The pesto would have been better tossed with small snails than with the gnocchi I made. I know I have a tendency to toot my own horn on this blog, and today is not going to be any different. You need to know that I can make the worst gnocchi in the world. Yesterday at the end of a weekend in the country with three generations of our families, my friend Ellie and I spent four hours pottering in the kitchen. I was making gnocchi and she was making pesto. People wandered in and

I made the cookies using an amalgamation of recipes on the internet, which I found by googling ‘cacao almond cookies’. They all contained the following ingredients, in seemingly arbitrary quantities: Ground almonds Quinoa flour (I used flakes) Chia seeds Coconut oil Baking powder Cacao (unprocessed cocoa: I believe it is the heat-treatment that causes the a and the o to swap places) Shredded coconut Rice malt syrup Coconut sugar (can you tell who has been following a bunch of

Actually, this year the game of Move The Tables From The Verandah To The Garden And Back Again Thrice As The Weather Changes was knocked on the head, with the decision taken early to just have the damn meal inside and not try to use the courtyard at all. It’s going to be cool and rainy tonight, so all the living room furniture has been moved into the garage and we will dine in dryness and warmth. Hurrah! But it’s a bit sad that all the guests won’t need to sneak, one by one,

Invitations: To get the numbers up, it’s useful invite people to your party. I used Paperless Post for electronic invitations. It is simple to use, has lovely designs to choose from and makes it easy to track RSVPs. We also chose to keep the party little this year, which was a good idea, so we just invited a child’s handful of very close friends. There somehow still ended up being twelve two-year-olds. That is a lot of toddlers. We must make more friends without two-year-olds

Better a terrible photo than none at all, that’s what I always say. I couldn’t put my spoon down long enough to take a photo with two hands. That’s all you need to know about this meal. I know, it’s a big call declaring a Lunch of The Week on Monday, but I’m feeling quietly confident that this will be the one to beat. It’s not a good-looking lunch, but it has hidden depths of deliciousness and you will find yourself a bit in love with it. It is the Stephen Fry of lunch. This

Swimming in an ocean rock pool. I am a bit slow, clearly, but I have finally discovered a place that has all the nice seawater of the beach, but no horrible sand and no scary waves. It is bloody freezing, but once you go numb it’s refreshing and makes me feel brave. There are also lots of interesting old people to talk to while you swim. Eating five-hour Greek leg of lamb, bought from our local butcher down here. I’ll tell you more about him another day, but he is known in ou

My little family is about to take a little break. Not from each other, but from the city and work, from battling for parking and crowded living in a flat, from barricading our kid into the ungated backyard using a line of bins to stop her escaping onto the road while we hang out the laundry. H has resigned from his job and he will start a business of his own in one month. So for a month we are going to be all three together, mostly away from home. Thinking about this makes me

Anyway, My Kitchen Rules is a cooking competition, and last night the competitors each had to choose a dish and cook it in ninety minutes. That was their ‘challenge’. H turned to me and said, ‘What would you make in ninety minutes?’ I thought for a moment. ‘I’d have a one-hour nap, watch a twenty-eight-minute British comedy on iView, then make a cheese omelette in the remaining two minutes, ‘ I said. ‘Yeah,’ said H. ‘That would be a good use of the time.’ Because seriously, n

As you can see, this is a very ordinary photograph of some bacon in a bain marie. Why would anyone put such a bad picture on their blog, you may be wonder. The answer is simple: this was the best bacon ever. It was the bacon served at my grandmother’s 100th birthday brunch in Denver two years ago. This was the amount left after fifty or so guests had served themselves a modest portion. Then my husband, father, older brother and I stood there and ate the rest like it was a bow

Did you know there is such a thing as Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease? No? Well, you do now. I highly recommend not google-image searching for it. It’s caused by something called the Coxsackie virus, a name, like Balzac, that makes H snicker. Hand Foot and Mouth is an unimaginatively titled mild illness that causes small blisters on the hands, feet and in the mouth. It’s common and goes away quickly enough, but we needed another virus in this household like we needed more Tupper

More guests arrived and three cats became four; an eleven-dollar blow-up paddling pool provided at least twelve dollars worth of fun; I bought some vintage tea towels from an op shop from which I plan to make simple sundresses for May Blossom. Being on holidays makes me do things like that. It gives me a sense of tremendous possibility, out of all proportion to my skills. Let’s all just say what we’re thinking on that front, which is that a person who can’t get their child to

Decorating: done (yes, all my bookshelves are this pretentious) There are but three shopping days left until Christmas, dear reader(s). You’re probably sitting back smugly upon reading that fact, thinking ‘Well those are three more days than I need, because I am very organised and superior and all my gifts are bought and wrapped elegantly and sitting under my real Christmas tree which is tastefully decorated with charming and whimsical ornaments and soft white twinkling light

My kitchen is as tidy as my photographs are focused. As the day when we board a plane for a fourteen-hour flight with a toddler grows horrifyingly near, I have started to consider what to feed May Blossom on our journey to America. We’re flying with Virgin Australia, who tell me that because she is under two May Blossom will be getting a baby meal, composed of jars of purees. May Blossom, upon starting solid food at the age of five months, ate maybe two or three meals of pure

What this means is that the food bloggers are always writing about the finding delicious new season apples in their farmers’ markets just when the mangoes are starting to appear here, and posting enticing recipes using asparagus and cherries (not together, ew) when I’m dragging the heater out of the shed. The design bloggers are showing me open fires and quilts when I am studiously sweeping sand brought home from the beach down into the cracks between the floorboards instead

B Blueberries: why not allowed to eat unlimited quantities? C Cat: for kissing. D Doors, slamming thereof: why so annoying to parents? E Eggs: specifically omelettes. With cheese. IMMEDIATELY. F Fuck, matter of time before I say this word, given how often I hear it. G Gagging: preferred noise to make while in car seat. Achieved by poking around in mouth with fingers. Frightening to mother. H Help: not required. For anything. Thanks. I Idiot, am not one. See ‘Stick, banana on

In the lead-up to May Blossom’s birthday, the cake preparations continue. Today’s post is an homage to some of the great cakes of my childhood. The first, and in my opinion the greatest, is my first birthday cake. It was made by my mother in the shape of my brown burmese cat, Quickly. It is not, as H assumed before I resized the image so he could see the cat’s face, a cake in the shape of Western Australia. It was served, as all the cakes were, on a massive brown plastic tray

In the lead-up to May Blossom’s birthday, there has been a lot of cake talk. First of all, her Uncle Superchief (my older brother) offered to make it. He suggested it should be in the shape of a rocketship (he is also leading a campaign to restore the suffix -ship to rockets. When and why did they lose that?) with a cat looking out each window (or porthole? Do rocketships have portholes?) I liked the idea, but since May Blossom is my daughter I think I should be the one who b

Just a quick post this morning, because I am supposed to be packing for our long weekend away. We fly this evening, and when we wake up in the morning we will be here: We’ll be staying where the curtains are made of pasta. This photograph was taken on our last visit, when we fed another guest so much pasta with braised lamb and peas, followed by eggs the next morning, followed by these pizzas… #Babies #Food #Pasta #Cooking #Travel

This coming weekend I am co-hosting a baby shower for one of my dearest friends. I love the idea of throwing parties. I start looking at beautifully styled parties on the Internet and planning how I’ll make pompoms out of tissue paper and suspend them above a table laden with colour co-ordinated iced biscuits in the shape of prams, and I’ll make a cute but tasteful sign – that somehow looks both homemade and professional – from circles of cardboard spelling out ‘Welcome Baby!