Cooking and eating brought our family together each evening, and now brings us together each birthday and each Christmas to share and laugh and live. The plant-based meals we enjoy preparing and eating passes on more than a collection of recipes, they teach the next generation a way to live.
It was during my early secondary school years that I decided to use my life to help people. In retrospect, now that I’m retired, this seemingly ordinary decision was anything but ordinary. It led our family on a peripatetic existence, teaching in several Pacific Islands and eastern Australian cities, introducing our family to cultural diversity and varied cuisines and leading us to see life from a wider perspective.
We bought locally grown food and cooking became an adventure; bargaining in local village markets for homegrown produce and carting it home in large string ‘bilums’ in Papua New Guinea; driving to farm stands and factory shops in Tasmania and adjusting to cooking food for many many months of freezing wintery weather; my first bite of feijoa from our backyard tree in New Zealand; enjoying the delicious tropical fruit of North Queensland; observing field after field of asparagus grown in fertile flats while driving to Melbourne for work. Over the years, I was challenged to adapt our plant-based diet using the locally available plant food.
I’ve always eaten plant food; it’s what my parents ate and I had learned to appreciate its health-giving benefits, so followed suit. Food’s important to mum, not because she loved to cook, but because she loved to eat healthy food and prepared the delicious meals we ate together at the kitchen table morning and evening. Memories of cooking with mum and my sister, teaching us the basics while we hung out in the kitchen and encouraging us to cook whatever we liked with guidance if we asked, will ever remain precious.
Now retired, Hubby and I eat a diversity of seasonal plant foods from our garden, greenhouse and orchard and shop at local markets and stores. Cooking and eating with family and friends and sharing my simply prepared plant food is still a joy. My recipes are simple and uncomplicated, use traditional cooking methods where foods are mostly unaltered, organic, nutrient dense and locally grown.
Our family ate at the dining table every evening to chat about our day and to eat the meal we’d cooked, sometimes together or sometimes alone. Often we’d take turns on who would choose a menu, shop and cook to share the load in our busy lives. Now eating brings our family together some weekends, some birthdays and some Christmases to share and laugh and live. The plant-based meals we enjoy preparing and eating passes on more than a collection of recipes, they pass on a way of life that brings not only health but happiness if shared. I hope you’ll enjoy cooking plant food with me and that it keeps us in good health.
BLOG UPDATED - 2023
