June 2011 - Page 3 of 3

Tuesday Eats: if you’re keen on quinoa…

August 10, 2018June 7, 2011 by Sarah Wilson

If you’re keen on quinoa (pronounced keen-wah), I’ve written a bit of a cheat sheet on how to cook and eat it before, and I’ve also posted additional quinoa recipes here. I’ll be honest, a quinoa post always gets folk going, so I’ve posted some extra recipes…each has a fun twist and all are great for lunch.

Tara Parker-Pope recently wrote about quinoa on the NYT wellness blog, and shared some clever recipes from Martha Rose Shulman, three of which I’ve pulled out to share. I love the lentil sprouts and the gluten-free tabbouleh rendition. And the idea of cooking up a whole lot of quinoa and using it for the different dishes over the week. Enjoy!

Quinoa, lentil sprout and rocket salad

(serves 4 – 6)

This recipe uses lentil or sunflower sprouts, which have a peppery flavor. I posted on how to make lentil sprouts the other day.

3/4 cup cooked quinoa, preferably the red or black variety
1 cup sprouted lentils or sunflower seeds
4 cups tightly packed rocket
1/4 red bell pepper (capsicum), sliced thin
1/4 cup broken walnuts
1/4 cup crumbled feta
2 to 3 tablespoons chopped fresh herbs, like dill, tarragon, chives and parsley
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When I’m shitty I climb a tree

June 5, 2011 by Sarah Wilson

This week in Sunday Life: I try the “wilderness effect”

On Thursday I woke up antsy. Sometimes we just do, don’t we. It’s the wind, the moon….the half bottle of wine we drank the night before. Whatever.

113125 5 600 When I'm shitty I climb a tree — by RJ Shaughnessy

I’d had a cold for days and I felt as stale as a pair of pyjamas that have been slept in too long. And just to add to the blah-ness I had to go buy eggs. So I fired myself up, tied on my hiking shoes, grabbed $5 and headed bush. I decided to travel the 5km into town (for the eggs) cross-country – through two farms and a national park, which Google Maps indicated has no walking trails or roads.

Which sounds quaintly Famous Five in theory. But things wound up with me stuck in a quagmire. Literally. The trail-less park turned out to be a swamp and about 2km in I was up to my knees in it, lost and stuck. I sunk back on a mangrove tree in a little sunny patch, picked off a few leeches and thought, Sarah, what are you doing?

I can only say I was trying to de-blah.

because i know you’ve always wondered: the best coloured undies to be wearing right now

July 31, 2018June 3, 2011 by Sarah Wilson

Now this is possibly an overly frivolous post. But, hey, it’s Friday. And, strangely, I do actually care if I’m wearing the wrong coloured undies. A while back reader Heather asked me to do a post on colour…and what they do for our moods etc. So I thought I’d consult a woman who specialises in colour…and coloured knicker readings. Seriously!

Years ago, when I edited Cosmopolitan magazine, I called in Australia’s leading colour specialist Chris Brazel to do a feng shui/colour makeover of our office. She walked straight into my office and shrieked, “OMG, you’ve got a fire extinguisher in your relationship corner!!!”. At the time I was extracting myself from a very messy relationship. I called the maintenance dude and had him remove it immediately. Seriously! Again!

This time I got Chris to do a colour reading on stuff in my life…as a way of illustrating some stuff on colour. I gave her five images and she went to town:

1. My orange bike (and brown top)

With the brown top it indicates that someone is bogged down and the orange is about change and wanting movement towards balance or a change in direction with work.

so you’d like to be a writer, yeah?

July 17, 2018June 2, 2011 by Sarah Wilson

Since I get asked this a lot – how did you become a writer? – I thought I’d answer in a jaunty post.

The short answer is: I started writing. From a young age. In journals. For the uni newspaper. And I kept going.

via pinterest.com

The longer one: I started writing and when I saw opportunities I jumped at them. I did work experience at Sunday Magazine while I was studying a Grad Dip in Professional Writing at RMIT (I also have a BA, in philosophy, half a law degree and did a political internship at Parliament House. Plus a year studying on scholarship at University of Santa Cruz, California – philosophy and women’s studies!). The editor asked what I liked/didn’t like about the magazine. I suggested the food pages needed more oomph. She said, Oh, is that so, perhaps you’d like to suggest some changes? Over the weekend I learned Quark from a manual (this was pre-Google and email) and redid the pages, complete with my own food and wine reviews. I presented my ideas Monday morning. She gave me the job as restaurant reviewer on the spot. From there I started writing more for the magazine – volunteering to do the extra work in my own time. Eventually she gave me a fulltime position as a features writer.

I had no idea what I was doing. So. I studied writers whose work I admired. I poured over their opening paragraphs, analysed the structure of their feature, reflected on what made their writing sing!! You become a good writer by being a student of good writing.