ragingyoghurt » 2005

Monthly Archives: November 2005

i don’t know how these things happen.

saturday morning i left the house, leaving a speech bubble trailing behind me: “im just going to the apple shop up the street. and then maybe i’ll go into the city. i’m not buying a computer today. i’m just going to have a look. i’m not buying a computer today. i’m just researching. i’m not buying…”

going to the apple shop is like going to a cake shop, all those things i want to lick and touch, behind glass display cases. the cake shop is generally more fun, because i usually come away with something, and in the process i haven’t had to think of smart-sounding questions to ask the salesperson so he doesn’t think i’m a bimbo.

so, saturday, i think i asked about RAM and processors, and running classic, and so they knew i was a savvy consumer, i also asked if they give discounts for cash sales. (“yes, but not much,” was the reply.)

and then the bus to the city, and a bowl of hae mee (which, due to the two halves of a prawn and the 27 strips of chicken gracing the noodles, should be renamed “kae mee”), and a lift up to electronics where i asked about RAM and processors and classic, and “what do you mean, i won’t be able to start up in OS9 unless i have a hardware-specific version of the installation software and where do i get this from and are you serious? my friends or ebay?”

at one point, one of the questions i asked was, “what’s the difference between this model and this model?”, identical but for 10% off the one hidden in the shadows.

“oh. this one,” said the salesperson, pointing to the slightly more expensive one gleaming in the spotlights, “has a faster graphics card…”
“um. uh huh?”
“but also, if you take this one we will throw in microsoft office and a bag.”
“oh. um.” i said. “what colour is the bag?”

shortly after that i had to take the lift back downstairs. besides telling me that the bag was available in black and red or black and green, the salesperson also told me that the promotion ended today, no, actually, tomorrow. i had decisions to make. i needed strength. i had a weak latte and a tiny chocolate-raspberry brownie. i read the product brochures over and over. i sent out two SOS SMSs. one reply came immediately: “do it”. the other, much later: “i was asleep”.

procrastinating, i got off the elevator at christmas foods and finally surrendered to the pink and silver-foiled wonder that is lindt’s new petites merveilles, that i had stalked twice previously while prowling the twinkly aisles. that gnawing feeling in my stomach intensified as i rode the escalator up a floor, but i couldn’t tell if it was the coffee or the impending purchase.

“ah! you’re back,” said the salesperson. “you went for a walk to think about it?”
“i had some chocolate and thought about it,” i said, and, “i’m a little bit stressed out right now.”

and so. it sits gleaming on my desk right now, this magnificent silver beast. stone cold. i haven’t really used it yet, because the battery doesn’t charge. two calls to the tech support boffins, and still the battery sits at 0% full — the optimist in me would say 100% empty — and the time needed to fully charge fluctuates between 144 and 200 minutes, even though it’s been plugged in for three days.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 30 November 2005 at 5:12 pm

permalink | filed under around town, chocolate, grumble, shoping

i bought a tray of brussels sprouts some time ago, and they’d since been sitting at the bottom of the veggie drawer in the fridge. i’d say about three weeks, as they were purchased while i was at the fish markets with my mother. of course.

i remember, when they were still fresh, or at least, freshly procured, that i said to the boy, “and i’m going to roast these! with bacon!” to which he wrinkled up his nose and said, “i like them boiled.”

“but,” i said, “roasted, with bits of bacon!”

and so nothing ensued.

last night i announced, “i’m going to make brussels sprouts pasta. with bacon.”
“you could use the leeks.”
“um.”

the bacon was also from when my mother was here. and what’s this? half a tub of rocket, from when my mother was here? sure. and this pesto? three weeks old and counting? ah what the hell.

it started with butter and olive oil, and then gradually, bacon fat; it could not go wrong. in my bowl it was slurpy and salty and bitter ’round the edges.

—

meanwhile, in the mailroom today, look what stellou sent me! the new chris ware book and a large bar of pink cherry nougat only slightly soft and squidgy from the perils of international post. it was just sunday that i stood in front of a bookcase at kinokuniya, gazing wistfully at said volume and then stroking it most gollum-like. and the nougat? well, it’s pink! and there are cherries! and it’s from carluccio. thank you, nellie! happy birthday to me!

posted by ragingyoghurt on 24 November 2005 at 10:48 am

permalink | filed under bookshelf, dinner, nellie, snacks

here is second breakfast: a perfect boiled egg, salted and peppered, then smooshed onto buttered sourdough toast.

here is a rotten egg: i was sent an unsolicited email yesterday from a publicist at a publishing house, heralding the release of an upcoming “fictionalized memoir”, a “novel as a food diary” about “a young woman who equates food with love and with disastrous consequences”. the publicist — let’s call her ms. matsumoto — also offered me the chance to announce this book to my readers, or to interview the author. she also pasted into the “to” field of the email, the email addresses of about 80 other food bloggers.

i sent her a reply, thanking her for spamming me and 80 other people and EXPOSING OUR EMAIL ADDRESS TO ALL AND SUNDRY, and i was surprised to receive an apology from her this morning.

“i’m so very sorry! i assumed that food bloggers shared a sense of community and had asked an intern to work from a list called food porn.”

thing is, i consider this only a sort-of food blog. i don’t think i am as committed to the eating or, more precisely, the documenting or cooking as are others out there. so it’s nice to feel validated by being pulled from a food porn list as a target for spam.

and of course i feel terrible at letting the team down, what with my grandious lack of a sense of community and all.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 23 November 2005 at 9:46 pm

permalink | filed under blog, breakfast, grumble

i finally gave in to the sandwich board outside starbucks yesterday, the bright red one that announced, “christmas drinks are here!”. the larger-than-life pictures of creme brulee frappucino and mint mocha frappucino looked most enticing, but two weeks after the sign appeared i still hadn’t ventured in because not being a great fan of minted whatever, and feeling somewhat dubious about the potential egginess of a creme brulee-flavoured coffee, what i really wanted was a gingerbread latte.

still, i thought i should give the creme brulee a try, for the cause, and so a bit tentatively, i trundled (with pram) up to the counter and ordered one. a small one. just in case.

but because i am not so good with prolonged eye contact, immedately after placing my order i cast my gaze down to the counter… and saw a laminated poster of three christmas drinks. they did have the gingerbread after all.

“oh! you have the gingerbread!” i exclaimed.
“yes,” said the countergirl.
“um. oh. i’ll have that one then. i actually did want the gingerbread.”
“that’s cool. do you still want just a tall one?”

[ i find only one thing ridiculous about starbucks, and it is that the small drink is called “tall”, because apparently an espresso is counted as “short”, so. let’s not even talk about “grande” or “venti”. ]

i was impressed at the quick-thinkingness of the countergirl. there was no reason for her not to think that since i had actually really wanted the gingerbread frappucino, i would now order a bucket of it. but, no, thank you.

however, since i was with child, and had to keep said child away from my whipped cream, and feed her her hot chocolate from a spoon, and sneak some reads of my 50c newspaper, and make sure she wasn’t eating the red crayon there in the sunny starbucks courtyard, i was somewhat distracted, and will no doubt have to return another day and give it another go.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 23 November 2005 at 9:32 pm

permalink | filed under around town, drink, kid

this morning, across the innernet, i asked saffron, “if i got into the city early, would it be foolish to try out one of those new starbucks xmas drinks? creme brulee latte frappacino!!”

to which she replied, “umm, yes it would :-I ”

a sterner emoticon never existed.

in the end, it turned out to be very sensible advice, because after spending an hour and a half trying on underwear, there was no time for starbucks. 2.30 came, and it was time for afternoon tea! past the gleaming timber doors of the globe bar at the observatory, augustus gloop was already ensconced in a large couch with a cup of milky tea. before too long, saffron was there too, with sister and friend in tow. and so.

there were five girls hungry for cream. there were three scorpio birthdays (and a fourth just out by two days), three flutes of pink champange, two pots of assam tea, one pot of ceylon, and one — a lovely silver thing — of english breakfast. there was a three-tier stand with fruit scones up top, crustless sandwiches in the middle, and tiny sweet things down below. there was not quite enough dollopy cream and really good jam to make it through the second round of scones, and when we asked for more, the second helping was half the size of the first. there was service so unobtrusive as to be non-existent, humph, and when you pay each for dainty little mouthfuls of food, maybe you don’t want to ask thrice for your tea, or wish that someone would come by and offer you more hot water for your depleted teapot.

for the record, the sandwiches were: salmon and capers, ham and cheese, cucumber, and egg salad. the sweet things were: sweet, sweet almondy caramelly slice thing, chocolate friand with three nuts (the nuts were: pistachio, walnut and almond), and white chocolatey custard fruit tart (the fruits were: blueberry, raspberry, strawberry and mango). you will see from the photograph that i couldn’t decide what i wanted as the last taste in my mouth. turned out it was the fruit tart.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 20 November 2005 at 9:56 pm

permalink | filed under around town, cake, snacks

oh all right. a photo. day five of banana bread, and it’s still going strong.

we spent the lunching hours of saturday in the old neighbourhood. it was time for maeve’s twelve-month immunisations, and upon discovering that the balmain doctors would charge for the privilege, we packed maeve, half an orange and a slice of banana bread into the car and drove to the surry hills medical centre, where for children at least, it’s still free. there we encountered a frontdeskman so rude and unpleasant and snatchy of medicare cards out of my hand, that we had to immediately go next door to café mint to while away our estimated one hour wait.

and what a pleasant hour it was.

“what’s the chickpea salad like?” i asked the waiter.
“well… you’d really have to like chickpeas because there are a lot of them.”
“but what is it like? are the chickpeas crunchy, or soft… or al dente? does it come with leaves? or other vegetables?”
the waiter was very patient. “it is not like a regular salad,” he said. “there are other things in it, like apricots –”
“oh, ok, i’ll have that!”

there was also a grapefruit and almond frappé.

the chickpea salad was all chickpeas, with torn herbs and little cubes of pumpkin, and no apricots. instead, baby figs! it was a big bowl of cool, served with hot shards of za’atar toast and fried halloumi.

the baby sat calmly, mostly, and deigned to be forkfed chickpeas… until a supplier walked past with a bunch of bananas. “ba.nana.” she intoned. her eyes followed the yellow trajectory.

“na-naa.”

“naa-naaaaa.”

and suddenly the chef was striding out of the kitchen and offering her a banana. as simple as that. all i have to do now is train her to say “chickpea salad” and i’ll be set.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 20 November 2005 at 8:57 pm

permalink | filed under around town, kid, lunch

for the last week or so, i’ve had three bananas going soft and ripe on the kitchen counter. not just leopard-spotted ripe, but dark, slug-like ripe. and really, i guess i started out with three, but the boy kept cutting them up for baby snacks. at one point i was sitting downstairs at the computer and heard him in the kitchen making knife-extracting, snacktime noises, and had to yell upstairs most unbecomingly, “i’m saving those bananas to cook with!”

for the last week or so, blueberries have been plentiful and cheap… well, affordable at least. remember that time we went to fratelli fresh and reached our hand out for a punnet of blueberries, and then recoiled and fell over frothing when we saw the pricetag? it has not been like that this time. at the supermarket, blueberries were going for a song (.94 a punnet, which, ok, is just over twice the price of an song at the iTunes store. a song and dance then).

for the last week or so, my father was in town. while my mother was here we discussed her dumpling skins, her kenwood chef, and what her old mixer was doing these days, now that she had mr kenwood. it turned out that old mr philips was languishing in a plastic bag in the back of a kitchen cupboard. “aiyah,” she said, “i should have brought it for you.” aiyah, i could only agree. and so a txt was sent and a box was packed, and when my father got off the plane a couple weeks later, he came bearing an electric mixer.

there is a point to all these little stories, and that point is everything came together sweetly — even with just one and a half black bananas — in a loaf tin in a 175° oven. yes, when i tipped it out, it were the most perfect banana-blueberry loaf ever. i didn’t even take a picture of it, because all you have to do is imagine the most perfect banana-blueberry loaf ever, and it was that. i had some fresh hot out of the oven yesterday afternoon, and some more toasted with butter this morning, and i will have more again tomorrow breakfastime, and it will be crunchy on the outside, light and moist on the inside, fat blueberries running deep blue stains over everything.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 17 November 2005 at 9:56 pm

permalink | filed under cake, kitchen

and the winner is…

me! for i am the proud new owner of a lovely pink beehouse teapot. ’twas a birthday gift from the boy, following such hint-droppery as, “i know what i want for my birthday: a beehouse teapot!” and “i have seen the pink one up the street, at the shop near bray’s books, called plenty. i have seen the yellow one in the same shop, except at bondi junction.”

for those of you following the saga of raspberry-coconut versus lemon curd, the loser was… also me, for when i rocked up to the markets on saturday, the cake stall was an empty counter between thai food and hippy vegetarian stodge. hungh.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 15 November 2005 at 1:15 pm

permalink | filed under cake

behold the bar italia iced chocolate. the surly counter boy took my order, and then turned away. when he faced front again, he held a drinking glass packed with chocolate gelato, to which he added as much cold chocolate milk as he could. and then he splashed a glug of normal milk in for good measure.

it was a luscious thing, but it threw a wrench in my post-cannelloni gelato plans. out back under the tarp, two sets of parents (three, if you count me and the boy), a baby, an aunt, a cousin and someone new, somehow managed to consume most of a lot of pasta. i turned thirty-three. my mother got on a plane. and just now, in two txts, she reports from the front:

“now in darwin to offload ill girl” and “stewardess fell, hit head, was unconscious, then vomited. suspected internal bleed.”

posted by ragingyoghurt on 13 November 2005 at 10:41 pm

permalink | filed under ice cream, lunch

having recently read that the girl who ate everything eats 100g chocolate each day, and then having somehow drawn myself into a handbag reveal exercise, and then having suddenly looked up and seen the carnage of confectionery on my desk, i thought i should catalogue it, because i don’t normally eat like this. no, really.

what we have here are:
– a bag of lindt christmas chocolate almonds (2 remaining, see previous entry)
– a cherry ripe wrapper (i actually only ate a third of this, after handing over the bigger half to the boy)
– an unopened bar of valrhona dark chocolate with candied orange peel (a present from my mother)
– a jacques torres box containing:
— an unopened ritter sport marzipan bar
— the last square of a ritter sport yogurt bar
— a handful of addictive little japanese chocolates
– coincidentally, a package of poofy badges, from robyn, who started all this.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 13 November 2005 at 10:41 am

permalink | filed under chocolate

Monthly Archives: November 2005

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