It’s not hard, having people over for a bite to eat.

Not when everyone has clear calendars and a clean slate of health and low expectations as to the food likely to be served. When dietary restrictions are nil and locality isn’t in issue. When there aren’t partners and spouses and other halves and children whose schedules need to be co-ordinated and re-co-ordinated and checked and re-checked before giving a semi-definitive yes-or-no.

Then again, when schedules do, miraculously, align and people do manage to turn up to one’s accommodation bearing a plate of something (despite clear instructions to bring nothing but oneself), it’s not hard to feel like all of that trouble was worth it, somehow. That seeing these people who mean so much to you, even for just a half hour on a weeknight, is worth all of the group emails that caused it to be. …continue reading australia’s biggest morning tea

Three hundred and sixty-nine days ago I walked out of my office job for the last time, head high and ready to take on a month-long holiday and a planned foray into the world of becoming a self-employed, self-contained, wholly independent businesswoman.

Two months and eight days ago, I spent the first half-hour of my newly opened business peering not-so-surreptitiously out the window, hoping for my first students to please-please-please arrive, whilst Kuni from Head Office looked on, trying not to laugh.

…continue reading kale, lamb & peach salad

Now that the weather is (finally) taking a turn for the cooler and we’ve no more got the excuse of “but it was just Christmas!” to explain away our kitchen lethargy, it seems there is nothing to do but get back into the swing of things.

Home cooked meals. Preferably at least 50% vegetable matter. No-dessert-days.

Hey you! (Yes, you.) Put down that extra slice of cake.

Sigh.

…continue reading roasted mushrooms & ricotta on toast

I decided, sometime during the final hours of 2011, that 2012 would be a year of change. BIG. EXCITING. CHANGE.

And it was. Not in the way I expected, but when does one ever really expect the changes that befall them.

(I should have known better than to pick that as a theme.)

…continue reading tropical knock-you-out trifle

It all started with a bushel of good intentions.

Run daily. Only one piece of cake per day. Do your work. Sleep well. Hydrate.

And then New Year’s Eve tumbled into a sad and sorry New Year’s Day tumbled into a three (!) week long cold (starting on Boxing Day, for those who think my mathematical skills are somewhat lacking) tumbled into watching all of the Mad Men and David Attenborough and tennis that a body can handle before stumbling off to get more Thai takeaway.

Oops.

…continue reading speedy sushi & quick pickled carrots