One from my extensive list of life mantras is to never eat seafood if I am more than two hours inland from the coast.

Seafood that has had to travel hours to get to me rouses gut-wrenching connotations of Swedish fermented herring.

If this is your thing, you are kind of gross. Rotting flesh that smells like roadkill is not my idea of a delicacy.

Growing up on a cattle property that was just over two hours from the closest beach meant that fresh seafood was tantalisingly close, but tragically just too far away.

Today one of my lady loves and I adventured into the countryside for a utopic spring picnic surrounded by big trees and trickling streams.

There were baby animals hopping excitedly around us, fascinated by their new surroundings. We got really lost on a windy dirt road, but we didn’t even care.

We ate coconut damper and salted caramel, apple and haloumi salad while sipping fresh pineapple and beetroot juice. 

I am somewhat of a cuisine discriminator and I blame it nearly entirely on my uncle.

He is tall, wears excellent shirts and takes lovely photographs. He is funny and caring. Sounds like a good guy right?

Wrong! He is a downright arrogant food monarchist! I found this out after once sharing with him my utter infatuation with Greek food  - after a holiday in Corfu saw me sailing around the islands eating olives and fresh caught sardines. 

I know it happens all the time, but it really stinks.

You are happily committed and then something, somewhere changes. You develop feelings, a magnetic attraction. You know you shouldn’t, but you can’t fight it.

It may have just started with their smell, a few sheepish glances and yearning eyes. You have come this close before, yet have always been able to tell yourself it isn’t worth it. But before you know it you are having some pretty deceitful thoughts. 

Cześć!

While I was growing up, I literally thought that borscht was a word my Polish grandma made up. 

Don't start thinking that I am a crazy racist or anything, my grandma, as lovely as she is, has some of the worst English I have come across - despite having been in Australia for over 50 years. 

Essentially, this means she coins a lot of her words and phrases into a kind of pigeon Polish. So when she told me the bright red soup she was ladling into my bowl was called borscht, I did my usual smile and nod response.