Building a better bangers and mash

Marriage is about compromise, and here's a dinner-time deal I brokered between the carnivorous cravings of my British-born husband and my preferences for French and Italian flavours.

It's a simple dish of bangers and mash with a twist: oven-roasted pork sausages, an upmarket 'gravy' and a silken potato purée.

The result is garlicky, boozy, earthy and rich. Stodgy comfort food for him, elegant continental flavour for her.

This is what you get when a meat-and-potatoes boy meets a Mediterranean-loving girl: and wants something to eat with a bottle of red.

Favourite things, September 2012

A WWII bomb shelter in the basement of a house in Lord North Street, Westminster

• London. London Walks. Immersion in history. Westminster. The Shakespeare: Staging the World exhibition at the British Museum

Kilchurn Castle, between rain showers

• Scotland's castles
• This dual biography of Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I 

Exploring Edinburgh's Old Town.

• Edinburgh. All of it.

Dumpling and noodle heaven in Edinburgh

• Dumplings at Chop Chop restaurant in Haymarket

French cheese board a La Fromagerie: Saint Maure, Olivet, Morbier, Crayeux de Roncq, Fourme D'Ambert (and housemade caraway, charcoal, oat and rye biscuits).

• La Fromagerie in Marylebone: my new favourite place to sit and sip and eat

Our SW6 neighbourhood café, Al Santo

• Breakfasts at Al Santo in Fulham
• Duchy Originals biscuits. I stock up on these each time I pass through the UK; sadly they're only available now at Waitrose, so impossible to pick up during brief Heathrow stopovers
• "I shop at Waitrose because I once heard a dad say 'Put the papaya down, Orlando'"
• Roaming London's fabulous LRB and Daunt bookshops
• Downsizing and simplifying in preparation for our move to a tiny terrace house in Georgetown. It's an emotional (my Bialetti!) yet liberating process. I'm even cutting back on my email newsletters. Must be that spring clean spirit taking hold.

Favourite things, July 2012

Exploring Reef Beach on Sydney Harbour, which Jem and I reached by kayak from Manly.

Garfish at Manly: incredible seafood.

Garfish seafood platter.

• Returning to Sydney to be reminded how we should live: surrounded by physical beauty, spending part of every day in nature, eating the world's best and freshest food (including meals at Garfish, Burnt Orange, Hugo's Manly, Nilgiri's, Kitchen by Mike and those cooked by Peter H. at home) access to culture (harpist Victor Valdes at the Camelot Lounge) and intellectual stimulation, and sharing it all with some of my favourite people. Australia's fresh air and beautiful pink-gold light really struck me this visit, as did the pure joy of waking each morning to hear native birdsong. 
• ICIJ's Skin and Bone project and video was published all around the world, particularly in the Daily Mail online and NBC
• White sangria: Sauvignon blanc, apricot juice, sparkling water, peaches
• Danielle Polen's yin yoga to keep me sane when work deadlines amped up the stress levels
• Mark Bittman's "Got Milk? You Don't Need It" NYT piece on milk
• There's nothing like going home, but when it begins with a glass of Taittinger the pleasure is elevated to new heights. I finally sampled the Qantas A380 international business class: a sublime experience from start to finish. Perfect comfort, terrific food and wine, great entertainment. Even from the outside, the plane still inspires awe. We drove alongside a Qantas A380 on the shuttle bus transferring us to the international terminal at LAX, and each head on board swivelled wordlessly to take it in as we drove by, a look of awe on each face.

Flying into Sydney from Brisbane, on my way back to the US.

Which wines work with curry?

You've heard some of The Rules associated with wine drinking, such as no red wine with fish, wine tastes better aged and French wine is the best of all.

If it's one thing I enjoy it's a bit of mischievous rule-breaking, or, in this case, myth-busting, so let's tackle the Rule which holds that spicy Indian curries are impossible to match with wine. Stick to beer, the experts declare. No thanks.

Curry is one of my favourite foods and there's no way I'd miss the chance to enjoy a bottle of wine alongside the meal. Furthermore, why should we be dictated to by tyrannical food-and-wine-combination police? I'm here to reassure curry-lovers that you can indeed drink wine the next time you tuck into a korma or a rogan josh with garlic naan, and that it can be an exquisite experience.

Favourite things, June 2012

• Are you a Newddhist?
• This recipe for vegetable lasagna with cashew cream. Even Gerard loves it.
• Reading the latest research about the human microbiome in Science: 'Microbiota-Targeted Therapies: An Ecological Perspective' and the New York Times: 'Tending the Body’s Microbial Garden' and 'In Good Health? Thank Your 100 Trillion Bacteria'.
• These vanilla macaroons by Hail Merry. Yummy straight out of the fridge.
• Yogitunes for free music and excellent music for sale. They turned me on to The Perfect Hour by Black Buddha: highly recommended for aural stress relief.
• Completing a 21-day challenge at my yoga studio: 21 classes in 21 days.
• Nama yoga mat spray. I'm becoming American - now I carry my own sanitizer! It has a minty fresh smell to savour during poses which bring my face to the mat, although I suspect the alcohol may be breaking down my yoga mat. I frequently find specks of teal blue rubber on my yoga tights post-class now 
• Digital library loans through Amazon's Kindle store. No more schlepping books back to the library
• Miracle noodles. You'd never mistake them for pasta but they are satisfying without the bloat
• This article about how to determine if a statement is scientifically correct 
• Livemocha: learn languages for free

Tips for the perfect wine tasting

A while ago I wrote about the impossibility of structured wine tastings: how the bold and more alcoholic examples overpower the subtler ones by the end.

But they're also tremendous fun, especially when you organise your own.

Not to mention a subsidised way to drink some decent wine.

Here's how to do it.

Favourite things, May 2012

• The American Ballet Theater's La Bayadère at the Lincoln Center. The red velvet-lined Metropolitan Opera House is just the place to sip a $19 flute of champagne whilst eyeing off NYC's bourgeoisie at the Grand Tier restaurant.

• Eataly. For the joy of standing in a marble hall, nibbling on Parma ham and parmiagiano with a chilled glass of rosé. For their lattes as good as those in Sydney, and divine apple tartlets. For their perfect pasta and jaw-dropping grocery aisles.

• Zainab Salbi's memoir, Between Two Worlds
• Mad Men season 5 - every episode is increasingly explosive. Season finale next week.   
• Launching a website for the ICIJ (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists) (www.icij.org) and a new digital product, the Global Muckraker (www.icij.org/blog) 
• Watching this video of my Sydney yoga teacher Susanna cycling through my beautiful home city:
• Jouer lip enhancer - no sting, and a pretty, sheer veil of pink.
• Algenist regenerative anti-aging moisturizer - finally, an effective anti-aging product.

Favourite things, April 2012

April was a bit of a bumpy month so it's a rather slender list this time. But a few things brought moments of joy:

Stephanie, me, and Stephanie after teaching our karma yoga class to benefit Women for Women

• Co-teaching a 60-minute karma yoga class on April 29 to benefit Women for Women International
• Sara Avant Stover's Way of the Happy Woman mini-retreat on April 1 was powerfully rejuvenating and nurturing. Such a gifted teacher, and it was wonderful to finally meet her in person
• Brunch at Zaytinya: a taste of Sydney with their Lebanese/Greek/Turkish menu. Their taramasalata is possibly the best thing I have eaten on US soil
• Strawberries with Tellicherry black pepper, made into jam
• New friendship with the lovely Carol, aka Coco Yogini
• This song, which makes me want to sip summer drinks and dance beside a swimming pool:

You must remember this

As wine lovers, we all have special drops that loom large in our memory. There are the exalted bottles we've sampled - an extravagant purchase perhaps, or a lavish gift - and been blown away by. And there are the bottles we hang on to for years, anticipating the taste before finally opening.

But quite often the wines we enjoyed the most aren't the great, expensive bottles at all. Even a modest bottle of wine sometimes lives on in your memory - not because of its taste but because of the circumstances in which it was drunk.

Bottles with memories attached are more valuable than a Penfolds Grange.

Favourite things, March 2012

• It's Spring! The scent and sight of cherry blossoms. Cherry green smoothies. Cherry marzipan green tea. Open windows. Warm breeze on your bare arms.
• Fojol Bros food truck. Each Wednesday the fantastically mustachio-ed, turban-ed chaps pull up at Farragut Square in their silver van and I feast on spicy Ethiopian stews such as beets and greens or beef berbere with a soft slab of injera bread. Alongside the Red Hook Lobster truck, this is the best quick lunch in downtown DC.
• My yoga teacher trainee sangha. I can't imagine weekends without their constant companionship and stimulation. 
• Roost blog. Exquisite photography and recipes.

• One Love Skin Savior on my face. It's a super-concentrated water-free cleanser and a moisturiser, so it's at once both non-comodegenic and very hydrating. Even better, it's all-natural and good enough to eat. A discovery via Birchbox.
• Age of Aquarius by Color Club on my toes.
• The Wisdom of No Escape by Pema Chodron. Her accessible Buddhist teachings help me find serenity and clarity.
• This article about foodie-ism as youth culture in New York magazine.

• Canal House Cooking lunchtime emails. Their cookbooks are outstanding (I have numbers 2 - fall/holidays - and 6 - the grocery store) and their name so evocative of a lovely, homey kitchen with a wood stove and a tree-fringed water view, fueled by the meeting of two creative minds. But I must put in a pitch for their daily emails of what they made for lunch that day, which are a true treat. Voyeurism and inspiration in one dose.
• Monoi Tiare Tahiti (coconut oil w/ Gardenia). I am seriously craving summer, having gone from one winter into another when we moved to the northern hemisphere in September. When I smell this I am transported home to our front courtyard in Bronte, sea salt in my hair and my skin slicked with coconut oil and the scent of our gardenia hedge in the air, with a glass of rose in my hand.
• My wonderful yoga students at Whitman Walker Health. Never imagined they would reward me so much
• Yago Hortal's colour-bomb paintings for some springtime sizzle. 

What brought you moments of bliss in March? Leave your favourites in the comments below.

Is Hormone Replacement Therapy worth the risk?

Samantha Jones: poster child for bioidentical hormones in the Sex and the City 2 movie.

Menopause is a normal physical process. Yet many in the medical community believe it should be medicalised and treated with hormone supplementation to ameliorate its undesirable symptoms. Unfortunately the consequences of long-term hormone therapy (HRT) are still not well understood. Research indicates it  increases the risk of heart attack, stroke, blood clots, breast cancer and dementia, while alleviating symptoms including hot flushes, low libido, vaginal dryness and insomnia.

I have weighed up the benefits and the risks of HRT, as well as investigated the alternatives to pharmaceutical treatment for improving both the health and quality of life for women undergoing and following menopause. All of my references are included so you can read the research for yourself and make an informed decision.

Favourite things, February 2012

Image: Sanjay Patel's Big Poster Book of Hindu Deities

• Really enjoying reading The Secret Power of Yoga by Nischala Joy Devi, one of the set texts for yoga teacher training. I'm dipping my toes into yoga philosophy, and can already feel the pull of the vast ocean of wisdom and its transformational effects. I see that I haven't been fully practicing yoga up until now, merely the physical aspects of it, although appreciating its powers to calm the mind and balance the emotions. Now its spiritual potential is slowly revealing itself to me. I've never had a spiritual practice before, not being raised Christian or following any faith (other than Dawkinsism), so it's mysterious and I'm naturally cautious - but inquisitive to learn more. First task? Defining what a spiritual practice even is.
• Birchbox. I'm a makeup gumby and one of my aspirations for 2012 is to learn a bit about it. For a small monthly subscription, Birchbox sends a box of cosmetic, skincare and haircare samples (and sometimes full-size products) tailored to your preferences. It's a fun way to find out about products - I never go to shopping malls or department stores and don't want to read beauty mags or blogs - and it gives a frisson of excitement when each box arrives. Love a cheap thrill! Now I'm looking for an excuse to try these stick-on eyeliner strips. Also enjoying the Jouer tinted moisturiser from February's box which gives subtle coverage and a glow without being too heavy for work. I'd been using my powdered mineral foundation but it's just been too heavy for daytime (see, told you I was a gumby).
• Mac and cheese at farm-to-table DC restaurant Founding Farmers. Ticks all the wrong boxes nutritionally, but it's so good. A very occasional treat. 
• Asian slaw at Teaism. I visit their Dupont teahouse at least once every weekend during our lunch break for yoga teacher training at Tranquil Space and often pick this up in lieu of a heavier meal. I love the crunch of the raw vegies and the heat in their dressing. I'm not a fan of mayonnaise but I love this. Their teas are also excellent but only if you dine in - my takeout green jasmine tea was made from a teabag, not loose leaf tea, boo.
• Pixar animator Sanjay Patel's illustrations have appeared in Toy Story 3 and the video for Bjork's I Miss You. Loving his illustrations of Hindu deities.
• Lately I've revived the homemade body scrub of rolled oats, brown sugar and olive oil routine. Smoothes away all the nasty bits on elbows and heels, softens my central-heating parched winter skin without being greasy, and there's no risk of toxicity since it is literally good enough to eat. You could scent it with essential oils but I don't - some oils can burn or sting the skin so unless you know what you're doing I would exercise caution. I don't add honey either, which plenty of recipes found online do include, but I imagine that would smell heavenly and be both softening and soothing.
• Paddywax's Jane Austen candle, part of their Library collection. A soy candle intensely scented with gardenia, tuberose and jasmine - can you imagine a yummier combination? Packaging is divine in a card file-like box and it's adorned with the message "there is nothing like staying at home for real comfort", taken from Austen's Emma.
• Baked quinoa patties by Heidi Swanson of 101 Cookbooks. Studded with fetta and onions, and toothsome with shredded kale, chives and dill. They pack up great for office lunches.
• My go-to quick dinner for the month: lightly-wilted greens (such as kale, rainbow chard) with a handful of cooked puy lentils, cubed pear, pecans/walnuts, and goats cheese, with an apple cider vinegar-dijon mustard dressing. Yum.

What brought you moments of bliss during February 2012? Leave your favourite things in the comments below.

How To Be Happy #1: You Are Not Your Job

With the hemisphere shift and pressing the pause button on my career, it's no secret I've been thinking a lot lately about the different ways of measuring success, and recognising there IS a different approach to achieving happiness.

Do watch this TEDtalks vid from Alain de Botton -- the author of The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work.

"One of the interesting things about success is that we think we know what it means. A lot of the time our ideas about what it would mean to live successfully are not our own. They’re sucked in from other people. And we also suck in messages from everything from the television to advertising to marketing, etcetera. These are hugely powerful forces that define what we want and how we view ourselves. What I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but that we should make sure that they are our own. We should focus in on our ideas and make sure that we own them, that we’re truly the authors of our own ambitions. Because it’s bad enough not getting what you want, but it’s even worse to have an idea of what it is you want and find out at the end of the journey that it isn’t, in fact, what you wanted all along.”

What makes a good yoga teacher?

Image: Lululemon Athletica

Some thoughts:

• Receptivity and responsiveness to where their students are
• One who teaches to all levels of a class
• Compassion for their students
• Enthusiasm for transmitting the subject
• Technical knowledge and experience
• Flexibility to alter a class when necessary
• Skill and thought behind their explanations and teaching
• Creativity in their lesson plan to excite learning
• Constant growth and building of knowledge in the subject area
• Attention to when a student is out of alignment or just needs a loving touch

We discussed this question in small groups on the opening day of Yoga Teacher Training Level 2 at Tranquil Space. It was unanimously agreed that while some yoga teachers can have enviable technical knowledge, their classes can at times lack heart - that special "fairy dust" a great teacher knows how to sprinkle throughout the class which contributes to you leaving on cloud nine, and feeling in love with the world. John Friend, in his Anusara Yoga Teacher Training Manual, puts it this way:

"... it is possible for a teacher to have minimal yoga experience or knowledge of postural technique and still be effective in inspiring students about their divine greatness."

He further describes the three interpersonal qualities he feels are essential in a great yoga teacher: soft heart, sharp mind, and vibrant body.

"The teacher's soft heart quality encompasses compassion, sensitivity to others' feelings, friendliness, kindness, patience, and respect. Sharp mind includes being articulate, creative and innovative, while vibrant body includes being enthusiastic, charismatic, positive, humorous, and inspiring. These three categories represent the most important qualities of a good yoga teacher - they form the soil in which the seeds of technical knowledge and teaching experience can root and grow vigorously, bearing fruit for a lifetime."

An encouraging idea to contemplate as we begin our journey as yoga teachers-in-training - the notion that the vast amount of theory and philosophy we don't yet know isn't as important as the qualities we intrinsically bring to teaching.

Siobhan also shared a few thoughts of note:

• You can teach a pose even if you can't do it (a relief for those of us who thought we needed a stronger practice before entering teacher training)
• Think of all the skills and jobs you have done throughout your life; you bring all of those to yoga teaching
• You can still weave yoga philosophy into your classes without using the Sanskrit words and frightening students off 

Favourite things, January 2012

• Yoga Teacher Training 1 intensive at Tranquil Space
• Dr Alejandro Junger's 21-day cleanse. Includes probiotics and liver support, as well as insulin support to maintain blood sugar levels and help tackle cravings, and a fibre supplement to add to the shakes to help combat constipation - all of which are missing in juice cleanses
• Yogi Tea's Tahitian Vanilla Hazelnut flavour. Add some liquid stevia and I don't crave dessert
• Hot baths, often with the aforementioned tea
• Downton Abbey and Portlandia
• Brad's Raw Foods' Nasty Hot raw leafy kale chips
• This article about Stephen Colbert in the New York Times Magazine
• Peppermint candles
• Rules of Civility by Amor Towles
• Knowing Your Value by Mika Brzezinski
• Thrive by Brendan Brazier: explains how to get optimum energy and strength to power an active lifestyle with a plant-based diet. Great recipes too
• The cricket test between India and Australia, via a dodgy live stream
• Cafe Sabarsky and the Egon Schiele and Constantin Brancusi works at the Neue Galerie
• Swan greens pressed juice from One Lucky Duck
• Apple slices dipped into a jar of sunflower seed butter
• New "fearless" journal from Papaya!

Big four-oh in NYC

• Best meal: dinner at Pure Food and Wine
• Best dish: a tie between the Salad of Chicories with Bourbon Cask Sour Cherries with Salsify Bacon, or the Lemon Alfredo Kelp Noodles with Marinated Portabella Mushrooms, or the Pumpkin Cheesecake with Brown Ale ice cream, pecan brittle and brown ale caramel - all at Pure Food and Wine
• Best breakfast: croque madame at The National
• Best drink: a flute of Veuve at Fara's apartment (sorry PDT and Cibar)
• Best coffee: The National
• Best cheese: Saint André triple creme
• Best birthday cake: Chocolate chip cookie sandwich with raspberry frosting from Babycakes
• Best atmosphere: Cafe Sabarsky
• Best artwork: Hans Memling's The Annunciation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Best smell: the Aesop store at University Place

The shit we say

Shit yogis say:


Shit people in DC say:


Shit New Yorkers say:


Is there a Shit Sydneysiders Say yet?

Yoga teacher training level 1

Last night I graduated from Tranquil Space's 3-and-a-half day level 1 yoga teacher training intensive, a transformative experience. There's so much to digest from the process and all that I learned. Suffering a little from withdrawal today - I want my 8 hours of yoga asana and discussion! - mixed with euphoria from teaching a class practice and, of course, an aching body.

So, what did I learn about yoga and yoga teaching? Here are some thoughts, in no particular order:

Happy little yoga vegemites. Image courtesy of Tranquil Space Yoga

• Teaching yoga is as enjoyable and fulfilling as I thought it might be
• It's also physically and mentally demanding. It requires a strong presence; intuition to read the energy of your students; anatomical knowledge; focus to remember your sequence as well as assist students, notice when one needs a bit of help, count the breath of each asana hold, etc.; creativity to design a stimulating practice and playlist; wisdom and life experience so you can share something of value each class
• Giving physical assists to students is very rewarding
• Yoga teaching language is an entirely different method of communication
• Cueing an action before you announce it is vital. On the mat you need a few seconds to prepare before a movement
• There's a fine art to vinyasa sequencing. The precise order of poses elicit particular energies and emotions
• Some of the less-confident students were confident teachers, and vice versa
• I got injured! A freak accident where a fellow student stepped too close to my wrist during a chataranga assist and sliced my skin with her toenail (yes, eww)
• Yoga while pregnant seems impossible. We performed one surya namaskar with bundled-up blankets strapped to our bellies and couldn't believe the difficulty 
• I learned a lot about my own practice. Corrected alignment problems, learned the focus and foundation of many poses, and know which areas I need to work on
• Shoulderstand can be performed correctly and safely without a chair. I even enjoyed it
• There has to be a little pressure applied in all learning and growth
• Think of your intention behind your teaching. It pervades everything, from each utterance to your tone to the energy you give off, and it's very evident to your students
• Intention and a specific dedication, even if it's just mindfulness in the movement, are what makes it yoga
• To apply compassion to your students - relating to their pain or struggle - you first must understand your own, and how you fall into your own patterns. Darkness is hopefully something you burn off in asana practice
• Inhalations remind us to step forward into action, exhalations remind us to be present
• All yoga poses need both ease and a steadiness
• My love affair with yoga deepened over the long weekend. It's giving me a lot more back now

I have so far to go with my yoga teaching education. I feel as though I want to read widely and internalise volumes of wisdom before I undertake Level 2 training, as keen as I am to jump in boots and all. Or is this just my perfectionism standing in the way?

Yoga can wreck your body, and the NYT can wreck yoga

Last week's story in The New York Times magazine titled "How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body" spent a week on their most-emailed list and has the US yoga community in a flap.

Some of the more hysterical commentary failed to mention the article was excerpted from an upcoming book by the NYT science writer, and therefore can't help but be a simplified and over-generalised version of the narrative, lacking full context and, just possibly, balance. And, as a journalist, I recognise the technique of provocation to appear fresh and new as well as attracting readers and debate.

Other reactions published this week point out a number of inaccuracies in the story and instances where interviewees claim to be misquoted (that old chestnut!).

Nevertheless there are some important issues lurking behind the anecdotes and accusations of ego.

Rules for happiness: 2012 edition

• Do the hardest thing(s) first
• Sleep at least 8 hours a night
• Practice yoga asana 6 days a week
• Take full breaths
• Take a digital sabbatical one day a week
• Eat natural, nourishing foods that agree with me, i.e.: no wheat or casein
• Speak up for what I need
• Act the way I want to feel
• Remember birthdays
• Laugh out loud
• Be fully present in each moment
• Spend time in nature as often as possible
• Listen to my body and nurture it
• Move towards my dreams daily
• Apply structure to weekdays
• Reach out to others in a crisis
• Arrange to always have leftovers in the fridge
• Avoid experiences with prohibitive cancellation fees
• Never buy cheap shoes
• Indulge in a salon blow-dry before long-distance plane travel
• Don't neglect self-care and grooming. It profoundly affects self-worth
• Asking for help is not a sign of weakness; it's a sign of strength
• Arrive early and breathe
• Say yes to invitations