This month in Après Diaries, we're taking in the good words and good foods of Aleks Bliszczyk. A former news editor and journalist, Aleks' layers include being a long-time food blogger, home chef and current Marseille resident.
We made Aleks' world our own for a minute and you should too.
To properly introduce you, what are your nicknames?
My full name is Aleksandra but Aleks is easier to pronounce. People at school also used to call me Chicken.
How would your friends describe you?
Passionate, loud, “zest for life”.
Where do you currently live, and who with? Have you been there most of your life?
I moved to Marseille on a working-holiday visa in November after 10 months of backpacking across the world with the love of my life. We met at the end of 2023 and decided a year later to leave our shared home city and move overseas together. Otherwise, I’ve lived in Melbourne my whole life (except for six months in 2014 when I did a semester of uni in Lyon).
Do you believe in astrology? What's your star sign?
No but I wish I did because it’s so fun. I’m a Libra. Apparently we’re the most beautiful.
Are you more inspired by people or places?
I feel most inspired and alive when I’m in a bustling public space full of people like a market, square or dance floor.
What do you currently do for work?
I’m currently looking for work in Marseille (hopefully by the time this is published I will have found something). But I have been a journalist for 8 or 9 years and was previously the deputy editor of VICE Australia. My redundancy from that role in 2024 (my third redundancy in my media career) spurred this trip overseas. Now all I want is to work in a bakery.
What do you get up to when you’re not working on something?
I cook. That’s all I do every day, seriously.
Favourite items in your wardrobe?
A pair of secondhand black leather knee-high boots my friend Ari gave me for my birthday; an olive green skirt my friend Amelia found at an op-shop, hemmed and then gifted to me; and a $4 pair of jorts I bought at a secondhand warehouse in Kazakhstan last year.
What are your favourite sounds?
Wubs and dubs.
What are your comfort meals?
Szczawiowa zupa or Polish sorrel soup is one of my favourite soups/meals ever. My grandparents on my mum’s side had a huge vegetable garden in their home in Strathmore where they lived for more than 50 years until recently. My Babcia grew lots of things there including sorrel. Her version of this soup is with her homemade rosoł (chicken stock), onions and chopped sorrel leaves, cooked down til very gloopy, then served over white rice with cream or sour cream, dill and a hardboiled egg. It sounds and looks pretty weird to most people but I love it so much and I will never stop cooking it now that my Babcia can’t anymore.
Has your relationship to your work or creativity changed as your career has evolved?
Yes, because my career has halted! I stepped away from it to travel and live my dream life. Now I use my creativity and journalism skills for myself, making 3-minute videos about produce markets and using food as a lens into a place’s history and culture. I haven’t made any money from this yet but I think that’s why I work so hard on them; they’re for me.
What's your favourite room in the house?
An obvious answer: the kitchen.
If you could invent an official love language, what would it be?
Cooking for and feeding people, which is 100% me and all the matriarchs in my family.
Do you have any daily rituals?
A new one is Monday to Friday before my 9am French classes I make a filter coffee and buy a perfect buttery pain au chocolat for $3.20 from the boulangerie 10 metres from my front door. Why are they $8 in Melbourne???
What's your favourite condiment?
Butter.
What about your death row meal?
I want to be flown to Xi’an, China for my last meal. I visited in February 2025 and it’s my favourite cuisine and yes, specifically the cuisine of this city, which fuses the native foods of Shaanxi province with ingredients, spices, cooking methods from across Asia and the Middle East because Xi’an was the end of the ancient silk road trade route. All those elements collided and evolved to become the immense variety of dishes Xi’an is now known for. For my death row meal I would like to be given two hours to run around and slurp as many bowls of biang-biang noodles, knife-cut spinach noodles, pao mo, liang pi, liang fen and fen zheng niu rou as I possibly could.
Songs that sound like your answers:
From sexy and smooth to epic. A mix of songs for professing love, or making love.
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