Strawberry ice cream and the palace guard

We visited Buckingham Palace on our European trip. My sweet friend Paige was our guide for the day.

Sticky barbecue ribs

I know, I know. Ain't nothin' about barbecue ribs that's Australian. Ain't nothin' Australian about starting a sentence with "ain't nothin'". You couldn't get more American than if you fashioned aforementioned ribs into stars and stripes. But there are some days (particularly those after a wild and wooly weekend like mine) where nothing but sweet, salty, sticky ribs will do.

Breakfast burrito and the weekend ahead

It's here! The weekend is here! It's been a long week at work - the first five-dayer since before Christmas. I've been hanging out for the weekend and not because I have something crazy planned. No, it's because I have nothing on at all. I get to mooch out for two whole days.

The Aussie

It's amazing how, when I think of Australian food, very little of it is centred around meat. I think of lamingtons, pavlova, peach melba or vanilla slice. Maybe even a prawn on the barbie. I realised this when I started my series of food for Australia Day and decided I needed to mix it up. A little concentration (Sam Neil would tell me that's the red meat kicking in) and the ideas started flowing. Aussie burgers were so obvious they were staring me in my pale, anemic face.

London Part I

Matty and I chose London as our last major destination on our great European adventure of 2012. We both had family and friends there and thought it would be a great way to wind down and chill out after five fairly full on weeks. We must have had some kind of jet-lag fuelled amnesia, thinking our friends would let us slow down. We didn't really stop the from the moment we landed (at 1am in Stanford, 1 hour west of Toofarfromlondonville).

Call me Lord Lamington

Almost every Aussie recipe has debatable origins. Normally, the source of contention resides in New Zealand. Not so with lamingtons. They're all ours - probably because they were named after Lord Lamington, an old Governor of Queensland. As far as awesome names go, that's got to be close to the top. Number two only to Steele Sidebottom.

Chilli Jam and chilli chicken stir fry

Before I moved to Melbourne, my style of cooking was fairly simple. Little spice, old classics and no deviation from the recipe. Nothing wrong with that approach, mind you. You've got to get the basics right before you start gussying up dishes. I made lasagne, bucatini amatriciana, stir fries and enough sponge cakes to sink a ship (a small ship - a dinghy maybe - but a ship all the same). My Mum showed me the kitchen ropes and I hit the ground running.