In My Tropical Kitchen, October 2025

Dear readers,  Life's heating up in my kitchen as Summer approaches and this monthly IMK will give you food stories, travel stories, garden stories, and whatever else I've been up to in our tropical home and beyond that I think you will find interesting. So grab a cuppa or cold drink and read on at your leisure.

We haven't been home much this past month, on a count back I realised it was only 8 days. It's always busy the week before, leading up to a long road trip and a Pickleball tournament, with various preparations needed. I like to take some frozen meals with us in the car refrigerator to make life easy when travelling. They are easily heated up at the end of the day and it's more economical than eating out every night. Although of course we do that as well.

 I cooked this delicious Creamy Chicken and Celery Casserole, which I froze and took away with us on our road trip to the Gold Coast.  There was an APC pickleball tournament on at Pimpana, at the Gold Coast, which Mr. HRK played in and did very well.. You can find the recipe here for the  Chicken and Celery casserole, delicious, very healthy and so easy to make. It ticks all the boxes for me for healthy eating.

I also made a double batch of Spaghetti Bolognese, using spiral pasta which is very easy to reheat in the microwave. I load it up with vegetables, so it is a meal in one. This tried and true recipe never fails and is a good option when I am short on time. We all need those.

During the busy week before we left, I made this very quick Korean Ground Pork dish, based on Gochujang Paste, maple syrup, ginger, garlic, soy sauce and ground pork. It was simply delicious. Mr. HRK loved it, in retrospect I should have doubled the recipe. I'll make it again now that we are home, and write it up. I dialled down on the Gochujang paste, and it had just the right amount of heat for us. I found it on a website called Slimming Eats.

During our stay in Cairns, in Far North Queensland, we visited the iconic Rusty's markets, I've mentioned them before, and this time we came home with some exotic tropical fruits which we hadn't tasted for a long time. Sometimes these fruits aren't at their peak or available for very long, so they need to be procured when sighted. 

Longans, Black Sapote, and Mangosteen were what we decided to buy.

Black sapote, or Chocolate Pudding Fruit, are delicious and perfect for dessert as well. After removing the seeds in the middle, the chocolate mousse like flesh can be eaten with a spoon. To be palatable, the fruit needs to be ripe, a dark colour, soft, and may be slightly indented.  Because Black Sapotes don't have a long shelf life, it is probably best to buy these from a tropical farmer's market.

Mangosteen are probably my favourite amongst these exotic fruits and are considered to be the Queen of tropical fruits. The juicy, snow white segments inside the fruit are delicious.

Longans have translucent, white juicy flesh similar to a lychee. I think I prefer lychees, but these ones might have been a bit old, however they were still very refreshing. Lychees should start appearing at the markets in the very near future. We enjoy our lychees during the Christmas season.

Enjoying longans with a a cup of coffee made by Mr. HRK.

I discovered that the Friendly Grocer near to our daughter Shannon's house, has Sourdough fruit bread and croissants from a Cairns bakery for sale every Friday morning.  So I was on a mission and was there early. What a delicious brekkie it was, enjoying Sourdough Fruit Toast, a few exotic tropical fruits, and homemade flat white coffee. Yes there were a couple of croissants as well, but they disappeared quickly. 

The most delicious sourdough fruit toast

Back home after the Cairns trip, a week to prepare, and then we were off on another road trip to the Gold Coast for the Australian Pickleball Championships. 

While we were away at the Gold Coast, unfortunately I became ill and just needed soups to eat for a couple of days. Mr. HRK and Shannon went shopping at the nearby Coles supermarket and came back with these soups by Hart & Soul and La Zuppa. (No promo intended for Coles, Woolworths also stock them.) I'd never seen them before, probably because I wasn't looking. They ate the Chicken and Corn soup and loved it. The Bone Broth for moi needed extra flavour with a little salt, but is probably intended to act as a base for added herbs and whatever is on hand. It was just what I needed though and was perfect for me. As you know I make all my own chicken and beef broths and soups when I am at home in my own kitchen, so I felt very fortunate to be able to eat this when I needed it. The Potato and Leek soup was delicious with a hint of miso, and we brought the Pho noodle soup home with us. If you feel like a night off from cooking and feel like soup, these are healthy options, and quite reasonably priced. Extra herbs, cooked meat and other bits and pieces can be added which is what is so good about soup.

Coast

Pickle flavoured Tomato Ketchup, really? Heinz were a major sponsor of the Pickleball tournament at the Gold Coast, and a bottle of Pickle flavoured Tomato Sauce was in every welcome pack.  How thorough is that? We don't call it Ketchup in Australia, it's definitely sauce.  It's actually quite tasty. Somehow or other we came home with 4 bottles of the stuff. Obviously not everyone was keen on it and slipped a bottle or two into our packs,  I'm working on that theory anyway.

When travelling, these Byron Bay Macadamia White Choc cookies are always delicious for a sweet fix.

Orchids flowering

September is the month for soft cane Dendrobium orchids to bloom and for other varieties of tropical orchids as well. When we returned home from Cairns, the dendrobes were on show to greet me. It was so lovely to come home to them flowering.

These are the Iced Vo Vo dendrobium variety in all their splendour. Of course they are named after that delicious biscuit, the Iced Vo Vo. 

Iced Vo Vo soft cane dendrobium orchids

This soft pink coloured one below is a real beauty as well.

The Swamp Orchid is a beautiful thing.

A brightly coloured yellow soft cane dendrobium.

This beautiful golden and delicate dendrobium which flowers for me each year was my Mum's.

Here's a selfie of us as we wait excitedly for the stage musical Pretty Woman to commence at the beautiful Lyric theatre in Brisbane. I loved every minute of the show, and highly recommend it to you. The choreography, costume, contemporary music score, stage sets and the performers were all world class. 

Meet Borobi, a blue male koala bear, who was the mascot for the 2018 Commonwealth Games at the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia.

We met Borobi at Surfers Paradise when we were taking a stroll along the esplanade with the beautiful surf in the background.  His name is derived from the language of the Yugambeh people, an indigenous group from the Gold Coast region. He was designed by Aboriginal artist Chern'ee Sutton. Borobi is very cute, don't you think and a lot of fun?

While we were at Surfers, we also enjoyed some delicious ice-cream at this place. Phil 

Rosenthal from Please Feed Phil, featured Messina on his show when he was in Sydney. Great ice-cream. Can you spot Mr. HRK excitedly entering through the door of the ice-cream shop. Like Phil, he loves his ice-cream.

An apology is warranted here from me. There are more links to sites on this post than I intended or put in place. I generally only link to recipes, mainly of mine, or the occasional site I wish to share with you. Now Google, I think, has decided to link names it recognises like the supermarkets for example to their websites. It must think it's helping. No thanks Google, I don't need it. Have I ticked something without realising it, or is it a new AI feature which has embedded itself into Google blogger?  If you can shed any light on this I welcome your feedback. I really need to publish this post, so no time at the moment to check out what the heck is going on and to remove all the links. Nothing stays the same. However, is this a problem for you as the reader? Please let me know.

Thanks for your patience and ongoing interest.

Warm wishes, 

Pauline