for it to cool down nor reheat it once pureed) or in a food processor, in which case you’ll need to wait for the mixture to cool before blending, and then heat up again before serving.

Taste for seasoning – I find the stock powder (albeit a reduced salt one) is salty enough, but a few turns of the pepper grinder finish it off nicely. To serve, place a large spoonful of black rice in the soup bowl, then ladle the hot silky-smooth parsnip soup on top. Place a sprinkling of black rice on the top to serve.

Ideally, eat in front of the TV on a freezing cold night – it’s guaranteed to make you feel all warm and cosy inside.

zucchini and butterbean soup

Crumpets are a surprisingly delicious soup accompaniment.

While summer might have taken its last breath, weather-wise, down here, the zucchini are still holding strong. Continuing my fierce wish to make use of everything I have, I made this delectable soup with some thick-skinned zukes that were verging on marrowhood. It was so good it made me wish zucchini season would last forever.

Zucchini and butterbean soup

Makes at least 4 generous bowls

Oil and butter (sufficient to brown the vegetables, how much depends on desired richness)
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
1 small green chilli, finely chopped
650g zucchini (roughly two large ones), chopped
3 large leaves silverbeet, stems and leaves, chopped
1 x 420g can butter beans, drained
A handful of frozen peas (about half a cup, or thereabouts)
Stock of choice (vegetable, chicken or even old pesto jars rinsed out, or a combo of all three), to cover
Fresh dill, parsley, thyme and mint, a handful of each, chopped
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
A wedge of fresh lemon per person, to serve
Grated parmesan, to serve

I melted some butter in a saucepan for a different recipe and was so determined to use every skerrick of precious fat, that I decided I’d use the same saucepan to make the soup. To each their own. I added a splash of olive oil too.

Place the pan with oil and butter (in your desired quantity, but a tablespoon of each would be ample) on a medium-high heat and saute the onion, garlic and chilli briefly until they are starting to soften but not brown. Add the zucchini and silverbeet and cook, stirring fairly constantly, for a few minutes or until the vegetables start to soften and colour slightly.

Add the drained butter beans and frozen peas, stir to combine, then cover with the stock. I take this opportunity to rinse out any jars with only a teaspoon or so left in them (pesto is ideal for this recipe) and add that in too.

Bring the pot to the boil, then reduce to a simmer and cook for about 15 minutes until the vegetables are soft and completely cooked.

Add the fresh soft herbs, stir to combine, and cook a moment or two longer. Season to taste, then puree with a hand blender until completely smooth.

Ladle into waiting bowls, squeeze a little fresh lemon and sprinkle with a bit of grated Parmesan.

Savour, with some good bread (or crumpets) alongside.