Using ginger essential oil and lapping up sweet potato ginger soup won't make you dance like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. But it will put an extra spring in your step! Ginger has long been a stalwart of home remedies and cooking. If you’re a regular at your local Thai takeaway, ginger-based stir fries could get [...]
Before kale and chia were food rockstars, there were carrots. Humble, rustic, tasty both raw and cooked. Bugs Bunny fuel. And you can turn them into cake. What's not to love about carrots?! Fun fact: carrots are members of the parsley family. When we think of their herby, dill-like stems, it shouldn't come as a surprise. [...]
Banana bread is a tasty staple to have around for morning teas and the kids’ lunchboxes. Our version is spiced up with essential oils of cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg for extra flavour and vitality. Whether you’re applying essential oils, inhaling them or adding them to foods and beverages when the label indicates it’s safe to do [...]
Back in the day, no beauty routine was complete without suffocating clouds of highly perfumed hairspray and holding your nose. Considering smoking was very much in favour at the time, it’s a miracle hair wasn’t being set fire to on a regular basis. Maybe it was and we just didn’t hear about it. You can probably [...]
Legend has it fennel bestowed immortality in the Greek island of Prometheus. If you needed a reason to learn to love its aniseed flavour, that’s a good one right there. Romans thought it helped with maintaining a healthy weight. Add another tick! File this away for next Halloween, but fennel was hung over doorways and its [...]
Doing some retro-themed entertaining? It seems not so long ago that the 1950s were retro. Now when people say ‘retro’, they are probably thinking 70s and 80s. The great news is, you can blame it on the boogie without the embarrassment of wearing flares thanks to our Groovy Apricot Chicken Appetisers. But before you do, let’s [...]
Judging by the search engine results when I Googled up camping recipes, people love comfort food when they are out under the stars ! Is it the combination of clean fresh air and exercise that drives an insatiable hunger for sausage coils and pan-fried spuds chased with buttered rum bananas with chocolate and marshmallow? Or is [...]
Christmas is a special time for giving homemade gifts. This spiritual occasion is always at risk of being over-commercialised in spite of our best intentions. With 24 hour Christmas trading hours on offer, have you ever found yourself hitting the shops in your daggiest clothes and joggers at the eleventh hour, beating down feelings of gift-giving [...]
“Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all.” Harriet Van Horne Have you seen the movie Burnt ? Ironically, at the time of writing this post, its Rotten Tomatoes critics score averages 4.8/10. Ouch ! Audiences are somewhat kinder with 3.5/5, so if it appeals, I say head out [...]
When I was growing up, Halloween wasn’t ‘a thing’ in my far north Qld childhood town on the Atherton Tableland. Come to think of it, Halloween wasn’t really ‘a thing’ when my kids were growing up much closer to city life, either. But thanks to the magic of the internet and TV and social media making [...]
