Australia Day is celebrated on January 26 and bonus, it’s a public holiday. Normally we spend the day with family or friends or even both, enjoying a traditional Australian lunch of lamb and snags cooked on the barbie with pavlova for dessert. But this Australia Day was different because Alfie was asked to sing in […]
Archives for January 2016
Cheat’s Bombe Alaska
January 23, 2016 By 37 Comments
Ever since we enjoyed Bombe Alaska on New Year’s Eve, it’s been on my mind how much I’d like to make one. This is a theatrical dessert that was big in the 70’s when a dinner party wasn’t a dinner party unless you were setting your guests’ food on fire. But the dessert originated a […]
Echoes, Katoomba, Blue Mountains
January 19, 2016 By 29 Comments
A few weeks ago it was our wedding anniversary and the plan was to go away for a couple of nights. However, with having to squeeze the celebration in between a number of other events, we had to scale back our intentions and instead head away for a 24-hour escape. That meant we also didn’t […]
A New Year’s Eve Dinner
January 16, 2016 By 31 Comments
Our New Year’s Eve wasn’t full of party revellers, huge crowds and explosive fireworks. It was celebrated in a very civilised yet casual way of a sit-down dinner party for 10, held at a recently renovated tiny cottage on the mid-NSW coast. We were in Stuart’s Point for New Year’s Eve and staying in the […]
Stuart’s Point, NSW
January 14, 2016 By 27 Comments
I absolutely enjoy five-star luxury holidays and escapes however, equally, there is something very special about a no-frills holiday in a place so trapped in a time warp it is reminiscent of summer holidays from long, long ago. A generation ago a lot of people grew up with the annual three-week family holiday commencing on […]
A Christmas Day Lunch
January 11, 2016 By 44 Comments
Very sadly, the year didn’t end so well for a couple of well-loved families. On Christmas Eve a long-standing friend Drew and I had known since our teenage years was tragically killed in an accident leaving behind a wife and three beautiful daughters. Two days after Christmas, Em’s father-in-law passed away after a short bout […]
In My Kitchen, January 2016
January 7, 2016 By 37 Comments
It’s Noah’s flood here in Sydney at the moment. It honestly hasn’t stopped raining for days and I’ve been living in my knee-high gumboots. Not only that, it’s cold; today I’m seriously back in winter clothes. I have a very good friend who booked a family holiday for one week in an apartment on the […]
The Year That Was
January 4, 2016 By 40 Comments
Happy New Year! Thank you for supporting my blog through 2015. I appreciate you all and really love when you take the time to visit and comment. Working from home and writing away in solitude can be a lonely affair so knowing you’re there is not only encouraging but allows me to feel I’m writing […]
The Dunes, Mount Coolum
January 2, 2016 By 26 Comments
I’ve just returned from a Christmas holiday where a few days before Christmas we drove north to Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, a journey that took 13 hours, to a holiday house in Mount Coolum. The idea was to spend Christmas with Drew’s family; something we hadn’t done for at least a decade. The idea of travelling […]
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