ragingyoghurt » 2004

Monthly Archives: April 2004

when a salmon dies, does it know that it will be wrapped in a strip of prosciutto and roasted and served up alongside a pile of sauteed vegetables? will it take its revenge by cunningly concealing a larger than expected bit of cracked black pepper, so that midbite, a boy with a slightly cracked but otherwise intact tooth will hear a loud crack in his head, wash his mouth clear with a swig of pink grapefruit fizzy, and discover that said tooth is now a third smaller than it used to be?

—

while i’m here, and while zucchini are like, $1.99 for a bundle of seven or eight, i could tell you to sautee some bacon, onion, garlic and cubed-up zucchini. add chicken stock and simmer. blenderise most of it and simmer a bit more. sprinkle with toasted flaked almonds. think about doing the same with a head of broccoli. mmm… green(ish) soups.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 30 April 2004 at 8:47 am

permalink | filed under boy, dinner

best monday ever

anzac day continues…
a cross-continental conversation with nellie

nellie: um. are you working?
bowb: umm. sort of, but not really. it’s a public holiday!
n: oh! is it anzac day?
b: eh! yah! how did you know?
n: because it’s a biscuit!
b: ummm. yesss. but there isn’t like, oreo day…
n: hngh. you can keep oreo day.
b: … and there isn’t tim tam day…
n: but there should be!

and with that the twinkies were off for three, count ’em, three hours. the phone company should start paying *us* money.

what to do after a marathon phone session, with ear hot and hand cramped into craw, than finish up my goddamn business activity statement, make a bacon, avocado and chutney (pear and fig) roll and walk briskly up to oxford street where the cinema is already quite packed with a holiday crowd ready to see “eternal sunshine of the spotless mind”.

when joel says “i love you” to his last remaining fading memory of clementine, oh it brung a twinge to my nose.

and then, another brisk walk to pellagio providore for a litre of pink grapefruit fizzy and two bits of $4 (each!) turkish delight studded with pistachios and covered in white chocolate (sometimes if you’re lucky, pink chocolate. today i am unlucky, but only just), and then on to infinity sourdough bakery for a walnut sourdough loaf swaddled in tissue like baby jesus.

sadly the only thing awaiting me after another powerwalk into the city, is a queue at kinko’s while the toner is replaced in two photocopiers, and then once i am at the machine, another queue to get some paper for the machine. so. it takes half an hour to photocopy one double-sided business activity statement form.

happily what awaits me on returning home is a boy on the sofa who is quite agreeable to the idea of me buying him end-of-school-holiday dinner in the malaysian restaurant up the street. not only is there a flavoursome mee siam with an egg boiled for so long it has a grey circle around the yolk, there is also ice kacang with bits of jackfruit hidden in the bottom.

except for kinko’s, best monday ever.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 27 April 2004 at 8:18 am

permalink | filed under around town, at the movies, boy, dinner, grumble, lunch, nellie, snacks

anzac day was commemorated with a cup of tea and an anzac biscuit, while watching the tail end of a 50s war movie on tv. people sure spoke loudly and clearly in those days.

earlier in the day, during the televised parade of ancient diggers and their medals marching up george street, the question “what happens as they all die out? who’ll take their place marching?” was answered with “there’ll just be more wars”.

the boy and i visited the australian war memorial museum in canberra a week and a bit ago. [could the hype-writers across the country please take note that this is the mark against which “world class” should be measured?] packed with relics and stories and dioramas, so many dioramas. scale models of battlefields. helmets all sieve-like with bullet holes. archival footage of a japanese child, still alive, whose back was skinned by an atom bomb.

it still surprises me, what people do to other people.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 26 April 2004 at 7:47 am

permalink | filed under around town, boy, snacks, trip

road trip report

no, there was no easter road carnage. not involving us anyway, and surprisingly few incidents that involved squished marsupials. there was nary even an attempt to learn to drive (let alone start up the car) on my part. mainly, i handed out snacks and gazed out the window at brown and cows. ahh cows.

there were many tasty treats along the way, including such fabled delights as a curried prawn casserole for tea and a breakfast involving two kinds of sausages, bacon, fried eggs, toast, sweet tea and a surprise delivery of lambs fry (with bacon). there was a roasted loin of lamb wrapped in vine leaves perched atop a tomato and olive salad, drizzled with tzaziki, with a bowl of buttered vegetables on the side. there were pasties and sweet buns, and a pizza experience the likes of which may i please o please never have again. there were two sips of a yummy sparkling shiraz before my throat started to close. there was a kebab. there was a turkey and salad sandwich half the size of my head, and a strawberry thickshake. there was a fat burger from a takeaway shop in yass, which had a refrigerated counter full of coleslaw…

there were mountains, and walks up and down mountains, and valleys, and the magnificent murray river, and the bewildering national museum of australia in canberra. there were good times, dammit.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 22 April 2004 at 6:09 pm

permalink | filed under boy, breakfast, dinner, lunch, snacks, trip

ah the wonder of easter that is everlasting salvation and chocolate mud donuts.

to the inexplicably loyal handful who show up here every day or so on the odds that there will be an update: this donut will have to last you all week, for i am an hour and a half away from taking my chances with the easter road toll.

hell, mentioning the all-week donut has reminded me of this story that i was told in primary school, so i’ll leave that with you as well.

“a long time ago in china, there was a boy who, being the only child, was spoilt by his mother. she would do everything for him, even bathing him and feeding him right into his teenage years. as he neared adulthood, his mother was one day called away to another village. she was reluctant to leave her son all defenceless by himself, but she had no choice. as he was incapable of feeding himself, she thought the best thing to do was to make a large biscuit, which she tied to a string around his neck; all he had to do was move his head and take a bite when he was hungry. by her calculations the biscuit was big enough to last a week. the bathing could wait until she returned.

a week later she came through her front door to discover her son dead of hunger in his cot. the biscuit had only been eaten only a small way through. the son had been too lazy and stupid to use his hands to turn the biscuit round and had starved when his mouth could no longer reach beyond biting range.”

yep. i don’t know what they intended to learn us, but i’m sure it was meant to be character building. and just look at me now.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 9 April 2004 at 7:17 am

permalink | filed under cake, chocolate, misc, trip

what i’ve been doing the last couple of days is making print ready artwork for a series of promotional posters for one of those reality tv shows in which twelve housemates get locked in a house with hidden cameras and then get voted off one by one over three months or so. these posters will be mounted three to a trailer which will be towed around the city streets, obstructing traffic and polluting the already toxic city air in more ways than one. for all this, i apologise.

in keeping with the tradition of having a celebratory breakfast to mark the completion of the job, i made this lovely spring-coloured toastie: thinly sliced avocado, salted and peppered, on wholemeal. i like green food.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 8 April 2004 at 8:46 am

permalink | filed under breakfast, werk

on the inside of the cap of my bottle of apple-cranberry juice — a juice so tart that after every slurp you have to pucker up and say “wooh!” — is printed something called a “liddle fact™”. this one states plainly, “fish can drown”.

are the copywriters at the juice factory disgruntled? are they not supposed to be writing upbeat little morsels like the last one i got, about honey bees? truly, i am surprised.

what i also found surprising, the first seventeen times i saw it on tv, was the ad for new fanta spider. so, there’s a japanese guy studying at his desk and suddenly he sneezes in the way that asian people do: no covering up of facial orifices, no turning away, just open-mouthed “ha-chaah”. and out of his nose? mouth? springs a bottle of fanta. oh how i laughed.

“i must have one of those, ” i said, as two bikini-clad girls popped out of a plastic orange and a plastic ice-cream cone-cup, chirping “it’s fruity! and creamy”.

and it really is. advertising has never been so truthful.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 7 April 2004 at 8:05 am

permalink | filed under drink, tv

waking up at 6.30 in the morning is wrong, more so when you’ve been waking up every two hours since 11.30 the night before. what with the clocks turning back to mark the end of summer time, the sun’s way too brutal at 6.30 to be slept through anyway. oh when will the soothing darkness of winter be upon us? (please come back in winter to hear me complain about the sun that sets at 4.40 in the afternoon)

the 7am bowl of cereal (flakes of grains, plus raisins and apricots) will only be in its most literal sense, a break fast. what you’ll really hang out for is the 11.30 burst of kitchen activity — a flurry of mixing and boiling and slicing and stiring over low heat and toasting, that mere minutes later has you all twitchy with excitement and glee.

buttered toast with a scrambled egg, sliced tomato and avocado, all salted and peppered, and a cup of sweetish tea, and then just when you think it’s all over, a crunchy anzac biscuit.

maybe in a few hours i could have waffles and syrup and bacon. what i need to do is make a button that says “breakfast all day”.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 2 April 2004 at 12:10 pm

permalink | filed under breakfast, kid

Monthly Archives: April 2004

best monday ever

road trip report

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