Fun fact for your next trivia night: Banana Bread is one of the most searched-for recipes according to Google.

Recently, I (like everyone else apparently) had an oversupply of bananas that were going brown faster than I could sell them as a snack to a four-year-old.

Looking at my squshy, brown fruit, I decided that if bananas can be a bread, they can also have an Aussie spin to them and become damper.

​And they can be caramelised too. 

This caramelised banana damper was legit one of the best things to come out of my oven.

​Let's put it into yours. 

​While Vegemite on toast is uncontroversially part of my morning routine, Vegemite spaghetti has become a bit of a weeknight staple at the dinner table.  

This is controversial. 

But when a mate said he had a crack at making this for his kids and that it was actually good, I couldn’t resist the lure of a quick, easy dinner recipe with the added benefits of a vitamin-enriched ingredient that had only ever known bread as its carb-friend. 

Dinner now puts the rose in every cheek. 

My knowledge of native fruits is rudimentary at best. So much so that I initially thought a native gardenia tree that was sprouting fruit was some form of strange variant of the citrus family.

It's not. 

Native gardenias (sometimes under the alias of a Yellow Mangosteen) are currently abundant at Bunnings and other garden nurseries in the lead up to Spring, but what should you do with the round fruit once it blossoms and blooms?

Make chocolate truffles, that's what. 

​Recently a group of us got to talking to the groundskeeper at work and unearthed a plethora of information on native fruits and veggies including some key intel on what we could and couldn’t eat. 

Hint: we can actually eat quite a few things we walk past everyday without usually batting an eyelid at. But not Nightshade. Don't try that. 

Bruce the groundskeeper is the first to admit he’s not book-smart, which not many other people working at a University are keen to put their hand up to. What Bruce does know about the environment and horticulture though from his lived experience could fill at least five PhD theses. 

One overgrown shrub of particular interest was the native raspberry bush (or Rubus Probus for the learned groundspeople among us). Loads of thorns protect the little bundles of berry bursts from hungry animals, but we were able to pick the fruit quite easily with only a few surface scratches as payment for our haul. 

What should we do with a whole heap of native raspberries? Apart from stand there and gorge ourselves silly?

Let's try topping a choc-peanut butter smoothie bowl with them. 

My mum has a kumquat tree. I've known she's had a kumquat tree for many years now but I've never really paid attention to it, other than to notice the little bursts of colour that appear now and then, correlating to extra bat poo underneath.

This year though the tree inspired me for some reason, so I decided to try my hand at making kumquat jam. 

An initial internet search for a recipe yielded a few tricky manoeuvres required to fix a simple marmalade craving. After a small eternity looking at jam porn, I stumbled upon a recipe that seemed easy enough. 

Using a few tweaks to make an easy recipe even easier, I managed to create not just kumquat jam, but kumquat jam crack. 

Literally. This stuff is addictive. 

Let's cook. 

​On the comfort food scale, bagels are right up there alongside molten chocolate puddings and any soft cheese priced at the $95kg mark. 

Got a work deadline? Bagel. 

Raining outside? Bagel. 

Can’t sleep without a severed plush tiger head on your nightstand? Psychiatrist. Then bagel. 

Stodgy and satisfying, my only beef with the haloed bagel is that it can actually be a little too stodgy and satisfying for the the jeans in my wardrobe. 

Enter cauliflower bagels. Yes, you read that right. 

A new product from PomPom Paddock makes this waistline-conscious baked good possible. So how does a floret become a bread sensation? 

Let’s find out. 

European street food and Belgium beer aren’t normally associated with Brisbane’s industrial suburb of Northgate, but thanks to the opening of Fick Brewing, Northgate may just be the new Neudorf Valley. 

With brewing taking place onsite in the sheltered beer garden, Fick is small enough to bring experimental beers to life, but big enough to draw a steady crew of office lunch-seekers and weekend locals. A games and toys section also ensures that kids, both young and old, have activities to carry them through the afternoon. 

So how did a piece of Brussels end up in Brisbane’s inner-north? 
​
Let’s find out. 

Working as a civil engineer in Brazil seems a far cry from distributing coffee in Brisbane. Tiago Cruz agrees, taking a chance not only at a whole new country, but at a whole new lifestyle.

OneHome Coffee is the brainchild of Brazilian-born Tiago and his brother Mateus, who both saw an opportunity to break into the home-delivered coffee scene in Australia. An opportunity that not even Covid-19 could stop.

How did this idea launch from dream pipe to reality in not only a brand new country, but at an unusual point in history? 
​
Let’s find out.

A curry and a beer is synonymous with a good night, but not so much with squeezing into a pair of skinny jeans the next day. 

Enter It's Mirchi Healthy Indian in the heartland of Brisbane's funky Paddington scene. This restaurant caters to the health conscious, whatever than means for you. Low-carb, low-sugar, vegan, dairy-free, vegetarian, nut-free and organic options are all available. These guys can omit anything. 

But don't fret if you've accepted elastic waistbands as a wardrobe staple, regular old mango chicken and garlic naan remains on the menu.

So has tweaking the tandoori dulled the dhal in any way at all? Lets find out. 

Australian dining traditionally evokes images of charred sausages on questionably blackened barbeque grills, buckets of prawns, and fingers sticky with mango juice.

​While there’s nothing wrong with each of these gourmet experiences, there is also a more nuanced way to appreciate Australiana on a dish- by making the most of native ingredients that otherwise grow, bloom and are forgotten on the vine. 

Harvest at Newrybar has taken the second approach to Australian dining, creating an ever-changing menu that makes the most of its own native garden, and other produce local to the region. Where exactly is the region you may well wonder? The tiny town of Newrybar is a 15 minute drive from Byron Bay, so while dining here you are in basically sniffing distance of a Hemsworth. 

Let’s take a stroll through the wilderness to find out what could end up on your plate when you venture out this way.