One of my favourite places in the entire world is a place called Papatowai in the Catlins, south of Dunedin. We spent Easters there when I was a child, and I still love to visit whenever I go back to New Zealand.

This part of the South Island coast has rock pools and tide pools, an estuary that drains out at low tide, South Island Rata that hang low over the sand and old growth Totara. It’s one of those places that you go to stay and not leave. Just get out your map, drawn a circle around where you are staying and go out explore a very small part of the world – climb your way around rock pools, walk up and down the coast, wander across the estuary in zig zags like the spoon bills that live there, sit inside by the fire.  Eat good food, go to sleep and then get up and do it all again.

Here’s a map of Papatowai that my Dad drew me last time we visited New Zealand, with all his favourite exploring places.

in which our heroine discovers romance novels and steampunk…

Reading was a big escape for me this year, and I was really surprised to find I enjoy contemporary romance novels, not to mention supernatural romance.  Jennifer Crusie was a huge find.  The subject matter that really drew me to these books or kept me reading is in brackets in the below list.  Taking note of what I liked about each book was a really fun way to see patterns in my reading – and will hopefully help me find more books to read in 2012, not to mention help other readers read their way from one author to another.

* Black Watch – Connie Willis (Time Travel, the London Blitz, World War II, History)
* All Clear – Connie Willis (Time Travel, the London Blitz, World War II, History)
* Not Less than Gods (a Company Novel) – Kage Baker (Travel, Orientalism, Victorian Europe, Time Travel, Cyborgs)
* To Say Nothing of the Dog – Connie Willis (Time Travel, Victorian England, Comedy, Mystery Novels, Seances, History, Romance)
* Fingersmith – Sarah Waters (Victorian England, Con Artists, Crime
* Tipping the Velvet – Sarah Waters (Victorian England, Theatre, Romance)
* Wolf Hall – Hillary Mantel (Mercantile Europe, History, Tudors, Economics, Statesmanhood, Domestic Drama)
* Her Fearful Symmetry – Audrey Niffenegger (Graveyards, Romance, Family Mystery, Supernatural, Seances, Ghosts)
* Mr Impossible – Loretta Chase (Romance, Egypt)
* Dead to the World – Charlaine Harris (Vampires, Werewolves, the South, Romance, Melodrama)
* Soulless – Gail Carriger (Victorian London, Vampies, Werewolves, Steampunk)
* Redemption – Pat Barker (WW1, Soldiers, War, Poetry, Psychology, History)
* Changeless – Gail Carriger (Victorian London, Vampires, Werewolves, Steampunk)
* Agnes and the Hitman – Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer (The South, Food, Romance, Crime, Weddings)
* Bellwether – Connie Willis (Trends, Chaos Theory, Research, Scientific Discovery, Romance)
* Blameless – Gail Carriger (Victorian London, Vampies, Werewolves, Steampunk)
* Heartless – Gail Carriger (Victorian London, Vampies, Werewolves, Steampunk)
* REAMDE – Neal Stephenson (The Internet, Technology, Gaming, Economics, Capitalism, Fantasy, Worldbuilding, Geography)
* Children of the Company – Kage Baker (Civilisation, World Building, Espionage, Conspiracy, Time Travel, Cyborgs, California, The Future)
* Bet Me – Jennifer Crusie (Food, Romance, Statistics)
* The Iron Duke – Meljean Brook (Steampunk, Romance, Conspiracy)
* Maybe This Time – Jennifer Crusie (Orphans, Ghosts, Romance)
* Busman’s Honeymoon – Dorothy Sayers (1930s, Aristocracy, Country Life, Mystery)
* Welcome to Temptation – Jennifer Crusie (Small Town Politics, Romance)
* Don’t Look Down – Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer (Movie Set, Hollywood, Military, Romance)

Agnes is a curvy food writer who lives in an old plantation mansion in Georgia.   It’s her dream house, just like the house in Gone with the Wind, only better… because it comes ‘with butter’.  There is so much cooking and food in this book, mostly breakfasts and cakes.  I don’t know why Agnes has so much food in her fridge/pantry, and who does the washing up.  But she feeds everyone.   It certainly made me want to cook for a crowd.

And Tara (with butter) has become a bit of a mental touchstone for me.  Having a huge mortgage on a big old house is pretty stressful for Agnes (she’s about to default on her mortgage payments, has to host a wedding for inlaws from hell, oh, and everyone seems to want to kill her), but the essence of the idea of Tara (with butter) is, for me, having somewhere to settle, somewhere to call home, with enough produce and supplies on hand to be able to eat well.  Really well.

At the same time as I have that dream, I also dream about vagabonding and going on a long adventure (knitting in iceland, bicycling my way through tuscany, learning french in paris, hitting the chicago blues festival, walking the high line in nyc).  And you can certainly eat well on the road.  But I also carry that idea of this place with hummocky paddocks, higher hills in the distance, a bit of a house to bang around in, friends who come visit, a cat on the porch and a long narrow twighlight.

With butter.

I have tried several times to buy shoes online.  The results are usually pretty disastrous.  The shoes always turn out to be too large.  I sometimes have equally terrible experiences buying shoes in person.  I know I’m not the only one to have squeezed my foot into a very snug shoe while saying ‘these will stretch, right?’   This moment of delusion is normally followed by weeks of hobbling around the house in thick woolly socks + new shoes -  a seriously great look.

Failed attempts to wear new shoes for the entire duration of my 6 minute walk to and from the train station in the morning are common.  Sometimes my new shoes stretch enough to turn into the best. shoes. ever.  But sometimes not.  Most of the time it’s a pretty nerve racking process.

As yet another pair of favourite shoes are shredded by the pavement and disappear from my life, I’ve decided to up my game a bit.  Last night I purchased a pair of Dieppa Restrepos.  My ultimate dream shoes.  But how disappointing would be for your dream shoes to arrive, but not fit?

Using an accurate insole measurement  is the only way to make sure that a pair of shoes will absolutely fit.  Would you believe that my foot is 22cm, but I wear a 24cm insole?  I wouldn’t have thought this was right, but it turns out your shoes need that much wriggle room.

A shoe manufacturer or a supplier will usually be able to tell you the insole measurements for their shoe sizes.  Often a website will say something like ‘Runs true to size’ and you can use a size chart to work out what size will fit you best.  The super cautious can always email the store and ask for more information.  And you should.  This is hard earned money you are spending on something that is not only beautiful, but functional.  Something you will wear every day.  You want to get it right.

Here’s how to measure your insole

• Find your favourite, best fitting pair of shoes.
• Find a soft, flexible tape measure (or, if you don’t have a tape measure, a piece of ribbon or string.)
• Take the right shoe (your right foot is usually bigger) and push the beginning of the tape measure marked with a ‘0’ way down with your fingers until it the point marked with a ‘0’ is sitting in the middle of the inside bottom of the shoe, as close to the toe as possible.
• Hold the beginning of the tape there at the point where the inside bottom meets the toe, and walk your fingers along the tape measure pushing it flat against the inside bottom of the shoe.
• Keep walking the tape up the middle of the shoe the entire length ofthe insole, until it hits the place at the back of the inside bottom of the shoe where it meets the heel.
• Take note of the number in the corner where the back of the insole and the heel meet.
• Hold a finger on that number, and (just in case the beginning of the tape measure has slipped up a little as you stretch it out) push the other end of the tape all the way in to the toe and hold it where the bottom inside of the shoe hits the toe. Hold that point with the fingers of your other hand.
• Pull the tape out of the shoe while still marking both points with your fingers.
• The distance of length between your fingers is your insole measurement (mine is 25 cm and I’m usually a 7.5/38).
• Compare this measurement to the insole measurement for the shoes you want to buy.  Dieppa Restrepo size 7s are a 25cm insole and the size 8s are a 26cm insole.

Before checking my insole I would have assumed I was an american size 8, but I’m pretty sure now that I’m actually a size 7.  Follow these steps and your shoes should always come out a perfect fit.  I’m backing the size 7 Dieppa Retrepos.  Only time will tell – but I’m pretty sure I’m going to end up with shoes that fit, rather than shoes that are a size too big.

I love that they start on the Friday evening, as I can’t think of a better way to start my weekend than by milling around a market filled with beautiful people and beautiful things. Carriageworks is a great space for it. I don’t think two of my favourite stall holders will be there this year, Publisher Textiles and Kareena Zerefos. But I am hoping to nab myself a Puddin’head teatowel.

I’m all about the red tea towels at the moment.

And just as I think I don’t have it in me to make ice cream ever again, I find two almost too ripe punnets of leftover strawberries in the fridge.

The thought of a complex ice cream recipe with multiple steps and straining, and chilling etc was daunting, but then I found a recipe for Balsamic Strawberry Ice Cream in Stephanie Alexander’s A Cook’s Companion. Even as I was reading the recipe I could taste the tart caramel of the balsamic vinegar and the sweetness of the strawberries. So fresh and delicious, and so simple.

Easy Balsamic Vinegar and Strawberry Ice Cream (ratios significantly modified from the orginal recipe)

Wash, hull and quarter 1 1/2 punnets of ripe strawberries. Macerate strawberries in 1/4 cup of balsamic vinegar for 20 minutes. Whizz strawberries and vinegar with 1/4 cup of pure icing sugar using an immersion blender. Chill this vinegar-strawberry-sugar mixture in the fridge for at least one hour. Whip 1 1/2 cups of cream and then fold through the strawberry mixture and churn in an ice cream maker for 20 minutes.

This black pepper panna cotta with balsamic strawberries looks amazing too.

This week though I found them finally – the Blood Orange Mecca – in a small greengrocer in the predominantly middle eastern community I work in in Sydney’s West.

I bought a dozen and couldn’t wait to take them home and juice them. This is me really excited later that night when I was about to start juicin’

I wasn’t prepared for how dark they were (such a great colour!), or their complex flavour. Like the sweetst, most alcoholic of oranges. They taste like concentrated sunshine. A friend of mine told me a story the day I bought them about growing up in Tamworth eating blood oranges straight from the tree as she walked home, and they really taste like that childhood summer walking. Such a treat!

I made such a mess juicing them, because the juice splattered everywhere as I did them by hand with my trusty white porcelain maxwell williams citrus peeler. It probably didn’t help that I felt the need to suck the last bit of juice our of every juiced half, either. I walked away with two cups of juice, but looking like I had also just walked off the set of an episode of True Blood! Totally worth it, though. Juice is sitting chilled in the fridge and I am going to churn it tomorrow morning. I’ll let you know how it goes and will try and take photos. The colour is going to be intense!

In other fun news, I scored tickets to see Sufjan Stevens at the Opera House a few weeks ago. They were late release tickets, so I only knew we were going a few hours before the gig started and had to get there straight from work. Which made it all the more special when I realised what an amazing performance we had been invited into. When people got up from their seats in the middle of Impossible Soul and started dancing, I realised what a great thing we were part of — and then balloons and glitter came raining down. In the Sydney Opera House! It was like a giant dance party, and it was so nice to see everyone enjoying themselves so much. I love a happy concert. I’m going to learn to dance like those girls, I swear.

January was just the most amazing month for live music, and 2011 has barely started!

Who needs Christmas when you spend the week before cooking the most amazing food? Case in point: last night’s chocolate sorbet.

I guess I can’t decry Christmas completely, because it did bring me my amazing Cuisineart ICE-20. My sister Claire, Dave and I test ran it early last night with a chocolate dessert par excellence… David Lebovitz’s amazing Chocolate Sorbet. Why I would decide to make the most decadent chocolate ice cream in existence after two weeks of guzzling Christmas chocolate, I have no idea… but it was just heaven.

I can’t wait to try more flavours – we are thinking rhubarb ice cream for Christmas day; Claire wants to make blood orange sorbet; and I am drooling about the salted caramel ice cream filled with shards of white Belgian chocolate that I had at Love Coogee on Sunday night.