Farewell to 2021 - see you next year

We sign off our final issue for 2021 with the hope that readers can see loved ones for Christmas and travel where they like.

This time last year, in our final issue for 2020, there was a strong seam of optimism: we’d lived through a tough nine months and 2021 would be better. We clearly jinxed it because weeks later the northern beaches region of Sydney was plunged into a Christmas lockdown followed by Melbourne for a few days in February, setting a pattern for a year that many would like to forget. So as we sign off our final issue for 2021, there will be no grand pronouncements. Just a simple hope that our readers can see family and loved ones for Christmas and freely travel to wherever they are hoping to visit.

We’re sad to farewell one of the mainstays of this magazine, David Herbert, who is hanging up the apron after two decades at The Australian. It’s no small task dreaming up and writing and testing recipes on a weekly basis and I know that David has been a firm weekend fixture for many readers because his dishes always deliver. We’ll be back with our first issue for 2022 on January 22 with a new face on our food pages, Alice Zaslavsky, who has written her own award-winning cookbooks and shares David’s knack for achievable yet delicious recipes.