Fiona's Favourites @fionasfavourites - Tumblr Blog

Pretty Prickly

I have been very prickly, lately. They say things get easier with time. Six and a bit months later, I things have certainly not got easier. They are different. And it’s hard to explain exactly what that means. What is different is having to accept that you never know – really – what will trigger an emotional response. At the beginning of December, I was at the opening of the McGregor Art…

View On WordPress

#hive-106316

Pita Breads with Natural Yeast - Sourdough

I have been planning to share another episode in my sourdough journey for a while. It was prompted by my newest market product which garnered orders for 160. Yes, you read right. One-hundred-and-sixty. Pita breads using wild yeast. Oh, and that excludes the batch I make each week for the market… I started working on this on Friday – in between my usual other “other” office tasks – and…

View On WordPress

#hive-120586

Different people. Different grief.

The other day, someone asked me, Do you miss him? I was a little girl – probably nine or ten – when I first encountered a death in the family. My father’s mother. We called her Wee Granny. I don’t remember her. Hardly surprising because the only time I did ever meet her, I was an infant and she never left Scotland. Glasgow, to be precise. Next, it was Big Granny. Now, I do remember her. I…

View On WordPress

#hive-106316

This day, 23 years later, will never be the same

For the first time in 23 years, I celebrate The Husband’s birthday without him. He didn’t “do” birthdays. I did. That photograph, I took of him in 2016 and used it for the invitation to celebrate his 70th birthday. Seven years ago. Exactly a month ago, on 5 June, I said goodbye to him forever. I left him knowing that while I was gone he was likely to breathe his last breath. He hadn’t been…

View On WordPress

#hive-106316

Keener than (wholegrain) mustard

I have been making my own wholegrain mustard for a while, now. Well, until December 2022, I hadn’t made it for a while. The first time I made it was ahead of a Sunday supper. I cannot remember why I needed it, but none of the shops had any. For love nor money, we could find none anywhere. Whatever I was making (I don’t remember), needed it. I had to have a plan B. I made my own. It was that…

View On WordPress

#hive-120586

Some September Stuff

Source There are some days that one never forgets. What happened, where you were, what you were doing and what followed. I was standing in my kitchen starting to get supper ready when I heard the news that Queen Elizabeth II had died. It got me thinking about how, in my life, I’ve lived history. It’s not something one thinks about as a six-year old, sitting on the floor, listening to a…

View On WordPress

#hive-106316

Six decades, only six songs? Impossible

Whenever I hear Abba’s Waterloo, my eleven year old self remembers the first “pop” song that appealed to her – the very first time she heard it. Source It was a weekday afternoon and the radio was on – we had one of those radiograms that had the radio in the middle, a turntable on one side, and a cubby hole for the records on the other. No, Waterloo was not the first seven single I bought. …

View On WordPress

#hive-106316

The quest to use less plastic

The Husband groans every time some of my regular customers arrive at the market, bulging bag in hand and make a bee-line for me. I take great delight in these deliveries: they’re usually glass jars (and the odd bottle) that they have emptied and saved. Sometimes for me to refill or to fill afresh. Before I can use them, the labels must come off, the glue cleaned and the branded lids sprayed…

View On WordPress

#hive-106316

The dying memories of the 1980s: looking back to look at the now

For the last couple of days, I have been musing on the heady, awful and wonderful days of the mid-1980s. At the moment, there’s a kind of pall hanging over South Africa which is a function of the nearly fifteen years of electrickery drama, ongoing corruption and impunity, only the surface of which Zondo has scratched. This is compounded with a growing sense of unease. The crime rate is…

View On WordPress

#hive-106316

Sourdough - it's a journey of constant learning

Sourdough – it’s a journey of constant learning

I have a to-do list of promises that is as long as my arm (and the other and both legs) of recipes that I’ve said I’ll write up and share. This one was made two years ago. It’s weird that it’s two years ago. It also seems that the phrase “two years” is running through so many conversations at the moment. Two years since we were sort of let out It dawned on me just yesterday, after the market,…

View On WordPress

#hive-106316

Musings on Mothers, Motherhood and Choices

It’s Mothers’ Day today. Growing up, Mothers’ Day was not a thing. I do, though, remember sermons about Mothering Sunday. Until I went to boarding school where peer group pressure made me pay attention and “do the right thing”. My mother’s response was less than enthusiastic which, with hindsight, I still don’t understand. Was I hurt? I don’t remember. I do remember that my peers looked at…

View On WordPress

#hive-106316

Burger Blues

It was with a bit of a start that I discovered I’ve been making these hamburgers for just short of twenty years. The original recipe came in the Good Taste magazine published by the Wine of the Month Club which I’d joined in about 1998. The publication is now defunct – gone the same way as many other printed publications. However, I digress, but indulge me a little longer: I realised that it…

View On WordPress

#hive-120586

The soundtrack to my life - a kind of musical "back story"

The soundtrack to my life – a kind of musical “back story”

An opening word – or three I wrote this post as an experiment in November 2018 in response to a challenge: pick one favourite song. For me, that is a virtually impossible task. I have favourites depending on my mood, what I’m hearing, the context, where I am… I delighted in rising to that challenge to which I rose. A couple of years later, I responded to another challenge: to write about my…

View On WordPress

#hive-106316

Pickled Fish: a South African Tradition

Pickled fish is an iconic traditional South African dish. I first ate pickled fish at the ripe old age of about seven. It was the starter for Christmas lunch: the first I really remember. I was instantly smitten. Auntie Doris made it every year and for all the years we “had Christmas” at number 10, I looked forward to it – more than the Christmas cake or the Christmas pudding. In the…

View On WordPress

#hive-120586

Sandwich Memories

It seems I’ve written quite a bit about sandwiches over the years. They were the subject of one of my earliest (and surviving) blog posts. Open sandwiches – 2014 Given that a sandwich is food – a filling – wrapped up – or between two slices of some sort of bread – I really have. Quite something given that about five years ago, I stopped eating bread: commercial bread, anyway. That’s a story…

View On WordPress

#hive-106316

Of licenses, liars and scrambled eggs

She came into the kitchen, clearly distressed, and asked, “Do you vear licenses?” pointing at her eyes. “Umm….ye-e-s…” “So could I pliz have some of zat liqvid to clean mine?” Then the penny dropped. Lenses. Contact lenses. I had taken a flyer and thought that our Ukranian house guest was talking about prescription spectacles. This was after her first breakfast in The Sandbag House. Each…

View On WordPress

#hive-106316

Unicorns, bunnies and fishes: a reality check

I’ve not had a rant for a while. My last few rants were more than a year ago. I railed against aspects of the restrictions associated with the lockdown. Truth be told, I was probably railing at the virus itself. As if it gives a damn. I might come back to that but I suspect we’re done with it. In more ways than one. That said, it’s been a rough couple of years. My work all but disappeared…

View On WordPress

#hive-106316

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Fiona's Favourites