In this vibrant and amusing book, well-known artist and writer Shona McFarlane has combined her talents with one of her lesser-known skills -making pickles and preserves. With humour and sensitivity she writes of people she has met, such as the Queen and Maxene Andrews, one of the Andrews Sisters. She even finds humour in her own heart-surgery. Shonas stories range from an occasion when her hands were filmed to represent Frances Hodgkins in a documentary, to the recollections of a feisty woman who lived 25 years on Somes Island. She also tells the story of an New Zealand woman who wrote the lyrics of one of the most famous songs of our time. This collection is engaging, often moving and always entertaining, with more than 80 splendid recipes. A selection of her recent paintings in vivid colour completes this delightful book.

The author combines the skills of an artist with those of a writer to present the world as she sees it from her home in the Wellington suburbe of Maungaraki. A blend of jottings, tribulations of a guest speaker, along with delvings into our pioneering past as she shares with us treasured old family diaries.