1. Referring to food as naughty, sinful, etc. This isn’t the Dark Ages: I think we can stop tying values of good and evil to the freaking bread basket. These value judgements are not useful. Fer Christ’s sake — no, scratch that: for the sake of compassion, decency and, oh, hey, let’s go crazy, maturity, let’s chuck the whole “naughty” thing, okay? It’s twee, stupid, and gets me into a big angry foam. What’s that? Why? Well, I’ll tell you.

1. Guilt and eating. We can do with less of that. Unless you’ve been living at the bottom of a compost heap for the past thirty-odd years, you might have heard that there’s a few people out there with food hangups. Even if you dodge full-blown anorexia, orthorexia or bulimia, it’s possible to be pretty disordered about food, following unhealthy patterns of bingeing, self-loathing, self-reproach and jumbled thinking that leaves you frizzy with anxiety about the avocado on your sandwich. “I nearly ate a Milky Bar earlier today, but instead I went to my dubstep-treadmill class, so I’m a better person.” Food shouldn’t be about how valuable you are as a person, unless you’re Lucrezia Borgia. It’s hard enough to chill out in the middle of a crazy-busy working day without somebody looking pointedly at your goddamn morning tea and hinting that you’re a bad, less-than-worthy person because you happen to want a Tim-Freaking-Tam.
2. Identifying something as a sin means another agent is in the position of forgiving. If your eating is a sin, it’s because some external agent has identified it as such. So some external force also has to forgive you. No. No way, José. It is not up to another external agent to tell me whether my eating is right or wrong, morally acceptable or morally condemnable. I don’t require another person to accept what I’m eating. I eat it because I want to eat it and this shouldn’t be an issue. Driving your car to work is, arguably, a greater moral concern than eating a carton of caramels every day, but nobody calls that sinful, indulgent or naughty.
3. Branding particular foods gives people the social sanction to negatively judge you. If you see someone eating a wedge of cake, suddenly you’ve got the right to assume that action is an illuminating example of their weakness and overall poorer social worth as a person because cake is naughty or wicked. Stop that, it isn’t nice. What a rotten way to talk about people.
4. Equating pleasure with sin is weird. Unless you’re a seventeenth-century European Puritan, you’ve probably figured out that pleasure and living ethically are not mutually exclusive. Love playing soccer? Reading a good book? Jet-skiing? Playing with your kids? Why are those pleasures not wicked, sinful, indulgent? And if the foods that are wicked and sinful are so good — and let’s face it, you’re unlikely to ever see a recipe for a Truly Sinful Dressing-Free Cabbage Slaw, are you? — what are the morally acceptable foods? Is it bran? Vitamin supplements altogether removed from food sources?

This is a feminist issue — not exclusively, but significantly. Look at it this way: what kinds of foods are usually marketed and labelled as naughty and sinful? Chocolate, ice cream, cakes, desserts. Less frequently: cheese platters, mashed potatoes, filet mignon, risotto. None of those are particularly scanty on the calorie side of things, but it’s the girly treats that are branded sinful, wicked, etc.

C’mon, food bloggers: referring to something tasty as wicked is just stupid, cheap and immature. You can do better.

2. The expression “you won’t even miss the meat” (usually with an astonished exclamation mark). Here’s a news flash, broadcast on all channels: some people can struggle through life without the meat. Sometimes they even go without meat for, oh, days at a time. Some true freakazoids go years – YEARS – without meat. Somehow they still manage to cobble together a meaningful existence. Sometimes they even seem happy with their food, even take pleasure in cooking and eating. How do you think they manage? I’ll tell you: meat, frankly, is not obligatory. Even most dedicated meat-lover types don’t eat meat with every meal. You don’t see Cocoa Pops with “tasty enough to make up for lack of meat” on the side of the box, do you? Cheese boards don’t come with whispered apologies for the absence of sausages, do they? Fruit salad doesn’t need a “WARNING DOES NOT CONTAIN MEATS” byline on the menu, does it? What about apple pie? Guacamole? Crackers? It’s not just vegetarian foods that cop this kind of talk: you also see “you won’t believe it’s healthy!” on anything not-horrifically bad for you, which suggests that healthy food is never anything but some sort of drear obligation, endless chewing on flavourless chaff. For crying out loud, people, can we lighten up on this sheer amazement that something could not contain pork chops and still somehow manage to be enjoyable?

I have other quibbles, such as the ubiquitousness of bacon and sriracha in every single food-related discussion anywhere on the Internet and the swarm of Oreo-stuffed baked treats that seems to be sweeping across the blog-o-world (seriously: how busy are you that you can’t take the time to eat your cupcake and then your Oreo?) — but honestly, those are quibbles about other people’s preferences and they don’t really impact me, except my slightly increased risk of eye-roll strain. But the other two are seriously bothering me. If you’re writing about food, think about the language you’re using: think about the messages you’re sending and the judgements you’re making. Yeesh.

Don’t mistake me, I don’t regret a moment of it: all the food I’ve had has been fresh, delicious, homemade stuff. But there was just. So. Much.  Plum  pudding. Roast onions. Hokkein noodles. Clafoutis (that’s mostly my own fault: I have a neurotic twitch that means when cherries are near me I must turn them into clafoutis). Potato and rosemary pizza. Spicy black bean quesadillas. Carrot cake. (Ooooooh M’s carrot cake.)  See what I mean? There were, of course, seasonal treats available: where there’s socialising, there’s nibbles. Roasted macadamias, chocolate-covered sultanas; cherries (see also: clafoutis, above) and plums; wine, lots of wine; cheese…yeah. See? A lot of food., lush and tasty and over-abundant. I’m not one for penitent self-deprivation: but I reach a point where instead of going “a glass of wine! yes please!” I go “ah, wine again, is it?” It’s not so much detox as a blessed relief. I can hear my liver creaking like an old chair, begging for a break. The surrounding organs could use a holiday too, come to think of it. So, how to recover? After you take the initial step of eating less, which comes as a relief, three curative steps.

Part one. Compliments of the season, a friend brought over just what I needed:

Those fuzzy workers know what they're about.

That right there is a wedge of fresh honeycomb, wax and all, oozing fresh honey onto my yoghurt for breakfasat. Say it with me: honey and yoghurt. Fresh honey, homemade yoghurt. Oh yes. It’s as good as it sounds — it tastes heavenly, smooth and clean and fresh and nourishing.

Nourishing part two (of which there are no pictures because  it’s all frozen in tubs): ratatouille. Slow-cooked ratatouille is the total bomb. Chopped eggplant, capsicum, zucchini, onions (didn’t have any capsicum for this round), mixed with a couple of tins of tomatoes, a little water, and whatever spices and herbs are closed to hand. This batch got parsley, marjoram, thyme, paprika, cumin, the last spoonful of tapenade from the bottle, and a huge blob of chilli jam. Roast for a couple of hours, then eat hot or cold. I’ve been known to puree leftover ratatouille for pizza sauce, and it’s pretty good cold on tortillas. I’ve got enough stockpiled in the freezer for weeks.

Part three: go for a really long walk. If your life is as awesome as mine, you’ll go for a drive with some mates to the beach and go on a fantastic bushwalk for an afternoon. You’ll clock up a couple of k’s and see a brown snake and a goanna, and when you come home you’ll feel tired and clean and goooood. Moving around after a few days of, well, not, felt mighty fine. Powerful fine. Pass me my yoghurt, I’m feeling better already.

I love food. So I love reading about food, food blogs, forums, etc. etc. Awesome places to yammer about yeast, waffle over waffles and shoot the shit about shakshouka. But, in keeping with Sturgeon’s Law, 99% of food blogs are crap are not to my taste. People, it’s not enough just to shove a photo of a slice of cheesecake up there and assume that it will distract us all from bad layout, dud writing and uninteresting posts. Allow me to guide you through some basic principles.

I’ve got some rules about what I’ll read. (I didn’t sit down and plan these out or anything, these are just observed patterns of behaviour.) First rule is that you’ve got to be interesting. Time is short. Like my legs. Your skills with a baked ham may be beyond reproach, but if your writing is blabbery and unfocused, you’ll just sound like a nine year old who needs to pee LIKE RIGHT NOW, and you’ve lost me. No recipe is so awesome it’s worth trawling shit sentences.

Rule two! I am uninterested in your cupcakes. You can have photos of dear wee decorated cupcakes that moisten the panties of the masses: I can promise you they will not move my cold, dead heart. It will be as a marble heart carved on the tomb of your ancestors.

Third rule: if at any point your recipe suggests I have to open a packet of cake mix, brownie mix, powdered French Onion Soup mix, or any other prefabricated box of crap, my cursor is already hovering over the back button. Proceed with extreme caution, and know that the presence of two prepackaged ingredients is likely to result in a muttered curse and clearing Chrome’s history .There are exceptions, obviously: peanut butter, sriracha, mayonnaise, jam, Cointreau – I could go on). If you post a recipe that involves pre-grated cheese, you should be prepared for the repercussions. That chill on the back of your neck and those nightmares you’ve been having: yo. You deserved it. (If you post a recipe that involves cheese from a can, then you can expect carbuncles, bunions and plagues of dildos raining on your next garden party. That’s not me, that’s just divine justice, but I wholeheartedly support it.)

Rule the fourth! A sandwich is not a recipe. C’mon, put some effort in.

All of this boils down to one thing, and it holds true across the internet. Don’t waste people’s time. Never forget for a second that your brave little blog post is launched into the heaving, extra-spicy combination laksa of info, stories, pictures and games that is the internet, and your reader could be reading something waaaaay more interesting and informative at the click of a mouse. Give folks a reason to stick around and read your blog instead of, say, foodgawker, Wild Yeast or Rabbit’s Reviews. You’re asking someone to give their precious time and eye juices to you: to make it anything less than 100% worth their while is downright rude. And stupid.

Let’s talk about this.

1. “Kitchen Sink Cookies“: biscuits with heaps of things added. “Kitchen Sink” as in “Everything but the…”. Can be applied to soups, stir fries, casseroles, bakes and the like. How does this not conjure up images of soggy biscuits covered in used tea leaves, squashed under dirty cutlery and plates with bits of dried egg? Is everyone else using their kitchen sinks for something far more dainty and neat than I? Have I been committing a huge faux pas all this time, using my kitchen sink for dirty dishes? I wouldn’t want to eat anything named after that zone.

3. “Garbage Quiche/Soup“: in application, very similar to the “Kitchen Sink” approach. Scraps and leftovers from the week revived in quiche or soup form. I am totally behind this practice, but the name…Imagine it: your friends show up one evening, bearing a much nicer bottle of wine than you’d usually buy for yourself, and you say “Fantastic! That will go really nicely with the Garbage Quiche!” The name suggests you scraped out the scungy stuff from the bottom of the crisper and the lid of the compost bin and slapped it in a pot. Eat up, chums.

2. “Chockablocks“: What a whimsical little name! Definition: biscuits with loads of extras: oats, sultanas, nuts, chocolate bits, etc. They are chock-a-block with extras. GET IT? If you’re more than eight years old you have no excuse for employing twinkly twee twiddlesome names like this. You start with chockablocks, then you move on to snickerdoodles, suddenly you’re wearing a flouncy apron, ironing your colour-coordinated tea towels and crinkling your nose if the dog hasn’t been washed in the past hour. You’re probably the kind of person who sees nothing gross about the name “Kitchen Sink cookies” because your kitchen sink smells like cinnamon and is so shiny it keeps the neighbours awake at night.

4. “Icebox Cake“: after seeing a bunch of recipes on foodgawker labelled “Icebox Cake”, I had to look it up. I mean, I know what an Icebox is — an old-timey word for frij — but I didn’t understand its relevance to the recipe. Now I get it: it’s because you leave the cake, once assembled, in the icebox overnight! CLEVER. I’m going to start calling everything I make by its preparation or storage equipment. Can I offer you another bowl of Tupperware Container Soup? You can have some Pantry Crackers and Crisper-First-But-Then-On-The-Bench-For-A-While Cheese to go with it.

5. “Impossible Pie“: this is one I learned from Aunts and Grandmothers (misc.). It isn’t always pie, but the “Impossible” part of the recipe name is essential. It’s an Impossible Pie because…wait for it…it’s IMPOSSIBLE to stuff it up! Hah! I assert that it is completely unnecessary to have a joke in a recipe title. I further assert that, if you’re going to make that sort of claim, you’d better have the balls to back it up, mate. I hear that recipe name/punchline, and I think “impossible, you say?” Believe me, I will dedicate myself to fucking up that recipe, ruining your joke, wasting the ingredients and swearing at the children.

Right. Feeling much calmer now I’ve got that off my chest. Strozzapretti, anyone?

Taste the genius. Taste the super genius.

However: when you get right down to it, very few recipes are actually original. Recipes are mostly derivative, right? Doncha think? For example: calzone is a pizza derivative; pancakes are a cake derivative (or vice versa, not sure yet); ravioli is a lasagne derivative; sandwiches are calzone derivatives — and so we are all connected in the delicious circle of life [citation needed].

That’s just a little diversion for ya. A little philosophy to help you ease in to the awesome stupendo-genius of my couscous.

Hail to the awesome, baby peppers!

Baby capsicums were abundant at the farmers’ markets on the weekend: I bought many. Tonight, we roast! If I could rebuild the food pyramid (and I hear they have), roast capsicum would definitely get a category all of its own. (So would hummus.)

Baked in the glow of awesome

Enough chit-chat! Here’s how to make Super Genius Awesome Couscous! Quantities are pretty flexible: go with what feels right.

What You Need:

• 6 baby capsicums
• 1 large zucchini, roughly chopped
• 1 small eggplant, roughly chopped
• 1 large brown onion, finely chopped
• 1 medium-sized tomato, roughly chopped
• 4 cloves of garlic (roasted is best, if you’ve got the inclination), finely chopped
• Olive oil
• ½ cup dried couscous
• 1 cup water
• Splash of white wine
• Chilli flakes
• Cumin seeds
• Salt and pepper

What You Do:

1. Drizzle the baby capsicums with olive oil and put them in the oven at about 200°C to roast. They’ll need about fifteen to twenty minutes, depending on how big they are.
2. Meanwhile, heat some olive oil in a deep saucepan: add the onion and garlic and fry until they start to go golden, then add the zucchini and eggplant. Keep frying! Add the chilli flakes and cumin seeds, and a generous dash of salt; keep frying, stirring frequently, until they start to soften. Once they start to brown, add the tomato and the dry couscous and stir quickly. Deglaze with a splash of white wine, then add the water. Put a lid on that sucker and turn the heat off.
3. Check the capsicums. They’re probably fine. You want them slightly shrivelled, a little blistery on the outside, but not black.
4. Don’t take the lid off the saucepan! Keep it there for at least fifteen minutes to steam the couscous.
5. Take the capsicums out of the oven; the couscous should be plump and soft by now, mingled with all those awesome rockstar veggies.
6. Time to serve.
7. Why are you still here? Go eat!

Et voila:

Can you smell the awesome?

This is seriously good eatin’. Serve with cracked pepper. If you were feeling particularly saucy, you could throw in some chickpeas or grilled haloumi, but this dish stands alone.

Not pictured: anything but almonds.

Almonds are mighty nice nuts. Now that I think about it, I’m seeing lots of almond cookie recipes, too — more of the same trend, or am I developing some sort of Amygdalus monomania?

Why does the mystery citrus bush in my front yard even need spines? Who’s it trying to impress? It’s very goth, of course, but it’s hard to get at the damn fruit. Which I suppose is the idea, but frankly if it’s not going to share its fruit, then its days in the garden bed may be numbered with small numbers. Even if it was growing wild — aren’t the fruits the bit the tree is supposed to share to get the seeds out there and circulating its genes around? I got so violently prickled (sharp thorns! hard thorns! thorns that puncture clothing and skin and leave an itchy red bump because I’m not used to plant injuries and couldn’t be arsed washing it right away!) picking the first fruit that I didn’t bother with the second.

Who is?

And while we’re pointing a big fat “explain yourself” at this bush, what the fuck is it? It doesn’t smell like a lemon. It is yellow and round. It feels super-hard for a citrus, so maybe I have picked it prematurely.

Cycle of life, dudes.

I love the poetry of the world turning inward and resting; a cycle of inner growth and patience, etc.

zzzz...

But I’ve been reading foodgawker.com, and it is pretty damn clear that in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s summertime. And in the food blogging world, summertime means…well, I had gimp open anyway, so here’s an artist’s depiction of food blogging in summer:

WHEEEE!

Everywhere I look, there are posts like “how to use up those excess strawberries!” and “What should I do with twelve kilos of peaches glowing like juicy pagan gold?” Meanwhile, Chez Spoonfully: “whoa, two days on the bench and that bread still isn’t defrosted” and “I wonder if I can make a convincing fruit salad for breakfast using only dried dates and zucchini?”

Which makes it sound like I’m envious of the bounty in the North — but I’m not. Winter harvest is still pretty juicy:

Bow before the pumpking!

This magnificent specimen was presented to us as a housewarming gift, and a beauty it is, too. We’re not cutting into it until we’ve seriously weighed up the many glorious avenues this fine piece could be channelled into. Soup? Pies? Roasted and tossed with couscous? Pumpkin and black bean chilli? Yes, yes, yes, oh god, please, yes.

This week has been fantastic and full of winter flavours: I’ve been living off my awesome hummus, on tortillas with roast pumpkin, pickled beets, gherkins, roast capsicums — any vegetable I can get my hands on. It’s winter and the world is retreating inwards, but as long as I have dried beans, pumpkins and pickles, I’m set.

I avoid shops and supermarkets the way dogs avoid fireworks. Most of my shopping happens at the farmers’ markets — so, of course, what’s on offer reflects the seasons. Winter seems to be rich in onions, beets, carrots, leeks — loads of root veggies, alliums, not to mention ALL PUMPKINS ALL THE TIME! Having said that, getting fresh salad-type stuff like tomatoes, capsicums, cucumbers and lettuce has never been a problem. God knows how the growers do it. Probably dark and deviant arts, which I’m happy to support.

I should really have a go at growing kitchen sprouts, in these chilly times when outdoor growing is slow and disappointing (although, a big loving shout-out to my silverbeet crop, which is bravely charging along, despite frosts and getting stepped on by accident with alarming frequency). Winter is chilly but not crippling, and the grey and grubby garden shots above don’t tell the whole story:

Fresh

Coriander seedlings, blithely ignoring the frosts…

Futureberries

…and one of several strawberry plants with oodles of new growth. Nobody tell these babies it’s winter, they’ll be so surprised they’ll pop their monocles.

Many shades of brown!

Oats make me happy. You may have guessed. Breakfast makes me happy. You may have guessed. Home-toasted muesli is just the ant’s pants. I toasted a batch today and added bran flakes and dried pineapple. Stand back, citizens, she’s out of control! Deliciousness awaits me every morning.

I do have a warning: be vigilant in your toasting! I overtoasted some of my oats and it was touch-and-go whether or not they’d make it into the batch! Burnt oats get bitter and unpleasant, and mine were just borderline. I melted some honey to ensure it stayed on the tasty side. Phew. Crisis averted.

(I’m pretty sure I don’t need to contribute to the masses of toasted muesli recipes already choking the Internet. It’s a pretty straightforward formula: toast the oats and nuts and seeds; don’t toast the fruit and bran bits; toss it all together and seal it up when cold. You can do that: it’s not rocket surgery.)

Anyway, inspired, I dug out a recipe I’ve been thinking of trying for a while: date and tahini breakfast bars. On Limes and Lycoprene (which is where that link’ll take ya), they look awesome. Sustaining, nourishing, stuffed with nuts and fruit: truly full of promise. But whether it’s because I used home-made tahini or because my dried fruit selection wasn’t as good, mine were surprisingly bland.

Kinda chewy, kinda crunchy: total dud

Like, really bland. Ridiculously bland. It was like the inverse of the saying “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts”. Take dates, pepitas, mixed dried fruit and chopped nuts, and you’ve got yourself a sexy snack (or at least some trail mix) right there — but cooked up into this chewy, texturally-satisfying slice, something mysterious happens. Everything good evaporated out of mine. I really liked the idea of having them on hand like a portable shot of muesli or something, but no dice.

Luckily, heritage cooking to the rescue! Jam drops, from my Mumini’s recipe:

Jam droppery

Ah, a soft and crumbly biscuit with a chewy well of thick jam in the middle. Either plum or fig. You choose. Go on, take one. HAH! You can’t! They’re over here and you’re over there!

M gets one because he baked bread:

Breadosaurus!

Jam drops are, I admit, not nearly as nutritious as the date and tahini bars, but they win the flavour battle hands-down. Once I realised I was eating the date and tahini bars out of obligation, not pleasure, I decided it wasn’t worth. Life’s too short. Do the fun stuff first.

Off to the farmers’ markets to stock up on fresh stuff; off to the dry goods shop to stock up on dried stuff; off to the deli to stock up on nearly-past-its-best-by cheeses (Always buy cheese that’s at, or near, or better yet, past, its best-by date! Everyone knows cheese doesn’t really go off!), then swept it all home for a morning of cooking.

Standard autumnal fare

Pumpkins and autumn. ‘Sjust obvious. This baby butternut became many things — and will continue to do so, as there’s still half in the fridge. First it contributed to a big pot of lunchbox filler:

Actual size not possible to capture

Which kind of got out of hand. Couscous, butter beans, pumpkin, roast capsicum, zucchini and shallots, all tumbling happily together on a fairly epic scale — resulted in about ten lunches’ worth. Lucky couscous freezes okay, because we’re going to be living off this for a while. I think of autumn as a girding-up-your-loins season: summer fades and you put down your umbrella drink and put a jumper on, head indoors and knuckle down to work. (In my fantasy, this work is seriously engaging, satisfying stuff — not scrubbing the bathtub work, more following your dreams work. True work: your calling. Whether it’s plumbing, pottery, poetry or programming, true work is the most satisfying, rewarding, soul-glowing thing imaginable.) For the purposes of this vision, you need a ready supply of nourishing goodness waiting for you in the fridge, so that you can grab a lunch without breaking mental stride. So ten lunchboxes full of autumn-lush vegetables tossed with couscous totally matches the overall aesthetic of my vision. Perfect.

Humble beginnings

And every season gets a pie. I like making shortcrust pastry from scratch, but I definitely made too little for this one. Nevermind, the filling holds it together. Shortcrust pastry is a cinch: weigh your flour and then add half its weight in butter, a generous pinch of salt, and crumble the lot together with your hands until it gets all breadcrumb-like. Add enough water to bring it together into a pliable dough.

Quiche with secret pumpkin

After cooking the pie crust, I added some buttery-fried leeks, then layers of pumpkin and cooked spinach (harvested from our garden, since the first frosts are coming and it’s time to get wise), then all brought together with whisked eggs and topped with tomatoes. Quiches are awesome: I love having one in the fridge so that when I’m delirious with hunger-induced indecision at breakfast, I don’t have to think. Protein, veggies, deliciousness — don’t even have to reheat. And this, as you can see, ties in beautifully with the above vision of autumn. Put on a jumper, have a wedge of quiche, start working. Pause to grab your couscous lunch, keep working. Mind foaming and bubbling, fingers moving swiftly and confidently to bring your thoughts to fruition.

That’s how I imagine autumn. Nourished and fulfilling; full of challenging, satisfying work, fuelled by pumpkin, eggs and couscous. (And oats, obviously…)