Hello, I'm Vanessa and, in the past, I have been pretty rubbish about writing things down. To make myself feel better about this, I’ve often made the argument that it is better to just ‘live in the moment,’ to experience life as opposed to worrying about recording it. My cooking, especially, has always fallen firmly within this ‘experience’ philosophy – I don’t like to measure anything, or follow written recipes, instead I’ve tended to just make things up on the go…

Recently though, every time I pick up the phone to Mum to check whether she puts parsley in her artichoke stuffing mix, or when, for the umpteenth time, I am combing the web to find a feasible-sounding béarnaise recipe (when all I’d really like to know is exactly how I did it last time), this question of record-keeping reappears and niggles me. You see, I’ve begun to wonder whether not having a recipe, actually ends up leading to less creativity, not more. If you know that the way back home is well signposted, aren’t you more likely to be more adventurous and to go just a little further afield?

So, I guess you could say, that this is my attempt to break the habits of a lifetime, to write, to record, to experiment, to picture, and to remember.

On this site you'll find my cooking, writing, recipes, food and travel photography. I am currently living in Rome, hence, the recent Italian accent here, but not so long ago was calling the desert city of Doha home, and before that London... and long before that, Hong Kong, and originally, Melbourne.

If you'd like to get in touch, my email is:

INFO@OLIVESANDLUCINDA.COM

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