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Relationships are tricky. Especially when they are made up of two vastly different people, with vastly different views, from vastly different walks of life. But sometimes, none of those things matters — not when you have an old Swedish cookie recipe to bring you two together. Let me explain. In this case, one is a suburban-raised, red-as-they-come Republican homebody who hates travelling and loves little furry things with paws. The other is a globetrotting, blue-as-a-bluebell

It’s fair to say that one of the nation’s favourite Lockdown activities was baking, judging from the scores of homemade banana loaves and sourdough posts flooding my Instagram feed. At one point, supermarkets were running so low on essential baking ingredients that flour felt like gold dust. And it wasn’t just my social media bombarding me with #bakinginspo- daytime television was awash with cooking and baking shows too, which I eagerly lapped up to fill my boredom. I watched

Credits: Bo Nguyen During the first lockdown, it seemed like everyone, young and old, was flocking to the kitchen. Even some of my friends who barely knew how to make sunny side up eggs were making all kinds of breads and other quarantine-friendly dishes. But for some reason I found myself cooking significantly less. I associated cooking with happy feelings and circumstances, so this surely was not the right time. Lacking energy and motivation, I was mainly trying to survive

“You won Jane. Enjoy the money, I hope it makes you very happy … Dear Lord, what a sad little life, Jane. You ruined my night completely so you could have the money but I hope now you spend it on getting some lessons in grace and decorum, cause you have all the grace of a reversing dump truck without any tyres on… So Jane, take your money and get off my property.” …were the infamous words uttered by Peter Marsh in that viral scene, racking up to 247k views on YouTube and

In the previous part of this story, I talked about how culinary nostalgia provided me (and many others) some much-needed comfort during this period of uncertainty. But from the very start, I knew that I’d intended to write a much longer piece because several months of lockdown has clearly provided me with an ample amount of material. So today, I return with another instalment of lockdown cooking, venturing out to the situation beyond the walls of our own kitchen. Credits: Emm

Graphic: Ella-Mae Earnshaw As restaurants open back up here’s a look back into the one activity the whole world took to in the confines of their own homes. Everyone probably has a moment when they realized that they would have to stay in their own home for a while. Many had a moment where they decided they would try to be productive and take up a new activity. As a collective, it seemed when everyone was isolating; we found one room in the house more appealing than most – th

Credits: Ella-Mae Earnshaw Strand Magazine's new column HomeCooked dives into lockdown stories from the kitchen. Natty Sae Jew writes about the nostalgia and comfort she found in cooking Salapao. “How was lockdown?” If you’d ask somebody this question a year ago, you’d probably get some very puzzled looks. Now, it’s practically a new way of saying “how are you?”. In the same vein, it’s a pretty loaded question: for some of us, it was a period of a much needed pause, but for