Five senses
For your ears:
Image credit: My Open Kitchen
The podcast My Open Kitchen. Oh my goodness! I only discovered this podcast very recently, when they (so kindly!) mentioned my blog and #mealsinthemail project in their Top 5 list on Episode 8 of Season 2. After I listened to that episode, I literally went back and listened to every episode of both seasons. The My Open Kitchen podcast is supposedly for primary producers - country growers and makers - but I live in the inner city and I still absolutely adore it. It's about slow-living, food and baking, gardening, and creative ways to connect and communicate through social media. If that sounds up your alley, scroll down the My Open Kitchen podcast and blog to find the show notes for each, which are full of useful links and also enable you to listen in (or of course you can subscribe in the usual ways on Androids and iPhones). Strangely, listening to this podcast has even helped me make my peace with the imminent arrival of spring and summer. Sort of.
Also, an honourable mention has to go to Sara Tasker's podcast Hashtag Authentic, which re-started this week with Season 2. I included it in a previous podcast roundup, but just had to mention this week's episode, which was an interview with Tara Mohr. I always love Sara's podcast but didn't expect my response to this episode: I was in floods of tears while sorting the socks, and felt like a light came on inside my head about why I had been feeling and behaving certain ways. It's as though I saw things I couldn't un-see, and now I'm super motivated to take action!
For your eyes:
I have two great reads to recommend today. The first is a cookbook by a lovely New Zealand lady with the enviable name of Amber Rose. (I mean seriously? Such a beautiful name!) The book is called The Wholefood Pantry and if you haven't come across it already, I highly recommend it. Basically, Amber takes us through how to make really wholesome, healthy, tasty pantry staples. The kinds of staples that most of us have bought from the shops for decades, but which can be made by hand and packed with so much more nutrition. Soups and broths, yoghurts, spice mixes, ferments, butters and oils, breads, jams... You get the picture! She also helpfully explains the why of using these ingredients and making these staples from hand.
My second recommendation is Lunch Lady magazine. Probably you've already come across this Australian quarterly beauty but, if not, it is such a wonderful read. I have every issue and look forward to it with ridiculous, childlike excitement. Even the typography and graphics are cheerful and somehow welcoming, like a hug. There are quirky and nutritious family recipes; essays from parents that have made me laugh, or cry, or both; and fun, accessible, family-friendly activities. Like edible garden tips, how to make coloured pasta, a guide to mushroom foraging, and common trail signs used by woodmen and campers.
For your mouth:
Of course, that has to be Meals in the Mail right now. As I finally read through all the letters and recipes that people have sent me, my heart just swells. This project is about food but it's about more than food: it's about what that food represents - comfort, love, nostalgia, community... And this project is about mail but it's about more than mail: it's about connections, and travel, and cultures, and art, and the love, care, generosity and permanence of writing things by hand.
Budget-wise I don't quite know how I'm going to make this book happen in a way that celebrates it the way it should be celebrated. I had counted on 20 to 50 recipes and stories, which I was going to photocopy and bind. Now I have more than 200 recipes and stories, many of them illustrated, as well as the beautiful envelopes they came in. The cost of printing this book is going to be considerable, and I am as short on the time it takes to successfully run a crowd-funding campaign as I am on the cash to just do it myself. However... I am determined to make this happen, and to make it as beautiful as I can see in my mind that it will be. I have my thinking-cap on. Watch this space!
For your nose:
Even the simple act of breathing in deeply, and exhaling fully, is like a mini-meditation. You can feel your body relax. And now for the flavour - take a wiff of these:
- Pick a sprig of mint or rosemary and crush it in your hand
- Coffee in the morning
- Stand near the ocean, close your eyes, and inhale
- Bake bread. I once read a quote somewhere saying that parents of small children should bake a loaf of bread every morning: even if you get nothing else done that entire day, you'll have delicious bread to eat, and the whole house will smell great
- Bury your nose into an old book
- Go stand in the garden when it rains
- Tip-toe into your sleeping kids' rooms before you go to bed, kiss them, and breathe in the smell of their warm hair and skin
For your hands:
Have you heard? I've made a downloadable colouring book!
On the one hand it's a traditional colouring book, the kind you'd turn to for a spot of creative expression, and mindfulness. But what makes it different to most other colouring books out there is that every one of the illustrations is designed as an envelope template, so you can make it and post it off when you've finished.
The idea is that this colouring book is not just for you, but for the people you care about, who will be surprised, touched and thrilled when they receive your colourful mail-art in the post.
The downloadable colouring book will be available in October, in time to make and send mail-art for Christmas, Thanksgiving, or any other end-of-year mail you'd like to send. There are 60 illustrations, and the book is available for pre-sale now (currently on special for $17.95, down from $23.95, until Monday 11 September).
