At the start of Spring last year (08), we embarked on a project to grow our own salad vegies and herbs in half wine barrels. It has been over 5 months since we first planted out the barrels and the project has been an overwhelming success (apart from one little incident with very hungry caterpillars) [...]

Given that food allergies seem to be on the increase and people general are becoming more interested in the health benefits of food, I have decided to introduce categories across the site to help identify and search for recipes that are gluten free, dairy free, nut free, sugar free and meat free. At the bottom [...]

I’m often asked where I draw my inspiration from, and the answer is all of the restaurants we visit, cooking shows I watch (much to the annoyance of PS) and magazines I read, but most importantly the cookbooks that I own. I don’t have a huge collection (and I think this surprises some people), but [...]

Since beginning our wine barrel garden at the start of summer, we have enjoyed the fruits of our work. It is incredible how much actual food you can get out of two wine barrels! The biggest producer has been the lettuce, while we have still supplemented our summer salads with the usual bags of leaves [...]

It was mid November last year when we planted our wine barrel garden (visit this link for the original article). Its now January and you won’t believe the transition. Here are some photos to give you a idea of how it’s all going. [nggallery id=2] Since planting we have had a pretty good summer in [...]

The more you read and watch material relating to cooking there is a common but simple theme that rings true; use good, fresh produce (and organic where possible). I have been taking this mantra more literally than most people for a long time now (some might say slightly over the top); imagine for a moment [...]

Growing your own herbs, fruit and vegetables is a great way to introduce kids to new flavours, vegies (god forbid they might put something green in their mouths) and cooking. It also means cutting back on your weekly fruit and vegie bill, and satisfaction from growing your own produce. If you don’t have very much [...]

A great idea for organising all of those recipes that you have collected over the years (cluttering up your cupboards and drawers on bits of paper!) is to purchase an address book and write them in. By using an address book you have all of your recipes in the one place, making it easy to [...]