Imagine surviving thirteen nights of durian pong, collecting valuable fruit identification info from a durian seller, and then discovering you failed to write it all down for one's readers' pleasure! I bring you tales of stinkiness with added (incomplete) interesting information, plus news of mangosteen and jackfruit.

Everyone who knows me well enough to welcome me into their home on my travels knows that I eat one thing for breakfast. It verges on religion. If I stray from the one true breakfast, I am punished with bad moods and heavy stomach (or growling hunger). What's more, perhaps unusually for something so mundane, I'm quite faithful to one brand…

All sorts of things grow when the weather is going crazy. In Paris this week, the temperature fluctuated between 14C and rainy and 35C and excruciatingly humid. I got home from a day of walking around the rive gauche (Left Bank = mix of university, studenty, somewhat wealthy, public service, cultural and dawdling tourist population). Look what had grown in my bag from the curious cultures floating through the air…

There was a strange box containing…

I had intended to review some of the chocolates from the British chocolatier Artisan du Chocolat, as I was in London recently and had previously enjoyed (and written about) them after a visit in 2007. Some businesses in high-end food succeed in respecting customers, others choose to be rigid and intentionally haughty. Artisan du Chocolat seems on the face of it to fall into a more positive category, but on this visit I was disappointed.

On Good Friday my mother usually makes her fantabulous hot cross buns. Unsurpassed in the history of Australia. Or something like that. Usually there are just four of us devouring the buns. Read on for a tale of the most unexpected events…

I don't think most Australians have any particularly awareness of the conditions for livestock animals in Australia. We hear occasional stories from overseas and can, of course, read books such as Fast Food Nation or The Omnivore's Dilemma to get even more of an idea. We know that chickens lead an awful life in battery farms, but what of pigs and other animals in Australia?

A few years ago, an American friend of mine in Denver told me of a chain restaurant (he worked there) which had served a slice of cake containing something like 2300 calories. Despite my sweet tooth, that just seemed foully excessive. Not long ago I found a magazine article that confirmed he wasn't lying and that there are a lot of people consuming unimaginable calories in the USA… Another post in my quest to find disgusting food the world over, here's a beautiful illustration of just how many calories can be packed into one pointless meal.

I was contemplating a holiday to Iceland. I was reading the guidebooks. The Rough Guides' description of Iceland's culinary delights stopped me dead in my tracks.

I am disturbed, disturbed! An article in The Guardian late last year drew my attention to the existence of a list. A subversive, deeply disturbing list. A list with earth-shattering implications for my hitherto guilt-free diet of pastry and chocolate. As if we needed more proof that things haven't been right in the United States in recent years, I fear that the military-industrial-vegetable complex is attempting a green coup.

It seemed time for a little Christmas spirit, though most of it seems to be passing me by at the moment. On the occasion of a little lunch at my place for friends, I wanted to serve some new flavours of macarons to my faithful tasters. Some very new creations and ingredients this time round, involving Christmas flavours and a very Australian memory.