the exquisite ordinary

a few trinkets and small mementos from the past few months.

home

gyms and swims + seaside saunas + sunday walkies + brunch with friends + garden tidy ups, ready for summer + marmalade-making + tiki taane with the auckland philharmonia + an easy and delicious chicken curry on repeat + friday night jazz at casita miro + holiday planning for next year and a safari in 2028 + poutine, for jeanine

some favourite recent reads

new cookbooks added to my shelves (1) lugma: abundant dishes and stories from my middle east, (2) ottolenghi test kitchen: shelf love and (3) is this a cookbook?

(1) the correspondent, (2) wild isle style, (3) every wild soul. we visited maria island in february last year and it made this read even more enjoyable for me (4) the briar club and (5) time travel for beginners. some of these reads i found out about from you. thank-you

away

a weekend in hahei in september • dunking ourselves in the cool water at opito bay whilst the wind bared its cold fangs at our exposed skin + lunch (and hot buttered rum) at luke's kitchen and the pour house + winter trees, emerging from hibernation, adorning themselves with their first buds of spring + morning adventures and afternoons on the sofa with a book and a beverage + outdoor showers and sand-crusted shoes + stripping down to my underwear to swim in the shadow of the smiling sphinx

made me look

• are you signed up for xanthe's course the beauty of noticing? there's still time (it starts tomorrow)
• noma projects • sea buckthorn hot sauce. i'll have mine with oysters please
• coast cards • an interesting new postcard subscription, shot on film
• i recently bought the first 2 issues of the stay awhile magazine and it's lovely. some of the places are ones we've been, others were on our list and now there's a few more.
• made me laugh • this quote, found when looking up flavour combinations in the flavour thesaurus...

Anchovy & Watercress • An elegant variation on salt and pepper. Spread anchovy butter thinner than a seven-denier stocking on two slices of white bread. Load up with watercress and press down till the stalks snap. Enjoy by the river under a broad-brimmed straw hat. And do cut the crusts off.