Book Review: Masterchef – The Cookbook

BREAKING NEWS: MasterChef Australia: The Cookbook Volume 1 is the best-selling book in Australia after its first full week on sale, making it the fastest selling illustrated cookbook opening week ever recorded on Nielsen BookScan  (stats released by Random House Australia).

Yes, I was thoroughly addicted, glued to the television screen with my novice-chef glass of wine and my cooking apron knotted firmly against my spine in expectation. Yes, ancient jars of herbs and spices began tumbling out from the dim, dark recesses of my ‘cooking stuff’ cupboard soon after the series commenced. Yes, I eventually ditched the jars and went and bought fresh herbs - but even more than that… I even planted my own herbs.

I also sharpened knives. I scrubbed the great clunking wooden chopping board, hauled out from semi-retirement. I dragged gadgets out from the back of the utensil drawer that had been wedged against the backboard for all eternity. I became inspired, driven and insatiably lustful to create nightly dinners of such gastronomic worth, my family grew cutlery from their extremeties and sat expectantly at the dinner table the moment a clatter emerged from the kitchen.

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Monica Trapaga returns with some home cooking

You might remember her from Better Homes & Gardens and almost everyone remembers Monica Trápaga from her years on ABC’s Playschool. In the five years since she last appeared on Australian television, Monica Trápaga has been busy raising kids, recording Jazz CD’s and writing a cookbook, inspired by her daughter Lil.

When Lil, now aged 24, announced she was leaving home, Monica Trápaga did what a lot of mother’s do, she presented her first born with a cookbook. When I left home twenty years ago my mother gave me The Commonsense Cookery Book. These days mums have a virtual smorgasbord of cookbooks to choose from, but Monica Trápaga wanted to give her daughter something more personal, Read more

Book Review: Buon Ricordo – How to Make Your Home a Great Restaurant

It’s probably a no brainer that if you’re going to make your home into a great restaurant, you’d be heavily influenced by the type of cuisine that epitomises the very core of family-based cooking – that time-honoured, community-driven affair that is Italian fare.

In this beautiful new book, authors Armando Percuoco and David Dale indeed take a focus on the home, with Chapter 2 – Family Fun - featuring easy ways every member of the family can be involved in the precious preparation of good food. Pizza, of course, is featured, but there are also recipes such as calzone, ragu, crocchette (potato croquettes) and semifreddo, that will draw in even the most reluctant chef – both as a way to become involved in the multifarious ways cooking brings us together – and in the eating.

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The Making of Julia Gillard

Julia Gillard is the first woman in our nation’s history to become the Deputy Prime Minister and is tipped by many to go all the way to the top job. Highly intelligent, with a strong work ethic, Gillard is widely perceived to be ambitious. But does she even want to be Prime Minister?

Author of The Making of Julia Gillard, the acclaimed biographer Jacqueline Kent, is the first to tell Gillard’s story in it’s entirety. Kent told me she chose our Deputy Prime Minister as the subject of her third book because she has always been fascinated by women who refuse to conform to sterotype. Read more

Book Review: Buddhism for Mothers of SchoolChildren by Sarah Napthali

Being a big reader of books on psychology and the inner workings of the human mind and heart, there has been many a book on my adult reading journey that’s brought me an ‘aha!’ moment or two.

Few books, however – no matter how life-changing or enlightening – have brought me so many aha! moments, I thought I’d been whacked over the head with an Oprah Winfrey magazine collection.

The newest addition to Sarah Napthali’s stable of enlightening books for women, Buddhism for Mothers of Schoolchildren brought me not only a superfluity of ahas, it also brought many an ooh, ahh and so many ringing bells, it was like entering a figurative Buddhist temple, replete with tinkling, ringing, pealing… and the merest hint of a waft of sandalwood.

I absolutely loved this book. I loved it for its honesty, openness, frankness and tender adherence to a belief system steeped in the antithesis to indoctrination – simplicity and Love. I also loved it because Napthali wrote it for me. Like, directly for me. It was like she had sat down and interviewed me, and then written a bespoke “Ok – now here’s how to change all this for the better” manual, with my name plastered across the front cover.

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In Search of Angels

When her 14 year old niece was diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, respected journalist, radio producer and TV researcher, Janise Beaumont (pictured), set off in search of a miracle. What she found will warm your heart and perhaps, restore your faith in humanity.

Eight years ago life hurt like crazy. Janise Beaumont felt she had failed in every area of her life and no matter what she did, or how hard she tried, happiness always seemed to elude her. Then a woman she barely knew gave her a little picture book about angels which she kept by her bed just to remind herself that ‘We are not alone whatever the circumstances.’ When her niece Georgia, fell gravely ill Janise began collecting the stories of people who have encountered angels Read more

The Butterfly Effect: A New Positive Approach to Raising Happy, Confident Teen Girls

There is something poignant in the title of The Butterfly Effect – a book that gently prises open the cocoon surrounding teenage girls; those delicate creatures caught half-way between a lengthy and often difficult metamorphosis into womanhood.

Like butterflies, teenage girls are in the process of blossoming into a life of full-blown potential, but the metaphorical cocoon of teen life that encapsulates our girls can both nurture and smother this process – a balance parents (or more specifically, mothers) all over the world struggle with.

The author of The Butterfly Effect, Dannielle Miller (pictured), also refers to the book’s title in terms of its basis in the chaos theory of sensitive dependence on initial conditions. Read more

Do You Want Sex With That?

Journalist for The Age newspaper in Melbourne, Claire Halliday (pictured), was asked to write a book on Australian’s attitudes to sex. As well as providing a fascinating look inside Australia’s sex industry and the organisations that oppose it, Do You Want Sex With That? discusses the impact of sex in the media on our society. Sex is everywhere you look these days – on billboards, television, radio, newspapers, magazines and the Internet. Sex sells and particularly if you’re a parent, sex in the media terrifies.

The backlash against the old advertising mantra ’sex sells’ has given rise to a new brand of conservatism in Australia which saw the artist Bill Henson publicly criticised for producing photos of naked juveniles and the Federal Government proposing mandatory filtering of sex and violent content on the Internet. Read more

Lisa Williams – Life Among the Dead

Since 2006 Lisa Williams (pictured) has been hosting her own cable TV show, Life Among the Dead, which airs in Australia on W. On 14th September the popular medium and clairvoyant spoke to me by telephone from her home in England.

It was the evening before my 40th birthday and I was hoping Lisa Williams would deliver a message from one of my dead relatives. I don’t know what I was expecting. A birthday greeting from the other side perhaps? A few choice words of wisdom from Uncle Jack? According to her autobiography, Lisa had been delivering messages from the dead to complete strangers in supermarkets and on the street, for many years and I knew from reading Lisa’s book that her gift could extend over telephone wires. So what’s the problem? Read more

One Mum’s Solution to Less Cooking and Cheaper Grocery Bills

The self-publishing success story of 2008 – ‘Table Tucker’ by Penina Petersen – has been re-released by Hatchette Australia.

Table Tucker is the budget cookbook where recipes and shopping lists work together to produce an easy to follow program that promises to change the way you shop, cook, eat and live. The author of Table Tucker, Penina Petersen (pictured with her husband and son), is not a chef, dietitian or greenie – but this busy working mum has created an ingenious way to feed yourself or a family on a budget whilst saving precious leisure time. In addition to recipes and shopping lists, the book includes information on home safety, food preparation, food storage, buying in season and wisdom for daily living. Read more

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