i started this phd a year ago today, officially at least. it’s been a great year of ups and downs, thoughts and insecurities, startings and then starting again and again. writing and thinking and making marmalade and chutney and jam and pickles. talking a lot about my thoughts and trying to capture them in some way.

last night i had my second annual phd monumentalising dinner. making a monument of my (literally) everyday.

i cooked a meal for eleven people – four (five including texas) of us were at last year’s dinner, the other seven are people i’ve picked up/attached myself to along the way in the last year or so, and very happily so.

i made a zine at the beginning of this year which sums up some of the thinking i’ve been doing. email me if you want a copy. i sent 10 copies up to susy pow’s zine shop in newcastle (bird in the hand) and they all sold. instead of getting the $28 cash for them, i got a copy of ‘vegan with a vengeance’ (susy sells zines and vegan cookbooks, it seems). the food i cooked for dinner came from my new zine funded recipe book; full circle.

there was bbq pomegranate tofu (baked tofu smothered in the most amazing homemade bbq sauce, complete with liquid smoke, maple syrup and pomegranate molasses), coconut rice (with lime and cinnamon), steamed squash and green beans, and a crunchy bean sprout salad. and wine and ginger beer and grape juice.

then dessert was the most amazing vegan pie i’ve ever eaten: no-bake black bottom peanut butter silk pie.