With perhaps a slight downswing in 2020 - because of you-know-what - life seems to get busier every year. It’s only rarely that we can take time to slow down, get outside and bask in birdsong or hug a tree. Forest Bathing invites you to do just that and immerse yourself in the sounds, scents, and sights of the forest. No goggles or speedos required.

Newly planted summer vegetables have been thriving on the extra water we've seen in recent weeks, especially given the water restrictions in place for parts of New Zealand and Australia. In this blog post we discuss how to plant asparagus and why some leafy greens planted in spring have the annoying habit of going to seed early on.

This is a lovely, gluten-free trifle cake that will really impress your family this Christmas. Despite looking fancy, it’s really very simple to make. It has all the flavours of a trifle, only it’s a whole lot more nourishing.

Every year, I find Christmas conflicting, I hold two beliefs at once – in Psychology they call this cognitive dissonance. I love Christmas carols, the smell of fresh pine, and the endless opportunities to enjoy potatoes - but it is also often marked by unnecessary consumerism, which leads to more waste for our already suffocating planet.

Food is such a big part of the festive season and this gingerbread popcorn is a great, pretty healthy treat to make for friendship get-togethers and family occasions. With ginger and cinnamon, it gives a nod to gingerbread, but with a slightly milder flavour.

These Socca Bread Pizzas are surprisingly light and super easy to make. It’s the gluten free chickpea flour and fermentation with coconut yoghurt or apple cider vinegar which makes all the difference. Chickpea flour is a wonderful ingredient: it's full of fibre and folate, low GI and packed with protein.

Down here in the Antipodes, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have been somewhat mitigated. While there’s still been a huge impact on lives and livelihoods in Australia and New Zealand, as island nations, we’ve been able to avoid some of the devastation the disease has caused overseas. But it’s also left us to navigate a lot of uncertainty.

I hate the glorification of busyness. There’s nothing admirable about how far you can run yourself down before something has to give – but the reality is, most of us find ourselves juggling several commitments at once. Everyone experiences different levels of busy, and those tend to ebb and flow.

Aotearoa New Zealand is only 1600 kilometres long and 450 kilometres across at its widest, but our irregular boomerang shaped country is absolutely teeming with great things to see and do this summer. After the year we’ve had, who could blame anyone for needing a holiday to unwind and reset?

For many, 2020 has seen an overwhelming desire to go back to “normal”, how things were before the global pandemic. But I’ve seen viral tweets about how maybe this year was the wakeup call we all needed, to make change and to shake up the status quo.