This recipe came about out of vivid memories of the Lamb Shank Pearl Barley soup my nan used to make often. It’s got all the flavours of this old time favourite, just with a whole lot more goodness.

Winter is the best time of the year to plant pip and stone fruit. At this time of year you’ll be able to buy bare-rooted fruit trees. The advantages of a bare-rooted fruit tree are they can have up to twice as many roots as trees in bags and they usually cost less.

With the shortest day of the year behind us, it is the perfect time for a midyear reset. Every year, I plan to read more than the previous year, some years it happens, others you would never know that I even made an attempt. My list of ‘books I want to read’ continues to grow faster than I can get through them, so choosing which title comes next is becoming increasingly difficult.

Since the invention of the dishwasher in 1850, there’s been a debate about who does the dishes better – humans or machines. Now, with that early prototype, the answer was pretty obvious. But what about now?

We all know how much of a challenge exercising can be, and especially so in the colder months. There are two things that keep me going when my own mojo has deserted me.

The building feeling that everything is all too much, that life is getting away from us, that we just can’t cope or have too much on our plates, seems to be almost a fact of modern life.

Last year I attended an online writers’ workshop - which left me feeling more inspired than ever. I proudly declared to my fellow writing friends that I would be putting pen to paper every day for at least 20 minutes.

This recipe for butter chickpea curry has become a favourite since we started making it for our Auckland-based meal delivery service. We’ve used roasted cashew butter and coconut milk to give it a luscious, creamy texture. It’s perfect to have with rice or flatbreads and freezes really well.

American comedian Phyllis Diller once observed "Cleaning the house while your kids are still growing is like shovelling the walk before it stops snowing." A sentiment most parents can sympathise with. But while it’s challenging to keep things shipshape with kids at home, there are a few strategies to make things easier on the orderly front.