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.
It was the berries that made me do it.
$5.00 per three punnets. Queensland grown. Large as a small plum and yet, somehow, amazingly sweet and juicy and strawberry-like.
I ate most of a punnet whilst waiting for dinner to cook, and another half punnet after dinner was done.
Koji, who had partaken of his own pre-dinner sweet treats, only needed a couple to sate his hunger for dessert and insisted (to my chargrain) on dousing them in maple syrup before eating them.
Ever since I gave up that heavenly drink that is coffee some 8 or so years ago, I’ve been known to stand and stare forlornly at the machine that adorns our kitchen counter.
Black, sleek, nice smelling.
It churns out cup after tiny cup of darkly potent brew, topped with the most deliciously creamy froth.
So, to make up for my inability to consume hot, caffeinated beverages, I started drinking my own combinations of milk and flavour. Sometimes chai. Sometimes chocolate. Sometimes even chocolate and chai together.
I’m a little bit groundbreaking like that. Ha!
Over time I developed my own favourite mix. Nothing fancy, always warming.
…continue reading barista’s own frothing milk (& a hot choc recipe)
It was a little before 5:00am when I willed myself out of bed.
(No small task, mind you, as I’d scarcely been able to sleep for the excitement of what I was to do that morning).
A trip around the Sydney Markets with James Harris from Harris Farm Markets (it really is a family business). To meet the growers, the sellers, the buyers and (I was to find out) to get a first hand lesson on how exactly to cross a street at packing time without getting hit by a forklift driver.
You’d never believe it looking at me these days, but I was once a temporary citizen of the land of the beautifully primped, posied and fashioned.
Hair styled, face primed, I stomped around in tendonitis-inducing heels and attended soirees. (To be fair, they were more often than not soirees that I’d helped to organise, complete with carting boxes of samples up and down stairs and stuffing gift bags in said heels).
Oh, and I lunched at Toko.
Not tokonoma, mind you, for it wasn’t around then, but a sister-restaurante no less, and the promise of takeaway from it made the chalkboard stains on my far-too-expensive outfit all the less worrisome.
