More than mince

With the temperature having dropped around 8degC over the course of Easter, I feel we have truly entered the pudding season.

It took me four years of living in Dunedin to get to Fergburger in Queenstown.

Hello strangers! I haven't forgotten about you. However, it seems I have gotten a little caught up in the "real world''.

I hate how Christmas, barbecue and beersie season coincides with bikini and beach season. Not ideal. 

I figured that for my last two posts of the year I should end on something sweet.

I'd never had proper home-made deep-dish pizza until recently. I think I had tried some terrible fast-food version at some point but the idea of eating what is essentially a pie filled with cheese and processed meats frightened me.

It was a cooler than usual spring evening, periodic showers and an unimpressed-looking sky.

My paternal grandparents retired to a 400-year-old stone house in the south of France.  Every three to five years from the age of 8 Mum and Dad packed us all off and we took a family holiday there for a few weeks to see the family. 

I have just woken up from a two-day food coma.

Summer is coming . . . That means our vege shops and supermarkets are being infiltrated by glorious spears of asparagus!

Uh oh, looks like I have become obsessed with pesto, asparagus and spaghetti. Please forgive me. I will change. I promise. Next week will be different.

Recently I received a "we're sorry you got conjunctivitis in both eyes leading to the bursting of blood vessels making you look like a hideous zombie'' care package from my parents.

OK, so I know this isn't a meal recipe. But it is a recipe for what could become the basis of a meal.  BLTs, salmon and cream cheese . . . the combinations are endless. Breakfast, lunch, dinner.

I used to be afraid of pasta: Pasta equals carbs. Carbs equals calories. And calories make you fat. Yet somehow I could justify two pieces of cake. And cake CLEARLY does not contain carbs (not).

Paella. Like in tortilla, the ‘l's are pronounced with a ‘ya' sound. So ‘pie-yay-ya'.

Pancakes for dinner is legit, right?

It's that time of year again: leek season.

Chickpeas are my new obsession. Home-made hummus, falafel, chickpea curries. They are everywhere in my food.

Apparently I am on a diet (tell that to the cookies I just baked, the chocolate tart I made on Sunday and the cookie dough balls I keep on hand for cookie-related emergencies stocked in the freezer.)