Entries by Debbie Worgan

Vegan choc peanut butter cake

Jody Vassallo

1 cup almond meal
1 cup desiccated coconut
1/2 cup coconut sugar
1/2 cup cacao
3 Tbs buckwheat flour
2 tsp baking powder
2 Tbs chia seeds
2 tsp peanut butter or hulled tahini
1 cup mashed banana – about 3 small ripe bananas
1 cup (250ml) coconut water

Topping 

1 ripe banana
2 Tbs cacao
2 Tbs maple syrup
1 Tbs hulled tahini

Flaked coconut … Read more »

Marinated chicken with coconut chutney

Jody Vassa

A few things about these drummies. Firstly, to ensure they cook evenly on the BBQ, make sure you score the thickest part of the leg. A couple deep diagonal cuts will do. Dilute the yoghurt a little as it helps the marinade stay on the chook. Lastly, make extra chutney as it is divine and tastes  great on everything, and it is suitable for all doshas, which is a bonus!

1kg chicken drumsticks, scored … Read more »

Leave the World Behind

Reviewed by Heather O’Connor

Leave the World Behind
Rumaan Alam
Ecco Press, $25.99

This is the third novel by this author, of whom I had never heard. It has received terrific reviews, so I have chosen it to kick off 2021. 

My first comment is that if you are one of many of us who are still feeling fragile after the challenges of 2020, you might want to give this a miss for a few more months. … Read more »

Birds and bees

This is a story about the birds and the bees. No, not that one, but one about our fine feathered friends and those helpful little pollinators and collectors of nectar that we often forget about in our gardens.

We, as gardeners, tend to overlook one of the most crucial elements of gardening when designing a space, and that is to provide food and habitat for birds and bees. In attracting bees to your garden, we must understand they do … Read more »

Hope from The Crossing

Sharyn Munro

This December was my first visit back to Bermagui and the south coast since last summer’s bushfires. My mid-north coast had suffered too, I knew the strain of daily fire alerts, evacuations, smoke instead of air, skies that were only shades of brown, and the sound of sirens and helicopters. But down here it seemed even more dramatic, with more villages severely impacted—nobody could ever forget those Mallacoota beach images—and the drive down the highway showed how … Read more »

Mary Williams: paying it forward

My Triangle 2020.10

It was 1991 and Mary Williams was teaching HSC English at Mitchell High, in the western suburbs of Sydney. Choosing which texts she would assign that year, among them she picked Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

‘I knew they were up to it,’ she says. ‘And when Sydney University offered a Chaucer lecture for HSC students, I told them to get their questions ready.

‘It was held on a Saturday morning and it wasn’t … Read more »