Wagga Wagga to Worcestershire & back again
Adam has been away with work this week, so I’ve been taking advantage of the opportunity to cook myself some of my favourite solo suppers.
There has been Tasmanian grown salmon (which Adam can’t stand the smell of), salads full of caramelised roast vegetables, a golden turmeric tinged pilaf and a carbonara that feels oh-so-indulgent…
Have you ever walked into a space, whether it be a restaurant, café or bar, and just instantly fallen in love with the design, aesthetic and look of it?
That happened to me a few months back in South Africa, while Adam and I were visiting the Western Cape’s wine country.
Maison Estate was our first stop of the day and it completely blew me away…
When Adam and I lived in England, we made a real concerted effort to get out and explore the local area as often as we could. When we moved back to Australia we decided it was something we wanted to keep up. So, the other day we jumped in the car and headed south…
Up until the last decade or so the ‘community garden’ was a concept that was a little unheard of. Sure the premise was easy enough to understand but communal garden beds seemed to be the stuff of hippy towns on the coast or progressive towns in far flung places. Now they’re everywhere and to be honest it’s really, really nice.
The other weekend I had the pleasure of spending a few hours in Wagga Wagga’s community garden – a place I’d driven past dozen of times but never found the time to visit…
South Africa’s wine country in the Western Cape is quite simply breath-taking. Not only is the scenery visually stunning but the towns in this beautiful part of the country look like something out a magazine, full of boutique shops and crush-worthy restaurants and sublime wineries. Adam and I enjoyed a blissful few days exploring the area around Stellenbosch and Franschhoek and loved it so much, we’re already thinking about returning…
It’s been an absolute scorcher in south-eastern Australia over the last few days. Wagga Wagga hit 40 + degrees on both Saturday and Sunday. I haven’t experienced that sort of warmth since the summer of 2015/2016, so I really felt it!
It always amazes me that while one part of the world can be experiencing extreme heat, others can be gripped in the midst of extreme cold (east cold of the United States and Canada, I’m thinking of you!) In the days leading up to the weekend my Instagram feed was full of northern hemisphere dwellers preparing for a cozy weekend.
While they were channelling hygge in the traditional sense, I thought I’d go about creating ‘summer hygge’…
Earlier this month Adam and I had a flying visit to London. Up one afternoon, back the next. We’d both been invited to a very special show, at the beautiful Aldwych Theatre…
This year I’m going to be lucky enough to enjoy Christmas with two families, in two countries, in two hemispheres. December the 25th will be spent in Wagga Wagga, NSW, Australia – Adam and I will be in our old home and we’ll share a festive meal with some of his distant family that live in town.
Our English family wanted to celebrate with us though before we flew back to Australia, so on December 3rd we had ‘early Christmas’…
The other day as dinner time drew closer, I began to have a think about what I would make and I drew a bit of blank. It feels like over the last few months Adam and I have got into a bit of food rut – making tried and trusted meals we know we enjoy and can rustle up fairly quickly. We both love getting into the kitchen and trying out new things, but somehow life just got in the way our creativity disappeared.
In a strange twist of fate within a day of me having this realisation, my friend Sonya wrote about food blogs and recipes she’s been enjoying lately, and it got me all enthused about cooking again.
Just like clockwork on the first of September the air had the slightest chill in it to welcome the arrival of autumn. It was hard to believe a few days prior England had recorded its warmest bank holiday weekend in decades. A joyful hurrah to summer.
I love autumn. It’s my favourite season and already a few trees around Malvern have started to turn yellow and red, readying themselves for the cooler months ahead. In those last hazy days of warmth though, Adam and I took my family and his sister Alex to a local fruit farm for a spot of picking…
Wattle and Ash 