Big change is happening in my life at the moment. I have returned to full time work for the first time since my son was born nearly nine years ago now. Nine years. The time it has taken to see two children off to school and to restore my professional life to the point where I am again appropriately employable. I love my job with the Southern Otway Landcare Network. In it I am working to serve the needs of the community, not a corporate machine. I am advocating for the needs of people at the grass roots level, aiming at the ambitious goal of enhancing and restoring the productive capacity and biodiversity of this beautiful stretch of country surrounded by wild ocean and National Park. My work makes me happy.

My husband, on the other hand, is not currently working. The reason for this is because he is going to be building us a house. A house built on a small property on which two generations of my family currently live. It will be a modest but undoubtedly lovely home and 4 generations of us will eventually live together. This is normal for me. This is how I was raised and how I want my kids to be raised.

We hope that house will run as much as possible on renewable energies and expect that a significant portion of the cost of the build will go towards covering it with solar panels. The new house will have a garden, a big one. Perhaps not big enough for livestock but certainly sufficient to supply 8 people with fruit and vegetables. We already have a chicken house. I think we built this as a surrogate for the actual house as we waited torturous months for planning permission. In it we have 6 hens, 1 rooster and 2 Indian Runner ducks. Beautiful creatures all and two of them already providing eggs. This one structure has generated a landslide of activity: the creation of a compost heap, the installation of ponds to grow duck weed, the planned installation of raised garden beds. My husband is deeply inspired by the emerging garden and a very great pleasure this is to see.

I could wax lyrical about minimising our footprint and living lightly on the Earth, communing with nature etc. All this is well and good and to some extent true, however we find our primary motivation arises from an increasingly overwhelming desire to stick it to the man. To stick it to the man who almost bankrupts us with the purchase price of his electricity each winter. To stick it to the man who modifies our crops and owns the intellectual property of our food resource. To stick it to the man who encourages us to atomise into tiny isolated nuclear family resource consuming units. To stick it to the man who wants to make us a wage slaves to corporate need. To stick it to the man who floods us with toxins and chemicals and drugs and processed horrors that will surely kill our life’s spark.

Are you getting the picture? We will no longer comply. We will feed and power ourselves to the best of our ability. My husband will write and grow food and I will work within and for my community. We will look after our own elderly and our own young. Most weekends now my family come together to prepare for this transition. We work hard and practice the skill of negotiating multiple needs. In the middle of this work we come together for food, a small act that seems hugely ancient and symbolic, but also completely simple. Today we sat down to a plate of fried local garfish dressed in a simple garlic lemon sauce swimming with nasturtium pods I had foraged at work and cured in salt. We shared jugs of iced elderflower cordial (a gift from a friend) and finished off with bowls of my own dark chocolate sorbet. If that is not the good life, nothing is.

Garfish with lemon and nasturtium butter

• 1/2 kg of garfish or sardines, flattened along the spines if garfish
• 3 cloves minced garlic
• Dollop of olive oil
• Good knob of butter
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 1 tablespoon of cured or brined nasturtium pods (replace with capers if unavailable) finely chopped
• Couple of sprigs of thyme, finely chopped
• Salt and pepper

Heat the oil in a medium hot pan, throw in the garlic. Throw the gars in spine first and press down to flatten out (a local fisherman told me this dissolves the fine bones). Fry the gars or sardines on both sides until cooked and then remove from the pan. Throw in the butter, lemon juice, pods and herbs and toss until combined. Serve sauce over the fish and season with a good grind of salt and pepper.

Recently a friend asked the following question: what to cook for a man who was invited to dinner. Aforementioned dinner was explicitly pitched as being not-a-date, however my friend was hoping that a not-a-date dinner would provide an opportunity to demonstrate that she is in fact highly date-able (and by the way, she is). Her quandary highlights a basic human truth that will outrage many in this post-feminist era: men get turned on by good food and therefore if you can cook a good meal for a man then the chances are reasonably high that he will be at least a little bit turned on by you.

(Disclaimer: I make the above comment as a reflection of my experiences as heterosexual woman who can cook. I imagine the condition is universal and can be applied to any combination of human relationships.)

The quandary is a difficult one and it reminds me of a scene in the movie High Fidelity when the protagonist is talking about the rules of making a mixed tape. You want to go out strong, but you don’t want to blow your wad too early because on the second track you’re going to need to take it up a notch. And then you’re going to need to cool it off a little, but not too much. When cooking a meal to impress romantically, you need to deliver something impressive but not so grandiose that you look desperate to impress. It needs to hook him in and leave him wanting more. And you need to be able to exceed expectations on the second time out.

What might such a dish be? Well it’s obviously a highly personal thing and there’s no hard and fast rules. You need to cook in your comfort zone. Your culinary comfort zone is the food you keep coming back to, the recipes and flavours that you understand. Cook within your zone and no matter what you make it will be tasty and, more importantly, it will come from inside you. And for those of you in established relationships, do not underestimate the power of food to kindle someone’s passion. The way to a man’s heart is not through his stomach: it’s through his lips, tongue, taste buds and loins. Food brings pleasure, and to provide pure pleasure to a person is the most wonderful thing you can do for your relationship.

I have been in a relationship for more than 20 years and I have absolutely no doubt that food has been an important romantic ally. I know damn well what I’m doing when I plate up certain foods and I know what effect it will have. I use it to regular advantage. As my friend pointed out, I evidently have some sort of past life association with South East Asia which gives me the ability to bang out completely bitching dishes from the region. With a husband who has Chinese Malaysian heritage, this can only be beneficial. And so I offer up to you now one of the most currently powerful weapons in my romantic arsenal: beef rendang. May you use it wisely and well.

Beef Rendang

• 1 litre coconut milk
• 1 1/2 tsps salt
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1/2 cup of kerisik (dessicated coconut toasted until dark golden and then pounded into a rough paste)
• 2 stems of lemon grass, white parts only, bruised
• I small tbsp tamarind purée
• 2 kaffir lime leaves
• 600 gms – 1 kg chuck steak, cut into a large dice

For the curry paste

• 12 dried chillies, roughly chopped and soaked to soften
• 8 shallots, chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, chopped
• 3 cm knob of galangal, chopped or minced
• 2 cm knob of ginger, chopped or minced
• 2 cm knob of fresh turmeric, chopped, or 1/2 teaspoon dried turmeric.

Make the curry paste by processing the ingredients in a spice grinder until finely ground. Add some liquid if needed to keep the blades turning. In a large wok or saucepan, place the paste, coconut milk, kerisik, salt, sugar, lime leaves, lemon grass and tamarind. Bring it slowly to the boil – it’s important to stir it constantly to stop it from curdling. When it’s boiled, add the meat and simmer uncovered for about an hour. Stir it occasionally from here on in. Rendang is a dry curry so you’re waiting for the liquid to evaporate and the oil to rise to the top. Once this has happened, you lightly fry the curry until those lovely pieces of meat are coated with a thick, dry sauce. The whole process should take about an hour and a half and result in a firm but tender and buttery meat curry. Serve with rice or roti. You’ll never be lonely again…

Notes: gluten free, dairy free, low GI

The hardest part of ditching addictions and bad habits is saying goodbye to those you love. In the last year I have bid a slow adieu to a number of passions and pleasures. Some of these goodbyes have been easy: chips, chocolate bars, soft drinks and their ilk have always been marginal acquaintances at best. I would now consume such things once every few months, and never with any real pleasure. It’s the epicurean equivalent of hanging out with right wing extremists: slightly soiling, depressing and void of all values beyond rank self interest. Others are a bit harder. Deep fried treats remain an itch that must sometimes be scratched: spring rolls, sesame prawns, honey chicken, pakoras, samosas. Fortunately in my tiny town of 1200 souls at the foothills of the forest and the edge of the Southern Ocean such things are hard to come by. My diet and I have an open arrangement that such treats when I’m on the road are understandable. Indiscretions are to be forgiven and moved on from quickly.

But there are some things that have generated a real sense of loss. The eradication of gluten has deprived me of my regular routine of making bread. I never personally ate the bread as the regular consumption of cheap carbs is now firmly a thing of my past, but the pleasure I got from kneading and proving the dough was immense. Making bread by hand is a gorgeously tactile experience and the experience of removing a crusty, yeasty loaf from the oven to present to awe inspired little faces is something I still miss. It has also been difficult to say goodbye to baking proper cakes. By proper cakes I mean the cakes of my grandmother and of the Country Women’s Association. Cakes of white flour and refined sugar. I had never been a baker until recently and just I was beginning to master these skills I decided I needed to say goodbye.

I still desperately miss the process of making these things, but I find that I increasingly do not miss flour and sugar. Apart from brown sugar for my husband’s coffee, I have not purchased any refined sugar in months. And I find now that I have lost the taste for it. The sweetness of things made with regular sugar is too much, no longer enjoyable. Refined sugars, along with refined flours, have actively become destroyers of the real flavour of things. Without them you experience the joys of nuts, coconut, spices, maple syrup, raw chocolate and all manner of fine and flavoursome things. Without them you become aware of the crazy mental and physical rollercoaster of high GI nutrient free foods.

The goodbyes have been hard, yes, but I don’t miss those who have departed – I’m pleased to be off the rollercoaster. I’m pleased to have lost nearly 12 kg, pleased to be healthier, pleased to feel like I am no longer longer on a diet but rather in a new place altogether. As I write this post, my five year old is sitting at the table with me studding an orange with whole cloves to give as Christmas presents. The smell is indescribably good and causes my spirit to soar with memories of childhood Christmases. In the fridge is a festive treat of such incredible deliciousness that I am reminded of how easy it really is to say goodbye to bad habits. It’s a fudge that contains only goodness and melts across your tongue like the best love, sex and bliss. I think that now the goodbyes are finally over and the hellos have begun.

Christmas chocolate fudge

This version contains a standard mixed peel which contains sugar. It could easily be replaced with any dried fruit or nuts of your choice. Alcohol soaked currants would be delicious, as would dried strawberries, even just plain old orange zest. Or you could omit entirely.

• 1/2 cup virgin cold pressed coconut oil
• 1/2 cup cashew butter
• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 2 tablespoons raw chocolate powder
• 2 tablespoons mixed peel, blended until very finely minced
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cardamon (I would have used allspice but I didn’t have any to hand)

Place all ingredients in a bowl and beat with an electric mixer until smooth. Stir the mixed peel through and pour into a small square mold. I used a plastic sandwich box for this – it was the perfect size. Put in the fridge for a few hours until hard and then cut into squares. This MUST be kept in the fridge or it will turn to slurry and you’ll be forced to drink it rather than eat it. Sounds awful…

Early in the morning one day last week I received a phone call from a certain restauranteur, let’s call him Steve (which would be wholly appropriate because this is in fact his name). Steve had a beast I might be interested in, a wagyu Black Angus from his own personal specialty herd that slowly marinades in salt against million dollar views of the Southern Ocean outside Apollo Bay. The beast, he explained, had lived a full and good life and was now to be the subject of a bespoke slaughter job. Steve was trialling the idea of directly marketing his beef to local people with a passion for fine local produce and he wanted to know if I might be interested.

I put in an order for 3kg of the cheap cuts (or “the tasty bits”as Steve described them) that I have been cooking with recently and today I was invited into the kitchens of his restaurant La Bimba to examine the produce. Money was exchanged, the deal finalised. Two kilos of chuck and one of topside are now in my possession. So thank you, young Angus for providing us with your flesh. And thank you Steve for growing this animal slowly and lovingly just 15 minutes down the road. Thank you for your commitment to the wellbeing of this animal and your respect for its life’s worth.

Previous adventures at Steve’s business, Otway Harvest, are available for your reading pleasure.

If you want to pretend these are kinda, sorta good for you then go right ahead. Certainly they contain no gluten, no dairy and no refined sugar. If you are doing the Paleo thing, these are probably OK, however you should consider going on a diet with a less ridiculous name. The notion of stone age Homo sapiens sitting down to whole egg cupcakes dressed with delicate nut butters is clearly absurd. Come back to me when you’ve killed an aurochs, skinned it with a sharp stone and roasted it over the fire with a couple of lizards and some assorted starchy tubers. If you must stick with such an enormous misnomer, please consider spelling it properly: it’s Palaeolithic, unless you’re American and therefore apparently incapable of managing the additional vowel.

But best not to get me started on that, so without further ado, here are two quite delicious and easy to make treats.

Cherry Ripes

My great discovery recently has been coconut oil. A quick google search would suggest that coconut oil possesses a myriad of health benefits. Whatever. I just enjoying snarfing spoonfuls of it from the jar.

• 1 1/2 cups pitted tinned cherries, well drained
• 10 macadamia nuts
• 1 1/2 cups shredded or desiccated cocounut
• 1 cup hazlenut or almond meal
• 2 tbsp maple syrup
• 2 tbsp coconut oil, melted
• Around 300gms dark chocolate (I used the wonderful Green and Blacks 85%, ostensibly because it’s gluten and dairy free but given my daughter won’t eat these, I honestly only use it because it’s delicious)
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence

Blend the cherries and macadamia nuts to a rough paste and then transfer to a bowl. Mix in the nut meal, maple syrup and coconut oil, stir well and chill. After the mixture has chilled down, melt the chocolate and stir the vanilla essence through. You can shape the cherry ripe mixture however you like – I quite fancy them as little bars – however you won’t be able to make the shapes too big. Dredge the mix in chocolate and allow to harden.

I have no idea how many this will make – I was too busy eating to concentrate. You may find you have some mixture left over.

Orange and almond creams

I am very pleased with this recipe, which is pretty much wholly originally conceived and just terribly deliciously overflowing with chocolate, orange and marzipan flavours.

• 1/2 cup almond meal
• 1/2 cup fine desiccated coconut
• Finely grated zest of 2 oranges
• 2 tbsp melted coconut oil
• 4 tsps orange blossom honey
• Raw chocolate powder

Combine all ingredients other than the chocolate in a spice grinder or small blender until a smooth paste and chill. Shape the chilled mixture however you like and gently toss in the chocolate powder. Makes about 12.

(gluten free, dairy free recipe)

It should by now be obvious to regular readers of this blog that I am a great advocate of eating with awareness. For me this involves commitments to the following principles whenever possible: local, organic, ethical. And if I’m going to be honest with you, it’s a complete pain in the arse most of the time. Shopping is difficult given most commonly available foods fit approximately none of the above criteria. Considerble willpower is required to not just cram tidbits of desirable rubbish into your trolley, subsequently to be crammed into your mouth. Cooking takes up quite a lot of time and although I love it, there are many times as a working mother I would like NOT to have to walk in the door at the end of the day and spend the next four hours cooking and cleaning. So you know what? I’m not floating around in a cloud of self-righteous glory blissfully procuring whole foods that my rosy cheeked little angels consume with trills of delight. I’m working damn hard at doing the right thing by the environment and the global community in which I live, and even harder at doing right by my kids. Because I’m their mum and the choices I make impact directly on them.

You may have noticed a slightly tetchy tone to this post. This is because I am a little aggravated at the moment. I recently consulted with a beautiful naturopath about my daughter Heide, who has been experiencing some health and behavioral problems that have frankly been breaking my heart. To cut a long story short, it was suggested that I trial Heide on a period of gluten and dairy free eating for a while. My aggravated response to this advice arises from a number of factors. First of all, the consultation made me aware of some things I had really been doing wrong in relation to her diet. Now I don’t want to hear any defensive statements about mothers bearing too much guilt over their children’s health and behavior etc etc. It’s not about guilt, it’s about taking responsibility and as parents we are absolutely responsible for what we feed our children. You can’t raise a child on bread (even if it is homemade) and milk (no matter how raw and organic it may be). Secondly, I now have to wind back the results of my laziness and change the dietary habits of a strong willed 5 year old girl. And last, but by no means least, my entire pattern of procuring and preparing food has had to change and I feel like a stranger in a foreign land. For the first time in my life I am having to cook to a restricted diet.

I don’t want to do this. I am struggling to find a new routine to my culinary life. I haven’t yet got my head around the suite of things I can buy that are both gluten and dairy free, and the fact that I can’t send any nuts to school adds a whole other layer of complexity. I am pissed at the (few) people who have unhelpfully suggested this whole thing is simply a fad but deeply grateful to all the folk who have come forward to share recipes, ideas and general support. I received a recipe book in the mail from a friend today, a small gesture that almost had me weeping with gratitude. Food is a core component of my identity and to experience such a fundamental shift is a challenge. Adaptation has been required. I don’t know if these changes will be permanent or not, although I suspect some dietary patterns will require long term modification. I do know that I have a different child in my house these days: an increasingly rosy-cheeked, well rested and vibrant little girl. And you know what? I’ll happily take responsibility for that, too.

Gluten free / dairy free chocolate crepes with coconut ice cream

(For the crepes):

• 1 cup of all purpose gluten free flour
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• Approximately 1 cup of almond milk
• 1 tbsp maple syrup
• 1 tbsp cocoa

Whisk all the ingredients well. I gather not all gluten free flours are created equal – the one I used was very lumpy and it took quite a bit of whisking and resting to get the lumps out. Lightly grease a non stick pan with oil (I used coconut oil which I’m quickly becoming addicted to) and pour in about quarter of a cup of mix. Swirl the mixture around the pan to achieve delicious crepeyness and cook until set on the bottom. Flip very gently – the lack of gluten makes them less elastic of course – and finishing cooking. Roll the crepes with coconut ice cream and sliced strawberries.

(For the ice cream)

• 5 egg yolks
• 3/4 cup of white sugar
• 2 tins of coconut milk
• 1/2 cup dessicated coconut (optional)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Rig up a large bowl over a pan of simmering water. You need to add the egg yolks and sugar and get whisking them over gentle heat quickly before the sugar cooks the yolks. Whisk for about 5 minutes until thick, pale and custard like. Remove from heat and whisk in the remaining ingredients. Churn in an ice cream maker according to manufacturers instructions. This makes quite a hard, icy ice cream. You might want to remove it from the fridge just prior to serving.

Scene 1:

A restaurant in Singapore in the bowels of the Paragon Shopping Centre, Orchard Road. High backed wooden chairs, lattice screens, large pottery vases. We have gone out to dinner with my husband’s uncle, an entirely charming and urbane Singapore professional. On the table before us is a Singapore classic: chicken rice. This is not the standard chicken rice that can be purchased almost anywhere in Singapore for a handful of dollars. This is something else altogether. The chicken is jelly-like in its silky smoothness and the way it slithers down the throat is more reminiscent of oysters than fowl. Served with soft cucumbers and a pungent sauce, it makes me ashamed of my own feeble attempts at this dish.

The entire experience  is outrageously sensual, but not enough to distract from the palpable tension that starts emanating from my husband about two thirds of the way through the meal. His eyes are glancing around the restaurant, noting the position of the waiters and the location of the nearest exits. His hands twitch nervously to his jeans pocket and he is observing The Uncle’s every move. He is preparing for the argument that inevitably erupts when we eat with his Chinese relatives, in which wallets are drawn at 20 paces and the men compete for the right to pay the bill. There are evidently rules of engagement to this argument (these seem to relate to an individual’s generational position, family status etc) but my husband was not raised among his Chinese family and so we do not know them.

And so, lacking the appropriate cultural training, my husband prepares: positioning his wallet, plotting intercept paths and seeking tactical advantage. The Uncle is apparently oblivious. The meal draws to a close. Am I imagining it, or is sweat beading on my man’s brow? As we move nonchalantly towards the cashier, he has his wallet in his hand, fingers right on the credit card. Ridiculously, I feel both nervous and strangely excited. He makes it to the cashier first and leans forward. He can taste victory. Then, as if from nowhere, The Uncle extracts his wallet from his jacket breast pocket and removes his credit card in a single fluid motion.  The transaction is made and the bill paid. Like a sword drawn silently from its sheath, the killing blow was made before we ever saw it coming.  My husband, the swordsman, the martial artist, has suffered comprehensive defeat. While The Uncle undertakes the fiscal equivalent of chiburi, our Visa has not yet seen the light of day.

Scene two:

My family sits around the kitchen table. In front of us is a pork belly, a beautiful piece of organic local meat. It is undoubtedly the best pork belly I have ever served. Double cooked, completely perfect crackling, tender and moist meat, the fat rendered into a delicious gel. It awaits only the addition of the thick and delicious mandarin infused sauce. My son, whose favourite food is Chinese style pork in practically any form is in a state of rapture. My husband, usually highly generous with his children at mealtimes, is leaning possessively towards the plate.  Each time someone makes a move for the pork I can see him calculating portion sizes and allocations around a complex algorithm of growing needs, appetite size and seniority.

The son has been gazing at the plate for some time and eventually makes his move. He asks if he can take an extra bit of crackling, just a little bit, because its so delicious. His father’s hand stops en route to his mouth and his dark eyes narrow. He looks at the boy, for whom he would do practically anything, and his resolves hardens as the algorithm plays out. The answer is no. Uncomplaining in defeat, the boy’s shoulders slump ever so slightly. One day his time will come.

Double-cooked pork belly with mandarin infused sauce

This is an extremely Chinese dish, so its best served with steamed rice and and stir fried greens. Please try to refrain from doing some weird fusion thing with it, it wouldn’t be right.

• 1 pork belly (approx 1kg)
• Salt
• Vegetable oil
• 2 onions, sliced
• 8 whole star anise
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 6 cloves
• 1/2 cup of brown sugar
• 1 cup of chicken stock
• 1/3 cup red wine vinegar
• 2 tbsp light soy sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
• 2 cloves minced garlic
• Peel of one mandarin

Heat the oven to 250C. Score the skin of the belly (you MUST have a sharp knife for this) and rub with the oil and salt. Place the sliced  onions in a deep roasting dish with the cloves, 6 of the star anise and a cinnamon stick. The dish will need to be big enough that you can sit a rack over the onions. Place the belly skin side up on the rack and place in the dish. Gently pour in a couple of cups of water, being careful not to splash the skin of the pork.

Roast at 250 for half an hour before dropping the oven down to about 150C and cooking the pork for additional 2 hours. Top the pan up with more water if needed. Remove the pan from the oven and set the whole lot aside – do not cover until the meat has cooled. You can now leave the pork alone until an hour before dinner time, at which point return it to the oven and cook for another hour at 150C. Turn the oven up to 220C for the last 10 minutes to give the skin a final push towards crispy deliciousness. When its out of the oven, let it stand for 10 minutes before cutting into 1cm slices. Serve with the mandarin infused sauce, as follows:

To make the sauce, simply simmer the remaining spices, sugar, stock, vinegar, sugar, garlic, soy sauce, sesame oil  and mandarin skin until it turns thick and syrupy. Before serving, stir some of the pan juices through the sauce and strain the whole lot.

My family dispersed across the globe in June. Our diaspora was spearheaded by my husband who, having enrolled in a degree in professional and creative writing last year, found himself surprised with the offer to go on a government funded study tour of Norway, Sweden and Denmark to study fairy tales and Scandinavian noir. I imagine the Germans have some long composite word to describe the smile you get on your face when you are trying to demonstrate love and support whilst simultaneously clubbing internal Cthonic green-eyed monsters to death. I don’t know the word, but I’m sure you can imagine.

I was informed by my beloved that part of the assessment would involve keeping a daily journal and that this exercise could profitably be undertaken while engaging in the Swedish tradition of fika. This fine word is apparently both a noun and a verb and means coffee and cake. Apparently if you haven’t done fika you haven’t done Sweden. Required. Almost part of the assessment. Integral to the sense of genius loci. Etc. So fika it would be, and not just any fika: federally funded fika.

Well I had government funding, too. Admittedly not the kind of government funding that sends you to Sweden to fika. More like the kind of government funding that arises from reluctantly accepting contracts that you spent the better part of a year trying not to get talked into doing because,well, you’ve read Kafka and you know that bureacracy is really like that. However, my funding got the kids and I to Bali. So while Pete fikaed, I had babi guling and nasi campur and bebek. I had arak cocktails and lay on windswept volcanic beaches and watched Lombok appear on the horizon at dawn. Not fika, but not half bad.

I have had bloggers block since we have been reunited but tonight it disappeared. It disappeared upon creation of a cake whose unifying qualities dawned on me as its gorgeous smell wafted from the oven. Cake in the fika tradition but scented with spoils from my own journey. An orange and coconut cake made from sugar infused with Balinese vanilla beans and ground cardamon. The recent history of my husband and I joined together in one delicious morsel. Behind me are lined up other spoils of our journey: vanilla vodka, Cointreau and spiced rum. Guess what we’ll be doing once this blog is posted and the kids are in bed?

Orange and cardamon tea cake

• 65g butter, softened
• 1/2 cup of vanilla sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla essence
• 1 egg
• 1 1/4 cups SR Flour
• 1/3 cup of milk
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cardamon
• Finely grated zest of one orange
• Juice of half an orange
• 1/2 cup of desiccated coconut
• 10g butter, extra, melted
• More vanilla sugar, mixed with a bit of extra cardamon

Preheat the oven to 180 and butter and line a round cake tin. Cream the butter, sugar, vanilla essence and egg until combined (a minute or two). Add half a cup of flour and half the milk and mix till combined. Add another half cup of flour and the remaing milk and mix again. Add the orange zest, juice, remaining flour and coconut and mix. Pour the batter into the tin and smooth the surface. Place in the oven for 20 – 30 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Cool in the tin for 5 mins before turning out onto a cake rack. Brush the top with butter and sprinkle with the combined sugar and cardamon.

Food has been getting political in our house recently. It started when our 7 year old son took his distress at seeing images of homeless and terrified Orangutans in Indonesian forests and decided to make our household palm oil free. This has been no simple task. An incredible 10% of supermarket products contain this cheap oil, demand for which is driving the destruction of Orangutan habitat in south east Asia and bringing this dear creature to the very edge of extinction. These products include the usual suspects – most processed snack foods from lollies to dry biscuits contain palm oil and the kids have quite happily banned all their favourite treat foods. Some are more surprising, such as the bulk of peanut butters in which the high value peanut oil is extracted and replaced with the cheaper palm oil. And good luck finding supermarket toothpastes, soaps and moisturisers without this ingredient.

My childrens’ dedication inspired to me to dig out the Ethical Supermarket Shopping book that Santa gave me for Christmas. Its a challenging read. The booklet notes boycott calls on Nestle, whose aggressive marketing of baby formula in the third world has been linked to infants deaths, a fact which has not gone un-noticed by the World Health Organisation. Then there is their child labour and workers rights records. Coca-Cola Amatil? Murder, kidnapping and torture of union leaders at their Colombian plants. Groundwater and soil pollution and exposure to toxic waste in India. L’Oreal and Proctor and Gamble continue inhumane and lethal animal experimentation. Even more unhappily, L’Oreal is 26% owned by Nestle and now owns the Body Shop. Major criticisms also for Kelloggs, Kraft, Mars, PepsiCo, Revlon and a host of others.

My initial revisiting of this booklet was paralysing. How can you make ethical choices when so much of what we find on Supermarket shelves contributes to pollution, slavery, environmental vandalism and more? I imagined that we would have to slowly compile a list of things its OK to buy, as the list of unethical items was just too huge. Then it dawned on me: there is a very clear correlation between what is good for your body and what is good for the environment and global community we all call home. The take home message is that cheap, processed foods with long ingredient lists are just not good for anybody.

I don’t really like to preach, but sometimes it seems necessary and no matter how you look at it comes down to this: inserting soft drinks and chips and bottled sauces and chocolate bars into your body is bad for you. We all know this. It gives you cancer and diabetes and it makes you fat and it inflames your arteries and slowly poisons you. If you’re a parent, it models this to your children, and as surely as drinking and drugs you are teaching them to be sick. Now lots of people seem to like to revel in this kind of behavior these days: It’s the food version of the general rolling around in its own abundance that the Western world likes to do. Whilst you could argue that it might be OK to do this kind of thing to yourself, I wonder how many people stop to consider the impact their choices are having on other people. When you buy a bottle of coke, you are essentially casting a vote for Coca Cola Amatil and saying “my desire for this product right now is more important than access to clean drinking water for people in India”. So it’s pretty simple – every single time you make a choice about what to put in your mouth you are casting a vote about what is acceptable behaviour in the arena of food politics.

After much agonising over ingredient lists and endless internet research, I came to the following conclusion: if its healthy for me, odds are its OK for everyone else. It’s not a perfect match I know and granted my “healthy” standard is probably set higher than it needs to be but its a start. Fruit and veg, mostly organic and / or local, ethically sourced meat, whole foods, simple fats, small producers, minimal packaging. So we’re stumbling along, my family and I, very imperfectly trying to change our food habits. The best thing is, though, that we’re having a a whole heap of fun doing it. The kids are profoundly inspired by their ability to take positive action – all they have to do is not choose the pizza shapes. Today we made toasted museli (because Uncle Tobys isn’t all that great either and the cereal munchers in the household are struggling for an alternative). The kids loved it – stirring big bowls of organic oats with cold extracted honey from small producer at the St Andrews market, fragrant with cranberries and mixed peel and vanilla. They know its story, they know why we’re eating it. Its real, its delicious and it minimises harm.

Cranberry and orange museli

The only part of this recipe you need to stick to is the oats, honey and oil and the method. Otherwise, its all about the flavours you personally like.

• 500gm rolled oats
• 1/2 cup dried cranberries
• 1/2 cup mixed peel
• 1/2 cup shredded coconut
• 1/2 cup slivered almonds
• 1/4 cup canola oil
• 1/2 cup honey
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 160 celcius. Mix all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Heat the honey and oil to make the honey liquid. Add the vanilla extract to the honey and oil. Stir the combined liquids through the dry ingredients until well mixed. Cover a couple of baking trays with baking paper and spread the museli mix across the two trays in a thin layer. Place in the oven and cook for about half an hour until golden. You will need to stir it regularly to stop it from burning. Remove from oven and allow to cool completely before storing in an airtight container.

When I was about 32 weeks pregnant with our first child, we made the decision to have a homebirth. Alex’s conception had been accidental and at 5 weeks in our local GP told us we had better take a tour of the local hospitals pronto and make our decision quickly. We had no idea what we were doing and were quickly sucked into the vortex of obstetric processing, testing and generally over-medicalised fear mongering that characterises publicly funded maternity care in Australia. I remain ever grateful to the friend who suggested that we opt out of hospital ante-natal classes and instead attend an intensive weekend session by birth educator Rhea Dempsey, the result of which was the decision to pursue homebirth. Shortly before my due date we went to collect a birth pool that we were renting from a couple who made such things. These lovely people helped us strap the pool to the roof of our tiny car, gave us a delicious fish pie for an easy meal after the birth and informed us that people who start with home birthing tend to end up in home schooling.

The home schooling thing hasn’t happened (although I can’t deny I’ve thought hard about it) but I often think about this comment becuase that woman sure was on to something. I am a powerful advocate of birthing rights, which are currently under sustained and pernicious attack in this country. Its not just that I am concerned by the medicalisation of the natural (if entirely epic) journey of pregnacy and birth. It’s that when a woman truly stands in the power of her own birth, however she births, she stands in the power of motherhood. Women who have stood in the power of homebirth are questioners of authority. They tend to trust themselves and their children. They don’t fret about feeding schedules or sleeping patterns, or the minuteae of developmental milestones. They do not entrust their understanding of their child to the experts. They strap that little mammal to their milky breasts and get on with their lives being with their children.

Some weeks ago I came across a business that will, for some undisclosed amount of money, send someone into your kitchen and teach your child to cook. I find this unspeakably sad. Cooking with your child is not something that should be farmed out to a suitably qualified professional. Cooking is not a technical skill, it is a labour of love. It is you spending time with your child, licking the beaters, peeling carrots and opening the oven door way more often than you should. It is being in front of the oven on a rainy day, making messes and mistakes. What do you want your child to remember? Time with Miss X learning to make the perfect pie crust, or long afternoons with you in the kitchen up to their elbows in cake batter? It was a public holiday today and I spent all afternoon in the kitchen with my 5 year old girl wondering in and out to help with banana bread, muffins, a meatball soup and a chicken casserole for tomorrow night. It was delightful. She cracked eggs and mashed bananas and got very sticky. These are the times I will remember, and the times I hope she remembers, too.

Persimmon and quince muffins

This recipe is great if you have some poached quince left over. To poach quince, you simmer the slices in a light sugar syrup (1 part sugar: 2 parts water) and a split vanilla bean until they are a deep rose colour. Alchemy, magic, beauty. Don’t move them around too much early on or they will break apart, but after they have been poached they “set” and are fairly sturdy.

• 4 slices poached quince, cut into thirds
• 1 cup of persimmon puree (if you are using the sweeter, hard variety of persimmon you will need to stew the pieces in a little water before pureeing)
• 2 eggs (lightly beaten)
• 3 tablespoons milk
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 1/3 cup canola oil
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups self-raising flour

Preheat the oven to 180 celcius and line a 12 muffin tin with muffin cases. Sift the flour into a bowl. Mix the persimmon, milk, eggs, sugar, vanilla and oil until well combined and add to the flour. Stir until only just combined. Drop a dollop of batter into the bottom of each muffin case. Place a chunk of quince into each muffin and fill up the cases with the remaining batter. Cook for about 20-25 minutes until the muffins are soft and springy to the touch.