Travels on Planet Earth - A blog
It is a little ridiculous that it took an American living in Paris to point me in the direction of a good lamington in Sydney but that’s what happened. A lamington is a quintessentially Australian cake. In the US, Girl Scouts sell Girl Scout cookies. In Australia, Girl Guides or school kids have “lamington drives” [...]
I am not a stickler for doing everything from scratch but I much prefer to make my own mince pies. I am inevitably disappointed by shop-bought mince pies. The problem is the pastry. Even with the fancy brands, I don’t enjoy the pastry nearly as much as when I make it myself. I also find [...]
I have to admit I had my doubts that we were going to reach our target with Passports with Purpose this year. To raise $80,000 – $30,000 more than last year’s target – seemed way too ambitious given the economic climate. I was quite worried when we only reached the halfway point with less than [...]
That Roulla Yiacoumi is a clever cookie! She is a successful freelance technology journalist in Sydney and now she is also a baking entrepreneur. She has just launched her new business Cookie Constructions and is rushed off her feet with Christmas orders. For Christmas she is selling gingerbread houses in various sizes, in both a classic fairytale construction [...]
Call me a food geek but I really enjoy visiting local farmers markets when I’m on holiday. It feel I am getting to know a place when I see what types of produce are grown and made nearby. It’s also fascinating to see what rules the market goes by. Some markets are citified foodie destinations [...]
Our trip to Bordeaux was well planned in every respect, except one: We flew instead of catching the train and this meant we couldn’t buy wine to take home. It was April 2007 and we were living in London. The airlines had recently imposed the ban on carrying liquids on board the flight. As we [...]
I didn’t like dates when I was a kid. The flavour was okay but the texture bothered me; the way the dry skin lifted and separated from the date flesh reminded me of cockroach wings. I would happily eat my mother’s famous date and sago pudding but I would never eat whole dates. I now [...]
I’m reading a book called Sweet Poison: Why Sugar is Making Us Fat. It’s about how over consumption of sugar is to blame for the obesity epidemic and a whole host of other health problems including heart disease and cancer. The specific culprit is fructose - one of the components of sucrose or common table sugar [...]
My mother-in-law rang my husband on Saturday to deliver this message: “Tell Caitlin the dress was beautiful but not as nice as hers.” I doubt very much that the new Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton as was, would be bothered by this highly biased declaration, but it made me smile. The royal wedding dress WAS [...]
Sometimes I fantasise that my husband and I will move to Hobart in Tasmania and open a macaron shop. I’m sure this will never happen. Even if I could get my husband on board with moving to Hobart, the truth is that I have never made a macaron in my life. And while macarons seem [...]
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