Swing with a view, at Taracoonee, Hawksbury River. Taracoonee is the name of the house, a grand old thing, built in 1913 by our friend Roo's great grandfather. It's kept as a holiday place for the descendants of the original owner, and you can only get to it by boat. There's no electricty, […]

Hello hello!! It's 10pm and I'm halfway through cooking a huge bolognaise and raspberry muffins and choc chip biscuits to take with us to a family holiday house up on the Hawkesbury River, tomorrow morning.  The house belongs to our friend Roo's family, his grandparents I think, and there's no electricity or […]

We lived in Brisbane until recently and our Brisbane house has just listed for sale, which was a big call because we loved it and if we ever move back it would have been nice to go back to it.  But Sydney being Sydney and all that, it seems sensible […]

I've mentioned previously a few of my absolute favourite things: baklava (*sigh*), baked cheesecake, hirsute men named Adam… another is GOATS CHEESE. Oh yes. I remember when I gave birth to my first baby my darling friend Anita brought me into hospital not one but two jars of Meredith Dairy […]

Hello! If you've stumbled across this post doing a google search for My Friend the Chocolate Cake a.k.a David Bridie, you need this site, not mine. I LOVE MFTCC. And I love chocolate cake. Listening to the former while eating the latter is pretty much utopia.  The reason cake is making ANOTHER […]

So I'm still on the kids & fibre thing, no movement there (content warning).  Here is today's attempt to increase the fibre in a two-year-olds' no-fruit-thanks diet. Actually that's not quite true. She ate one bite out of an apple today. And tidily chucked the whole remaining apple into the bin. Later […]

Hello hello! Thanks so much for the lovely feedback I've had over the past week. Blogging is very new for me and I think it takes a little while to find your voice and figure it out. I said to my friend Nicki, also a blogger, that it feels a […]

So, you walk in the door at 6pm with two tired and hungry under 5s and you've got to find dinner in under 10 minutes before All Hell Breaks Loose. Eggs on toast? Henry won't eat eggs on their own. Shame, really. And I'm out of baked beans. I haven't […]

Cake making in Brisbane last December, before we left for Sydney. Baking with small children is slow. Sugar gets spilt. Flour goes on the floor. And you often have to move the mixture out of reach of sticky roving fingers.  But damn it's fun. Small children practice pouring and sieving and measuring […]