Chilled Mint & Cucumber Soup

Mint and cucumber is a combination that, I recently found out, is as effective in the spa as it is in the kitchen. If you’re wanting a flat tummy or to detox, a face mask or to cure acne, it is to mint and cucumber that you apparently turn. I’ve never tried it as a beauty treatment, but I have used it to great effect in the kitchen.

Paring down to the Essence, but without removing the Poetry

Three years ago today, I flew out of a desert — Botswana’s Makgadikgadi Salt Pans that reflected so well my own emptiness — and landed on a piece of Africa tucked into the edge of the Zambezi Valley. The rains had arrived, and it was a piece of Africa full of seeds bursting with the promise of new beginnings. Of connection. Of learning.

Bean (of many names), Fennel & Quinoa Salad with Fresh Lime

“What’s in a name? That which we call a [lima bean] by any other name would [taste] as sweet.” Apologies to Shakespeare, but there appears to be much confusion when it comes to the name of these large, kidney-shaped beans. Aren’t they Madagascar beans, I’m asked? Christmas lima beans? Butter beans? Yes, yes, and yes. They are all these names, and more.

Companion Planting – Lovers & Warriors in the Garden

How do you explain companion planting to a visiting geologist, in other words, “a scientist who studies the solid and liquid matter that constitutes the Earth, as well as the processes and history that have shaped it?” I could have fetched my smart phone and read out its definition: “Companion planting (noun) – the close planting of different plants that enhance each other’s