It's been quite a while since I've been on/seen my blog. Of course lots of things have been happening, the biggest and most time consuming of which has been the building of and moving into our new home. It's amazing how many weekend hours are gobbled up visiting furniture stores and deciding on colour schemes and towels and cutlery and…everything that fits in a house.
When I reflect on my posts of 2014 I see this: fish, marshmallows, yoghurt cake and mango trifle. Perhaps the only positive to come out of this is the fact that it is almost mango season again. Clearly, time has been fragile. When I reflect on my life of 2014, the last weekend I remember enjoying was spent watching 2 entire seasons of Game of Thrones (yep, discovered!). Also we went to Europe at some point for 3 weeks and backpacked (ate our way) through Italy and a bit of France. Then there is just a crazy blur of house building related……bits and pieces (of astronomical proportions). 2014 has been a time vortex.
So, this sounds like I'm having a very big whinge "my new house means I didn't do anything on my blog whaa" and this is really not what it is about at all. I love my house. I love every painstakingly selected item within my house. I love the fact that when I was a kid I used to dream of living in a fancy house and the house that I now live in infinitely surpasses those dreams. In short: I love it and….I la-OVE the kitchen, which is really what it's always been about. Let's talk about that.
Today is not about whinging, today is about two things - banana bread and Nutino - and the excessive amount of joy these two things (and my new kitchen) bring to my life.
Let's start with banana bread. I don't remember when banana bread became part of my life. It is so integral to my overall wellbeing that I feel like it has just always been there….at least from the time I started regularly frequenting coffee shops so let's say 14 or 15. It's my go to breakfast, morning tea and afternoon tea and all the other small meals that fit in-between those meals - you have those too right? The only deal breaker is when it lacks walnuts. It also has to be toasted and if you let it go just a little bit, almost to the point of burning, you can create the most amazing caramelised flavour. Are you drooling on your keyboard too?
I have had a shot at a few different banana bread recipes but this is it for me now. I have gone back to this one all year.
Let's talk about Jamie Oliver. Love him or hate him? I enjoy his t.v. programs. I find his cookbooks have over stuffed ingredient lists and too much reading. I find his website difficult to navigate. I find many of his recipes are either epic win or epic fail. This one is epic win. An additional bonus, it can be made as a half loaf and still tastes amazing and is still a reasonable size. This is just sugary, nutty, banana goodness and it only gets better with the addition of Nutino.
As a kid I did not grow up in a Nutella household. I remember having tiny snack pack Nutella in my lunch box on very rare occasions, that I'm pretty sure I often switched or threw away. Of course when my husband hears these stories he almost goes into a fit of rage, "WASTING NUTELLA??? WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU??". I just never really understood it. Then we went to Italy, where everything comes smothered in Nutella or the Italian version - Nutino.
On our European vacation we booked all of our accommodation through Air BnB, which meant we spent three weeks living in family homes, most of the time with the family themselves. Without sounding like a total hipster, it was very authentic. It's fine, I hate how I sound when I say that as well.
We spent out first few days in Rome. We stayed in a little apartment which, according the the Air BnB website profile, belonged to an Italian adonis named Dario. I swear even my husband thought he was dreamy. Of course when we arrived, Dario was in Milan at Fashion Week and (after a gruelling 34 hour fight through Brisbane-Singapore-Frankfurt-Rome, a train ride, a walk from Roma Termini and 5 flights of stairs) we were greeted by a woman who spoke zero English and simply introduced herself as "Dario Mama".
We loved Rome. We loved Dario's place. We loved Dario Mama. We especially loved the flaky, buttery croissants she fed us each morning that were smothered in Nutino.
So the rest is history right? It just makes sense. And I'm totally fine with never wearing a two piece again, there are just more important things in life.
