Cookbooks.

I spend a lot of time pondering life in Hobart. Tonight, exhausted and wishing myself at home we dropped into the supermarket in the city only to witness a woman bail up the chap stacking shelves with the whinge that she had cut her finger on a shelf and was going to report it to, of all places....The Mercury (the local paper). I grit my teeth.

But last night, Jane from Life on Planet Baby went to town to Fullers Bookshop to hear Tessa Kiros talk about her new cookbook Limoncello and Linen Water:

A sweetly pretty book where the recipes are nostalgic and woven together from myriad directions. Being Hobart, it only took a matter of minutes to materialise at the front of the queue for an inscription:

(Jane took this photo)

Of course, I couldn't help myself and had to tell her about how I regularly cook from her book Venezia in my kitchen in Hobart in an attempt to try and transport us back to Venice, if only for one fleeting dinner. It's a tenuous link but miraculously it works. Food is clever the way that it can do that.

How vivid is the memory of the giddy thrill that came with swapping the plane for a water taxi and speeding through the haze where the sky and water were indistinguishable....before the incredibleness that is Venice was revealed:

And the first, much anticipated, taste of gelato (pistachio)......of course there was a gelateria right next to where our feet touched land.

Then, just because I could, I told her how powerfully the quote on the back cover resonated with me:

Suddenly the talk veered towards the aqua alta, sirens and thunderstorms and the watery beauty and unpredictability of Venice. Tessa Kiros lives in the countryside somewhere between Siena and Florence. She lives in a beautiful part of the world.....and then she told me that I do too. And she's right. But it's very easy to forget.

Rx

PS Who has stumbled on Heidi's gorgeous new blog? Back in May, when I was totally demoralised by the fact that I had been blogging for quite some time and had NEVER received a comment, Heidi was one of the first to make one and has regularly and perceptively continued to do so. She has a distinctive voice and a wide range as a comment maker in blogland yet now you can read about and see pictures of her life in Adelaide....I thoroughly recommend having a look.

History.

Look how incredibly beautiful the sunset was in Hobart last night:

It was just like something straight out of a John Glover painting:

('A corrobery of natives in Mills Plains' 1832)

Except that there are no full blooded Tasmanian Aborigines in Tasmania, now. European settlement and the disease, violence and warfare that went along with it made the indigenous population virtually extinct.  It was one of the first recorded modern acts of genocide, here in Tasmania. What a tragedy.

Finally, there are flowers in our garden. The rhododendron is putting on a show:

Conveniently, it matches the library:

And here is a Camelia:

Tonight, we are going to Venice, as I am cooking dinner using this as my guide:

I love the quote on the back of this book, 'As many times as I went out was as many times as I got lost. But I was never lost. I was always somewhere in Venice'. Sigh. Here was us lost in Venice back in 2008:

This afternoon, in the small window of opportunity offered while the baby was asleep, I made the Tiramisu:

And now all I need to do is put the Lasagne di Pesce, which I concocted around feeding the children, in the oven.

This is what I wore to embark on Saturday morning manoeuvres:

And here are my sidekicks, also dressed:

It was 9.30am and our other two children were already at sport and dancing. There are no languid sleep ins at our house.....on Saturday, it's game on EARLY. Those of us who were left had to go to town to acquire birthday presents, so that when they showed up to parties later in the day they weren't empty handed. I have a rule that we only give books for children's birthday parties.....because plastic NEVER biodegrades. And who doesn't love a book?

Look at the display going on out the front of Fuller's Bookshop:

Oh my. I couldn't help myself.....I had to spontaneously giggle at the chain. They said that this book is significantly contributing to keeping the shop in business.

I love my printed pony skin handbag that I bought on sale at Max Mara in Paris:

But today while I was speculating as to exactly which animal it looks like, I began to think that the colours and stripes are a bit like the extinct Tasmanian Tiger:

Another living creature totally eradicated by European colonisation in Tasmania. I hope that they can find a cure for the facial tumours currently decimating the population of the Tasmanian Devil......so that they don't vanish forever, too.

R