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A couple of weeks ago I was approached by the kind folks who work for Jamie Oliver and they wanted to know if I’d be interested in creating a soup from a box of fresh veggies that they would have delivered from Aussie Farmer’s Direct. You know this has been an extremely busy week for [...]
What a day! The kind people who bottle CAPI sparkling mineral water invited me for a day out deep-sea fishing today. I had the best time meeting Pitzy Folk and his sidekicks. Chris Arnold from Noosa River Fishing was our captain for today and his assistant Lee kept our hooks baited, took fish off and [...]
I hope everyone had a lovely Mother’s Day. It’s always a tough day for me because my mother died a few years ago and my children are in Washington, DC, Orlando and Atlanta. And… I only have two children. My daughter’s home is in Orlando where her husband is an attorney and her son goes [...]
This is a really busy time for me with one thing going on right after another and my sweet friend Claire from Claire K Creations offered me this gorgeous recipe for coffee and macadamia loaf cake. The Australian Macadamia Society sent Claire a big package of vacuum sealed macadamia nuts and asked her to come [...]
Lots to talk about today. First, you all know Kim Bultman from Cravings of a Lunatic? She has an interview series called Burning Down the Kitchen and today she’s interviewed ME ! I couldn’t be more stoked. It’s usually me writing about other food writers/bloggers but today I’m on the other side of the desk. [...]
Until today I’d never owned a recipe for yellow lentil dal but I do now and it’s good stuff. Before I get into the recipe, I want to tell you what happened yesterday. Many of you know I take Charlie ball chasing on the beach every day at low tide. At low tide the sand [...]
A month or so ago I received a high tea cookbook from the PR company for Dilmah Tea. Along with the book came an invitation to submit a recipe for their contest. The contest is for recipes where Dilmah tea is used in some way, either a recipe or a pairing. I flipped through the [...]
I’ve been wanting to do an “in my kitchen” post for oh, a year now, but so much going on, nothing much IN my kitchen to talk about or I forgot. It’s one of those reasons all the time. Today is different. I got some cool things last weekend. Last week I received my much [...]
Food Tales is a joint venture of the Queensland Writers Centre and the State Library of Queensland where they feature some of Queensland and Australia’s best-loved food writers. They are held in different parts of the state and it’s always about writing and food. On May 11th at the Maleny Community Center’s newly refurbished auditorium, [...]
Can you believe it? Another Yank in Oz who loves to cook. Fran Flint even studied French cuisine at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris so I suspect that puts her 11 notches ahead of me. That’s okay because I’m pretty sure I can learn a trick or two from her. I think we all can. [...]
I know, another story from the olden days but I promise this one is very relevant to our lives today. My grandmother was born in 1879. Yeah, scary. She was over 50 when my mother, her 13th child, was born and although my mother didn’t start having babies early, I’m no spring chicken. When you’re [...]
After looking at the creations that Leah Rosenberg of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has made, I look at my food photos and think, “I think I could’a done better.” Aren’t these dishes clever? Leah was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan but was raised in Canada. She’s a painter, sculptor and cake maker. [...]
I like ketchup. I eat it with a meat pie or on a burger or with my fries. When I was served this tomato chilli jam recently I instantly thought, “give me ketchup.” I’m quite grateful that I didn’t say what I was thinking because it was really good. It was tomatoey but it also [...]
I was at a local business get-together recently and someone asked me who my audience was, expecting me to say, “Women, 30-55, 2.1 children, works full time, etc.” You know the drill with the 30-second elevator speech. At this point the group scene was like a cartoon with about 8 people who’d been in other [...]
Although I’m a dinky di Aussie, I’m also a true blue American. A sweet potato casserole is ALWAYS on my Thanksgiving table (which ends up being Spring here) and if I’m honest it would be on every table I sit down at if it weren’t for that quick but frightening peek of my lard ass [...]
For quite a while now I’ve been following the blog Strands of My Life written by Suzanne Perazzini. She’s a woman of many talents – she’s been a ballet teacher, a teacher of English as a second language, a maths, English and art teacher, a fashion designer and now a food writer. Oh and she [...]
Last year when I interviewed Lorraine Elliott for my Food Writer Friday series, she talked about her memoir (with favourite recipes) that would be coming out later in the year. Well as things happen, it didn’t happen for various reasons but the date has finally been announced. On April 24th, the book will finally be [...]
Can you imagine after living “down south” for many years, moving to Australia where biscuits are cookies? “Oh, you mean scones,” they say. And scones in Australia is pronounced scons. I said it wrong once at a party and, “You say it like an aMERican,” someone said and everyone else nodded. It’s been scons ever [...]
Ever eaten incaberries? Nah, me either until I received an email from the incaberry folks here in Australia. They wanted to know if I’d like some berries to play with. I was honest and told them I’d never heard of them before but I was willing to give it a go. They taste much like [...]
Don’t have the patience to learn the complexities of every type of wine out there? You don’t have to actually be a pro to act like one. Wine tasting is about knowing what you’re looking for, the most common flavor notes and a few keywords that will help you sound more wine master than layman. [...]
I went for a walk over the weekend and along the way I met a really sweet lady. She had beautiful platinum hair, eyes that could see right through you and a smile that was big and bright and a little bit crooked. She stopped to pat Charlie and she began talking to me about [...]
I’m going to bare my soul in these words so read but please don’t judge. Last year, many of you know I began a series called Food Writer Friday where I interviewed food writers / bloggers that I follow and respect. Everyone is busy and keeping up with who sent what and when it would [...]
You’ll probably remember my post about the Noosa Int’l Food and Wine festival that I wrote last year. It was my very first experience up at Noosa which is only 30 minutes from home. In my mind it was a food fair where you get smashed between two tall people, don’t see anything and the [...]
You’ve probably heard a lot of people tell stories about their “Lucille Ball Moment.” It makes me rather sad to say that my moments are more like Ethel Mertz. Not that an Ethel moment is a bad thing to have, it’s just not as glamorous as a Lucy Ricardo moment. Ethel and I have a [...]
This is a tale of two cakes. I had this brilliant idea to take a recipe for an apple coffee cake and put some streusel topping on it. Sounds like a good idea, doesn’t it? Well, what you cannot do is put too many apples and too much streusel and expect it to rise and [...]
I know you probably thought I got lost or distracted but no, I’m still here and I’m still loving every one of my friends like you. I was all set for the Christmas season and it was going to be just John and me so I didn’t stress. There were a few parties both here [...]
There I was with my weekend all planned when I saw a post on Facebook from Freestyle Escape about a cancellation they’d had for their nose to tail cooking class to be held on Sunday from 10 to 3. Freestyle Escape in the hinterland on the Sunshine Coast has a wonderful reputation for great cooking [...]
Oh how I’ve missed you, my friends. Remember when I told you about “the olds” coming for Christmas? Shortly after they returned home, one came back. John’s dad who’s 92 needed a break. Mentally, he’s 100% and can remember things that happened in the 1940s plus he can remember exactly what he had for dinner [...]
I grew up in the far northeast in Maine. The winters were (and probably still are) quite severe and like this year it seems that Spring is a long time coming. I remember that it snowed the night of my junior prom in May. In Maine, nothing is predictable where weather is concerned. I checked [...]
As many of you know, my daughter-in-law Ming lives in Atlanta but she’s originally from Taiwan and moved to the US when she was only 13. It must have been one helluva shock to a 13-year-old to be adopted out of her family, leaving her parents and brother and sister behind. I know it’s tradition [...]
I’ve been looking for the holy grail of hot fudge sauce and I tried a new one yesterday. This one is really for grownups as it’s not really sweet and it’s very chocolaty. We find that ice cream is really sweet and then topped with even sweeter hot fudge makes it tough to eat 3 [...]
My friend Mary Frances from LOVE the Secret Ingredient has shared this wonderful recipe for Silky Chocolate Cake. Seriously now, when you read that recipe name didn’t you want to taste it? All I could think of was silky? cake? I’m in! I’ve been following Mary Frances’ blog for a long time now and her [...]
I’ve always peeled kiwi fruit with a knife — even when I lived in New Zealand and nobody there told me anything different. I found this video on You Tube today and it works. I also have peeled every kiwi fruit I had in the house testing it out. Fruit salad for Sunday lunch, anyone? [...]
Last week John and I were invited up to dinner in Noosa (30 minutes north) by Charlie Louie of HotlySpiced.com. She and her family were enjoying a holiday up there after Christmas. Her husband Carl’s parents live up here and one of his brothers. If you follow Charlie’s blog, you’ll know what a treat it [...]
Most of my recipe are for grownups and recently a young friend asked me why I didn’t put up easy things that kids could make, especially around Christmas and make the recipe simple enough that mums and dads didn’t have to help other than the oven. Well, that gave me food for thought. It’s been [...]
In the mail the other day I received a package of Smooze Fruit Ice. I’d never heard of it before but decided I needed to do something with it that was totally different than sticking the little packets in the freezer. I got a small dish and poured the liquid into it and popped it [...]
You all know I live in Australia and grew up in Maine but I’ve never really talked about my family much other than my son’s southern bbq post. I have a younger brother Jim and an older sister Carole who both live in the States. Carole lives in Rhinebeck, New York, about 90 miles north [...]
Many of you know that we’re working on a new website to get more exposure and send new visitors to our food blog friends who use EasyRecipe or other recipe formatting vehicle. John decided that in addition to more traffic to their newest posts, maybe we should offer a search by a few ingredients as [...]
I spent most of Saturday at the food photography workshop and it was full on, non-stop from the moment I arrived before 9am until it finished in early afternoon. I haven’t enjoyed myself so much in a long time. I was learning to do something I really enjoy – taking photos of food. I was [...]
Happy Thanksgiving Everyone! I should have said happy Thanksgiving to all Americans wherever you are because people around these parts don’t celebrate the Nina, the Pinta or the Santa Maria’s arrival in the New World. Whether you’re in the states wearing Pilgrim hats or in sunny Australia where I am – Thanksgiving is a holiday [...]
On Saturday I’m going to attend my first hands-on food photography workshop. A while back I went to the Maleny Real Food Festival and sat in on Chris Klaas’s food photography presentation. It was so much fun to watch him prepare a dish, plate it, style it and photograph it. I wanted to know more [...]
I’d like to introduce Denise Romeo of We Like to Cook. The Romeos, Denise and her hub Dom, live in Atlanta and share great recipes, cooking methods and local places to eat tasty food. You might remember that my son and his family live in Atlanta so I have a soft spot for Southerners. There’s [...]
Today I get to introduce you to someone I doubt you’ve met before. She’s Bridget Sandorford and she’s a freelance food writer for culinaryschools.org. If you’re a food lover and you’re looking for professional training, I think you’ll find it on that site. I met Bridget online and she seemed so nice that I said, [...]
Amanda McInerny from Lambs Ears and Honey and Jennifer Schmidt from Le Delicieux have created Food Bloggers Australia as a spot on the net where we can meet, network and learn from one another about ways to make our blogs better. I couldn’t be happier about it and I joined within 3 minutes of learning [...]
One of my favorite things to make for breakfast is CADA. The letters stand for coconut, almonds, dates and apple and I always top it off with some yoghurt. I was incredibly lucky to get some Chobani yoghurt with peaches and that’s what I had for breakfast today. It’s healthy – that’s always important, but [...]
