Reflections 2024

Happy New Year!  Looking back over 2024, I could sum it up as a year of hope.  As always there was lots of change - a new job, a new school and new interests - but also lots of travel, great food and fun outings.  There is a lot to say about the year so find a comfy seat and enjoy my reflections on 2024.

We started the year with a busy 4 weeks of travelling to Edinburgh, Rome, Zurich (above photo), London, and back to Edinburgh. So many icons, amazing history and great food, as well as nostalgia for past trips and joy at seeing familiar faces.  When we returned home, Sylvia transferred her enrollment to an online school that suited her much better.  I had some redundancy pay so I was able to spend time settling Sylvia settling into a new school.  In August I started a new job in a collaborative centre that is fascinating and a little crazy!

The year also brought us: More bike riding. Fresh pasta-making.  Winter coughs and colds in July.   Historic tours (Johnston Collection, Pentridge, Sydney Road).  Meal planning for dinners.  An onigiri trail.  NGV Triennial.  A new blog header.  Membership of the local historical society.  An unsuccessful attempt at our cat Shadow going for a walk in his harness.  Sylvia's pots taking over the back garden.  My sister's visit from Ireland.  Open House Melbourne talks.  Craft workshops (Turkish lamps, collage and festive dioramas).   Tradies doing major outside work on the drains.  A fairy garden we made out of an old toy oven.  Outdoor events (Winter solstice at CERES, Lightscapes, Royal Melbourne Show, National Celtic Festival, markets). Skin prick tests for Sylvia.  Confirmation of her ongoing peanut allergy.  A new probably allergy: buckwheat.  Live shows (Trophy Boys, Clare Bowditch, Esha Tewari, Sammy J's ABC farewell).

Street art in Brunswick after the style of Leunig

Celebrities who died in 2024: Glynis Johns, Brian Wenzel, Michael Mosley, Donald Sutherland, Shannon Doherty, Michael Leunig, Steve Harley, Jimmy Carter, Dame Maggie Smith, Morgan Spurlock, Kris Kristofferson, Lowitja O'Donoghue, Lynne Reid Banks, James Earl Jones, Bob Newhart, Terri Garr, John Blackman.  And a neighbourhood celebrity, George!

My music in 2024: according to Spotify the types of music in my 2024 music evolution included amusing genre names such as "Hot chocolate ukulele folk" (eg. Indigo Girls, Peter, Paul and Mary, Isabel Rumble), "Mellow rock permanent wave britpop"(eg. Pulp, Blur and Travis) and "Royalcore instrumental classical" (Joe Hisaishi, Max Richter and Arvo Pärt). 

Blog headers: 2007 at bottom to 2024 at top

Improvements to blog

This year it was lovely to find a bit of extra time to spend on the blog while I wasn't working.  I added some navigation improvements and a new monthly round up: 

• Designed a new header.  See above collage of different blog headers over the years with the most recent at the top.
• Posted a list of Craft ideas for kids - a post to compile links to posts with craft ideas, mainly for kids
• Updated the photos on the Recipe Index.  My photos have improved since then.
• Increased the subtitles to make it easier to navigate the Recipe Index. 
• Added anchor links to some broad headings in the contents list of the Reflections and Reviews lists and added photos to these heading in the page.
• I have continued to update my Index of Favourites which is probably one of the pages I refer to the most on the blog.
• I set up a new email subscription service with follow.it.  Readers can opt to be emailed each blog post as it is published, given that I don't currently give the option for updates in any social media service.  The subscription form is on the left hand index on the web view.
• A new My Monthly Chronicles (MMC) post at the start of each month to share where I have been eating out as well as other news and esoteric information I choose to share,
  

As always, there is still a lot to do on the blog.  I wish I had the time to check for broken links and typos.  I would like to tidy up the Reflections and Reviews lists and use dates more to make it clear which items are more recent.  I would like to think about how do I make sense of blog posts going back 17 years?

I wrote a post in April about most of these blog changes.  One of the changes that I have enjoyed is writing My Monthly Chronicles each month.  It is a reflection of my development as a blogger that when I started blogging in 2007, I planned to only blog about recipes but this year I have posted more reflections and reviews than recipes.  MMC is a chance to write about places and reflections that I haven't had time to post.  There are just too many drafts that never see the light of day.  This is a great way to record a little information about places that I might like to return to or just ideas that take my fancy.  It means the blog is a richer resource for me, and for you!

Statistics:

In 2024, I published 129 blog posts.  This is the most posts I have published since 2016.  I attribute this to 47 posts from my travels earlier in the year, with 43 published in 2 months, and some time without work to write them up.  I also had 695K views and 633 comments, according to my Blogger statistics.  

In over 17 years of blogging (since 2007) I have published 2559 posts and amassed a total of 7.77M views and 30.3K comments.  Although my views this year are higher than average, my comments are much lower than average.  No surprises there.  It reflects that I now spend more time writing posts than putting effort into exchanging comments.  It makes me a little sad as I miss when I had more time for comments but that is how my life is right now!  And it is a decent amount of comments for a year!

I had a look at readers' favourites according to my Blogger statistics.  When I generated a top 20 posts I got the five top posts as: Then I found that if I generate a top 20 viewed posts for the year there are only posts from previous years starting with Chookas Cafe Brunswick, Overnight sourdough rolls, Overnight baked sourdough doughnuts, Mexican rice in the microwave, and Damper: traditional Australian campfire bread.  But if I looked a list of views of posts from this year, it looked like about 4 of the posts from my travels had more views than those in the top 20 list.  So I am confused but grateful that people are viewing my posts.

Sylvia's cute foodie discoveries:

When she is not eating pasta and noodles, Sylvia flexes her digital native skills to discover amazing cafes.  She goes places online that I would not know existed!  In fact, the resulting meals are one of my best arguments against the recent legislation banning social media for under 16 year olds.  Some of her cutest discoveries are pictured above with info about them below:

Row 1: Matcha teddy panna cotta at Zero Mode in Box Hill, Amorina Gelato in Rome, Miffy rice bunny served by Just Loved in Blackburn South.
Row 2: Totoro bao from Son-in-Law in CBD, Flinders Street Station nutella filled waffles from Flinders Waffles in CBD, Chocolate teddy ice cream on French toast at Santuccis in Camberwell.
Row 3: Shawn the sheep cake from Linger Patisserie Cafe in Camberwell,  Ghost toast at Humble Rays in Carlton. Christmas tree cupcake at Tylers Milk Bar in Preston.

Memorable random moments

Fun foodie discoveries: Eating a delicious Indigenous edible succulent called Pigface at Bansho Bistrot, drinking Cascara at Industry Beans that is the brewed byproduct of coffee, my first soda with Snake fruit at Rong Cha, and Sylvia introduced me to Tteokbokki (rice sticks) from Korea.

Being encouraged to cut pictures out of picture books at the Collage workshop at Monsalvat.  It gave me permission to come at creativity from a different perspective.

I am still thinking about Series 1, Episode 8 on The Rookie when John Nolan shoots a suspect dead in self defense.  I have seen a lot of procedural television shows but this episode gave an amazing insight into the horror and complexity of this experience.

My favourite comedian of the year (sorry Sammy J) was Aaron Chen who was hilarious in Fisk and in Guy Montgomery Guy Mont Spelling Bee.  I just love his deadpan humour and how it contributed to these fantastic tv shows. In our house he is called Arancheni, high praise given how much Sylvia loves an arancini.

Seeing my home town of Melbourne rendered in stop motion claymation animation in Memoirs of a Snail.  And this is only one of the many wonderful things about this beautiful melancholic film.

Sighing in pleasure at the beautiful evocative writing about a day in the life of a playwright in Dublin in Molly Fox's Birthday, a novel by Deirdre Madden.

Exploring the whimsical garden spaces at Old Man Drew cafe in Ascot Vale.  It is a magical place with a fairy bed here, a canopy of colourful umbrellas there, plants made out of bottles and cups and rusty nails while the relic of a rusted old truck is embedded in the midst of the vintage tables and cascades of vines.

Hearing about the story of John Cade on the tour of Bundoora Homestead.  It was here after returning from World War II that he experimented on himself to discover the benefits of lithium for mental health patients.

Reading Sally Morgan's personal story in My Place gave me an insight into the impact of inter-generational trauma of Aboriginal people who were treated with appalling racism (and still are).

Our top 10 most frequently made recipes
Note that these were not the impressive recipes of the year such as Apple crumble cheesecake or Okinawa taco rice.  This list is of the ones we made over and over again.  Not much sweet food, though miso banana bread was rising up the list at the end of the year.  These are ones we make often enough that they feel familiar and easy.

• Carrot fritters with yoghurt sauce
• Dumpling Okonomiyaki (v)
• Fast track pizza dough (v) with various toppings
• Mock tuna (chickpea) salad (gf, v) 
• Pearl couscous, cucumber and feta salad with pesto
• Rice bake with chickpeas, broccoli and corn (v, gf)
• Sourdough flatbreads (v)
• Tofu besan omelet (gf, v)
  
• Tomato orzo with chickpeas and mushrooms
  
• Toasted muesli - with fruit mince or dried fruit (v)
  
  

Our top 10 most visited cafes:
We love trying out new cafes but some keep us coming back because they serve delicious food at a reasonable price.  These cafes are the local ones that we love and return to over and over either for comfort, convenience and/or creativity.  Quite a few of them are in my drafts folder and I hope to share more about these soon!  Meanwhile, you can find these ones in My Monthly Chronicles this year.

• Calle Bakery, Carlton North 
  
• Chookas Cafe, Brunswick
• Boot Factory, Coburg
• Luthers Scoops, Brunswick
• Melbourne Kebab Station, Coburg
• Pickles Milk Bar, Carlton North
• Ti Amo, Carlton
• Tylers Milk Bar, Preston
• Udon Izakaya Maedaya, CBD
• Zaatar, Coburg
  
  

Top 10 foodie travel experiences:

• Mercato Mayfair food hall in London was a fascinating place of great food in an amazing old church that is now a food hall with a bar on the altar.  To make it even more special, the community-minded and sustainable approach to food is admirable.
  
• Eating lunch at La Biga Ristoracaffe overlooking the Colosseum in Rome.  I loved my meal of bruschetta, salad and cannelloni.  This was the sort of Italian meal to rave about because it was so good together and such a beautiful place to eat.
  
• Best hot chocolate ever at Babbington's Tea Rooms outdoor tables in the piazza at the foot of the Spanish Steps in Rome.
  
• My sister treating us to a meal at Nopi, an Ottolenghi restaurant in SoHo, where we ate amazing food such as chickpea tofu, char sui cauliflower and burrata.
  
• Feasting on rich Fondue surrounded by amazing side dishes at Swiss Chuchi, Hotel Adler in Zurich
• A plate of Fettucine Alfredo being tossed at our table as the waiter tells us the story of the discovery of the dish at Alfredo Alla Scrofa restaurant in Rome where we were eating.
  
• A warming plate of spaetzli at  Burgstein's Gasthaus Penalty in Zurich.  The gasthaus was so cosy and the staff so friendly and welcoming.  I had always wanted to try spaetzli.  Simply buttered and seasoned they were magnificent.  Our leftovers were wonderful for breakfast the next morning.
  
• Snacking on a packet of Fonzies on the train through the Swiss Alps en route to Zurich.  Fonzies remind me of my first trip to Rome when I was excited to find an Italian version of Twisties from Australia, one of our iconic savoury snacks.
  
• Enjoying colourful foods, smelling the spices, admiring viral doughnuts, tasting intense cheese, bantering with stallholders, sampling chocolate covered strawberries, avoiding queues and dreaming of eating Humble Crumble at with Borough Market in London after my sister arrived from Dublin for a weekend.
• Watching cheeky Persian cat, Guillaume, darting out his paw to try and swipe cream from drinks at Maison de Moggy cat cafe in Edinburgh.
  
  

Sylvia's favourite 15 cats of 2024

Sylvia loves the cats around her, especially our cat Shadow and the neighbouring cats.  She loves to see them in cat cafes and to encounter them in the street.  She tried to narrow down her favourites to 10 but in the end had 15 favourites.  They are listed below and some are pictured above:

1. Shadow (middle of the middle)
2. Colosseum cats (top middle)
3. Vanilla, Whiskers and Cream (top right)
4. Marley the Molesworth St cat (top left)
5. Biscuit, who spent a memorable day at our place (middle right)
6. Alice (bottom left)
7. Kitten, Melbourne cat cafe (bottom middle)
8. Salem (bottom right)
   
9. Mr Shy, lazy cat cafe (middle left)
10. Juniper
11. Coco Maison de Moggy
12. The goddesses: Venus and Minerva
13. Charlie and Margot
14. Window tabby in Collingwood
15. Professor

Current affairs and fascinating web links

In the news this year we had lots of change of government including Labour's Keir Starmer elected Prime Minister in the UK and the Republican Donald Trump elected in the USA.  Paris has been in the spotlight for the Olympics, the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral and the collapse of the recently elected Barnier government.  Our Australian Prime Minister Albanese was held to higher standards than his LNP predecessors and fell in the polls.  The Ukraine and Gaza wars continued to produce distressing stories.  We had a feminist hero in Gisele Pelicot who bravely faced the courts and the media during a traumatic French rape trial.  While in Australia, we had the fascinating defamation of Bruce Lehrmann over the Brittany Higgins story, led by an refreshingly sympathetic judge

"More evidence has emerged that AI-driven demand for energy to power datacenters is prolonging the life of coal-fired plants in the US", in The Register, 4 October 2024. 

Butter, candy and pasta chips: 2024's top food trends that changed the way we cook and eat, in euronews, 27 December 2024. 

Whipping up Aboriginal enthusiasm (dropping the age of criminal responsibility to 10 and how it will affect overrepresentation of Indigenous people in the criminal system and racism.) by Jack Waterford  in Pearls and Irritations, 31 December 2024.

What lies beneath: the growing threat to the hidden network of cables that power the internet, in the Guardian, 9 August 2024.

Return to Analogue Eden: Nostalgia for a pre-digital world is the wrong way to protect children from harm, in Patrick Stokes Substack, 26 November 2024.

COP Climate talks could benefit from more feminist values, less focus on tech solutions, experts say, in Inside Climate News, 3 December 2024.

Scientist’s ‘ruthlessly imaginative’ 1925 predictions for the future come true – mostly, in the Guardian, 29 December 2024.

Grass roots on fire: the fuel loads of our democratic neglect: Our representatives have forgotten they are supposed to represent us, gaslighting Australians for decades, by Joel Jenkins in Bogan Intelligentsia, 30 December 2024.

Happy New Year

So I end with wishing you and yours a happy new year.  I am not sure that 2025 will bring better politics but I hope you can find peace, joy and hope in your own little corner of the world.  

Our travels this year back to Edinburgh where I once lived demonstrated the strength of what seemed like fledgling relationships when I left in 2002.  Likewise, the blog brings some new faces but also has produced long time friendships.  When we look back we see the patterns of our connections.  The older I get the more it builds certainty for the future but I also know how easily relationships can be affected by the fickle winds of change.  I am very grateful to all who bring joy into my life and those that have lasted the distance.

I ended the year feeling that there is much to catch up on.  I haven't even delivered all of my Christmas presents to my extended family after forgetting them on Christmas day and then not being able to visit after Covid struck down many of my family after a Boxing Day lunch (that I did not attend). So I have much to hope for in 2025.  In the last week of December I went to the beach and also swam laps in the local pool.  I was shocked to be told that my last swim on my multi pass was 23 November 2023.  Thank goodness I got one pool swim in during 2024.  I have been enjoying riding but my bike is currently being checked over because it is not quite right.  So I look forward to a year of more bike riding, more swimming, more good meals, more craft, more good company, more time in the garden and more blogging.

I thank you for continuing to read and comment on my posts, for the company of friends and family and for the community around blogging that continues to delight and support me. Happy new year!