A group of women are sharing their stories of food and survival - and their recipes - in a new book titled, 'Handmade'.
From a remote village in Sri Lanka to a restaurant in Sydney.
A new cookbook for charity is helping women share food, as well as stories of their journeys through conflict, poverty and refugee camps.
Kalai is one of the women featured in the cookbook, in which she shares her experience of fleeing war.
"There were so many people there, hundreds of people, all with wounded arms and legs. Everything in pieces... We went through all this and I didn't think we would survive it at all."
The recipes and stories feature in Handmade, a cookbook compiled by the Palmera charity.
All of the book's profites will go back into supporting women in Sri Lanka to develop sustainable businesses.
Palmera Director and co-founder Abarna Raj says it was a way of making the stories relatable to people on the other side of the world.
"Sometimes these stories are so sad, and filled with so much loss. So I thought, what better way to share it than with a language that the women are comfortable with? And that was food."
Sydney restaurateur Dr Sam Prince has added some of the receipes to the menu of his Indian fusion restaurant, Indu.
He's says he was inspired by his time as a medical doctor working in Sri Lanka.
"The villagers couldn't pay us with money, but instead invited us into their homes where we could actually eat the food that they actually ate on a day to day basis. Thus came the idea that the best food you can have is actually in the homes of the villagers rather than the colonial food that we're used to - the butter chickens and the naan breads. "
Ms Raj says she hopes the cookbook will help bring people together.
"There's such a similarity between humans. A woman here in Australia would be going through her own hardship - cooking food, remembering, sharing stories.. It doesn't matter where you are in the world. Food unites people it brings people together. And that's what I hope people take away from the book - that they see some of themselves, or someone they know - in a woman they'll never know."
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