Making a home and life on love alone

There are days when I miss Australia. I miss small things, like the smell of the eucalypts drying in the summer heat, or the crash of the sea onto the banks.

I also miss more material things, like an under-bench oven that would comfortably hold a leg of venison - and a freezer with the capacity to hold extras.

Those of you who read my columns regularly know that I am fond of good food, and the tools that go into its creation.

Well, recently it was my birthday, and I let Ellen, my just-married wife, go shopping online for a few bits and pieces to put into our kitchen. I already have a small oven, and an electric hand beater, things that make life easier for me - so we were looking for a mixer with a dough hook for making bread.

It was then that it dawned on me that I didn't really need these things to be happy.

Sure, I could have every gadget going, and fill the kitchen with things I'd probably never get around to using.

But, in the long run, it's not what you have in a kitchen, but what comes out of it.

This will sound soppy and sentimental, and you will decry me as a love-struck fool, but the best thing to come out of my kitchen is love.

Ellen loves to eat, and explore different recipes that I create in the kitchen - a lot of which most people in China have probably never tried. With a simple saucepan, a whisk, and some vanilla syrup, I can transform what would be a mundane hot chocolate into something well and truly out of the ordinary.

Of course, I have to spend a lot of time doing the "donkey work" for the things I cook, but it's time well spent. Kneading the dough has left me with arms like Popeye, and there are always nicks on my fingers, evidence of a knife unexpectedly slipping off carrots - but these are well-earned battle scars.

I've discovered that as long as I take the time and effort, I can compensate for the lack of fancy gadgets to put extra gloss on my dishes. Of course, sometimes you just need to monter au beurre (a fancy chefs' term for "add butter") your sauces, but the love behind it will show through anyway.

It's the same with the rest of the apartment. My salary isn't exactly huge, but there's just enough slack in it to allow me to go to a market, and pick up a few scatter cushions, or perhaps a throw cover for the tired old sofa that dominates the lounge. Prints of 1920s Shanghai-style advertisements cover a few patches where the plaster's not quite up to snuff. Bowls of whole dried spices such as star anise and cinnamon perfume the air, giving the house that smell of generations of cooking before us - even though the apartment's only a few years old.

I've long since given up the idea that I'm only in China for a year or so, or that I'm going to land a dream job with almost no time spent in front of a class for a ridiculously high salary. My love for Ellen means that I'm here to stay, no matter what.

As long as we have love, we can live very comfortably in China without all the optional extras - love which makes our house a home.