Your specific frequency
I am, as always, waiting
The regular routines we put into our week create the beats, the chorus and sometimes the surprising addenda to our weeks. I would not be as normal as I am, such as that is, without my regular coffee with my regular best person every Saturday morning. He allows my fancy, but then pulls me back to where I need to be with grace and care. It is at these gatherings that both the most important and the most ridiculous things in life are discussed with the same urgency and seriousness. It is with him that I am nagivating my father’s failing health, my mother’s increasing demands, my brother’s prolonged absences. We spend hours locked in conversations that twist and turn around surprising pathways. Hours are spent discussing housing, healthcare, youthful beauty, flights of fancy, legal structures, art auctions, the quality of people those around us may be sleeping with…
It occurs to me that my parents had this life. That is, until recently. My mother had this with her particular friend. Perhaps not quite the same - I couldn’t imagine her indulging in all the craziness that we talk about. But she had a friend I knew, here in Australia, also a Japanese woman, married to a Western man. They shared thoughts and things. My mother, she is not easy, and not shy in her opinions, so of course, they fought. But they were to catch up, and my mother was looking forward to this. She waited and waited and waited. The friend never showed up.
I have thought about that waiting. What it is to have your particular person - the one who holds your specific frequency - and then not. The silence where the conversation used to be. I do not want to dwell in it too long. But I think about it.
And then I think about my boys.
But perhaps it is always about the waiting.
I wait for them to grow up - one of them seems to be forever young, the other is definitely growing up. They are both strong and smart and ridiculous and brave. They are becoming, in the way that young people become - messily, magnificently, on their own terms. The world is going to get them eventually, in all the ways the world gets people. But right now, watching them move toward it, I feel something that is not quite pride and not quite fear and is probably both at once.
And I am here, waiting. For whatever they want, whenever they want it.
They will have their people. Their Saturday mornings. Their ridiculous conversations about housing, art auctions and the quality of people in their orbit. I hope they hold those threads tightly. I hope they know what they are for.
Because here is what I know, from the other side of a great many Saturdays: the rituals we build are not incidental to the life. They are the life. The coffee, the friend, the particular person who lets your fancy run and then pulls you back - that is the structure underneath everything else. The chorus that makes the verses bearable.
Hold it. Tend to it. Show up.
Hallmark Movie Review
There is something quietly clarifying about watching someone else be pushed into the spotlight before they feel ready. We recognise it immediately - the moment the person who was supposed to lead walks out, and suddenly the person who was just trying to do their job well finds themselves holding the whole thing. We know that feeling. The scramble. The strange mix of terror and, if we’re honest, something that feels a little like finally.
We don’t always get to step up gracefully. Sometimes we get there sideways, holding a spatula, in someone else’s kitchen, hoping nobody notices we’re improvising. But we get there. And sometimes that’s enough.
Which brings me, warmly and without irony, to A Pinch of Portugal.
🏙 A Pinch of Portugal
A celebrity chef walks off. A prep cook steps up. Portugal does the rest.
📅 The Details
Year: 2025
Platform: Hallmark
Genre: Romance / Comedy
Director: Clare Niederpruem
Screenplay: Nicole Baxter
Cast: Heather Hemmens, Luke Mitchell, Amy Louise Pemberton
🎨 The Setup
Anna is a prep cook. She is good at her job, quiet about her ambitions, and absolutely not the face of a television show… until the celebrity chef who is supposed to be the face of a television show walks off set and Anna is handed the spatula.
What follows is a food show, a location scout and a romance, all set against Portugal, which is doing a great deal of heavy lifting as both backdrop and co-star.
Honestly? Portugal earns its billing.
The market scenes are genuinely lovely. The food looks real. The fine dining preparations are filmed with enough care that you want to eat everything, which is either aspirational or cruel, depending on your situation.
💕 The Meet-Re-Meet
Anna’s cameraman is there, the Aussie, it turns out, which the blurb hinted at. Her Portuguese location scout is also there, and is, as advertised, quite cute.
The chemistry is warm rather than electric. Nobody is pretending otherwise. The attraction develops at the pace of a slow braise: unhurried, building quietly, occasionally in need of a stir.
📜 The Conflict / The Quest
📜 The Conflict / The Quest
There are twists. There are turns. They are, in the tradition of the genre, telegraphed far enough in advance that you can see them coming and still enjoy them arriving, the way you enjoy a dessert you already knew was coming.
It is a bit clunky in places. The middle act especially has the slightly stop-start energy of a recipe that’s lost confidence in itself mid-method. But it finds its footing. The love story gets where it’s going.
No harm is done.
🍁 Cultural Check-in
Portugal is treated with genuine affection rather than mere aesthetics. The markets feel inhabited, the food feels local, the location scout actually scouts locations. It won’t win points for depth, but it earns points for warmth.
The Aussie in the cast is a small delight. We take our representation where we can get it.
😘 How Hot Is the Kiss?
6/10 Earns it. A slow build with a satisfying landing - which is more than most manage.
👀 POC Check
Heather Hemmens is Afro-Latina, so it is present and warmer than average for the genre! We applaud that!
🥨 Final Thought
Anna didn’t ask to step up. She just did - because someone had to, and she was there, and it turned out she was ready enough.
A Pinch of Portugal is not a perfect film. It’s clunky in the middle and tidier than life. But it’s warm, it’s genuinely fond of its setting, and it has the good sense to let the food be as good as the romance. Sometimes that’s exactly what you were hoping for.
And that, it turns out, is plenty.
Loved reading this gorgeous Noe x
May we always be messily magnificent…I know how much you treasure your Saturday sessions and by the time I join you guys , the world seems to have lightened and many complex issues have been sorted.