this week

Mrs Hunt’s Cottage, Maria Island. Picture by Tom!

After a pretty rough past couple of weeks, this one has been really good for the soul.

We went to a family wedding up on the east coast, and you can’t help but feel happy at a wedding, surrounded by love! This one was particularly sweet and romantic, and it was lovely to see some people I haven’t seen for ages. We decided to make the most of being in the area and took a day trip to Maria Island - a place I had never been, and was utterly blown away by. It was one of those places that is truly magical, that pictures and words will never do justice to. If you ever visit Tasmania, it is a must do. We’re already planning a return, but staying longer!

I had also forgotten the profound impact that a change of scene can have on your mood and outlook. We’ve barely left the house since the borders opened and I hadn’t appreciated how much we needed just a little break in the routine. It has been a literal and metaphorical gust of fresh air!

Favourite experiences of the week

Maria Island was absolutely spectacular. We haven’t stopped talking or thinking about it! The ferry from Triabunna was a breeze - though I highly recommend booking as far ahead as you can. I stupidly left it to the day before, thinking we could stroll up to the marina like we did with Rottnest Island when we visited Perth in 2020 (before covid). It wasn’t a complete disaster but as the earliest and latest crossings were already full we only had half a day to explore rather than the full day. But that’s OK, we’ll definitely be going back!

I just love spending time in nature, and getting up close and personal with adorable wombats was one of the highlights of the visit:

One of about a thousand pictures we took of a mother wombat and her joey, who were totally unbothered by the presence of humans.

A Cape Barren goose in its lush natural habitat.

The lesser-spotted writer of this blog post on the deck of Mrs Hunt’s Cottage (the house in the first photo).

The Painted Cliffs.

A beautiful tree.

I mean LOOK at that water!

It was extremely hard to pick a leading image for this week’s This Week, let me tell you!

With my husband of nearly twelve years! Attending a wedding always makes us feel very nostalgic for ours!

The wedding was also a highlight, because it’s always wonderful to be in the presence of love and joy. Whenever I go to a wedding I can’t help but be overwhelmed with happy memories of my own, remembering the incredible high of it all and how full to bursting with love you feel, not just for your new spouse but for all the people sharing in your excitement and wishing you well. And it’s so wonderful to know someone you care about is having the same experience, and you get to be a part of it. The happy couple were also very blessed with the weather, it was an unseasonably warm and sunny autumn day, and the setting was stunning.

We enjoyed the festivities so much that one of my sisters suggested that Tom and I renew our vows at some point and have another wedding for all the Australian family who couldn’t make it to London in 2010. We’re certainly thinking about it!

Looking forward to

Another upcoming wedding, this time of a dear friend. Another dear friend visiting Tassie soon. Finishing the introduction to my thesis. Potentially another trip to Maria Island before the end of the season!

Reading

The Writer Laid Bare by Lee Kofman - I’ve just started this and just want to tell every writer I know to buy a copy and read it ASAP. Incredibly insightful and relatable!

The Practical Australian Gardener by Peter Cundall - I plan to make good use of the Easter break and get some jobs in the garden done as the fruitfulness of autumn is starting to wind down.

Bigger than Us by Fearne Cotton - a lovely book I dipped into each night at bedtime, about intuition, connection and “finding meaning in a messy world”. Some really beautiful reminders to trust the Universe a bit more and to stay open rather than close down when life gets tricky.

Sydney Review of Books:  Plath Traps by Felicity Plunkett

Poetry Foundation: Sylvia’s Table by David Trinidad

Listening to

The Shift: Marian Keyes on menopause, Botox and learning to be shameless - I particularly loved this quote from Marian, “Other people’s anger and judgement is utterly survivable and, ultimately, it’s not even important.” I also enjoyed the follow up with Marian which aired last month.

Now You’re Asking, with Marian Keyes and Tara Flynn: The High School Problem and The Co-Dependency Problem, both enjoyed while gardening. I love this podcast, Marian and Tara are so kind, encouraging and understanding with their answers to problems sent in by listeners (apart from the idiot who wrote in saying that he had cheated on his wife and now didn’t understand why she didn’t trust him - their response to that was gold). You might notice that my listening habits tend to reflect the fact that when I’ve really enjoyed an interview with a particular person, I start listening to everything I can find with them in it! I’ll try not to be too repetitive or boring in that regard, haha.

My main writing playlist on TIDAL - it’s so full of goodness, for my writer’s brain at least!

Eating

We made fresh pasta dough with chickpea water and it was utterly amazing. Like, life-changing. I couldn’t recommend trying it more highly!

It seemed to be the week of pasta - I also made a Moroccan pumpkin, chickpea and feta pasta which was delicious.

Lots of hiking and road trip food - energy balls, apples, muesli bars, mini packets of chips.

Today is Good Friday so I’ve procured fresh hot cross buns - as this is the appropriate day of the year to eat them, not on Boxing Day when the supermarkets start selling them! I enjoy a fruit bun as much as the next person but I do think we lose something when something that is meant to be saved for a particular time of the year is simply made available once another major holiday is out of the way, or even all year round as is often the case. OK, I’ll get off my soap box now.

I also thoroughly enjoyed the potatoes with garlic, oil, herbs and preserved lemon at my cousin’s wedding (made by another cousin)!

Picking

The remaining red (or red-ish!) tomatoes and there’s still a few zucchini that may or may not be coaxed into their fullest expression by the heatwave we’re expecting over the Easter weekend. I will also dig up the first potatoes over the long weekend, I think.

Watching

American Beauty - I hadn’t seen this film for many years and we enjoyed it last Friday night. On this rewatch, I found it more funny than I did dark (as I had on previous watchings) and I wondered why that might be so - perhaps it was because I found it rather amusing to watch a privileged white man explode his current life in the pursuit of a supposedly more authentic one. And I agree with Stephanie Zacharek’s take that American Beauty is “a movie from a time when we didn’t know what we wanted. From where we stand now, the dark, buried desires of affluent suburban men and women, no matter how ludicrously they’re presented, seem even a little touching. Maybe that’s partly because our eyes have been opened to the way so many men—unlike Lester, regardless of how you feel about him—have simply taken what they wanted, with no regard to whom they’re hurting.”

Fences (iTunes) - another great film based on an August Wilson play. We saw a clip of this played in Brene Brown’s Atlas of the Heart and were immediately intrigued. It’s set in 1950s Pittsburgh and centres around a middle-aged garbage collector named Troy (Denzel Washington), a man who appears jovial and charming on the surface but deep down is very bitter about his failures in life and his missed opportunities in professional sport, which were primarily due to being too old for the professional leagues by the time Black people were allowed to play in them. His son Cory (Jovan Adepo) now has the opportunity to go to college thanks to his talent in football, but Troy is dead-set against the idea. Odie Henderson said in his review that “anyone who had a strict taskmaster as a parent will find parts of Fences unendurable” and, indeed, Troy’s brutality and pig-headedness in dealing with his son is hard to watch and ends up driving Cory away. Unfolding in parallel is the revelation of Troy’s infidelity which devastates his devoted, long-suffering wife Rose (Viola Davis) and has some permanent consequences. It’s superbly acted, and very powerful, but we weren’t wild about the ending, which seemed a little neat and sentimental given everything that had preceded it. But worth a watch, for Viola Davis’s performance alone.

Call My Agent! (Dix pour cent)(Netflix) - our addiction to this fabulous show continues, but we only have a few episodes left! I hope they make more!

Wearing

I had at least five people comment on my outfit at the wedding - which was my glorious Keshet jumpsuit, both stylish and incredibly comfortable! The photographer came over at one point and just said “Keshet?” which made us both laugh! They are certainly a distinctive Tassie brand for those in the know. I do want to get some more of them because they are so wonderful to wear.

Quote of the week

“He who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch.” - Jean-Luc Godard

If you’d like to share your thoughts on this post with me, please do! A Happy Easter and Pesach Sameach to those celebrating this weekend xx

my favourite cookbooks: a gift guide

This is just one section dedicated to cookbooks in my home….

I thought this would be a useful post to do this time of year, as a good cookbook always makes a wonderful gift for the foodie in your life.

It’s no secret to anyone who knows me that cookbooks are something I adore and devour as enthusiastically as I do food itself. I have found myself revisiting a lot of my favourite food writers throughout 2020. Dystopian fiction was quickly put away in favour of the poetic prose of Nigella Lawson or Nigel Slater, their words conjuring the homely festive spices of gingerbread and fruit cake, the yeasty smell of bread rising, or the sight of a gloriously golden cheesy crust on a pie. It was the perfect escapism for much of this crazy year.

Every now and then I will tire of my usual dinner repertoire (if you’ve been following my 2020 Dinners stories on Instagram, you’ll know what I mean!) and want to try a few new things. I scan my shelves quickly and pull down whichever volumes look most appealing, and sit myself down with a cup of coffee, a pile of cookbooks and a notepad and pen to hand to meal plan and pick new recipes to try. It’s my idea of bliss.

While I love reading about food, I find myself in the bizarre situation of rarely making the actual recipes of some of my favourite food writers (the two aforementioned Ns being an example). So when cookbooks come along that I both enjoy reading AND end up cooking from, that makes for a very impressed Phil indeed.

So, these are the cookbooks I have loved reading and have cooked from the most in 2020, and some of the recipes have become absolute staples in our house that I now cannot imagine life without. Some of them were released this year or last year, others are a couple of years old. But they’re all fabulous!

Family by Hetty McKinnon

I think this is probably my most-used cookbook of the year. Without fail, every recipe I’ve tried has been astonishingly good. I keep a vegetarian home and so it was to my great delight that I discovered all of Hetty’s recipes are meat-free. After trying a few of the recipes in the pasta section, I decided I would make it my mission to try every pasta recipe in the book. Achievement unlocked! And they are all magnificent. If you’re a confident home cook who enjoys hearty and healthy vegetable-based meals, you will fall in love with this cookbook and its great ideas without a doubt!

Hetty has a new book out this year - To Asia With Love - which may be, I have on good authority, waiting under the Christmas tree for me…

My favourite recipe: I have loved them all but it is a tie between the One-Pan Sweet Potato Mac and Cheese on page 149 (great weeknight meal) and the Pasta with Miso Brown Butter Sauce (special occasion meal) on page 129. Just get this book, you won’t regret it!

Green by Elly Pear

I own all of Elly Pear’s books but I think this one is her best yet, by far. She writes imaginative, healthy vegetarian and vegan recipes which are bursting with flavour and surprises, but that are achievable in your likely limited kitchen around a busy life. She has ideas for weeknights and meals you can freeze, as well as weekend recipes where you might have a little more time to potter around the kitchen and make something delicious. She sounds like a cook after my own heart - she abhors waste and shows you how to use everything up and repurpose leftovers. But her food is also a celebration of seasonality, flavour and very creative too.

My favourite recipe: The Pumpkin Gnocchi with Brown Herb Butter and Kale Almond Pesto (p.30-35). I was surprised by how easy it was! I hate faff as you all know, but this was so quick and easy, and quite meditative to put together. I felt like a real pro seeing the trays of gnocchi laid out and ready for the pan. And it looked and tasted like something I’d order in a restaurant!

A Basket By The Door by Sophie Hansen

I don’t remember how I came across this book. I think a few people I follow on Instagram mentioned making Sophie’s passata during the first week of autumn - a golden time really, before everything changed. I found this book such a comforting read during the rest of autumn when Hobart was in its version of lockdown and we went days without leaving the house at times. I had an abundant garden with produce to use, and it was a great way to show family and friends I cared during that time - we couldn’t visit but I could leave a jar of apple butter on the doorstep with a note. I ended up getting another copy for Mum for Mother’s Day, I loved it that much and found myself taking it to bed with me most nights. The idea of making preserves, pies, cordials, biscuits and comforting food was deeply reassuring and prevented too many sleepless nights.

This is not a vegetarian cookbook but there are plenty of meat-free recipes and many of the meaty recipes are easily adaptable.

My favourite recipe: the Olive and Walnut Pesto (p.159) is magic - it tastes so rich and delicious and I’ve found many uses for it. The Apple Butter (p.198) was also made many times with windfall apples left on my doorstep by my parents. It’s heavenly stirred into thick Greek yoghurt for breakfast and I am already looking forward to autumn and making it again!

Deliciously Ella Quick and Easy, Deliciously Ella: The Plant-Based Cookbook and Deliciously Ella with Friends all by Ella Mills

I am hard-pressed to say which of these books is my favourite because I cook from them all quite regularly - or have certainly got some new ideas from them which I’ve then adapted to my own tastes - so I heartily recommend all three to you!

I am not new to plant-based eating as you know and it is rare to find vegan cookbooks that have new and interesting ideas and recipes rather than the same old things that get trotted out time and time again. All of these books have excellent recipes and ideas for delicious vegan (and in many cases gluten-free) cooking. The latest one, Quick and Easy, also features wisdom from the DE podcast, which I also highly recommend and enjoy on the regular.

My favourite recipe: from DE with Friends it would have to be the Garlicky Black Beans (p.190), I make that ALL the time and it’s fabulous either as a wrap filling, a baked potato topping or just with steamed rice. From The Plant-Based Cookbook, the Apple and Banana Spelt Muffins (p.47) get made pretty regularly around here. And from Quick and Easy, the Spanish-Style Rice (p.241) and the Spinach and Chickpea Curry (p.154) have had rave reviews and gone down a treat.

Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi

This is Yotam Ottolenghi’s second cookbook and it came out in 2010 - so not a new cookbook, but personally I think it’s his best and it’s my favourite of all his books. Anyone who loves food and cooking will be familiar with his work, and his innovative, original flavours and ways of making vegetables absolutely shine. If you love vegetables, cheese, spices, fresh herbs and a bit of a kick - be it from lemon, chilli or both - this is the book for you!

My favourite recipe: Where do I start? It would be a tie between the Spicy Moroccan Carrot Salad (p.14) which I have made countless times and am still not sick of; and the Caramelised Garlic Tart (p.38) which I made for Christmas lunch a few years ago and will be making again this year!

Special Guest by Annabel Crabb and Wendy Sharpe

What a treat this book is! When we first moved back to Australia, I borrowed it from the library and once I started leafing my way through it, I knew I was going to have to buy my own copy, or risk getting splatters all over the library copy (poor library etiquette of the highest order right there).

As the name suggests, these recipes (all pescetarian or vegetarian - and also very mindful of other dietary requirements like kosher or halal) are ideal for entertaining and parties, and for occasions when you’re going to a party and need to bring something that will be a crowd-pleaser. I’ve loved everything I’ve tried and while there’s not been much entertaining at our home this year (obviously) I am hopeful of a summer where we can have special guests around once more.

My favourite recipe: While my family have loved (and have requested again this Christmas) the Salted Caramel Crack (p.198), my favourite recipe from this book is the Fennel, Walnut and Sundried Tomato Pappardelle (p.49). Absolutely exquisite! I feel like making it RIGHT NOW. Probably wasn’t a good idea to start writing this blog post at dinner time….

What are your favourite, most-used cookbooks? I’d love to hear your recommendations!

one hundred years wasn't enough

My grandmother Daphne as a baby, with her mother Pansy (her real name was Emily but everyone called her Pansy). Taken in London, November 1919.

the light, the season, 

is fading. 

what will be left by winter?

what will be left by tomorrow?

will our family be one person down,

without the one whose heart started

before the guns of the Great War

fell silent,

whose breath spanned two centuries,

whose soul knew many homes.

I wrote the lines above as the sun set last Monday night after hearing the news earlier that day that my beloved grandmother, who I spent three hours laughing and doing crosswords with only a few weeks ago, had had a small stroke and was fading.

I went to say goodbye to her last Wednesday. And on Saturday evening, a week out from her 100th birthday, she passed away. We had been anticipating her 100th as a family with great joy - we even had a letter from the Queen, all ready to go. So it hasn’t been the week we thought it would be, though it has still been a celebration of a long and fruitful life.

But it is also, to use a well-worn phrase, the end of an era.

We were so lucky to have her for so long. But that doesn’t make losing her any easier. She is irreplaceable. It feels strange to now be living in a world without her when, until a week ago, she had always been here.

How lucky I was to have her as a grandmother, and what a shining example she was of how to live well and authentically. I adored her sharp wit, her endless fascinating stories, her cooking, her affinity with plants, her love of nature. She taught me to cook, to sew and to play cards. She indulged every one of my silly childish whims but she always treated me like a grown up. She encouraged my love of writing and storytelling. When my book came out, she was in the front row at the launch and she read the whole thing, with a magnifying glass.

I will always cherish the memories of her indefatigable spirit, her sense of fun, her generosity, her quiet conviction, her pragmatism, and her fierce independence. Sometimes, when I was growing up, I felt so different from the rest of my family, convinced on some occasions I had been swapped with another baby at the hospital. But then I would think about Ma and her mother, and the kinds of women they were and realise ‘ah, that’s where I get that from’. I am proud to think that both their spirits live on in me, somehow.

Without her influence, I know I would have been a very, very different person. I am so grateful.

All of the above I told her while I sat with her quietly last Wednesday, holding her hand and stroking her hair. But I wish I had told her these things more often while I still had the privilege of being in her company.

So let this be a timely reminder for you, dear reader. Tell your loved ones you love them. They really won’t be here forever. Even though, in Ma’s case, it felt like she would be! I’m so glad Tom and I moved back to Australia when we did and that I got to spend lots of time with her these past few months. Those memories are now very precious indeed.

Happy 100th birthday Ma. As far as I’m concerned, you made it.

I will love you always.

***

Daphne Lucie Elizabeth Moore
11 May 1919 - 4 May 2019