ragingyoghurt » 2006

Monthly Archives: January 2006

as nellie says, buy first, think later.

after i bought the bumper box of 30 assorted mochi for the bargainous price of $7.95, i thought it over, and then tried to get my aunt to take some of it home. “no, no, no,” she said, “i don’t want to eat these fattening things.”

but after she left i checked the nutritional information on the back of the box, and discovered that this magical mochi has 0% fat, 0% protein and 0% dietary fibre; one serving size of mochi — three pieces — is only 67kj. which is surprising, really, as one of the mochi is filled with peanut butter.

this box, almost a kilo of squishy delight, contains a selection of green tea, sesame, taro, red bean and peanut mochi. over the course of the day i managed to sample all five, and i can’t really say which is my favourite. the green tea one isn’t maccha flavoured, as i had assumed, but it’s understandable since this is not japanese but taiwanese mochi, produced by the royal family food co., ltd.

the sesame one is gritty outside and in, coated with black and white seeds, and filled with a ground black sesame paste. it’s the kind of thing that makes you check your teeth before smiling at anyone, after you eat it.

the taro one is a lovely shade of lilac, smooth through and through. the red bean one is as you’d expect, though sprinkled with perhaps more rice flour than necessary, and will leave a powdery white residue on your red carpet when you’re done.

the peanut one is strangely savoury, with its salty smooth peanut butter inside. i’m not a great fan of peanuts, but felt the same way about this as i do when someone else buys a jar of peanut butter, and it’s sitting there in the pantry, and one day he makes a slice of peanut butter toast, and i just have to have a little bite.

the little paper cases have been colour-coordinated with their contents; the red bean mochi sits in a white case, which is printed with fruit: pineapples, grapes, cherries… and the cherry is the same size as the pineapple and the bunch of grapes. that’s my kind of cherry.

some time in the week, this blog will be featured on australianreader.com, as part of their summer feature: delicious indulgence. it’s poetry, fiction and nonfiction by emerging writers, from now until 22 january. go see!

posted by ragingyoghurt on 16 January 2006 at 9:19 pm

permalink | filed under blog, cake

o how nice to see krissie and jude and bim and edie, who drove all the way down from the mountains to grace us with their presence. maeve hardly gets to properly meet other little people (as opposed to pointing at random children we pass in the street), so it was a great novelty to have two friendly young ‘uns for the afternoon.

our party of six became those groups of people you hate, who trundle up the sidewalk with multiple prams, obstructing traffic. but balmain has the biggest number of pavement-roaming prams i’ve encountered in a suburb (although krissie claims penrith actually holds that title) so i’m sure everyone we hindered was used to it.

after walking up and down the main drag in an effort to get jude off to sleep, we ended up at circle cafe, where i went with nellicent once and a homeless man followed us in off the street and stood next to our table for the longest time, occasionally making conversation, before eventually pulling up a spare seat to sit down. not only does circle cafe have a breakfast-all-day menu, they also do the best ever vegetarian big breakfast: an enormous oval platter covered with two large slices of crunchy sourdough toast, two pats of yummy salted butter, scrambled eggs (though you can choose fried or poached), creamed spinach, sauteed whole button mushrooms, hash brown and three grilled tomatoes. and a sprig of parsley.

i ordered maevis a grilled cheese sandwich off the kid’s menu, which turned out to be old skool plastic cheese melted onto square white toast, and slightly mouldy on the edges, but that was ok because she ended up quite liking the eggs and spinach and tomato and sourdough… and that still left a whole slice of sourdough left on my plate at the end of the meal.

afterwards, as the drizzle returned, we sat on my couch, and krissie counseled me against buying “the complete new yorker” on dvd from the internet. for a couple of months i’ve been entertaining the thought of owning every single issue of the magazine ever published, since 1925, albeit on DVD — eight DVDs, but the original pricetag (US$100 plus $65 postage) was a little upsetting. over at amazon, it’s being sold for US$61 plus $6.50 postage, but my computer has a colourful history of randomly not reading DVDs, and what do i need with a set of shiny, limited edition “new yorker” drink coasters?

not so much. instead i am going to buy comics!

posted by ragingyoghurt on 13 January 2006 at 10:09 pm

permalink | filed under around town, breakfast

can i do it: three posts in a day? it’s just, i was in the asian supermarket at world square today, and right after i paid for a tin of maccha, a box of 30 assorted mochi, a biscuit that maeve had chewed to smithereens in its packaging (45c was a small price to pay for twenty minutes of quiet, contented child), and the shiny green box you see here, containing maccha and red bean flavoured chocolate mushrooms… i saw the shiny pink pouch you see here, containing happy candy. happy cherry candy. i had to join the queue again.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 12 January 2006 at 10:25 pm

permalink | filed under candy, kid, packaging, shoping

here i sit with a baker’s dozen of sweet fat cherries. it is allowed, because these days i am a baker, don’t you know. ok, so it was just another loaf of banana bread, but it is a damn fine loaf of banana bread. i’m sure this is because it’s such a forgiving recipe; even with slightly less butter and quite a bit less sugar, and more bananas, it comes out good. this time ’round i threw in a cup of the sweet fat cherries, quartered, in place of blueberries, and i want to sit down and eat slice after slice, toasted and buttered.

week number three sans boy is coming to a close, and things are going much better than i anticipated. really quite good, actually. as he fixes up his country estate — digging up floors, pouring new concrete, liberating asbestos, hosing himself down at the end of the day with cold water in the backyard — me and the kid have sorted out a routine (starting at 5.30 most mornings) involving hanging out laundry; meals on the balcony; an occasional luncheon (with chips!) at the portuguese chicken shop up the street; walks in the park; perhaps a swim on an extra sweltery afternoon; cartoons and picture books; bathtime; storytime; and “hmm… isn’t it almost bedtime?”.

i have just enough work on for maeve’s morning and afternoon naps, and no resentment towards the boy sitting down and watching tv instead of attending to child… because i have to do it all myself. since the boy isn’t here to help me out by cooking dinner and using every single pot, pan and utensil in the kitchen, i have about half the number of dishes to do at the end of the night. the end of the night is a lot earlier because i eat dinner with maeve at 6.30 instead of 8 or 9 after she goes to sleep. there is no loud primetime tv, and no snoring in the wee hours sending me out to the couch. could i get used to this? eeeeeyes.

last night i shut down the computer and made up a sundae of raspberries, icecream and yoghurt, and a muji green tea biscuit. i ate it in bed, reading a “new yorker”, which maeve had dropped in the bath a month ago, and which i dried by blotting and smoothing each page with kitchen paper, before sunning it on the hot tiles in the backyard. bliss.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 12 January 2006 at 9:05 pm

permalink | filed under boy, ice cream, kid

what is it with the hoarding? surely not because my grandmother lived through the war? these boxes of cardboard and cardboard boxes, the magazines — you know those stories, the jams, the teas… right now it’s chocolate bars. i go up to the shops knowing that i cannot buy another bottle of jam or packet of tea or bar of chocolate, but despite my best intentions…

despite the valrhona bar (from my kind mother), the pack of haigh’s chocolate-covered marzipan (from my kind father), the scharfen-berger block (from my kind sister, and it’s really cooking chocolate, so it doesn’t count), the slab of italian chocolate nougat (from xmas(s) past… oh dear) all stashed away in a shoe box, i left the supermarket the other day with a lindt intense lemon bar: 47% cocoa with bits of lemon and almond slivers (and oh! apple pulp and pineapple), and then a day later, all giddy like a schoolgirl from being in the wonderland that is about life, i bought (raspberries-blueberries-half-a-pineapple-and) a grizzly bar.

the grizzly bar is one in the managerie of the endangered species chocolate company. the display at checkout was row upon row of chocolate bars with wildlife photographs on the labels: zebras, giraffes, koalas, snow leopards, marine iguanas… the kid started making monkey noises at the chimpanzee bar (72% dark chocolate), but because she is also partial to bears, i managed to get away with the grizzly (70% with raspberries).

you get more chocolate for less money compared to the dagoba roseberry bar and, bonus, it feels creamier on the tongue. later, sitting at the computer, i was going to have a square, and suddenly the entire top row was gone. the thing is, the squares on this bar aren’t even all that clearly delineated; there are suggestive mounds where you can break around if you are so inclined.

at the store, i turned the bar over to see where it was made: unsurprisingly, oregon. 10% of profits are donated to protect endangered species, and the inside of the label contains conservation tips such as:

“Don’t Feed the Bears
Bears that obtain human food, birdseed, pet food, or garbage quickly lose their natural fear of humans. This poses a risk for both human and bear safety. If you visit or live in bear country, learn ways to secure your food and trash.
Protect Our Planet…
It’s the Only One with Chocolate.”

speaking of bears… we have been watching a really good cartoon in the mornings: eddy and the bear. or at least, i have been watching while the kid does her rounds of the living room. nellie, i must insist that you click on the trailer link.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 12 January 2006 at 11:40 am

permalink | filed under chocolate, kid, tv

my sister, who keeps me in constant supply of cool comics, recently sent me a “drawn and quarterly showcase” in the mail. you see the drawing above? it is by a french-canadian girl, geneviève elverum/castrée. her pages in the book made me want to fall over and curl up into a ball. in a good way. there are pages completely covered in intricate ferns. and there is an elephant. and sadness and wistfulness.

sigh.

i used to draw. i even used to want to draw a comic, but i think that time has passed. a combination of extreme laziness and the thought hanging over my head that i couldn’t do it: self-defeating blah.

these days i lie on the floor with scraps of paper, blunt pencils and the kid, and i draw dogs and cats and lions and cows. tigers, ducks, monkeys, frogs, elephants. i tried to draw a rabbit the other morning, but it turned out to be a totoro.

gripped by a short and uncharacteristic burst of motivation over xmas, i drew this:

because who doesn’t like that light and fruity taste of baby yoghurt? i find myself licking the spoon, just short of nicking mouthfuls myself, when i dish out the kid’s breakfast in the morning. you can buy it on a bib for that grubby baby in your life… or maybe even for yourself! we all spill brown and red down our fronts from time to time, no?

posted by ragingyoghurt on 10 January 2006 at 10:12 am

permalink | filed under bookshelf, kid, nellie, werk

early on new year’s day, my aunt telephoned me and said, “eh, it’s going to be 41° today. you’d better come over and sit in my aircon.” except it wasn’t 41°; it was 44°. no wait, 45°.

in her shiny new white kitchen, we made ice kacang. just a basic selection of hidden treasures — grass jelly, sweetcorn kernels, kidney beans, atap chee, preserved jackfruit — beneath a mound of shaved ice drizzled (or drenched, as the case may be) in evaporated milk and gula melaka. there would have been rose syrup too, but the mantra i’d been chanting to myself all morning (“remember to bring the rose syrup. remember to bring the rose syrup”) had been instantly forgotten when it came time to load bag of toys, bag of nappies and eating gear, bag of extra clothes, car seat, baby seat and baby into the car.

due to my aunt’s persuasive nature and cooking prowess, we ended up staying the night, and then another night, and had the spare clothes and nappies not run out and a print deadline not been pressing up against my forehead, i’m sure there would have been a third night as well.

which is just as well, because stepping back into the apartment on tuesday morning, we were engulfed in a rather fruity odour. yes, so sunday i hadn’t taken out the garbage because i thought we’d be back later that afternoon. i will not make any such assumptions again, because a very hot day followed by a very wet day turns your ordinary bag of kitchen scraps into a pile of wriggly little maggots.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 6 January 2006 at 7:42 pm

permalink | filed under around town, snacks

o what an inauspicious start to the new year. somehow my < div > tags have become magic spells, which spirit away everything that follows them.

what i wrote last night was that i had a choice between writing an entry, watching reruns of “lost”, reading and sleeping. the blog won, but clearly i should have spent the hour watching “lost” instead. first time ’round, it seemed like the kid would wake for a feed in the last fifteen minutes of every episode. that and the fact that the promos kept promising things that were never delivered… in the end “lost” lost me. i am assured however, in the promos for the next season, that i will find out what’s at the bottom of the hole, in the first three minutes. we shall see.

new year’s eve, me and maeve were talking to the friendly neightbours across the way, and i asked what my balcony was like for that night’s fireworks. “this is the place to be,” they said, and pointed to a large flat thing being towed across the water into our line of sight. “look! here comes the barge from which they set off the fireworks.”

come midnight, i was perched on the balcony, chin on the railing. the fireworks were right there and the building trembled from fifteen minutes of crackle-crackle-BOOM. miraculously, maeve slept through it all.

this year i resolve to be better.