Recipes & Resources
Hello! This Blue Mountains Guide has been a lifetime in the making… developed over hundreds of trips from Sydney out west and back again. As Sydney-based kids we’d do this trip most weekends en route to our place near Mudgee or to visit our grandparents who lived in Leura. In my twenties, I’d drive over…
A bag of lemons for two jars of curd, 200g sourdough starter for an envelope of runner bean seeds. A basket of pinecones for bunch of rhubarb, potted tomato plants for twelve homemade bagels or a load of firewood for a few hours pruning. You get the idea. The tradition of swapping of produce, preserves,…
We live in the country and have a kitchen. It’s a cosy, colourful and practical corner of the house but fairly small and lacking somewhat in style, substance, pantry and bench space. But because I write about cooking for a living and spend a good deal of time in country kitchens all over the place,…
I’m going to generalise here and say that country people love entertaining outside and this is why (again generalising); because it’s a rare chance to down tools and actually enjoy the space and scenery we call home, because picnics are kid heaven and because surely we can all agree that fresh air is conducive to…
It was a cool April afternoon, I was a brand new country-dweller chatting about the change of season with a neighbour. All innocence, I told of my excitement about having a fire that night, the year’s first. She shook her head (and may even have tch tch’d – if memory serves). No she said, no…
This column first appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald’s Domain magazine. Remember Baby Boom, that 1987 rom-com with Diane Keaton and Sam Shepard? It is, I think, the best tree change story ever. Here’s my snap synopsis – a Manhattan-based workaholic adopts a baby, gives up the city life and buys a picture perfect yellow…
Quince chutney;This column first appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald’s Domain magazine. A small country show is the best of country life packaged up into one weekend. From the working bees that ensure their show ground pavilions are always spick and span, to the army of dining hall cooks producing hundreds of hot meals with…
This column first appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald’s Domain magazine. Generosity and hospitality are common themes in country cooking. And maybe its because I didn’t grow up in this environment, but I’m always amazed by the speed with which food is produced as soon as someone looks hungry in a country kitchen. A sandwich,…
This column first appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald’s Domain magazine. Twelve years ago I made the tree change from Sydney’s inner city to Orange’s outer reaches. From apartment living – crowded trains, coffee on every corner and a drawer full of home delivery menus – I now found myself newly married, living on a…
The days between Christmas and New Years are always good ones. We fall into a funny kind of lazy limbo when you know the date but not the day of the week, you get to sleep in then stay in bed with tea and new Christmas books, a trip to the town pool is the…
It’s been a little quiet here lately – and I just wanted to jump in and explain why. Some of you may have heard that I’m writing a new cookbook (yay!). It will be published in 2019 by Murdoch Books and I’m in absolute heaven writing, recipe testing and shooting my socks off to meet…
food writer and farmer (or at
least married to one). Read More…
