The wanderers

"...and all the time I was thinking of Dean and how he got back on the train and rode over three thousand miles over that awful land and never knew why he had come anyway, except to see me. "So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out, and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty."

* Lyric, bittersweet, stream-of-consciousness words by Jack Kerouac, from his novel On the Road * Poetry-on-film by young mum and gifted photographer Nirrimi Firebrace, from her blog The Road is Home (used with her kind permission)

I think you either love or you hate the non-conformist, loose and spontaneous creativity of the Beat Writers. I'm definitely in camp former. What do you think of them?

Interview - where the truck at?

Maybe you know, or maybe you don't, that I've been following food trucks and vans around the streets of Melbourne for the past few months to sample their delicious wares. It's probably one of the best assignments I've ever set myself. These are the trucks I've visited so far (loads more to come!). A few people have asked me how I know where the trucks are at any given time, since there are a LOT of food trucks in Melbourne and even if you followed them all on Twitter or Facebook, the odds of finding the one near you in your social media stream at right time aren't great. So today I'm going to reveal my secret: wherethetruck.at.

Created by three Melbourne blokes (Jack, Tom and Xavier) who love meals on wheels, wherethetruck.at is a website that tracks food trucks' whereabouts in real time on a map, so you just select your city of choice and voila! Trucks R Us! Recently Tom was good enough to spill the goss on how this website came to be and what the trio is planning next.

ME: Food trucks: what do you love about them? What should WE love about them?

TOM: I love that it's all about quality food, done quickly and cheaply, all the while embracing our beautiful Australian landscape as the dining room. What should you love? That it's happening! It's so grass roots, no pretentious maître d', no bill shock, no need to dress up. It's all about fun, food and friends.

ME: What inspired you to start wherethetruck.at? How did you come up with the idea?

TOM: It was actually Xavier's idea, he saw something similar being done in the States, was pretty keen on the food trucks here, and so thought that we could put something together that was the best location service for food trucks and food truck enthusiasts.

ME: How long did it take for you go from idea to launch? Talk me through the process.

TOM: From inception to our public launch (March, Food Trucks United for Melbourne Food & Wine Festival) it took about a week. A LOT of coding, a LOT of late nights, a LOT of help from good girlfriends and from there it's been a very interesting ride. We basically screen printed our own t-shirts, got some stickers made up and then walked around for two days at Food Trucks Unite talking to people, giving them stickers, telling them about the site - from there we haven't looked back. Since March we've had over 100,000 people use our website to find themselves lunch or dinner from one of Australia's gourmet food trucks, and that's totally awesome.

ME: How do you guys know each other?

TOM: Xavier and I worked together at a market research company many moons ago (two-ish years ago?), we've been talking about ideas and things we could get going as a cool project for ages and this is the one that we made stick. Jack came on board as our Code Monkey on the day we launched V1 of the site and has been pushing the limits of Wordpress ever since. I met him at my place, he's a friend of my housemate, it was very serendipitous... He was around having a drink with my housemate and we were all shooting the shit, he came on board the next day - after a quick little dev task we gave him.

ME: How do you work together on this project? Who does what and how do you all keep in touch?

TOM: Email, Skype, face to face, SMS, phone...it's probably fair to say that around all of our day jobs, Jack's and my girlfriends and then Xavier's wife... it can be difficult to do exactly that. Keeping lines of communication open between the three of us is certainly our biggest challenge. We somehow mash the thing together though, things always work out in the end.

ME: What's next for this project?

TOM: Well first up it's our app*, we NEED to get this going SOON and so any support you and your readers can throw our way would be so greatly appreciated. From here, once we've got Australia's scene sorted out we'll be taking it to the States as the food trucking scene over there is just enormous. Bit of work to do here first though...

* At the time of this interview, the guys were crowd-sourcing funding to develop a smartphone app for wherethetruck.at. They reached their target, so look out for this app soon!

ME: If you could pick a cuisine that's not yet supplied on wheels here in Melbourne, what would it be?

TOM: Vietnamese!!!!! We need a Banh Mi van like nothing else, imagine tucking in to a beautiful French baguette stuffed full of Vietnamese grilled pork, coriander, pâté etc on a warm summer's evening... YUM!!!!

ME: Tell me a funny food-truck-related experience.

TOM: The FUN(iest) experience to date has been trying to get people who don't quite understand the concept of a "gourmet food truck" to understand that you won't get food poisoning from a dirty kebab here!!! Australians have been so conditioned to expecting that anything served out the side of a truck is bad news: dirty kebabs, soggy burgers...yuk. So taking friends and family along to a gourmet food truck for the first time is always a lot of fun, they're skeptical until the first mouthful, then their faces light up, and most of them are hooked from then on.

ME: Anything else you want to say?

TOM: We do this for the love of it, it can be tough sometimes as we don't make any money from the site however there is an expectation of quality from both a user's and the trucks' perspective. We love that people love our site, what makes it all worthwhile is when somebody has something nice to say about us and what we're doing. That's the fun bit for us, when we get feedback from our users saying that they love using our service.

If you live in Australia, go to wherethetruck.at and select your city to find your nearest food truck. For photos and a bit of a story about the trucks, click on my Meals on Wheels tag at any time as I eat my way through the streets of Melbourne.

ps. Last chance to win some beautiful handmade gifts by Sparkling Flora

Favourite things - sweet tooth treats

Dig out your recipe scrapbook friends, you're going to want to print these out and stick them in. I'm hanging on to all five to try when I'm in need of a sugar fix. 1. Heart-shaped doughnuts

Cupcakes are so last year. These days, it's all about doughnuts, in pretty shapes and oh-so-delicious flavours. Like this sweet, heart-shaped take on the classic from Sugar and Cloth. Yum!

2. Pomegranate & blood-orange pancakes

These pancakes from The Best Remedy are topped with blood-orange and honey syrup, and I'd add a small dollop of cream. I am most definitely bookmarking this recipe for when pomegranates come back into season.

3. Butterscotch pudding with roasted banana-whipped cream

Imagine a winter's night: the dark comes down early and the wind is tearing around outside and you are indoors with good food and good wine and good friends, and now it's time for dessert. This butterscotch pudding from Not Without Salt looks rich, sweet and oh-so-satisfying.

4. Coconut hot chocolate

My mouth is literally watering. Read this recipe, then come visit me when the weather gets cold because I WILL be making this amazing hot chocolate from Cup of Jo.

5. Salted caramel lava cake

I left the most indulgent-looking sweet treat until last. Can you just imagine spooning into this chocolate lava cake from Eatsy ('food as craft' on the Etsy blog) and watching the salted caramel come oozing out? Lord have mercy!

Time to take a tumble

Do you remember taking roly poly tumbles down hills? Topography in my childhood was constantly assessed on the basis of its suitability for climbing to the top and rolling back down. There's a wonderful sense of abandon to a good hill-roll, completely surrendering yourself to the forces of gravity while tumbling in a disorienting swirl of sky and grass and sky and grass until you land at the bottom, puffed and dizzy and proud. Then you brush the grass and twigs off your clothes, and run to the top of the hill to try again.

When did I stop rolling down hills? When do adults stop playing in general? And why do we choose to stop doing something that is so harmless and so much fun?

I don't want to just watch Madeleine play. I don't want her to have to beg me to join in. I am going to make a conscious effort to rediscover playful, childlike me.

This Schweppervessence ad premiered on Australian television on Sunday night, during Downton Abbey. It's like childhood, but better: grown men and women tumbling through an alpine landscape, over snow, fields, forests and finally a waterfall.

In one sense, I fear that sharing an ad with you guys is buying into commercialism but, honestly, I'm just thankful to the folks at Schweppes for making me happy. So I have to give them props. What a joyful, creative minute they gave me!

ps. Once upon a time I made up a story that if you rolled down the hill in our front yard with your eyes closed, when you got to the bottom you would be in a different world. I played this game with my friend Elise when I was about seven or eight. When we got to the bottom of the hill, all dizzy and disoriented, I said, "Look! We are in an ancient world! Can you see the pyramid?" (I was pointing at the swing set). That game was short-lived, since the next time I knocked on Elise's door and asked her mother if she could come out and play, her mother said, "Elise isn't allowed to play with liars." So much for imagination, huh?

Lovely... and a little bit heartbreaking

This is a beautiful little song called 'Existential Crisis,' written and performed for you by the one, the only, the lovely Emily Rose. It breaks my heart a little bit. It's all angsty and teenagery and reminds me of how I wouldn't be a teenager again for quids. I remember these emotions and the sense of powerlessness OH SO WELL. As though I was 14 yesterday.

What do you guys think? And tell me: how did your teen years treat you?

Favourite things - people!

People are great, aren't they? I love people. Here are five people-oriented favourites to take you into Saturday. Enjoy! 1. About missing persons

Take a look at this fantastic photo series called "i'm not there" by pol ubeda. Eerie and rather lovely, don't you think? (Via The Daily Muse)

2. About memories

How amazing would this look on a wall in your home, positively twinkling with good memories and loved ones from floor to ceiling? You can make it yourself by following this DIY on A Beautiful Mess. (Via Poppytalk)

3. About posties

As in, I think the postie would love the look of this wonderful stamped copper postcard from Catbird NYC as much as your recipient would. (Unless of course you sent a whole bunch of them, which would weigh the postie down and actually make you somewhat unpopular with him or her, I imagine).

4. About paper dolls

The rather lovely Shannon from Happiness Is and her other half had vintage paper dolls of themselves made for their wedding save-the-date cards. Don't they look gorgeous? This sends my mind a bit boggly with the multitudinous possibilities...

5. About grandmothers

And finally... I thought this was just a beautiful and thoughtful story about families and generations and understanding and love and chaos, all rolled into one. It made me happy. I hope it makes you happy too. Have a great weekend!

The circus of dreams

About a year and a half ago my friend Brandi wrote this post about Erin Morgenstern's novel The Night Circus and I thought, "That sounds right up my alley." So, being the early adapter that I am, I finally got around to reading it myself this week. And, WOW. Normally when I am sitting up at 2.43am nursing Madeleine I tend to think along the lines of "Hurry uppppp, I'm sooooooo tired." These last couple of nights I've been thinking "Are you done already? Have a bit more while I finish the chapter." The night circus of the book, Le Cirque des Rêves, translates as "The Circus of Dreams" and it is exactly that. An immersive experience into someone else's dreams. Magic springs from the fingertips of two lovers. In the most beautiful way imaginable. You wander in deliberately disorienting spiral pathways of black and white, entering or bypassing striped, black and white tents as you please, to uncover the secrets within. In this place the magic feels real. Perhaps the magic is real. But don't be afraid: you are safe in the circus.

Likewise the book itself is a step inside a magic place. With storylines and perspectives that twist and turn through time like the spiral pathways in the circus, it's best not to try and straighten it out but, instead, just let the story carry you with it. On the back of my copy, author Audrey Niffenegger is quoted as saying "The Night Circus made me happy." That is exactly how I felt. Happy. Elated. Like some long-forgotten childhood part of me that once believed in magic has woken up, stretched, yawned and smiled.

ps. How do I describe the magnetic pull of this book? It's what I call "the Harry Potter effect." You love Harry and his friends, and you care what happens to them. But there is another character in those books: Hogwarts itself. You love Hogwarts. You care what happens to Hogwarts. You want to live in Hogwarts, even after Harry and Ron and Hermione have all graduated. Know what I mean? Well, the circus is another character in this book. And you will love it. And probably, like me, you will want to run away and live in it too. The end.

Ok not quite the end.

ps2. Dear rêveurs (you know who you are):

* Play the Night Circus Game * Follow Herr Thiessen on Twitter * Listen to the Night Circus playlist (say what?)

The Storytellers - Restless #3

"Restless" by Paul Hulbert

There are no words to this post. Instead, the story of "Restless" is told in these two photographs. What do they say to you?

{Post by Paul Hulbert, in the theme “Restless” for The Storytellers}

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Paul Hulbert is a freelance photographer who regularly works for lifestyle, home and garden magazines, as well as local governments, corporate clients and not-for-profit clients. He also creates tailor-made garden books for private clients, and photographs portraits, weddings and special occasions on commission.

Monday's addiction

It is... the Lizzie Bennet Diaries, a very funny and completely contemporary adaptation of Pride and Prejudice that is familiar and new at the same time, and makes wonderfully innovative and interactive use of social media. You start watching the YouTube vlog episodes, and following the various characters' social media accounts and conversations (for example, this is Lizzie's Tumblr), and reading the behind-the-scenes insights and, before you know it, a whole hour has gone by and all the things you'd planned to do have been left undone and the most pressing discovery to your world is that KITTY IS A CAT.

My dear friend Brandi Bernoskie (also from Not Your Average Ordinary) introduced me to Lizzie's world last week, and I have been hooked ever since.

I hope you have a wonderful Monday. We have a public holiday here but I am working. Boo.

(ps. If you want to start from the beginning do it from here so you can get all the social media interactions between episodes, in order.)

Favourite things - something to share

It's Friday, at last! Do you have any special plans? We're heading into a long weekend here in Australia. Mr B and I are not doing anything in particular, but it will be lovely to have that extra time to spend together as a family. I thought it would be fun today to get a little bit intimate, and explore some little things you can share with someone special. Like these.

1. The two-cookie recipe

This recipe from no.2 pencil makes just two cookies. I have bookmarked it for those nights when Mr B and I crave something sweet, but don't want a whole batch of biscuits or cupcakes around the house to tempt us in days to come.

2. Romantic tattoos

Don't worry, they're not permanent. But these tattoos from SusyJack are a rather unique and lovely way to decorate yourself for your lover on a special occasion, don't you think? Via Poppytalk

3. Mother and child reunion

I would just love for someone to capture my days with Madeleine like this video of Joy (from Oh Joy!) and her daughter Ruby. What a beautiful memento of their time together.

4. Guess who?

Do you remember the detective board-game Guess Who? It was one of my favourites as a kid. How awesome is this customised version of Guess Who featuring family members, made by Simple Jill? I am so doing this! Via B for Bel

5. Cheesy love

Want the recipe for the most romantic picnic ever? Pack the following: 1. the apple of your eye, 2. a bottle of red, 3. some fantastic water-crackers, and... 4. a heart-shaped cheese. True love is sure to follow. Seen on Frolic, here and here.