A night at the zoo!

The National Zoo and Aquarium in Canberra has been around since the early eighties and they have offered overnight stays at Jamala Wildlife Lodge for about ten years. I'd always wanted to spend a night at the zoo and was very lucky to stay there on Sunday night as a birthday treat. The package included lunch, tours, dinner, accommodation and breakfast. It was a spectacular experience. Here are some pics ...

Light lunch on arrival

And from the self-guided Sunday afternoon tour:

Our luxurious room, which had a lemur enclosure on one side and an expansive view of lion habitat on the other:

Lemur-viewing window

Yawning, snuggling lemurs!

Dinner:

Assorted canapes

Madagascan vegetable and tofu curry with coconut rice

Creme brulee

Mischka the white lion snoozed next to the room where we ate dinner and was still slumbering there when we reconvened for breakfast the next morning :-)

Breakfast:

Vego eggs benedict

We expected to be in a group for our guided tour on Monday morning but the other participants didn't show so Andrew and I received a very personalised tour with our knowledgeable guide, Lucy. Some highlights:

We were allowed to pat the rhino!

We had access to our room for one more hour between finishing the walking tour and checking out ...

... which meant we could watch our lemur friends enjoy breakfast

Such am amazing experience. Delightful and delicious and educational.

Weeknight meals ... the 2026 edition

Seventeen years ago (!) I started an Excel spreadsheet recording all the dinners I cooked at home. Over the years I've become more efficient at producing tasty, nutritious, quick meals. On the one hand, the annual number crunch indicates quite a lot of repetition; on the other, we're (mostly) enjoying healthy, delicious food that isn't over-complicated and leaves plenty of time for the many other delights of semi-retirement: gardening, reading, socialising, exercise, volunteering …

So, here's what I cooked most between April 2025 and April 2026:

creamy tuna pasta
hearty vegetable and barley soup
pasta and sauce
macaroni cheese
kimchi and cheese jaffles
scrambled eggs with feta and crispy chilli
spinach and feta triangles with veges
nectarine, rocket, haloumi and pecan salad
spinach and feta quiche
tomato fondue

A couple of new favourite recipes this year have been paneer fried rice and crispy haloumi with tomatoes and white beans. Apparently we need extra protein as we age, so I'm trying to be conscious of including plenty of legumes, eggs, nuts and cheeses in our diet, particularly as I rarely cook meat anymore.

Cheers!

For about two weeks each year, Majura Valley Farm becomes

a sunflower maze. Andrew and I enjoyed a lunchtime

walk among the flowers and the artworks last month

Chocolate cheesecake re-re-engineered

Chocolate cheesecake just got even easier to make! I've tinkered with this recipe over many years, removing the sugar from the base (it's sweet enough without it), halving the sugar in the topping then deleting it altogether, deleting the egg whites and increasing the amount of chocolate. It works well.

First, make the base

200 grams plain, sweet biscuits [I like to use Malt or Digestive biscuits]
100 grams butter

Crush the biscuits. Melt the butter and combine well with the crushed biscuits. Press the mixture onto the bottom of a foil-lined springform pan and chill.

Next, make the cheesy topping

250 grams cream cheese
200 grams chocolate [milk, dark or white]
300 ml pouring cream

Soften the cream cheese a little and beat well. Melt the chocolate over a bowl of hot water or in a microwave. Allow the chocolate to cool slightly, them combine with the cream cheese mixture. Whip the cream. Combine the chocolate and cream mixtures well, and pile on top of the base. Decorate with extra cream, grated chocolate, or fresh fruit. Refrigerate until ready to eat.

A sunflower maze in Canberra!

This blog has mainly become my online recipe book. I barely post anymore, though I often pop by for recipes. Just lately it's been pumpkin bread, rice paper rolls, peacamole and carrot and coriander soup.

Anyway … we recently spotted a story on Canberra's news blog, The Riotact, about a local sunflower maze. It's only open for two weeks (closing on 16 March) so Andrew and I bought some tickets, grabbed a picnic lunch, and headed out there today. Delightful.

Thanks to Andrew for the photos.

Pomegranates are back in season. Yaaay!

Four months ago a brief but violent storm caused havoc at our place. For a few minutes the neighbourhood was a mass of flying vegetation. A large tree branch came through a window and another falling tree crushed the roof of our newish shed. The insurance claim was approved but we're still waiting for the shed to be repaired. Until that happens, I've been trying to minimise the amount of food in our fridge and freezer, as apparently the builders will need to switch off the electricity for several days, and we and the contents of our freezer will need to go elsewhere. As someone who really likes having a freezer full of curries, dals, soups and casseroles, I've found this quite challenging. Anyway, Andrew pointed out that maybe I've accidentally jinxed the building work by using up all the food in the freezer. Maybe, if I start filling it up again, the work will actually get done …? So tonight I'm making a pumpkin, eggplant and zucchini rendang, and sometime soon I'll make a pumpkin and pomegranate stew. All these things are currently in season and in stock locally. Autumn vegetables are amazing.

Pomegranates are delicious! Messy to eat but worth the effort. I avoid buying them for most of the year as they're often imported and I want to avoid the food miles, so it's always exciting when locally grown ones appear in the shops. I planted a pomegranate tree a couple of years ago; while it seems quite healthy, it has yet to bear fruit. Ah well.

Here's my recipe for the vegetarian Persian stew fesenjān (or fesenjoon). I cobbled this recipe together from several available on the web. The main alteration made (again because I prefer to use local rather than imported ingredients where possible) was to use pecans instead of the traditional walnuts.

1 large onion, chopped
olive oil
0.5 teaspoon turmeric
0.5 teaspoon cinnamon
half a pumpkin, cubed
one large eggplant, cubed
2 cups vegetable stock
0.5 cup pomegranate molasses (try Middle Eastern grocery shops or delis)
1 cup pecan nuts, roasted and roughly chopped
seeds from a fresh pomegranate
fresh parsley, chopped

Heat the oil in a large pot and add the onion. Cook until translucent, then add the spices and cook a little longer. Add the pumpkin and eggplant chunks and stir till they're coated in the spices. Add the stock and bring to the boil. Reduce heat and add the pomegranate molasses and pecans. Simmer for about twenty minutes. Garnish with pomegranate seeds and parsley to serve. This recipe makes about six or seven portions. Freeze leftovers for another day.

Nurturing brain and body

Occasionally we hear sad stories about people who retire one day then die the next, or count down till retirement only to find it unsatisfying and boring. I'm trying to be strategic about my transition to retirement … gradually reducing the amount of paid work I do while increasing voluntary and leisure activities. 

In 2006 I dropped from five work days to four (taking a 20% pay cut; this was long before current ideas of four-day weeks) and took up two volunteer jobs. In 2012 I started doing some freelance work on the side of my day job, and in 2018 I left the day job to make freelancing my main activity. Self-employment can be a bit of a roller coaster, time-wise, and some weeks I'd work 30+ hours; other weeks it was fewer than ten. Early on, I felt compelled to accept most work I was offered in case the offers dried up. Over the past couple of years I haven't needed to do that; I have enough work (and enough income) to support myself so can afford to slow down and smell the roses.

Not my roses. One of our neighbours has a great collection though!

Anyway, it's been fun. Life, these days, features gardening, volunteering, socialising, exercise (boot camp, barre classes and cycling), a community orchestra, random lectures and webinars, and still some paid work. And while I exercise, cook and do housework, I listen to podcasts. They fill gaps in my brain! I didn't always pay attention in school, or take notice of momentous world events happening around me in the seventies and eighties, so am grateful to a whole flock of podcasters for letting me know what I missed. A few current favourites:

Global Roaming – current world affairs with Geraldine Doogue and Hamish Macdonald

Empire – how empires have shaped the world, with William Dalrymple and Anita Anand

Legacy – stories of influential people, with Peter Frankopan and Afua Hirsch

Cautionary Tales – mistakes and what we can learn from them, with Tim Harford

Radio Atlantic – stories and conversations with various hosts

Lady Killers – Lucy Worsley explores historical crimes by women

7am – stories in the news

Full Story – stories in the news

The Waves – news stories from a gender perspective

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to buy myself a coffee. And listen to a podcast on the way :-)

Sri Lanka was delightful!

Sri Lanka had been at the top of my bucket list since I was seven. It was the mid 1970s and, while living in a grim, grey little town in New Zealand, I started corresponding with a penpal in Colombo. Sri Lanka sounded like everything New Zealand was not: colourful, spicy, exciting. The country remained a fascination for the next few decades and I started making plans to visit several years ago. The COVID-19 pandemic and an economic crisis meant that I booked, then rebooked, then rebooked the trip, but it finally went ahead last month. And it was fabulous!

I went on a 16-day bus tour organised by Bunnik Tours, who specialise in small-group touring. Everything about the trip met my needs. The staff were excellent, the tour group (14 people including me) nice, the food AMAZING, the scenery and archaeology and wildlife beautiful and fascinating. Just wanted to post a few pics from the adventure …

Lord Howe Island

Andrew and I visited Lord Howe Island, for the first time (hopefully not the last), in early October. What a wonderful little slice of paradise. We walked, climbed, ate, drank, watched birds, snorkelled and learned about the island and its history. There are approximately seven restaurants on the island, which may be why travel agents recommend a seven-night stay! We were supposed to stay for seven nights but ended up with an unscheduled 24 hours in Sydney at the start of the trip as it was too windy on the island for the plane to fly. Never mind. We found things to do in Sydney and thoroughly enjoyed our six nights on Lord Howe Island. I won't waffle on, but here are some pics:

A gorgeous and peaceful getaway.