Goodness Gracious Organic Cafe, Yandina

For nigh on two years, a slap up Saturday breakfast at Goodness Gracious has been our favourite way to top off an early morning amble round the markets - the perfect way to cut ourselves into that weekend groove. Down a little side street behind the pub, the good people of Goodness Gracious - Sandee Burnell and Steven Mahoney - have created cafe nirvana.

Yet have I had the decency to blog about them? No.

Clearly, they have become so much a part of our life that I take them for granted.

'Tis time to make amends.

So, how do you create cafe nirvana? Here follows a step-by-step guide, with photos.

1. Ambient Atmosphere
Comfy-cosy, laid-back, unpretentious and bursting with soul - Goodness Gracious has it all. It's the home you want to be at when you're not at home. Well it is, after all, in a house - a nana and pop post-war bungalow complete with yawning casement windows; shady backyard sprinkled with ferns, geraniums and other old school horticulture; and a pocket hankie-sized porch piled with cushions, vintage tableware and the papers. (Best spot in the house. You need to rock up early - pre 7:30 am - to snaffle it!)

2. Originality
Everything about this wonderful place is an expression of its imaginative owners: their interests and passions, their keen eye for detail, their sense of nostalgia and wry humour, their blatant joy in gathering the quirky and the kitsch.

Should that cute porch be occupied, there's still a fine choice of dining nooks and crannies - indoors and out. Settle back in this sunny sitting room. Browse the vintage wares whilst you await your order. Snap up some original gifts - yep, just about everything is for sale!

Real collectors are not just bowerbirds but curators - relentlessly sorting, grouping, arranging - drawing the eye to the beauty in the banal.

3. Good People and True
They certainly are. No "cafe attitudes" here. (Know what I mean?) Always happy to see you. Always buzzing. You can't help but love people who love what they do. Look at Steve pumping that machine. He can pour a hearty mug of coffee - a "bucket" even - without losing any integrity of flavour. What a triumph.

4. Food Excellence
Do the words 'gluten free' have you in reverse gear? Ready to plead guilty of intolerance towards food intolerance? Swallowed enough lumpen slabs of almond meal masquerading as cake? Fear not! The food here is scrumptious - and just happens to be gluten free. Every cake, tart and muffin is baked in-house - including the fruit bread (and it makes such heavenly, sticky rich toast).
And the menu? From the retro to the nouveau - from baked beans to quinoa porridge to berry pancakes to okonomiyaki (Japanese omelette) - Goodness Gracious put their clever, inimitable twist on it all.
The hash brown they have completely reinvented.

And finally - joyfully - a place that honours both the herbivore and the carnivore. Finally, a place that understands those who relish their vegies as much as their meat. And at Goodness Gracious they really know how to cook vegies to perfection, to bring out that deliciously jammy, toffee-taste explosion when natural sugars caramelise.
Slow roasted pumpkin and crispy bacon? Oh mercy!

And savoured round a vintage laminex table on a fine Yandina morning? Cafe nirvana.

Goodness Gracious Organic Cafe
3 Conn Street Yandina
5446 8444
Closed Sundays

Porter's Moss Green Walls: My Rainforest Study

Feature walls feature in the Eumundi House - and thus, Eumundi Papers.
First there was the moody blue feature wall in the studio.
Then the mod mustard feature wall in the living area.
But when it came to a feature wall for a study perched loftily before the rainforest, it just had to be green:

As decorating mavericks will admit, it's not easy choosing green. The wrong shade can do alarming things to a room. Take emerald green. On a deep buttoned velvet armchair, a hand knitted Shetland wool blanket, a satin cocktail dress - the colour can be opulent, divine. Yet that same hue washed across an expanse of wall or carpet can suddenly turn brash, oppressive, or just plain ugly.

That said, walls of apple or lime can be cheery and uplifting, and work well in modern interiors. And for several days I did swatch wildly away with a palette of bright, rich greens - all from Porter's - an appetisingly named selection of Caprioska, Wasabi, Green Papaya and Banana Leaf. I nearly fell for Banana Leaf, a hard to resist chartreuse. But you see, such is the subjectivity of colour. I am of a lively nature. By day, I march out into the world to teach, motivate, provoke. Back home, I need a bit of shoosh. When I drop my satchel on the study floor, I need my walls to murmur, in a Barry White purr, "Sit yourself down baby. Relax. Let me massage your shoulders. Let me put on some Miles Davis".

Clearly, I needed to move towards the olive and lichen end of the spectrum.

Finally, after three coats of Porter's Moss Green in pigment rich Ultra Flat, I had a wall to inspire and soothe, a wall as verdant as the patchwork green rainforest that unfolds before my window.

And it took but a quick rummage through Phil's Citroen archives to turn up the perfect vintage 2CV poster. C'est vraiment magique, n'est-ce pas? Every time I look, and without the need for 3D specs, that adventurous little family in their intrepid little car seem to burst through the forest and out of the wall to invite me along for the ride.

But a room of one's own should be magical, should it not? 

All Things Must Pass: An afternoon with George

I did not want to wait weeks - maybe more - to see him closer to home. I did not want to run the risk of missing him entirely. There was nothing for it but to drive to Brisbane, to the Dendy at Portside. And the journey was oh so worth it ...

Not so much the journey to Brisbane, but the journey into Martin Scorcese's world of George Harrison: All Things Must Pass. "It feels like I've been in someone's life for four hours," said Phil as we exited, blinking, into the blazing Brisbane sun. Tossed rudely from Scorcese's tardis, we had not fully landed. I was not sure I wanted to.

Days later, Scorcese's film still reels through my mind: Astrid Kirchherr, as captivating as her beautiful black and white images, her photo of a seventeen-year-old George with his old soul eyes beneath the cocky, teddyboy haircut. Ravi Shankar's dazzling sitar, his aura of perfect calm, his reflection on music as a state of pure love.  Jacki Stewart's analogy between music performance and the heightened state of awareness he felt behind the wheel of an F1. Ringo’s touching reminiscences, his endearing blokiness as he wipes off an errant tear.

And most enduring of all, those entrancing images of George’s extraordinary garden - a wonderland of turrets and streams and ponds and topiaries - his beloved Friar Park.

George was so often cliched as the enigmatic Beatle, the dark horse.  To unravel complexity takes time, and the care and precision of a Scorcese. Slowly, tenderly even, Scorcese peels back layer after layer, revealing George as a relentlessly driven seeker of perfection - the perfect song, the perfect recording, the perfect garden - a perfection only glimpsed, perhaps, through chemicals or meditation. But finally, it seems, George was driven by love - pure, wholehearted, unconditional. "Scan not your friend through microscopic glass" was an aphorism he aimed to live by.

And his family, and his friends many and true, loved him so deeply and unconditionally in return.

I am of the generation to whom the Beatles were an integral part of life, of the world as we knew it, as integral as the sun and moon and bicycles and houses. So ubiquitous was their presence, over so many years, they became imbued with a weird familiarity - like family, yet of course, not. Halfway through this beautiful, moving film, I leaned to Phil and whispered: "Aren't you grateful to have been there, to have lived through those songs?"

They say you should never meet your heroes. But if I could meet George, I would want to thank him for Something, and My Sweet Lord, and While My Guitar Gently Weeps and … 

Oh yes, and ask him: "Where did you get those excellent gnomes?"

Bircher Muesli + Barambah Yoghurt = Breakfast Bliss

Here at the Eumundi House, we are creatures of breakfast habit. Sure, weekends may be launched with a celebratory sizzle of free range bacon and eggs, market croissants, or even, on special Saturdays, fruity wedges of fresh-baked brioche from Maison de Provence (Eric's 'Royaume' is just scrumptious). Monday to Friday though, it's all about oats. Oats, oats and more oats. Simple. Pure. Healthy. Delicious.
Steaming bowls of silky smooth porridge, drizzled with amber honey, keep us firing through chill winter mornings. But come summer, it's time for a cool, creamy alternative: homemade Bircher Muesli.

Bircher Muesli is idiot proof to prepare - well, providing you remember to soak the oats overnight - and reliably delicious, its yumminess depending only on the quality of ingredients. What's more, it's the perfect bespoke breakfast, so simple to tweak to your tastebuds' delight. This basic recipe ...

welcomes almost any combo of fruit and nuts, from walnuts to apricots. The apple can be red, or Granny Smith green. Oats can be soaked in milk, orange juice or water (go milk I say). For total breakfast decadence, top with fat juicy berries and shavings of dark bitter chocolate.

That said, at the Eumundi House this spring we're keeping things fairly trad:
Nuts = chopped almonds
Dried Fruit = raisins (the local IGA has quite nice ones in bulk - 'nice' meaning without the icky vegie oil that coats most packaged raisins)
Apple = any red-skinned variety in season (with skin left on for fibre, and a pretty scatter of colour)
Milk = as full-cream, local and/or organic - i.e. as straight from udder to bowl - as possible. Depending on availability, we use either Eumundi, Cooloolah, or the outstanding Barambah.
One cup of oats soaked in one cup of milk gives two satisfying servings.

Speaking of Barambah - gosh they deserve a plug. Their organic yoghurt is divine: tubs of dairy lusciousness. And those cows - those buxom, bovine beauties - are champions. Go visit them here, while I soak tomorrow's oats.

Mustard Feature Wall: Resene Retro Wallpaper

Favourite (rumoured) Oscar Wilde quote: "I hate this wallpaper. One of us will have to leave." As Wilde's wittily petulant remark was uttered circa 1890, I imagine the offending wallcovering was something florid and frumpy: unlike this clean-edged, classy, chevron textured paper from Resene.

To clarify: I'm happy to be seated against wild, psychedelic, Florence Broadhurst style backdrops at the hairdressers, or restaurants, but at home I prefer my walls to be a bit less - well, rowdy.

Enter those design-savvy Kiwis at Resene, with a deliciously retro, super smart collection of textured papers, ready to be painted over with the feature colour of your choice. Feature walls: did they ever go out of style? If so, I'm glad they're back. Here at the Eumundi House there's four, which sounds a little greedy, but they are spread out: two upstairs, one downstairs, one in the studio. And all are deep and moody in colour, a counterfoil to the bright sub-tropical light that streams through louvred glass.

If you wait, and listen, a space reveals what colour it should be. Those freshly hung chevrons were emitting a palpable 70s vibe: "Mustard", they reverbed, "Paint us mustard". So for the deepest, most satisfying, colour-saturated shade, I turned - as always - to Porter's Paints. Porter's Paints are pots of pigment perfection.

And what, you may be asking, is that silvery, snakelike object in closeup? Why, it's an almost vintage Phil Ward design, circa 1985.

Yep - give him a tripod, a satellite dish, and he's off and wiring.

FAQs
Wallpaper: Uselessly, I have forgotten the pattern name. Resene do, however, have a brilliant New Zealand site, with an almost too good selection of colour, pattern and texture. (Here on the Sunshine Coast, head straight to the wonderful people at Paint City Coolum.)

Paint: Sombrero in eggshell acrylic from the incomparable Porter's Paints. (Ditto Paint City Coolum.)

Hanging wallpaper: Use the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy approach: Don't Panic!

Painting textured wallpaper: Use a long napped roller. Load with plenty of paint. Roll on in zigzag pattern first, to work into the grooves, then roll off from top to bottom.

Resene have all the DIY details you need, plus videos, on their site.