First hint of summer

I spent five years growing up in the desert. My father, a financial controller, was transferred from Sydney to Kalgoorlie to manage a goldmine in the early 1980s and the rest of the family went with him. So, from the age of seven I felt as if I was living an almost eternal summer. It was fantastic.

We lived in a rambling Federation house. Its verandas were covered in grapevines that produced more fruit than we could ever eat. We had pomegranates, cumquats, apricots, grapefruit, oranges, lemons, tomatoes, pumpkins and a bountiful herb garden. With all that sun, you just need to add water.

My mother is a city girl at heart and she had to make quite an adjustment. To keep busy, she started a catering company with a girlfriend and brought tabouli, coriander, spinach and feta triangles to Kalgoorlie. I used to help, sometimes folding filo triangles or rolling curried meatballs and it was during this time that my love affair with food began.

So each year, at the first hint of summer - the trill of a cicada or biting into a perfectly ripe, deep-red tomato warm from the sun - I get to revisit my youth and those long, hot, dusty days under the cloudless West Australian sky.

Jane Strode