About

That's me in the corner!

I like baking, cooking, growing and eating food. I also love reading, thinking, daydreaming and talking about the baking, cooking, growing and eating as much as I love doing it!

It doesn’t always mean I do it well, so Dig In is as much about my failures as it is about my successes.

I love writing about all these things. This is the space – the freedom - where I can flex my creative muscles and use all sorts of lovely adjectives (usually inappropriate in my daily job) and share some of my favourite things and challenges in life. Where I can record the seasonal changes in my vegie patch and on my dinner plate. Where I can rhapsodise about how much I love to cream butter and sugar, add vanilla and eggs from mum’s chooks, some flour and sour cream, bake in a moderate oven and make a good plain cake. And where I can share them with you – so Dig In!

Thank yous
Thank you to my mum and dad for the eggs, tomatoes, apples, raspberries, pumpkins and, well, absolutely everything. Thank you to my friends for encouraging, advising, confusing and cheering me on. To B especially for creating my fabulous spoon-and-trowel header.

Frangipani Fabrics
You've seen credits under some of my photos for Frangipani Fabrics. This is the fabulous quilting shop run by my friend B (as above) and her mum. B graciously loans me ‘fat quarters’ to use in place of my meagre supply of napkins or tablecloths. I get to temporarily ‘own’ these fabulous designs. If you’re in Hobart, do look up B, or have a look at the Frangipani Fabrics website for mail order too. It's a treasure trove of contemporary, colourful, irresistable quilting fabrics.

Photos
What is important to me - and where I think my skills and passions lie (I hope that doesn't sound pretentious) - is writing, as I said above. Which is another way of saying I know I'm not a great photographer; I have a very basic digital camera; worse, I'm dealing with Tasmania's unpredictable light. So instead of a picture painting a thousand words, I hope my few hundred words conjure up flavours, smells, textures, successes and woes in my kitchen and garden.

Weights and measures
I use celsius oven temperatures, Australian measuring cups and spoons, and am mostly metric (though an occasional imperial brownie tin may appear).

I am thrilled to know Dig In has international readers, so if you need to convert grams to ounces or celsius to farenheit, you might like to try the Taste website (I have some old pages from the Australian Women's Weekly stuck inside my pantry door that I refer to).

Ingredients
I use normal butter - which in Australia, is 'salted' - even if the recipe specifies unsalted. Just as a pinch of salt brings out the best in a chocolate cake, I figure the extra flavour from this butter enhances any sweet recipe. I use normal white sugar, not caster. And I use eggs from mum and dad's chooks, who free range and eat greens and kitchen scraps. Happy chooks make happy eggs, so if I have to buy eggs, I look for 'ethical' eggs.

Sources
I'll always acknowledge the source of a recipe if known. If I'm using an unreferenced photocopy, I'll state that - and if it's your recipe, or you know whose it is, please let me know.