Welcome to The Sunday Table, my monthly letter for paid subscribers. A place for recipes, books, seasonal finds, and whatever else has been occupying my mind lately. Thank you for being here.

What I’ve Been Cooking Lately

Looking back at August, I realise I spent most of the month cooking for others.

We all know the five love languages, but I’d like to propose a sixth: feeding people.

Between my partner Ben’s spectacularly complicated wisdom tooth extraction (which somehow resulted in dry socket, multiple infections and a diet consisting almost entirely of homemade tomato soup and ice cream), catering a full-day retreat for fifteen women, and hastily baking a plum torte because my brother and his partner were on their way over, I spent most of the month in the kitchen for someone else's sake.

Not that I mind. Looking after people with food has always made sense to me.

The month began with slow-roasted tomato soup, blitzed and sieved to within an inch of its life for fear of tomato seeds getting lodged in a healing wisdom tooth socket. Was the only sieve I could find about the size of a tablespoon, meaning I had to do it in agonising increments? Yes. The things we do for love.

Then came the invitation to cater a retreat right here in London. I said yes before I’d even fully heard the pitch.

It was organised by the lovely Maria, who runs a business called Girly Wine Night, which is a concept I could gush about for hours. It’s for women in London looking to make new friends, and as someone still finding my feet in this city, it’s been an absolute lifesaver. The range of events is fantastic: sound baths, yoga classes, arts and crafts nights, coffee dates, pastry runs and picnics. There’s something for everyone, and it keeps on growing.

Catering a full-day retreat for fifteen women, with a two-course lunch and a five-course dinner, was no small task. In hindsight, I definitely bit off a bit more than I could chew. I was chef and dishwasher in one, too many elements needed cooking on the spot, and I hadn’t built in enough time to clean between courses. The result was a 5am–1am day, 90% of it on my feet.

But it was a roaring success. One guest told me they were the best prawns she’d ever eaten and asked how I’d managed to keep them so juicy. Then the whole room gave me a round of applause as I emerged from the kitchen.

Did I end up taking a bus because the Tube was closed, then an Uber because the bus only got me halfway and nothing else was running? Yes. But you bet I floated home on that applause.

I’m already dreaming of a Christmas canapé supper club...

My favourite dish of the day was the whipped feta and watermelon salad. Greek yoghurt and feta blitzed until fluffy, watermelon dressed with a squeeze of lime, fresh mint, a little balsamic vinegar, and just a sprinkle of Maria’s mother in law’s gorgeous chilli powder (or Tajín would work beautifully). Ooh, my mouth is watering just thinking about it.

I was so busy I barely took any photos, but feel free to use the below for your own watermelon salad inspiration.

The slow-cooked lamb, roasted chicken, tabbouleh, tzatziki and roasted potatoes seemed to go down rather well too.

After the retreat I was suffering from slight cooking burnout, so I’d already texted my brother and his partner who were coming over the following day to say we’d keep dinner simple: tomato salad and pan-fried chicken. They’d had a long day travelling too, so nobody was expecting anything elaborate.

Did that stop me, twenty minutes before they arrived, suddenly deciding I absolutely had to make dessert?

Reader, it did not.

I’d picked up some little British plums on a whim and discovered, to my surprise, that they were green inside and wonderfully tart, which turned out to be perfect once baked.

Which brings me to this month's recipe, Marian Burros's legendary plum torte.

Everyone had seconds, which is always a good sign.

Recipe of the Month

Plum Torte

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I used to think that if I only had more time, I would finally become the person I was supposed to be.

I would work out every day. Stretch. Journal. Read more books. Cook beautiful meals. Take online courses. Become organised and interesting and deeply fulfilled. Lose weight.

Instead, I’ve discovered that free time mostly disappears into laundry, supermarket trips, thinking about dinner, and wondering where the afternoon went.

It’s funny how we always think life would finally fall into place if only we had a little more time.

I’m here to tell you it’s all a pretty lie.

You do have time. I just don’t know where it goes.

Somehow, all the chores you used to squeeze into evenings and weekends simply expand to fill the day. Laundry. Shopping. Cleaning. Dinner. Then suddenly it’s 4pm, which feels so unfair when I remember sitting in an office watching the clock thinking ‘in one hour it’s only two hours until lunch time’ until it was time to go home, blink, and do it all over again.

None of this is quite what I imagined.

I haven’t optimised my life, learned a new language, or run 5km.

But I have written poetry, started a Substack, read a pile of books that had been sitting on my list for years, almost finished writing a novel, and cooked all sorts of new things, from pide to paska.

I thought having more time would make me more productive.

Instead, it has made me pay more attention.

There is a shame that comes with unemployment, too.

When people ask what I’ve been up to, I instinctively reach for the productive answers. The job applications. The writing. The running. It feels harder to admit that I've also spent time learning the names of birds, perfected my homemade granola, or spent an afternoon sitting in the park because the weather was nice. Those things don’t feel like they count in the same way, even though they’ve made my life richer.

I would swap the uncertainty for a job in a heartbeat. I miss earning my own money. I miss having colleagues. I miss being able to answer, “So what do you do?” without feeling like I need to explain myself.

But there’s a difference between saying something has been hard and pretending nothing good has come from it.

One of those things has been discovering how much I actually need routine.

Not because every day needs to be ruthlessly optimised, but because otherwise I would become an Instagram-scrolling goblin who only leaves the couch to grab snacks. (I think my spirit animal would be a rat. Ideally one that lives in a deli.)

I read somewhere that when you’re unemployed, it’s really, really important to have a project. And some structure. After a year of unemployment, I can now confidently tell you it's really, really important to have a project. And some structure.

My mornings now always begin the same way.

My partner gets up between five and six for work, and I, eternally cursed as a light sleeper, can’t get back to sleep once I’m awake. Depending on how many times he hits snooze on the alarm, I’ll make his sandwich while he’s in the shower before walking him to the Tube.

On the good mornings, we wake up together, listen to a five-minute meditation, go for a run or a walk, then come home for Greek yoghurt, homemade granola, berry compote and peppermint tea while competing over Wordle and doing our daily Duolingo lesson. Those mornings have become my favourite part of the day.

Then I wave him off and begin my own. I love watching everyone else start their day.

The smart casual outfits, the takeaway coffees. I'm delighted by how many people still read physical books on the Tube.

Some days are for job applications. Some are for writing. Some disappear into life admin and staring at my never-ending to-do list (why does it keep growing??).

Wednesdays, though...Wednesdays are mine.

The one day I’ve officially allowed myself to blob. To be a hobbit.

I stay in bed longer (awake, but luxuriating in not getting up, damnit). I wander around the supermarket buying ingredients I’ve never cooked before. I make something wildly impractical. Sometimes I drink wine. I sloth.

And then Ben comes home.

Sometimes I feel like an eager dog at the window, starved for company, waiting for him to arrive all day. You’re here! You’re here! I have to remind myself not to immediately start talking at full volume about everything that happened, as if I’ve been storing it up all day. (I have been storing it up all day.)

On the days Ben's in the office, I talk to myself (and the cat) a lot. He usually answers back, though he’s not nearly as good at conversation as Ben.

I’ve slowed down enough to start learning the names of birds and plants on my walks. Now I can hear a bird call in my garden and think, "Aha, yes. That's a magpie!"

None of these things are achievements I can put on a CV.

I can’t walk into a room and proudly announce, “I learned three new bird calls this week,” the way someone else might say, “I had three job interviews.”

But they’re accomplishments too.

And I think I’d rather be the kind of person who notices birdsong than the kind who spends their whole life waiting for Friday.

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I grew a lime tree. I hit a 250-day Duolingo streak.

Neither comes with a party.

Why the hell not?

We know when we’re supposed to celebrate. Birthdays. Engagements. Weddings. Babies. Christmas. We have cards for them, decorations for them, designated aisles in supermarkets for them.

And I love all of it. I love throwing a birthday party for a friend (or myself), having people over for a casual barbecue, putting on a bottomless brunch. Whatever it is, I love an occasion. Christmas is my favourite time of year and, like many of us, I go a little mad for it.

But outside of those big, expected occasions, what exactly do we celebrate?

We spend so much of our lives looking ahead. The next job, qualification, house, project, promotion, trip, achievement. We finally get there, mark it with a nod and a smile, and almost immediately start looking towards whatever comes next.

But if your life doesn’t follow the usual script, the calendar can suddenly get very quiet.

So why aren’t we celebrating the other things? Getting the job you desperately wanted. Adopting a cat. Visiting your 30th country. Publishing something you wrote. Buying a car.

Big things, little things, deeply important things and slightly ridiculous things. I don’t care what it is. If it makes you happy, why aren’t you celebrating it?

I mean, I grew a lime tree. And I’m damn proud of it.

The kernel of this idea came many years ago, when I applied for a Master’s programme overseas. I desperately wanted to get in, but the programme usually required a science background, which I didn’t have.

I spent months emailing admissions, translating my grades from New Zealand, writing personal statements and chasing references, hoping there might still be a way in.

I waited. And waited. Heart in my mouth, sure I wouldn’t get it.

Then the news came: I got in.

At the time, the department was ranked among the top 30 in the world and the top five in the UK. I couldn’t believe it.

I happened to be with one of my best friends and her then-partner (now husband) when I found out. I screeched the news at them, completely giddy, expecting a quick congratulations! before the day carried on as normal.

Instead, he announced that we had to celebrate.

So we did. The three of us went around London from pub to pub, with my friends insisting on treating me, because as far as they were concerned, this was an occasion.

I was blown away. Someone wanted to celebrate my achievement. Not just congratulate me, but actually mark it. It felt…alien.

It has stuck with me ever since and remains one of my fondest memories, not just because I got into the programme, but because somebody else decided my happiness was worth making a fuss about.

So at the beginning of this year, I decided I wanted to celebrate more. Not only achievements, either. Seasons. Traditions. Good things happening to people I love. Days people have been marking for hundreds of years.

Over the years, friends and the places I’ve lived have introduced me to traditions I didn’t grow up with. Thanksgiving. Burns Night. Galette des Rois. The sweet, fluffy, brioche-like Mona de Pascua I ate during Easter in Spain.

I love the idea that the year can have a rhythm to it. That instead of racing from Christmas to birthday to Christmas again, we can punctuate ordinary life with moments of ceremony.

I’m beginning to think celebration is a habit. The more I practise it, the easier it is to find the next thing to celebrate. Sometimes that means cooking something traditional. Sometimes it means inviting friends over. Sometimes it’s opening a bottle of wine, baking something ridiculous on a Tuesday, lighting candles for the solstice, or going out because somebody you love has done something they’re proud of.

You don’t have to wait for the world to hand you an occasion.

There is always going to be another thing to work towards. Another goal. Another thing we haven’t done yet. But I don’t want to spend my whole life racing towards the next milestone and forgetting to notice when I’ve actually arrived somewhere.

So celebrate the qualification. Celebrate the new job. Celebrate your friend finally finishing the thing they’ve been working on for three years. Celebrate the first lime on the tree you planted. Celebrate the changing season.

Make the cake. Open the bottle. Invite people over.

Don’t wait for your life to become sufficiently important to celebrate it.

As Annie Dillard wrote, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”

I think I’d like to spend more of mine celebrating.

A year of things worth celebrating

Here’s what made it onto my calendar this year. We missed a few, added others as we went, and had a lovely time doing it.

Steal whatever you fancy.

JANUARY
New Year’s Day — 1 January
Twelfth Night / Galette des Rois — 6 January
Burns Night — 25 January

FEBRUARY
Imbolc / Candlemas — 1–2 February
Valentine’s Day — 14 February
Shrove Tuesday / Pancake Day — date varies
Lunar New Year — date varies

MARCH
St Patrick’s Day — 17 March
Spring Equinox — around 20 March

APRIL
Easter — date varies

MAY
May Day / Beltane — 1 May
Cinco de Mayo — 5 May
Eurovision — date varies

JUNE
Summer Solstice / Midsummer — around 21 June

JULY
Bastille Day — 14 July

AUGUST
Lammas / Lughnasadh — 1 August

SEPTEMBER
Autumn Equinox — around 22–23 September

OCTOBER
Halloween / Samhain — 31 October

NOVEMBER
Día de los Muertos — 1–2 November
Bonfire Night — 5 November
Thanksgiving — fourth Thursday of November

DECEMBER
Advent
Winter Solstice / Yule — around 21 December
Christmas — 25 December
New Year’s Eve — 31 December

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In danger of sounding ridiculously privileged here, I'm very grumpy about not being in Europe this summer.

My Instagram and my Substack feed are all full of photos of gloriously clear water, piles of tzatziki in tavernas, or sun-soaked vistas from farmers’ markets in the south of France. I’d take either, honestly.

I can't complain. We recently moved from New Zealand to England, so our finances have been focused on that. But in my head, I imagined I’d find a job faster, we’d have a bit more breathing room, and be able to pop off for weekend trips to Europe. Maybe a cheeky week in Greece.

Not so.

Instead, it’s another heatwave in London.

Which, to be fair, isn’t actually the worst. The enormous parks, walks along the river, the beer gardens. London is wonderful in summer (I am excluding the tube from this statement).

But it isn’t Europe.

It isn’t mountain villages in the shade of ancient olive trees, drinking cold white table wine in the square while the cicadas drone away, and life carries on much as it has for hundreds of years.

It isn’t cycling down country lanes past fields of sunflowers or rapeseed, their bright yellow flowers waving in the breeze. Wandering through blazing hot markets filled with the smell of fresh bread, fish and sizzling merguez.

It isn't digging my toes into hot pebbles while goats wander past and I contemplate my fourth swim of the day.

Perhaps it isn’t Europe I miss. It’s being on holiday. And that’s all the difference.

So as another scorching weekend settles over London, I’m making my version of kolokithokeftedes, Greek courgette fritters, served with tzatziki, or simply the best Greek yogurt you can get your hands on.

I’m sensitive to the taste of egg, so I leave it out of mine, though traditionally they do contain it.

Crispy, creamy, moreish, and best eaten under the shade of grapevines or olive trees, with a cold glass of white wine alongside.

If I can’t be in Greece, I’ll damn well bring Greece to me. To my tiny courtyard garden, with fake grass underfoot.

At least it has a resident cat.

Greek Courgette Fritters (Kolokithokeftedes)

Serves 2 as a main, or 4 as part of a mezze spread.

Ingredients

• 1 courgette, grated

• 60g Greek feta, crumbled (not too finely as the chunks are delicious!)

• ¼ small red onion, very finely diced (or 1 spring onion, finely sliced)

• 3½ tbsp plain flour

• ½ tsp fresh mint, finely chopped (or fresh dill, or both)

• Salt and freshly cracked black pepper

• Olive oil and a neutral frying oil (such as rapeseed or vegetable oil)

Method

Grate the courgette into a large mixing bowl.

Add the feta, onion, flour, fresh herbs, a generous pinch of salt and plenty of black pepper. Stir until everything is well combined and forms a fairly thick mixture.

Leave the mixture to rest for 5 minutes so the flour absorbs some of the moisture from the courgette. (Don't drain the courgette. Without the egg, it needs that moisture to hold everything together.)

Pour enough olive oil and neutral oil into a non-stick frying pan to cover the base by about 1cm. Heat until shimmering.

Drop generous spoonfuls of the mixture into the hot oil. Don’t worry about making them perfectly round, the rough edges become wonderfully crisp.

Cook 5–6 fritters at a time for about 3 minutes per side, or until deep golden brown and crisp.

Transfer to a plate lined with kitchen paper while you cook the remaining batches.

Serve warm with tzatziki or thick Greek yogurt.

Notes

• I prefer mine without egg, but traditionally they do contain it.

• Fresh dill works beautifully in place of mint.

• Sweetcorn makes a lovely addition if you have some to use up (not at all traditional but it is delicious!)

• Best eaten straight away while the edges are still wonderfully crisp.

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Welcome to The Sunday Table, my monthly letter for paid subscribers. A place for recipes, books, seasonal finds, and whatever else has been occupying my mind lately. Thank you for being here.

What I’ve Been Cooking Lately

I hope you had at least one picnic in July. It would be a travesty not to.

Some people think picnics are an unnecessary faff. All that carrying. The inevitable bees. Sticky hands. Someone always forgets the bottle opener (hello, it's me). Then, perhaps, a jar of caramelised onion chutney leaks through the entire bag, which smells faintly of onions for the next three years. (I am absolutely not speaking from experience.)

To those people, I ask: where is your whimsy? Not every meal has to happen at the table. Indeed, I'd argue some of the best ones don't: the midnight cheese gnawed in front of the fridge door, the fresh peach hunched over the sink, dribbling juice like a demonic fruit bat, fish and chips on the beach, or a feast spread out in the garden.

Scrunching your toes into warm grass with a cold glass of Rosé in one hand and a strawberry in the other is one of summer's greatest pleasures.

The heat, however, is another matter entirely.

Eating cartons of cherries and lying around the place lethargically like a sickly Victorian child helps slightly. Escaping for the weekend to visit one of my best friends, who happened to have air conditioning in her guest room, that helped considerably more.

Everyone has their own idea of the perfect picnic spread. Mine has a few mandatory ingredients. Fruit first, obviously. Strawberries, grapes, wedges of rockmelon, or pineapple dusted with Tajín if I’m feeling particularly extravagant. Then something salty: olives, saucisson, cornichons, perhaps a little pâté, maybe a terrine de campagne if you’re lucky.

Cheese is non-negotiable, of course.

Ideally something soft, something hard, and something strong. My vote is usually brie, Comté and a proper kick-in-the-nose goat's cheese. I'm still working my way towards blue.

If you can’t get your hands on one of those little French goat cheeses, here’s my favourite trick.

Buy a soft log instead, slice it into thick rounds and pack it into a jar with olive oil, pink peppercorns and dried herbes de Provence. Leave it in the fridge for a few hours and you'll be spreading it onto crusty baguette and humming Edith Piaf before you know it.

But if there's one thing that's guaranteed to make it into my picnic basket, it's cake salé.

You’ll find it on apéro tables in homes all over France, though I doubt you’ll ever see it in a restaurant. It's humble cooking, made from whatever happens to be lingering in the fridge: cheese, deli meats, perhaps a handful of vegetables. It's invariably the first thing to disappear.

I have fond memories of eating it at big family gatherings in France. As the youngest, I was always the one sent around with the plate, dutifully offering slices to every family member before I was allowed another piece myself.

I remember feeling unbearably smug when my extended family arrived and the responsibility passed to cousin Tom instead. These days I have to crane my neck to talk to him, which is slightly discombobulating considering my clearest memory is of him toddling after cousin Victor, crying, “Victor, arrêteeeee!” over and over again.

So here's my version. It's perfect for picnics, brilliant for using up odds and ends in the fridge, and best shared with people you love.

Recipe of the Month

Cake Salé (French Ham & Cheese Loaf)

This is one of those wonderfully forgiving recipes. Swap the ham for leftover roast chicken, throw in a handful of olives or sun-dried tomatoes, use whatever cheese needs finishing, and it'll still be delicious. It's happiest eaten at room temperature, preferably outside.

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Every country does one thing better than anyone else. In my opinion, New Zealand's thing is salt and vinegar chips.

Doesn't matter if you're a thick cut or thin cut gal, a Penguin Chips (Bluebird) devotee or an Uppercut fan, they do them right.

I'm talking burn-the-roof-of-your-mouth-off, tongue-blistering, lips-peeling business. You lick the salt off because it burns so good. If it isn't an exercise in masochism, you're doing it wrong.

And then you put them in a sandwich. Sliced white bread only, chaps, with nothing but margarine (and marmite if you’re feeling frisky) to accompany. Best eaten at children’s parties or in the schoolyard at lunch.

None of this balsamic vinegar business. None of these soft-footed cider vinegar attempts. These chips (yes chips, not crisps) should be a welcome to the second level of hell, no sweetness here.

I can only surmise that the English are happy to simply flirt with vinegar. New Zealand doesn't believe in half measures. If you're having a vinegar chip then by God, it had better mug you in an alleyway.

Chardonnay vinegar isn’t going to cut it, chums.

I think what we need is a rating system. You know how you order a curry mild, medium or hot? I petition for a crisp meter: mild, medium and caustic.

Your mouth should flood with saliva. Your shoulders should reach your ears. Your tongue should wonder whether it can press charges for aggravated assault.

When you move overseas, you expect to miss certain things. Friends. Family. Christmas, birthdays and weddings. The beach.

Nobody warns you about chips.

I didn't expect to have to go on a chip quest, each offending potato weaker than the last. (And don't tell me to try Kettle Chips. They just aren't right.) So far M&S has had the best results, but I’m still not satisfied.

So if anyone knows where to find a salt and vinegar chip prepared to commit battery, I’m all ears.

Until then, the quest continues.

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Sometimes I think summer feels more like a place than a season.

The summers of my childhood were filled with the faint drone of lawn mowers, the steady chorus of cicadas and the scent of freshly cut grass. Picnics in Auckland Domain park, lying under the shade of old trees and eating fruit and nut chocolate that melted through our fingers. I remember once we forgot to pack spoons and had to drink our little yoghurt pots. Fish and chips at Stanmore Bay beach on Friday nights. Is there anything better than hot, crispy fish and chips eaten with the sound of waves in your ears and the salt licked off your fingers? Playing petanque on Big Manly beach, or morning swims at Little Manly Beach. I didn’t come up with these place names, I swear.

Then the bees. All the bees in summer. See, bees really like me. And what they adore most is stinging me with no provocation in inopportune places: my ear, my thigh, my bum (twice in two years, I wish I was kidding). One summer, as I lay on the beach sunbathing with my eyes peacefully closed, a bee landed on my behind and stung me out of nowhere. I leapt up and shouted “oh no not again!” much to my eldest brother’s complete confusion. The worst part isn’t the swelling. It’s how guilty I feel at their senseless death. Please, I’m just sitting here minding my own business, don’t bee like this. (I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist).

And always strawberries. Dark, sun-kissed, heavy with juice. Mum would take us picking at the strawberry farm, one for the bucket, one for our mouths, until our fingers were stained red and we were about to turn into strawberries ourselves.

But most of all, it meant my dad’s Tarte aux Fraises. A strawberry custard tart (crème pâtissière if we’re getting technical) made in his kitchen on long summer afternoons. I always wanted it for my birthday, and was always disappointed when he patiently explained that as my birthday falls in October, strawberries weren’t in season. Not this year, not next year. I think this only fuelled the obsession. I had it whenever the chance arose, and spent the rest of the year waiting.

I left New Zealand at twenty-one. By the time I returned, my dad had sold the apartment. I never got to go back, never got to stand in that kitchen one last time. He packed everything carefully into boxes, and I went through them later, the detritus of my childhood in cardboard, things I hadn’t thought about in years suddenly unbearably present. That version of us, the long summers and the kitchen and the tart, exists only in memory.

Now I’m an adult (whatever that means), I still make that tart every summer, wherever I am. In New Zealand, I buy expensive strawberries in small punnets from the supermarket, or spend an afternoon at one of the picking farms, fingers stained red all over again. Now I’m in England, I watched for that first flush of summer strawberries with a particular kind of eagerness.

Because that’s the thing about summer being a place. You can’t go back to it, not really. The apartment is gone, the kitchen is gone, and you are not the same person who stood in it. But one bite of this tart and I’m back to those long afternoons, the cicadas droning, the smell of cut grass drifting through an open window.

This isn’t my dad’s exact recipe. It’s more of a blend of his and this one I found online (with an easy homemade custard!), tweaked over the years until it tastes close enough.

Tarte Aux Fraises Recipe

Ingredients

Pâte sablée (pastry)

• 230g plain flour

• 65g white sugar

• 125g butter, chilled

• 1 egg

• Pinch of salt

Crème pâtissière (custard)

• 250ml full fat milk

• 1 egg + 1 egg yolk

• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract (the higher quality the better)

• 3 tbsp white sugar

• 2 tbsp plain flour

• 1/2 tbsp cornflour

Topping

• 500-800g fresh strawberries, washed, hulled and halved (depending on the size of your tart tin)

• 2 tbsp smooth apricot jam

Method

• To make the pastry, mix together the flour, sugar and salt. Cut the cold butter into small cubes and rub in with your fingers until it resembles large breadcrumbs.

• Add the egg and gently mix until the pastry comes together in a rough ball. Do not overmix or the pastry will become tough.

• Wrap in cling film and refrigerate for a minimum of 30 minutes.

• Once rested, preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

• Line a tart tin (I use a 23cm one) with baking paper, roll out your pastry on a floured surface and transfer to the tin. Cut away the excess and poke holes in the base with a fork.

• To blind bake, cover the pastry with baking paper and fill with pie weights or dry rice. Bake for 15-20 minutes, then remove the weights and paper and bake for a further 5-10 minutes until golden. Leave to cool completely.

• For the custard, heat the milk and vanilla in a small pot over a medium heat. In a mixing bowl, whisk the egg, egg yolk and sugar until pale, thick and fluffy, then whisk in the flour and cornflour.

• Once the milk reaches a gentle simmer, pour it into the mixing bowl and whisk until just combined. Pour the mixture back into the pot and cook over a medium-low heat, whisking regularly, until thickened. Watch it carefully, it catches quickly.

• Pour into a clean bowl and press cling film directly onto the surface to prevent a skin forming. Leave to cool completely (the fridge speeds this up).

• Spoon the cold custard onto the cooled pastry and spread evenly. Arrange the strawberries on top in a pattern.

• Warm the apricot jam until liquid, then brush gently over the strawberries to glaze.

• Refrigerate for at least an hour before serving.

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It wasn’t until I left New Zealand that I realised no-one else called their cheese ‘tasty cheese’. They had cheddar and gouda and comté. We had tasty cheese.

It’s a cheddar, supposedly, though more a halfway house between English cheddar and American cheese. Not crumbly, semi-plasticky, but with a more mature taste than the American stuff. It wasn’t exactly artisan. (It’s also about $20 a kg nowadays, but the cost of NZ groceries is a sad tale for another time.)

In England I discovered real cheddar, the crumbly kind with crystals. The good stuff.

People love saying English food isn't good. I look at them and say: have you tried Kiwi food? Although we do have our moments. The best savoury pies in the world, the pavlova (you can suck it, Australia), the flat white. But we’re not exactly a food destination. I say this lovingly.

England, though, has so many lovely, long, and sometimes wonderfully strange traditions. Yorkshire puds, buttery crumpets, golden syrup soaked pikelets, rhubarb crumbles. Then it gets stranger: mince pies (once made with actual mince). Toad in the hole. Spotted Dick. The old-school meals everyone loves to laugh at. Post-war English food was, from what I've read, fairly dire. (You can keep your jellied eel and your liver and onions, thank you.) But to hold it to that reputation now is not only outdated, it’s also insulting.

If anywhere captures the spirit of modern English food, it's probably Marks and Spencer. M&S, Marks and Sparks, whatever diminutive you prefer.

Because I’m not talking Michelin stars, although England certainly has them. I’m talking little luxuries and daily deliciousness.

I’m talking picky bits.

The first time I heard the term, I was confused. Then quickly, delighted. In New Zealand it’d be a snack, a picnic, a pot-luck dinner. None of them are quite right. The closest I can think of is the French apéro-dinatoire, which I had the joy of discovering early, courtesy of my French dad. But picky bits is better. Picky bits is perfect.

And M&S is its natural habitat. Is there anything so quite so thrilling, so wallet-thinning, as wandering through M&S on a hot summer’s day, taking in the air conditioning and popping one thing after another into your basket?

The expansive charcuterie selection (bresaola, Parma ham, every salami you could want). The little rounds of goat’s cheese, the Cornish Cruncher mature cheddar (those crystals, I told you). The extra virgin olive oil crisps, the extra creamy hummus. (Extra everything, really. It's all extra, in the best possible way.) The marinated olives, the chargrilled peppers, the dips. Oh, the dips, with new flavours every week. The crusty baguettes. The biscuits you can smell the moment you walk through the door. (Did you try the speckled egg Easter cookies? Insane.) The weirdly addictive marmite and cheese balls.

The way you get pulled into the 3 for £8 picky bits deal. Multiple times.

All this to say: there’s nothing quite like taking your haul and a cold bottle of prosecco to the nearest common, and picnicking in the latest heatwave.

Because if there’s one thing England does well, it’s summer. No, don’t laugh. I mean it. London in summer is a glorious thing. The long canal walks, dipping your toes in if you dare (I do dare, though I have drawn the line at a swim, unlike many. I have no wish for parasitic diseases).

The cold lagers in beer gardens, the Aperol spritzes in the sunshine, the open-air cinemas, the way the first hint of warmth sends hordes of people flooding to the parks, shirts off, turning steadily into lobsters in the sun. The smoky smell of barbecues drifting down residential streets. The paddling pools appearing in gardens, the sound of splashing and children's laughter and music drifting over fences.

There’s a magic to London in the winter: the Christmas lights strung across the city, the markets, the mulled wine, the cosy pubs, the smell of wood-burning stoves, the winter coats. But in summer, London comes alive.

Perhaps it's because they've endured the long dark nights of winter and the endless rain in a way New Zealand rarely has to. But people flourish in the sunshine. They do more, even on weeknights.

On a random Tuesday evening, it feels as though the whole city is outside celebrating.

And it all starts with picky bits.

Although I must say, your marmite still isn’t right.

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If I had a pound for every time someone asked me why I moved to the UK, I could probably afford that Richmond house I’ve been dreaming of. I have explained myself to hairdressers, Uber drivers and many people at parties. Basically everyone I come across.

When I mention I’ve come from New Zealand, every single one of them looks at me like I've said something slightly unhinged. The same aghast 'but why?' every time.

A Brit moving to New Zealand makes sense.

A Kiwi moving to the UK is apparently madness. Especially when it involved leaving family, secure jobs, and a rental that we were paying under-market price for. We left our friends, our certainty, our ‘normal’ path.

The British seem to love hating their own country. It reminds me of an older sibling with a younger one. They can bully and belittle all they like, but if anyone else tries, there'll be hell to pay.

I usually fall back on the practical answers, because saying a move is driven partly by a feeling tends to earn some odd looks and perhaps the suggestion I may have hit my head.

"For family."

“We wanted somewhere bigger, with more opportunities.”

A hundred practical considerations went into the decision. It's all true, but it's not the whole truth.

There is a feeling here that I find hard to capture. It’s in the hedgerows and the stone walls, in the rivers and the streams, in the foxgloves and the cow parsley and the meadowsweet. In the crows and the robins and the foxes. In the ancient churches and their peaceful graveyards.

Perhaps that feeling isn't entirely surprising. My great-grandparents came from Yorkshire. Even though those roots have long since faded into family history, my mum always says that when she first set foot in England, it somehow felt like coming home.

Growing up in New Zealand, England felt like a mythical place. Our literature was full of it. Enid Blyton’s Famous Five eating sandwiches on trains. C.S. Lewis’ London and the rambling English countryside. Harry Potter leaving King’s Cross for Scotland. Beatrix Potter’s squirrels and rabbits. It was the place King Arthur drew his sword from the stone, where Winnie the Pooh wandered in woods and Robin Hood hid in them.

The thing is, when you’re a child, you don’t realise these stories are set in real places.

I spent my childhood reading about things I had never seen. Trains. Foxes. Squirrels. Buildings older than my entire country. Places layered with centuries of stories and history. Somewhere distant and unreachable.

Because you see, England was as mythical to me as Hogwarts or Narnia. An impossible place from my childhood.

Then I moved there.

So when I walk down a country lane, or spot a robin in the garden, or pass an ancient church tucked into the landscape, how can I explain the delight that gives me? These were the things I spent my childhood reading about.

Perhaps I am still in my honeymoon phase with this country. I am not unaware of the struggles, the poverty, the homelessness, the economy squeezing us tight, the successive shitty governments and the rising anti-immigrant rhetoric (as a new immigrant struggling to find a job, I am keenly aware of these things). And those all matter. Very much.

It’s been so hard in many ways. The safety net of close community is gone, job hunting without contacts or references in the right country. Doing it with a visa that marks me as second class. I still haven’t found work and it hangs over me like an invisible storm cloud. Money is tight. We housesit to make money less tight, which brings with it constant uncertainty and change. Everything is different. Trying to sort anything to do with immigration usually leaves me on hold for hours, my anxiety through the roof and my pocket a few (many) pounds lighter. Perhaps New Zealand's system is no different. I just never had to find out.

But alongside all of that, I am seeing so much beauty. It’s like being a child again. Suddenly I am noticing the smallest things: dragonflies on the water, primroses and snowdrops and blackthorn, wood pigeons in the trees, heather and yarrow and hogweed. I find my joy again.

I am a stranger in a strange land. But I am learning its name.

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Welcome to The Sunday Table, my monthly round-up for paid subscribers. A collection of recipes, books, seasonal finds, and whatever else is on my mind. Thank you for being here.

What I’ve Been Cooking Lately

I can’t talk about June without mentioning the heatwave, obviously. For days my Substack feed was full of salads, people swimming, and many, many heat complaints (which I happily added to). Combine that with housesitting in the hottest apartment we’ve ever been in (a top-floor flat where we couldn’t open the windows or the cat would escape), and I’ve never been so sweltering in my life.

Cue operation low-cook. I think I ate my bodyweight in Greek yogurt (I recommend Fage 5%) and fruit. Then the salads: Caesar salad, lamb salad, halloumi salad, and picky plates (so many picky plates). Do not judge my unhinged picky plates.

Mainly, though, I've been living off shop-bought flatbreads (I usually make my own, but I think if I'd tried that week, they would have been more sweat than dough) with oven-roasted chicken wings, smeared with chili feta dip and piled high with pickled onion and cucumber. Or rolled up with tzatziki and shop-bought falafel and quick-pickled red cabbage. All the pickled things. Or stuffed with sumac-spiced lamb mince, or hot honey halloumi. The world is your flatbread.

Lastly, I’ve been eating a lentil salad on repeat. I start with supermarket packets of lentils, then fry up courgette, capsicum, chorizo and shallots until everything is brown and crispy. Then it all gets tossed with toasted pumpkin seeds, feta, plenty of fresh mint and parsley, dollops of lemony yogurt (or tzatziki if you can be bothered), and topped with quick-pickled onions (which I almost always have lying about in the fridge) and loads of lemon juice. Fresh, pickly, creamy, earthy and sharp.

And if you’re really desperate not to cook, I recommend burrata, the best tomatoes you can buy, fresh basil, salt, good olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Eaten straight. Yoom.

Of all the things I’ve made this month, though, it’s the wings I keep coming back to. You can buy a huge packet for a couple of pounds, and it’s so delicious Ben wanted to eat them all in one go. So there you go.

Recipe of the Month

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Heat waves like this one always make me think of Spain. And Spain makes me think of oranges, both the colour and the fruit.

My mind goes straight to Valencia, awash in yellow sunshine, its streets lined with orange trees.

When I moved there, it was on a whim. I was 22, on my second day of a barista job in Cambridge, staring down a cold, wet English winter and feeling distinctly unexcited about the future.

I applied for a role teaching English in Spain, dreaming of sunshine, but never dreaming I would actually get it.

The next day I had an interview over Skype. By the end of the week I'd accepted a position in a city called Valencia that I'd never even heard of. I didn’t speak a word of Spanish.

Two weeks later I landed with little more than a backpack and ‘hola.’

We were lost twenty-somethings who'd somehow all washed up in Valencia. It felt like each of us had come there hoping to leave something behind. Alix, soon to be my English friend, had dropped out of medical school and run off to Valencia to get away. She found her own place first and only landed the teaching job once she was already settled. Amelia, a wealthy Londoner, had been offered a position at a prestigious art gallery courtesy of her parents but dropped it in favour of the Spanish party life. Claudia, the trendy Italian from Milan, chain-smoked and seemed to both love and hate her country. We were a mixed bunch. English, French, Spanish and Italian flew around the room, often in the same conversation, the Europeans casually trilingual if not more.

We were paid 200 euros a month in cash for working forty-hour weeks, though this did include accommodation in a shared apartment. Ridiculously little, of course, but it gave me about 30 euros a week for groceries and 20 for beers at the bar, and somehow, it was enough. Did I live off homemade chicken wraps and three-euro bottles of cava? Perhaps. But did I have a damn good time doing it? Absolutely. “Una cerveza por favor, grande!” became my favourite line, and why not, when beers were two euros at the bar, and the gloriously generous tradition of a free tapa or ración coming with every single drink. Many beers were drunk.

There was a grungy, wonderfully atmospheric bar near us where ordering a pint took a full ten minutes, because each time the lady behind the counter poured our glasses, she decided there was too much foam, tipped some out, refilled, and started the whole process again. She did this with a face so deadpan I could never tell if she was screwing with us.

I worked from 10am, with a two-hour siesta in the middle, then resumed work until 8pm. I often wasn’t home until just after 9pm, since I walked everywhere. I didn't mind starting later, but I never got used to finishing so late. Some mornings I went jogging along the town's old riverbed, long since drained and turned into a beautiful park. The trees were heavy with oranges, and I'd spend hours basking in patches of sun and shade. Other mornings were slower: a café bombón, that thick, sweet condensed-milk iced coffee, sat at a table watching the street go by, in no rush to be anywhere.

Long lunches at nearby bars, cheap beer passing the time before work began again. Sunday afternoons listening to live jazz drift through the open doors of the local bar. House parties that never started before 10pm, in typical Spanish fashion. I lost count of the number of times I walked the hour across the city home at 2am, the heavy scent of jasmine perfuming the air, old ladies still out walking their dogs at that hour. It felt like the safest place in the world.

Of course, it wasn’t all rainbows and sunshine. Half the teachers had crushes and relationships going with each other; gossip and drama were rife. It was like being back in high school. Amelia used to drink from a water bottle at her desk during lessons, only it was full of straight vodka. (She also once put bleach on her face trying to remove a pimple, but that’s a story for another time.)

And then I got fired. Not her, the one drinking spirits in front of her pupils. Me.

I’d been asked to go to Barcelona for a month, to cover staff shortages at a sister school. At first I was excited. Then I learned I’d be staying alone with an unknown middle-aged Spanish man, rather than with a group of teachers like I had here. I said no. In response, they fired me.

I called my best friend in England, sobbing. She told me I could come stay with her anytime, no questions asked, which took the edge off the panic. At the time it felt catastrophic. And like it was all my fault. It’s only years later that I can see the situation more clearly. They wanted a young woman to travel somewhere she didn't feel comfortable going, to stay with a man she didn’t know, and when she refused, they got rid of the problem instead.

Looking back, I’m glad I listened to the voice that said no.

It was one of the first times I had to stand up for myself and draw a line, in the face of everyone pressuring me to say yes. I’m proud of her.

It turned out to be a blessing in disguise anyway. I'd already finished my TEFL certification, and I was starting to tire of teaching. I crashed on Alix’s couch for a while, in her own little apartment until I found my feet. She took me out to the bars some nights too, the two of us picking up exactly where the school day used to end. One evening we hauled a portable barbecue up to the roof of her building and cooked skewers up there as the sun went down, eating ice cream, drinking beers, lying back and watching the whole of Valencia turn gold beneath us.

My savings were thin, but they stretched far enough to soon get me a room in a shared apartment for a couple of months while I figured out what came next. Thank goodness for cheap cities.

It was next to nothing to rent in Russafa, one of my favourite neighbourhoods, right in the heart of the bar scene. My room was painted sunshine yellow and reminded me of a Van Gogh painting. I shared the flat with two quiet Italian flatmates who mostly kept to themselves; Lucca, who once walked me to the local veg market (I think I briefly fell in love) and another whose name I can no longer remember at all. I had a tiny balcony looking down into the neighbourhood, and I loved sitting out there with a cold beer, knees pressed against the railing, eyes closed, listening to music drift up from the bars below.

I was so hot and dusty. So replete.

It was here, in this lovely little yellow room, that I invited friends over for a goodbye dinner. I'd wracked my brains over what to cook for a small crowd in a small kitchen, and eventually did what I always do when stuck on a cooking question: called up my dad. He immediately suggested an orange chicken dish, which felt perfect. After all, it seemed only right to use oranges to celebrate my time in Valencia: surely the capital of oranges. It would have been easy to let the bitterness of why I was leaving poison everything, especially given the irony that the bitter Valencian oranges are grown for beauty, not taste. But I bought sweet oranges from Andalucía for that dish instead, and I felt at peace with my choices. It was ending at the right time. I just hadn't realised it in the moment.

I’d already decided to leave for England, fleeing the hot winds blowing in from Africa. I made the call to go the day it hit 43 degrees. My friend’s offer in cooler England still stood, and I was ready to take her up on it. As I stood cooking that final dinner, I realised what the whole stretch of it had actually been: getting fired, the month of sleeping on someone else’s couch, the rooftop sunsets, the grumpy beer lady, all of it had made me feel, for the first time, like I was actually flourishing. Like I was a character in a story. My story. The best way I knew to mark its ending was with good food and the people who’d been in it with me.

Every time I make this dish now, it brings me straight back: sunny Valencia, the scent of orange blossom on the air, that glorious yellow light.

Chicken in Orange Sauce (Dad’s Recipe)

Serves 3–4

Ingredients

• 1 whole chicken, cut into pieces (or use chicken legs)

• 1 onion, finely chopped

• 2–3 cloves garlic, finely chopped

• A few sprigs of fresh thyme

• 1 bay leaf

• Salt and pepper

• 2–3 juicy oranges

• White wine (1–2 glasses)

Method

1. Heat some olive oil in a pan and add the onion, making sure it’s well coated. Cook on low heat until soft and translucent. Set aside.

2. In another pan, heat olive oil on medium-high. Brown the chicken on both sides, then add the white wine to deglaze the pan.

3. Reduce the heat and add the onions, garlic, herbs, salt and pepper, then the juice of the oranges and a few slices of the rind. Cover and simmer for at least half an hour, ensuring the legs are properly cooked (around 20 minutes if using breasts).

4. Taste halfway through, if it’s not orangey enough, add more zest and rind; if too bitter, add a splash more wine.

5. Remove from the heat and let it rest, covered, for 5–10 minutes before serving.

Notes: You can replace the wine with Cointreau, Grand Marnier, or rum, use half as much as you would if using wine, but add the juice of an extra orange. Serve with potatoes, rice, pasta, or green beans, though rice is my favourite.

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Cookham feels like the village time forgot. Half-timbered Tudor houses and skinny footpaths made for a time when roads only needed to be wide enough for horse and cart. The houses all gently buckling with age. There are more pubs than seem reasonable for a village this size. How properly English. You get the sense that life has by and large been the same here for centuries, and by God little things like the Industrial Revolution or electricity won't change that. I make up stories in my head about the locals, each having their favourite pub and the rivalries around it. (Reginald’s been drinking at the Old Swan Uppers for 30 years, but someone swears they saw him at the White Oak. Reginald swears he’d die before he set foot in there.)

And the river, oh the river. First I find it on the bridge, then I look for a way down. I find the church and rest a while in the shade of old trees. Looking out at the gravestones, it's peaceful. There’s an ancient yew in the churchyard, and I’m always fascinated by the pagan-Christian origins of places like this. As soon as I spotted the ancient tree, its branches twisted and gnarled, I knew it was a yew. They’re in most churchyards here, and the reasons are older than the churches themselves. The yew has been associated with death and the journey of the soul for thousands of years, and became a symbol of eternity long before Christianity came along.

Christianity did eventually arrive, and folded many of these older symbols into its own stories. Churches were built where people already gathered, and old meanings lingered beneath new ones. Something this old has outlived the religion that first claimed it.

Eventually I leave the peace of the churchyard. I walk and I walk and I walk until my feet are sore, and I find a perfect spot to sit.

On the banks of the river, beneath the willow tree, I close my eyes and listen.

The rustling of wind in the tall grasses. A moorhen squawking indignantly in the water. Further off, the occasional cry of a rooster. The sound of music drifts towards me, jazzy, upbeat, but with some serious bass. The sun is on my face, my fingers still sticky with nectarine juice. I lie by the river.

This is June. I am content.

Slowly I notice the music has changed. A trumpet plays Happy Birthday, followed by cheering, and I realise it's a live jazz band. I can see a giant tent in the garden of the house on the other side of the river, and I imagine chilled wine and ice buckets, delicate canapés. I wish I was there. Surely it's wonderful?

I think about the yew tree again, what it might have meant to so many people over so many years. Then I think about the party. Someone has been planning this for weeks, maybe months. It’s someone’s special day, perhaps the highlight of their year. But in the blink of an eye, it will be over. Everyone will go home and tomorrow will be ordinary again. And the yew will still remain.

Then I wonder if sometimes the idea of an event is more perfect, more alluring, than the event itself. It occurs to me that someone in that tent might be wishing they were somewhere else entirely. I wonder if any of them can see me, the girl in the grass beneath a weeping willow, and wish we could trade places. Maybe they're looking out at the river, at the quiet, longing to get away from all those people, to lie under a willow tree with fingers sticky from nectarine juice.

I don't move. The grass is warm, the willow leaves shift overhead, and somewhere behind my closed eyes, the trumpet keeps playing for someone else's day.

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Growing up, Friday night meant fish and chips. You can take the Kiwi out of New Zealand, but apparently you can’t take the English food culture out of the Kiwis. So many of our staple recipes hail from the old country: Shepherd’s pie, meat, potatoes and boiled veg, and of course, the ubiquitous Friday night fish and chips. All imported wholesale from a country most of us had never been to, but somehow, completely ours. (And our chips are better. Sorry England, but I’m not here for flabby fries.)

By Friday afternoon the excitement would start to build. We’d call ahead so we didn't have to spend half an hour waiting on the grass beside the shop while everyone else had the same idea. Shouting to be heard over the fryers. Feverishly trying to remember the number we’d been given so when they yelled "Number 33!" across the field, we could leap up in response. The weird little tins of Wattie’s tomato sauce, the pineapple fritters no-one ever ordered. The paper-wrapped bundle would be deposited on your lap, hot enough to burn your thighs, the smell of chips lingering in the car for hours afterwards. Then down to the beach, popping cans of L&P and biting into hot, crispy chips, the salt stinging your mouth. I always got chicken nuggets, turning my nose up at the fish. I still have a weakness for those nuggets.

Seafood and I have a complicated relationship. My parents, like most parents in the 90s, had the rule of finishing your plate before you could leave the table. If you weren’t keen on finishing, the threats came out: you'll have to eat it cold for breakfast tomorrow, or worse, you won’t be getting any dessert tonight. The horror. Mentions of starving children in Africa were also trotted out. 'Well then, post this disgusting fish to them and see how they like it,' I thought mulishly, though I knew better than to say it out loud.

The problem was, fish was revolting to me. To this day, I still struggle to eat anything even slightly fishy. I remember gagging around each bite, trying not to spit or throw up. One time, I started sneaking every second mouthful onto the floor. My clever disposal system had one major flaw: we didn’t own a dog. As it was, I ‘finished’ my plate, and promptly got in a lot of trouble when my parents discovered half a fish worth of uneaten bites on the floor beneath my feet. I still consider this a victory as I couldn’t be forced to eat it.

Every generation of parenting finds fault with the one before it, of course. But that battle over fish taught me something: nobody has ever been argued into liking a food. If I ever have children of my own, I don’t think I’ll make them finish a meal they genuinely hate. Some battles simply aren’t worth winning.

As far as I was concerned, fish would always be my nemesis.

Then I travelled.

In Croatia, I tentatively tried fish carpaccio off my brother’s plate. On a small Croatian island, I ate shrimps cooked ‘grandfather’s style’, fresh and sweet and nothing like the fish of my childhood. I ate octopus in Greece, and I liked it. I even tried oysters on the French coast. It was fresh, very fresh, but we shan’t talk about it. Snot of the sea. Shudder.

But it was on a pebbled Suffolk beach at sunset that things really changed. I was housesitting on my own in England, no one to judge or push me, and I tried fish and chips again. Dribbled in malt vinegar, wrapped in paper, soft and crunchy and fatty and sharp all at once. It seems odd, me buying fish and chips when I'd never liked fish. But I kept thinking about my mum's stories of fish and chips on English beaches. Maybe I wanted those memories too. Or maybe I wanted to feel closer to her.

I shared the beach with no one but the birds and the salt marsh behind me. I dipped my toes into the pebbly shallows, but it was freezing. The English sun doesn’t warm much in September. I wasn’t sure what I was doing. Job hunting, housesitting, alone.

But sitting on that beach with the endless roar of the waves pulling in and out, fish and chips warming my lap, I felt brave. I was alone but not lonely. Not in those moments, by the boundless shore.

It wasn't an overnight conversion. Most things aren't. But it was the beginning. I still won't touch anything overly fishy, but somewhere between Croatia and Suffolk I stopped being the child smuggling fish under the dinner table. Even if my brothers still won’t let me live it down.

I started making my own fish, courtesy of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, and haven't looked back since. The trick is keeping everything as cold as possible. That's what gives you the lightest, crunchiest batter.

Beer Battered Fish Recipe

Serves 2

Ingredients

• 2 fresh fish fillets, hoki, cod or snapper work well

• 1 x 330ml cold bottle of beer (any kind, I usually go for a lager)

• 160g flour

• ½ tsp baking powder

• Chilli flakes

• Salt

• 250-500ml cooking oil depending on your pot size (use rice bran or anything with a high smoke point)

Method

• Mix the flour, baking powder, chilli flakes and a good pinch of salt in a bowl, then place it uncovered in the fridge or freezer.

• Cut each fillet into 2-3 pieces depending on size, check for any missed bones or scales, season with salt, and put back in the fridge.

• Fill a deep pot with two inches of oil (I use rice bran) and set over a medium heat. To test whether it’s hot enough, dip the handle end of a wooden spoon into the oil. Once it bubbles immediately on contact, it’s ready.

• Take your flour bowl from the freezer and add the cold beer slowly, mixing roughly with your fingertips. You want it still somewhat lumpy as this is what makes it crispy. You may only need three quarters of the bottle of beer. Aim for a thick batter that drips slowly off your fingers.

• One at a time, coat each piece of fish in the batter and lower carefully into the oil. Don’t overcrowd the pot: the pieces shouldn’t touch, so work in batches of two or three.

• Fry for 2-3 minutes each side until golden brown, then transfer to a rack lined with paper towel and hit each piece with a pinch of salt immediately.

• Serve with loads of lemon juice, homemade fries, and whatever greens take your fancy. I love a fresh salad or homemade pickled cabbage. My partner is partial to peas.

Note: I've heard vodka makes an even crispier, lighter batter, but I don’t usually have vodka in the house so I can't speak to it. Worth a go though!

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Welcome to the first Sunday Table, a monthly round-up of recipes, books, seasonal finds, and whatever else is on my mind. Thank you for being here.

What I’ve Been Cooking Lately

I’ve been on a bit of a legume kick recently, consuming many a tin or packet (or jar, when I’m feeling bougie) of white beans, chickpeas, and lentils (ideally Puy, my favourite). …

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Nobody tells you how hard it is.

The bills and the budgets and the what’s for dinner (again). The career questions that don’t get easier with age, just more loaded. What do I actually want? Does it even matter? The creeping worry about ageing parents. And underneath all of it, the low hum of a world that’s, let’s be honest, fucked.

And then there’s the body. The mysterious aches that appear from sleeping on your pillow wrong. The greys (dye? don’t dye? I’m not interested in Botox, but that doesn’t stop the subtle and not-so-subtle societal pressure). Gone are the days of rolling a jumper as a pillow and sleeping in my jeans. (I must have been a lunatic.)

Everyone talks about this part. It’s a whole genre. Adulthood is exhausting, we say, passing around the sentiment like a biscuit tin, taking one each.

And it is. It really is.

But nobody tells you how much fun it is either.

I remember sometime in my late 20s standing in a supermarket aisle, properly delighted by hand soap. So many flavours! (Er, scents. I don’t eat them, I promise.) What pretty packaging. Jasmine? Bergamot (what even is bergamot?) or cedar? How will I choose? I stood there for a long moment, soap in hand, and thought: when did this happen?

(As an aside, does anyone else remember practically memorising the back of every shampoo bottle in the bathroom out of sheer boredom, pre-mobile phones? Just me?)

Because somewhere along the way, without anyone warning me, I started finding real pleasure in small things. Growing herbs on the windowsill. Spending an unreasonable amount of time researching the right wood stain for my outdoor chairs. The satisfaction of a clean house, even better if achieved with club music at full volume and a glass of wine in hand. Usher, yeahhhhh man, while scrubbing the kitchen counter. This is peak living.

I remember in my early 20s wondering why you never saw older people, and by older I mean anyone over 30, in the club. I didn’t want them there obviously. But why weren’t they? I assumed they felt too uncool, or were too boring to bother. I was a judgy little thing.

It didn’t really occur to me that they just didn’t want to. That they had a nice house they were probably paying an alarming amount of rent or mortgage for, and perhaps they wanted to actually enjoy it.

But even that isn’t it. As a 30-something myself, I can assure you I’m not sitting on the couch sighing to myself, “If only I could go out, but I need to justify the crippling amount I pay in rent…” No. I am in my PJs at 7 pm on the couch with a comfy blanket and peppermint tea (or a glass of wine, depending on the day) saying “Thank fuck I don’t need to leave the house.” And I mean it.

That’s me now. I pass the clubs on my way home from a late dinner out and think back to sticky floors and expensive, average mixers. It was great, really. But I don’t miss it. The burst of excitement I get putting on earrings before friends come over for dinner feels exactly the same as it did before a night out. Only now I get to play jazz and serve food I actually like, in my own home, with people I love, and everyone leaves at a reasonable hour.

On the weekends, I’m often up at 6 or 7 am, heading for a little morning trip out somewhere nearby, a cute neighbourhood, coffee shop or bakery. Even better if there’s a nature walk nearby. And best of all if it can be finished off with a pub.

Meandering around when it’s still quiet does make me feel smug, I won’t lie (pride thy downfall!) as I imagine the young’uns from the night before, waking bleary-eyed and dry-mouthed, heads pounding, ordering McDonald’s from bed and swearing never again. I saunter along the river inhaling coffee and taking a bite of my excellent flaky pastry. No, this is the life, I say. Small smirk. I try to wipe it away. Probably fail.

No one told me that being an adult isn’t boring. That I would become a person who crouches down with a plant identification app and crows excitedly over a new species. That a beautifully scented candle could make my week. That adulthood itself can be wonderful. I am sure 20-year-old me would think I was extremely lame. I would tell 20-year-old me we don’t use the word lame anymore. It’s not very nice. She would be deeply unimpressed.

Honestly, I’m quite pleased with myself.

The world is difficult. Some of it is frightening. There are things I carry now that I didn’t at 22. But in this small warm life I’ve built, in the hand soap I choose and the fresh herbs on the sill and the pyjamas at 7 pm, I’ve found happiness I didn’t know existed.

I wonder what 40-year-old me will look back on and realise I’m still missing now.

Maybe that’s the nicest part. You don’t arrive at adulthood fully formed, neatly baked and finished. You’re still proofing. Still rising. Still figuring out the recipe as you go.

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If you are going to have an awakening about capers, I highly recommend doing it in a shanty shack on a Croatian island, with wild kittens at your feet and a possible pirate serving thick slabs of grilled bread topped with melted cheese, home-pickled capers, and home-brewed wine.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I had just finished my master’s.

This sounds like a simple thing to say. It was not a simple thing to do. A master’s is the kind of undertaking where there is always more that could be done, always another source to read, another paragraph to tighten, another reason to stay up until two in the morning staring at a screen. My brain had been in a permanent state of what next, what do I still have to do for the better part of a year. Even when I wasn’t working, my brain was like a computer with background processes running constantly, all of them screaming silently, ‘there's more to do!’

And then, suddenly, it was done.

I submitted, and waited for my brain to catch up. It didn't, not immediately. It kept reaching for the next thing, finding nothing, then reaching again. I was proud of myself, it was one of my biggest achievements, and I was terrified about my marks, which I wouldn’t receive for months. But mostly I was just tired. My brain was deeply, to the bone, exhausted.

I needed a holiday. Croatia called.

My brothers, Yannick and Christophe, were also free and in Europe, so we soon hatched a plan.

We went to Vis, a gem of an island where the water is an impossible cerulean blue that no photograph ever quite captures. You need to smell the salt and hear the waves to truly experience it. We played Catan in the shade of climbing vines, Christophe quietly accumulating largest army while we argued over sheep, and losing track of time the way you only really do on holiday. We found a beach with friendly goats who wandered over to investigate us with zero fear. I suspect other tourists fed them. At our last Airbnb, my brother Yannick bravely removed a scorpion from my room. It was a very small scorpion. I maintain this made it more dangerous, not less. Yannick can’t even remember said scorpion so clearly his own heroics didn’t make much impression on him. I think that makes it more impressive?

From Vis, we took a private boat tour of some of the tiny surrounding islands. We would never have found them otherwise, these gorgeous grottos and inlets full of clear shallow swimming waters and tiny caves.

It was on one of these we found him.

Lunchtime. We had been dropped on a slightly larger island, and told our captain would be back in a couple of hours before he motored away. There was a beach bar serving overpriced cocktails and a handful of lunch options. In the distance, we spotted a small structure on a hill. We could hear music drifting faintly over and wondered if it could be another lunch option. We decided to wander over and have a look.

A grey-haired, nut-brown, shirtless man with a joint permanently in his mouth greeted us with “sit, sit!” His English extended approximately that far, but no further. A caravan behind him flew a pirate flag. Five kittens wandered between piles of junk. A camp bed was visible through the open door of the shack. Croatian radio played from somewhere inside. At first I wasn't sure whether we'd wandered into a private dwelling and nobody had the heart to tell us.

However, two of the very Eastern European men at the neighbouring table, smoking incessantly, had some English and explained that we were in the right place, and could have fish salad or cheese and bread. We chose cheese and bread and a litre of white wine, because obviously.

What followed was one of my favourite meals of my life.

He cooked the bread on a massive open grill in front of us, the flames low over charcoal, giving the place a delicious smoky smell. He brought out cheese made by his friend over the hill, and capers he had grown himself, picked himself, and bottled himself — genuinely the best capers I have ever tasted. The wine appeared to be homemade too, tasting somewhere between paint stripper and jet fuel. It was wonderful. Every few minutes he would appear with more bread, more wine, more cheese, gesturing cheerfully: more? The answer was always yes.

I felt like we had wandered into a relic of the 70s, the kind of experience my parents talked about finding everywhere in their backpacking days, full of locals letting them sleep in garden sheds, feeding them figs, and striking up friendships that seemed effortless. The sort of thing that feels harder and harder to find now.

As he capered (you knew it was coming) around our rough wooden table, my brain relaxed at last. How could it not, to be in a moment so sublime. The background noise in my brain, the what next, the what do I still have to do, went quiet. There was nothing to optimise here. There was only this.

I could not have planned this moment, and that was precisely the point. If I planned out every detail, accounted for every moment, these experiences would never have happened. And I promise they are the very best of travel. The gems you never see coming, the memories you will never forget.

Nowadays, my guilty pleasure when peckish is to wander to the fridge, take a teaspoon, and eat capers straight from the jar. I blame the Croatian pirate entirely. He started this.

But I do think about it sometimes, would I have liked capers at all without that specific afternoon? Would I have tried them at home, from a jar in a supermarket, without the kittens and the charcoal smoke and the wine of questionable origin? Probably not. Or I would have tried them and found them too briny, too sharp, too much, without the things that gave them an origin, a balance, a story.

Travel does that. It hands you things in the right conditions, with the right people, at the right moment, and suddenly you love something you never knew existed.

Maybe that’s the magic of capers. Or maybe it’s just the magic of travel.

All I can give you is a recipe that makes capers sing. The rest is up to you to decide.

Panzanella Salad with Fried Capers

Adapted from Ottolenghi

Serves 4

Ingredients

For the fried capers and croutons

• 4 garlic cloves, peeled and minced

• 1 tbsp capers, roughly chopped

• 4–5 tbsp olive oil, plus extra if needed

• 100g sourdough, crusts left on, sliced 2cm thick, cut into 4cm chunks

For the salad

• 500g ripe tomatoes, cut into 4cm chunks

• 1 lemon, finely grated zest (1 tsp) and juice (2 tsp)

• handful parsley leaves, finely chopped

• handful basil leaves, finely chopped, plus a few extra to serve

• 1 tsp Urfa chilli flakes or ½ tsp of another chilli (optional)

• Flaked sea salt

Method

1. Put the oil and capers in a pan with ½ teaspoon of flaked salt over a medium heat. Cook for 5 minutes, then add half the garlic. Cook gently for a further 3 minutes until fragrant but not browned. Watch the heat, if it starts to bubble too aggressively, pull it off until it calms down.

2. Remove the pan from the heat. Lift out the capers and garlic and set aside.

3. Add the sourdough chunks to the warm oil and toss until golden and crisp, adding a little more oil if needed as the bread will soak it up quickly. Add the remaining garlic and cook for about 1 minute, then transfer the bread to a large bowl.

4. Mix together the tomatoes, lemon zest, lemon juice, parsley, and basil. Stir through the fried capers and cooked garlic.

5. Just before serving, add the tomato mixture to the bread and toss everything together gently. Transfer to a platter, drizzle over any remaining garlicky oil, and finish with the chilli flakes and a few extra basil leaves.

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I’ve thought about writing this more times than I can count. And every time, I’ve stopped myself.

There’s never a clean or comfortable moment to talk about illness. It’s messy, personal, and often invisible in more ways than one. But if I keep waiting for the right time, I’ll never say anything at all.

On average, it takes around 10 years to be diagnosed with endometriosis. It took me 13.

I first heard the word at 17. A chronic inflammatory condition where tissue similar to the uterine lining grows outside the uterus, anywhere in the body. It causes chronic pain. It can fuse organs together. It can lead to infertility. The cause is unknown. There is no cure.

A condition affecting at least 1 in 10 women, likely more, is still understudied, misunderstood, and routinely missed.

At 18, I brought it up to a doctor. My symptoms fit: severe period pain, especially in my lower back, bloating, bowel issues, heavy bleeding, constant pain. I sat in that room alone, as I would sit in so many rooms alone, and tried to explain what my body felt like from the inside.

I was dismissed.

I wasn’t in enough pain. The symptoms didn’t fit. I was told to take birth control and ignore it. But birth control doesn’t cure endometriosis. At best, it masks symptoms. At worst, it delays diagnosis.

For me, it felt like putting a plaster over something much deeper. The pain dulled, but it never went away. I missed school. Then university. Then work. When my friends described their periods as an inconvenience, I couldn’t relate. Mine were debilitating.

Doctors told me it was normal. That I had a low pain tolerance. That I should lose weight. I was always wrong. There was never anything wrong with me.

Eventually, I stopped trying to be heard.

Because if enough experts tell you it’s all in your head, you start to believe them. You start to wonder if perhaps you’re just weaker than the average person, unable to cope with normal pain, there must be something wrong with you, not physically, but mentally. I didn’t know the term medical gaslighting then. I didn’t know how to stand up for myself, because I didn’t know I was right. How could I be, when everyone was telling me I was wrong?

I retreated into myself, and tried to forget.

Years later, I tried again. I found a doctor who listened. I was 28.

She referred me for an ultrasound. Months later, it came back normal. A retroverted uterus. Nothing to worry about. Back to the beginning.

What I didn’t know then was this: endometriosis often doesn’t show up on ultrasounds. Even MRIs can miss it. The only definitive diagnosis is surgery, a laparoscopy, and even then, only if the surgeon knows what they’re looking for.

At 30, I pushed for a specialist referral. They made me feel small. I kept pushing, though I’m still not entirely sure where I found the nerve to, after so many years of being told I was imagining it.

Nine months later, I sat across from a gynaecologist.

“I highly doubt it’s endometriosis,” she said. “You probably just have a tight pelvic floor. Do you want me to double check with my supervisor? I don’t think she’ll support surgery.”

She was the expert. I should trust her. But something in me resisted that certainty, some small, stubborn part that hadn’t quite given up yet. I struggled in silence for a moment. Almost every part of me told me to smile and nod, and walk away, like I always had. But a tiny voice whispered “No.”

I asked her to check with her supervisor.

She sighed, left the room, then came back two minutes later.

“My supervisor wants to put you on the surgical list.”

I felt embarrassed. Anxious. Like I had exaggerated everything, like I had pushed too hard, made too much of something that was probably nothing. That feeling, I realised later, was not mine. It had been handed to me, piece by piece, over 13 years.

But I said yes.

A year later, I was sitting in a hospital gown, waiting. Just before the operation, the surgeon came in.

“We won’t find anything,” she said. “I highly doubt you have endometriosis.”

Five minutes before surgery. I still don’t understand what purpose that served, except to make me doubt myself one last time.

Five hours later, I woke up with four incisions instead of two.

“We found endometriosis,” the surgical assistant told me brightly.

And then she was gone. I was alone, as I had always been with this.

I lay there, still foggy with anaesthetic, and there was no one to say it to. No one to say: you were right, all along, you were right. I had spent 13 years being told I was wrong, and in the end I found out the truth alone, in a hospital bed, before I was even fully conscious.

That was the first and last time I spoke to anyone actually involved in my surgery.

Recovery was harder than I expected. Pain, exhaustion, bloating, shoulder pain from trapped gas. I couldn’t sit up properly. I couldn’t sleep. I needed four weeks off work, not the two I was told. And even then, things weren’t better. Just different. Some pain eased. New pain appeared.

Later, my GP suggested adhesions, scar tissue from the surgery itself, possibly binding parts of my abdomen together. One of the very things surgery was meant to fix.

When I finally accessed my surgical notes, no one walked me through them. I ended up putting them into ChatGPT to understand what had been done to my own body. If that isn’t a system failure, I don’t know what is.

My diagnosis included scarring across my pelvis, an endometrioma, inflammation, and adhesions affecting my intestines and abdominal wall. AI suggested I had pelvic endometriosis. No one else did.

Three months later, I had a follow-up appointment.

I came prepared. Notes, questions, hope. Instead, I saw a surgeon who had never met me before.

“I don’t know why they sent you to me,” he said. Then he told me they had only found a little endometriosis. The severity of the disease does not correlate with the level of pain. But that didn’t seem to matter to him.

“Have a child. Or a hysterectomy.”

Neither of those are cures for endometriosis.

I wish I had said something. I wish I had reported him. But here is the thing about being dismissed for 13 years: it teaches you to make yourself small. It teaches you that the expert is always right, that your instincts are not to be trusted, that pushing back has consequences and staying quiet is safer. I had fought so hard just to get into that room. And sitting across from him, I had nothing left.

I am ashamed of that silence. But I also understand it now in a way I didn’t then. The shame doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to a system that spent over a decade telling me I was the problem.

I sat in my car in that shitty hospital carpark, surrounded by concrete and indifference, and I cried. With anger. With resentment at a medical system that had made me feel small over and over, that had handed me back my own pain like it was an inconvenience, like I was the inconvenience. I cried because I had been right all along, and it had cost me 13 years to be believed, and there was no one waiting to tell me that it mattered.

Living with chronic illness is strange. Some days, I function. Some days I don’t. There is no clean narrative.

A diagnosis doesn’t change how your body feels. It just gives you permission to stop pretending.

And I need to say this, because I wish someone had said it to me.

Surgery is considered the gold standard for diagnosing and treating endometriosis. For some people, it is life changing. But it is not a guarantee. Sometimes it helps, gives people a new lease on life. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes the pain comes back. Sometimes it never leaves. Sometimes new pain begins. Endometriosis can return. Scar tissue can create new problems. No two experiences are the same.

I don’t know if surgery helped me.
I do know it gave me answers, certainty. Validation.

Almost two years later, I am still figuring it out.

They call this an invisible illness. And it is. You can’t see it on me. But I spoke up. I asked. I pushed. I was ignored.

I hate complaining. I hate feeling vulnerable. Even writing this is uncomfortable. But I have learned, slowly and not without cost, that staying quiet has never once protected me. It has only made it easier for the room to stay the same.

If you are reading this and you are tired, I know. Keep pushing. You know your body. You know when something is not right. You deserve to be heard.

They call us silent warriors. They call this illness invisible.

But it was never the illness that was made invisible.

It was us.

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Further reading:

• The silent face of endometriosis

• Endometriosis: why is there so little research?

• Mayo Clinic: Endometriosis

• Why do we know so little about this disease?

The Rest Room

I am not a warrior

When we first join online chronic illness spaces, there’s a new shared language that we learn: “warrior”, “zebra”, and “spoonie”, to name just a few…

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4 years ago · 35 likes · 5 comments · Natasha Lipman

*https://drandreworr.com.au/the-silent-face-of-endometriosis/

*https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/endometriosis-why-is-there-so-little-research

*https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/endometriosis/symptoms-causes/syc-20354656

https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/news/2022/05/03/why-do-we-know-so-little-about-this-disease.html

Spring is the time of beginnings, of rebirth, of everything happening anew. Which feels fitting, as I am also in my season of change, of everything being new.

For so many of us, beginnings and resolutions start with the new year. The first of January has become deeply symbolic, the time for change, intention setting, the fresh start. It is also the time of stress from self-inflicted deadlines for a body that wants to do nothing more than be held gently in the darkness. Because the problem is, for the Northern Hemisphere at least, this is also deep winter. And winter is not the time for new beginnings. It is the time for hunkering down, for settling in. For wintering. More sleep, more candles in the dusk.

The time for beginnings is spring.

In New Zealand I never felt this strongly. For one thing, we were in the Southern Hemisphere, and for another, Auckland winters are mild anyway, less light, more rain, but little else changes. Too many evergreen plants, too temperate a climate to feel the turn of the season in your body. Here in England is the first time I have truly felt spring, with my senses, with something almost cellular. The natural world echoing my own sense of change.

Spring is the time to wake up. To realise you were solar powered after all, and you’ve been running on low battery all winter.

Standing in an English spring, you understand why people built rituals around this season long before Easter ever existed. The turning. The return. The sudden feeling that life is beginning again.

And then one day the snowdrops are out, and then the bluebells, and there is wisteria and magnolia in flower everywhere you look, and it feels like a dark cloud has lifted. There is still frost in the morning, but with it a sense of hope. The weather is, as the Brits will tell you at length, completely unpredictable.

I have become one of them, I should confess.

“Hailed yesterday. Twice! And then sunshine straight after. Hail in May!” I tell anyone who will listen. Does that make me English now? (I ask hopefully).

But I love how deeply you feel the seasons here. Each month brings something new, a new plant, a new bird, a new point in the life cycle of the year, and discovering them feels like a continual quiet joy. A reason to look forward to every season. I am seeing great tits and robins in the garden now, and squirrels. So many squirrels. I have heard locals talk about them disparagingly, but I can’t help loving them. Perhaps it’s because I never grew up with them, only Beatrix Potter’s Squirrel Nutkin, and the real thing feels like stepping into a story from my childhood.

The light is another thing entirely. It is getting light at 4am and it is not even summer yet, which is lovely in theory. Longer days. More light.

But I wake with the light. None of our housesits have had blackout curtains. I have taken to scrabbling for my eyemask at some ungodly hour like an enraged gremlin, furiously trying to go back to sleep. (Why not wear it from the start of the night, you ask? I struggle to sleep with it on. It is a lose-lose situation and I don’t want to talk about it.)

This is spring in England. Unpredictable, abundant, somewhat chaotic, and completely wonderful.

I am new here, and everything around me is new too. I am figuring out what comes next, what I want, what this chapter looks like. I hope to do what the natural world around me is doing: bud, bloom, and turn towards the light.

And in the meantime, there is asparagus. And cold custard. (Not together.) New potatoes and garlicky lamb. Peppery watercress salad with slow roasted beetroot and tangy goat cheese, crunchy radishes on toast with thick layers of salted french butter. Tart rhubarb compote on creamy Greek yogurt. I will embrace this season as I am embracing my own change, with as much optimism and love as I can.

I’m writing this sitting in the sunshine in the garden, listening to the sound of birdsong, the damp grass fresh between my toes. The sky is blue again after a sudden squall, and I am drinking my new favourite drink, one I suspect will make many appearances this summer.

Lillet Rosé Spritz

Serves 1

Ingredients

• 50ml Lillet Rosé

• 60-100ml tonic water (I prefer the lesser amount, you may like more, try to taste)

• ice cubes

• 1 fresh slice orange or grapefruit

• 1 sprig fresh thyme (optional)

Method

• In a large wine glass, place 3-4 ice cubes depending on size

• pour in the Lillet followed by the tonic water

• stir gently to combine

• place your fruit slice and thyme if using inside

• serve

Notes: you can also replace the tonic water with 50ml prosecco and a dash of sparkling water

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Not working comes with a heavy sense of guilt.

I feel it every time someone asks what I do. Every time I open LinkedIn. Every time I hear myself explaining that I’m “job hunting at the moment”, with a bright smile that says, don’t worry, I’m still participating correctly.

Underneath all of it is the same fear:

Laziness. Undisciplined. Unambitious.

We throw the words around like armour, protecting ourselves, lest the doubts find a gap and worm their way in.

I’m currently not working. I’m job hunting, aiming to get back into the corporate grind with passionate cover letters and perky emails, each tweaked and manipulated to fit the job description. But beneath all the effort, I don't want to go back.

It feels like an admission of laziness. You can’t just… not work.

Can you?

Well, I can’t. Not because of social expectations, not because of life fulfilment, or that word again, ambition. But for the oldest reason in history. The strongest motivator. Money.

Perhaps if I was bankrolled by my family, came from old money, was upper class.

But I’ve always lived paycheck to paycheck, only one or two missed pays away from being unable to pay rent. The car or the washing machine breaking not an inconvenience, but a serious financial burden. Every time savings began to build up, something needed fixing.

I realised recently that I’ve never walked into a supermarket and not calculated up the total of my shop as I went. Never picked something off the shelf without checking the price. But I’ve also never gone hungry. I’ve taken holidays, even just local ones, at least once a year. I suppose this makes me middle class.

The point being, I cannot live on air.

So work beckons. Eventually I will go back, and I will have to take the small wins. A job I don’t despise, even if it’s just okay. Not taking work home with me. A good team. Money to have fun on weeknights and weekends. Carving out time for the tiny things that make me happy.

I don’t know what it means long-term.

In the meantime, my partner supports us, alongside my rapidly disappearing savings. We scrape by until I find something. There’s no rush, he says. Wait for the right thing.

But what is the right thing, when I discover how much I love not working?

When I spend my days writing my novel, publishing on Substack, reading books and articles over slow cups of peppermint tea.

And then comes the embarrassment, when meeting someone new (something that happens rather a lot, living in a new country), trying to explain. Just job hunting at the moment! Fingers crossed something comes up soon!

Somewhere along the way, productivity became tangled up with morality.

What does that make me, then? I’m not a stay-at-home mother, which comes with its own identity to wrestle with. I don’t have children. I’m a housewife without the wife. House fiancée? House partner? Each sounds more ridiculous than the last.

I’m on a sabbatical, I brightly tell the people we are housesitting for. Writing my book.

It’s not a lie. So why does it feel like it is?

I was leaving my best friend in Australia a long and rather meandering voice note on this subject the other day. What makes a writer? And why do I shrink at calling myself one, feeling like a fraud?

I think other professions feel more clear-cut. Doctor, engineer, lawyer. You’ve studied, you’re employed, you have a title that announces you before you’ve said a word.

But what is a writer? Someone who writes. Well praise be, that’s all of us here.

So it should be simple.

But my brain catalogues it. There must be achievement. Proof. Is it if you make your living as a writer? Have published work? Earn a certain amount? Even my poor heart isn’t sure, but it has decided I am not one.

I think about the supermarket. The way I have never once picked something off the shelf without first checking the price, calculating its worth against everything else in the basket. I have done the same thing to myself, apparently, for years.

Maybe that’s the thing to unlearn.

Not to decide, finally, that I am a writer. But to stop calculating whether I can afford to be.

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I wasn’t always caught in this muddle of figuring out what work means to me, where it fits into my life and what I actually want to do. There was a time when I knew exactly.

I always knew I wanted to be an archaeologist. After outgrowing my dreams of being a ballerina and a lady farmer, I settled on archaeology, and never really wavered. I started off wanting to go into Egyptology, but by university decided to branch out into the still incredibly niche world of Greek, Roman and Egyptian archaeology.

I would only further my niche by studying a masters in Osteoarchaeology (human remains in an archaeological context) with a focus on leprosy and the changing function of early medieval hospitals in England. Never get between a girl and her hyperfixation.

After a purely theoretical bachelors, I wanted the real deal. An archaeological dig. And thank goodness I did, otherwise I may never have learned that I loved lab work, not field work. A big difference, both in the job itself and, unfortunately, in the job prospects.

The sun is beating down. Honking cars, clanging trams, and wailing sirens fill the air. I’m in Rome, having just met my seven housemates for the next five weeks, a group of American girls. It’s boiling, and we’ve dragged the creaky old chairs from the living room out onto the balcony to sit in the sun and take in our new surroundings.

We’re too tired and too hot to cook, and too jet-lagged to venture out to a restaurant just yet. One of the girls introduces me to the gorgeous simplicity of bruschetta: fresh tomatoes, basil, and garlic, chopped finely and piled onto toasted bread, salted generously. We sit on the balcony, tomato juice running down our hands, sipping cheap beer and soaking it all in. I’m twenty-one, and the world feels boundless.

Eventually, I venture out to the local supermarket, flummoxed by the low price of cans of Peroni and deeply confused by the milk sitting unrefrigerated on the shelves. My flatmates buy a stovetop espresso maker (a Moka pot) and every morning I wake at 5:30am to drink a tiny, sugary espresso (no milk, because the whole unrefrigerated milk situation still unnerves me), forcing myself awake before the long day ahead. We're out the door by 6:45am for a forty-minute bus ride. Over a decade later, after multiple jobs that started at 6 or 7am, this doesn’t even sound that early. But twenty-one-year-old me struggled terribly.

I’m digging at an archaeological site called Gabii, the remains of a Roman city-state just outside of Rome. Because of the heat, we start early, but by the time we finish eight hours later, the sun is relentless. There’s no shade, temperatures sit well into the thirties Celsius, and the manual labour is brutal. On the first day, someone faints.

The truth is, I hated it. I love archaeology in the lab, not in the field. Still, there was only one way to find that out.

It’s a chaotic, wild summer. There are about fifty of us, all students, and most are under twenty-one, meaning that until landing in Rome, alcohol had been illegal for them to buy. I’m the only non-American there, so the only one not entirely intoxicated by the novelty of buying cheap, terrible wine legally. But I’m still twenty-one, so not exactly averse to it either.

It’s in Rome that I meet one of my very best friends. Joe earns the nickname “Suitcase Saviour” when the airline delivers my luggage without wheels. Dragging it across cobblestones is nearly impossible, so when a kind stranger from the dig appears to help me on day one, finding me jet-lagged, sweaty, and overwhelmed after over 30 hours of flying (a stellar first impression), I am immediately, deeply grateful.

We bond over Lord of the Rings, random animal facts, cheap wine, and our shared hatred of digging. It’s an easy, solid friendship, and over ten years later, it’s still going strong.

On weekends, we eat gelato and pizza, drink carafes of wine, and wander back to our apartment in the early evening, pleasantly buzzing. I don’t speak a word of Italian, so Joe becomes my unofficial translator, haggling for a replacement suitcase with actual wheels, ordering pizzas and wine, navigating conversations I can’t follow. We spend long afternoons soaking in the history and trying, unsuccessfully, to find the river. Finally, someone with the same catastrophic sense of direction as me.

And when we’re not wandering ruins or eating pizza, we’re at the Irish pub, Scholar’s Lounge, drinking pints of Hoegaarden. (To quote Pippin: “They come in pints?” I’m getting one.)

Across countries and continents, we’ve kept in touch in the years since, even if we rarely see each other: watching Lord of the Rings in Bologna, taste-testing roasted chestnuts in Annecy, making birthday tiramisu in the English countryside, cooling beers in the snow in America. Joe is one of the funniest, smartest, and kindest people I know, and easily the best thing to come out of that summer, along with the firm knowledge that fieldwork was not in my future if I could help it.

Looking back, that first bruschetta on the balcony feels like the entire summer in miniature: tomato juice running down our hands, creaky chairs dragged onto the balcony, and the feeling that life was only just beginning.

Cheap beer. Sunburnt noses. New friendships forming at impossible speed. The intoxicating freedom of being twenty-one in a foreign city with no idea what your life will look like in ten years.

In New Zealand, I was never much of a tomato person. But in Italy, they’re something else entirely: deep red, bursting with flavour, properly juicy.

In high summer, there’s nothing better than something fresh and simple for dinner.

Here’s my take on the Italian classic.

My Bruschetta Recipe

Serves 4 as a starter

Ingredients

• 1 punnet cherry tomatoes (about 200g)

• 2 cloves garlic, peeled

• 1 bunch fresh basil

• ½ baguette sliced into rounds, or 2 slices of sourdough loaf per person (cut into halves or thirds)

• Olive oil

• Salt

Method

• Slice your bread, not too thick.

• Finely chop the cherry tomatoes, salt, then leave draining over a colander for 10 minutes to remove excess juice.

• Mince one clove of garlic, and chop the basil. Toss together, add a small drizzle of olive oil.

• Taste, adjusting salt, garlic, or basil as needed.

• Cover and refrigerate for 30 minutes to let the flavours develop.

• Place a frying pan over medium-high heat.

• Drizzle a good amount of olive oil into the pan and lay in your bread slices. Season with salt, pepper, and any herbs you like (dried oregano works well). Cook for a couple of minutes until golden, then flip and cook the other side, adding more olive oil as needed.

• Once golden, remove from the pan and rub both sides of each slice with the remaining whole garlic clove.

• Top with the tomato mixture (drain off excess juice if needed).

• Serve immediately, ideally with lots of sunshine and chilled white wine.

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