Thoughts From Becca

Yes, it's been a while. More than 10 years.  Thoughts From Becca was my very first blog, in the days before Instagram existed, and started after I wrote the first food tweet in the world (yes ever!). A lot has changed since then, although my love for cooking remains the same, and has lately been reignited. Alongside writing, I'm even doing some work again as a caterer. The reason I abandoned you here in 2009 was for my international Inside Cuisine food drinks travel digital magazine of five years. Which provided a lot of happy memories and lots of culinary travel. My focus however is now with my  SydneyScoop.com  guide to Sydney: food & drink, arts & entertainment, fashion & lifestyle. Est. 2014 now up and running for more than 7 years, with over 2,000 editorial articles, 1,000 Sydney venue listings, and 10,000 calendar events - if you want to take a peek. Beyond those two biggies, the last 10 years have also seen me eat and travel and write A LOT. There was a...

Yesterday I took a jaunt to Sydney's newest (and oldest) retail butcher. I knew something was different as soon as I saw the window in Queen Street Woollahra. Paintly boldly is the motto: "If Pigs Could Fly". In the window is a small whole pig with wings and in the base of the display a bed of white feathers. This is no ordinary butchers. Father and son, Vic and Anthony Puharich are suppliers to many of Sydney's finest restaurants. "The Churchill's Butchery site has been a butcher shop since 1876, so it seemed only appropriate that we opened our flagship shop there" say Anthony Puharich, CEO of Vic's Premium Quality Meat . Anthony was kind enough to take time out of a busy Saturday to proudly yet humbly show me around the store. There's a fine range of goodies, including charcuterie, traiteur and rotisserie. Not sure if the secret's out yet but my favourite mustards and salts are also stocked there. There's even dessert. While we were...

Exploring the hub of a city (the food market) is my number one travel priority. Towns historically formed as a market centre. The town emerged around the market place well before industrialization. Farmers brought their produce to town to barter or sell, long before we turned the fashionable 21st Century city phrase ‘farmers market’. When I was younger, and long before I ventured away from home, I found a love of travel, of discovering other cultures. Discovery was pursued in my mother’s kitchen by exploring the food of other lands. Cooking became more than sustenance, more than nourishing myself and others, and became a way to embody myself in other cultures. From this, there also unfolded my deep love of well cared for produce and slowly crafted cookery that became an integral part of my being. Now that I do travel as often as I can, the first thing I do in a new city is to find the food market. I felt right at home on my first sojourn to Paris because of the attention and importance...