A watery tale of pain and pesto

By Virginia Winder

It was a night of mild celebration in the kitchen tonight as I made pesto for the first time.

I picked basil straight from the herb garden, used a combination of olive and flax-seed oils, toasted pinenuts, fresh garlic and grated parmesan and whirred the ingredients together in the food processor.

Heaps of you will have done this, but I’ve lost my confidence in the kitchen, despite being a long-time food writer.

So tonight’s effort was made with “support” from my home cook husband Warren, who watched me as fixedly as a cat stalking a rat. (We have had resident rodents lately, but that’s another story.)  

“In my humble opinion, I would do this…” he said, or “I don’t want to interfere, but…”

I kept my cool, just, and did my thing. The result is a good-looking pesto, which will go with tonight’s salmon and on pita bread tomorrow with feta.

As I’m writing this I can hear my husband Warren pulling the husks off sweetcorn, one of my great foodie loves. You see when fresh fruit and vegetables are in season, I devour them until I’m sick of them until next season.

Breakfast is muesli, soaked in water for a few hours or overnight, with organic blueberries from the Farmers Market Taranaki, and/or chopped up nectarine and a plain yoghurt. I’m trying a kefir coconut yoghurt at the moment and it’s delicious.

Lunch can be anything from eggs on toasted slices of a friend’s home-made organic sourdough bread to three cobs of corn. I don’t have anything on the corn, not even my old friend, or should I say enemy, butter.

You may think that butter’s OK, but you see I have a bit of a butter thing. Other people love chocolate or cheese (alright, so do I), but butter has always been my downfall. That’s one of the main reasons I’m eating little bread these days.

Another big thing for me is drinking water.

I failed miserably on Monday. We went to the beach five times that day, braved the heat slathered with sunblock, but I simply forgot to drink. It felt like it was enough to be in the sea.

It wasn’t.

Bodysurfing at Fitzroy Beach on Monday night

In the evening I spent an hour co-hosting a weekly radio show with my mate Al in a studio that was as hot as a day in the tropics.

Warren and I had another swim in the sea, which cooled me down but I didn't have enough fluids inside me.

In the night I started feeling hot and cold, nauseous and weak, my head a percussion instrument of pain. Most of Tuesday was spent in a dark room, fan on, painkillers on board and drinking, drinking, drinking.

Still felt washed out yesterday, but kept up the water-drinking regime.

Today, I’m back to normal, focused on fresh food, throwing back water, making strides in the kitchen and generally feeling great about life.

And best of all – hey presto, I made pesto and it tastes good.