The drawer of paper notes
A small kitchen drawer in a flat above a Christchurch bakery — clipped magazine pages, neighbours' recipes, two grandparent notebooks, butter stains everywhere.
Tēnā koe — page 02 · about the pantry
A small notebook from a quieter side of the harbour.
Phrexxontholmare is an everyday recipe and cooking journal based in Banks Peninsula, Te Waipounamu. It began as a kitchen drawer of folded paper notes — quantities scribbled in pencil, ingredients crossed out, butter stains on the corners — and slowly became a place to share those notes with anyone who likes weekday cooking in Aotearoa.
A few words first
We are not a magazine. We are a notebook with the pages open.
Every dish on this site is cooked at home before it appears on a page. We write quantities while a pot is still hot, swap an ingredient when the shop is out of one, and revisit recipes a week later to see if they still hold up on a Tuesday night.
The notebook is shaped by Aotearoa's seasons, by the small markets we walk to, and by the simple idea that a meal does not need to be impressive in order to be cared about. Most of what we publish is built around five ingredients or fewer.
We do not promise faster suppers or transformative routines. We share what we make, write down what we learn, and leave a margin for you to add your own notes.
Kaupapa · Six house values
What the kitchen quietly believes.
None of these are rules. They are the habits the notebook keeps coming back to.
Of the season, of the place
We cook with what's grown nearby and reaching its best. Fewer kilometres on a carrot tend to mean better cooking, week to week.
Slow, but on a Tuesday
Slow cooking is not a weekend project. Most of our recipes are written so they fit alongside a working day, not in place of one.
Plain, honest writing
No exaggerated language, no claims of transformation. We tell you what we put in the pot and what came out the other side.
Use the whole basket
Stems, peels, ends, off-cuts. Nearly every recipe leaves a small note for what to do with what's left over.
Manaakitanga · Pay our growers
Every supplier we mention is paid for their work, on time. If a recipe relies on a small grower, we list them by name.
Open kitchen, open notebook
We share corrections, swaps and reader notes. The recipe you see today is not necessarily the recipe of next month.
By the Numbers · Five quiet years
The notebook in plain figures.
Numbers we trust because we wrote them down ourselves, week by week.
Ingredients on average
0
per recipe
We aim for short ingredient lists you can read in a single breath.
Words on average
0
per page
Long enough to teach the dish; short enough to stand on the bench.
Reader corrections
0
thanked & folded in
Every correction we receive is read; useful ones are credited and added.
Local kilometres
0
average from the farm
The mean distance from grower to bench across the past 12 months of recipes.
A short history · Five chapters
How the notebook came to live here.
From a drawer of recipes to a small daily kitchen, in five honest steps.
The first weekly letter
A short Sunday email to twelve friends with one recipe and a few lines about the week's basket. The thing kept coming back; it kept being asked for.
The move south of the harbour
A small house at the bottom of Rawhiti Street, a working stove, and a vegetable patch that has more failures than successes for the first two seasons.
Workshops at the wharf hall
Eight people, two long tables, a Saturday morning of bread or preserves. The format that quietly shapes what now goes into the journal.
This notebook, online
A quieter home for the writing. Not a feed, not a database — a small Aotearoa-based site you can read once on a Sunday morning and close for the week.
Three notebooks · One kitchen
What we mean when we say "the notebook".
Tap a tab to read about each strand of our work — they all share the same wooden table.
01
One recipe, weekly
A single tested dish, posted every Sunday at 8am NZST, alongside the email letter.
02
Free to read
No paywalls, no advertising. The journal is supported by workshops and the printed booklet.
03
Reader corrections welcome
Send a note if a step doesn't read well — we credit and update the page within a week.
04
Plain language
No "transformative", no "ultimate" — only what we cooked, what we measured, what we tasted.
01
Saturday mornings
Roughly once a month, four hours, at the Diamond Harbour wharf hall — eight chairs only.
03
Dietary swaps
We offer gluten-free flour and dairy-free options where the recipe allows. Please tell us at booking.
04
Wheelchair access
The wharf hall has a level entry ramp, accessible bathroom and a clear chair height range.
01
Printed in Ōtautahi
An end-of-year booklet of twelve seasonal recipes, printed locally on uncoated stock.
02
Posted within Aotearoa
NZ$28 including GST and tracked NZ Post delivery, sent in compostable cardboard.
03
Pre-orders only
We print to order so nothing is wasted. Pre-orders open in late October each year.
04
Returns & faults
Damaged in the post? We replace at no charge under the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993.
"We try to leave the kitchen a little quieter than we found it. The recipes are simply the receipts."
Editor's letter · Volume Three
Carry on
If the kitchen feels close to your kind of cooking…
You're warmly invited to read on, write in, or sit at one of the small Saturday workshops at the harbour hall.