Charmian Smith

Eating cheaply doesn't necessarily mean boring food or lack of flavour. Charmian Smith comes up with a few thrifty tips for eating well.

When chefs try to do basic home-style food, they often fail dismally, but Australian Andrew Telford manages to be both down-to-earth and homely, practical and helpful in The Basics: A really useful cookbook (Allen and Unwin, pbk, $40).

Charmian Smith indulges in some home baking that doesn't make her feel too guilty.

Tucked down near the confluence of the Indian and Southern oceans in the southwest of Australia, Margaret River is probably the most famous of the Western Australian wine regions, but we see only a few of their wines in this country.

Waitaki Valley wine is starting to gather momentum. Producers arranged a tasting of 15 wines in Auckland recently, the first major tasting from the North Otago region.

Sometimes wines arrive to be tasted that don't fit my general varietal tasting categories, or are oddball releases at a particular time of year.

Folate has been in the news with the announcement that New Zealand wants to delay the transtasman move to require bread to be fortified with folic acid.

Students and people going flatting - and almost anyone who wants to make good, simple food - will find lots of ideas in The Student Cookbook: Great Grub for the Hungry and the Broke

Sometimes wines are just too big and extractive for enjoyment, and a lighter, more lively wine brings more pleasure, like the delightful Pete's Shed syrah.

Although many of our grandmothers felt obliged to keep their tins full, these days baking is something we do for enjoyment.

For a long time, the focus on Central Otago wine has been on the areas around Cromwell, Lake Dunstan and Gibbston, while Alexandra has been left in the shadows, a bit like a poor cousin.

Pinot gris can be richly fruit-driven and easy to drink, but at its best it can have some structure and restraint, as the fine Red Tussock here.

Making good tea takes time, says Michelle Casson, director of Queenstown's Tea Global, which supplies a wide range specialist teas under the brand Stir Tea.

There's something about Penfolds wines, from the modest Koonunga Hill to the pinnacle of Grange, that makes people treasure them.