30 days and cheese making

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30 days into the new year I slipped on my harness and crawled back to work. If it wasn’t for the boundless energy and enthusiasm of the people I was working with it would have been a grim day.  Aside from the burning desire to find a quiet corner and take a nap the first [...]

Daily bread

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This year I’ve decided to hone my culinary skills and will be tackling one foodstuff a month.  I’ve started the year with one of my favourite foods, I’ve been on a bread making mission.  I’m already a dab hand making soda bread and beer bread which requires no yeast and can be slapped in the [...]

Strawberries and Cream

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Living life as an expat upside down plays havoc with your senses, most notably because seasons back to front .  Take strawberries for example.  To a Brit strawberries are synonymous with tennis at Wimbledon in June. From my teens to my thirties, I was an avid tennis fan glued to the sofa for a fortnight [...]

This is the life

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There’s been a loud ticking sound around the place in the last week.  No, it’s not the cicadas arriving early but the sound of jobs being ticked off the list.  Well, I confess, it’s actually writing being smudged off the chalk board but I like the notion of a tick which is a cleaner and [...]

Gooseberry goodness

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With a taste that can be as sharp as their thorns gooseberries are not to everyone’s liking. I love the  crisp bite and piquant flavour that livens the palette whether you eat them straight from the bush or wrap them in a luxurious blanket of cream and sugar. Last year the birds raided our pickings [...]

Transitions

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I don’t know about you but I’m feeling a little short changed by 2011.  It’s been a good year in so many ways but it has passed in a flash and I don’t feel I’m done with it yet. But that’s time for you, running away at its own pace. As we end 2011 under a large [...]

Croissants: the ultimate baking marathon

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Some time ago ham and cheese croissants became a Christmas Breakfast tradition. For years I used croissant pastry you could buy from the supermarket fridge and on the occasions that we couldn’t get hold of the dough we’d fill shop bought croissants but they were never as good as the freshly baked.   Last year I [...]

Indulgence

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Christmas is the one time in the year where indulgence is encouraged.  Time to treat yourself and others.  To give thanks and celebrate.  To offer extra kindness to others and give generously.  But against the backdrop of fun and festivities life goes on with other indulgences that bring misery, sadness and grief. Yesterday Christchurch was [...]

The decadence of afternoon tea

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I always find it a pleasure to find working relationships that just click. The sorts of working relationships that move swiftly from dealing with business to caring deeply about the work that you do and the people you work with.  I celebrated this fact yesterday with one of my biggest and most longstanding clients by [...]

Sweet and golden – the craze for Seville Marmalade

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Despite reports earlier this year of the decline of marmalade, news of marmalade making spread across my Twitter Feed a few weeks ago.  After someone had posted news of their marmalade making efforts others followed suit and just like a Mexican wave all of a sudden there was a crescendo of interest in where people were [...]