ragingyoghurt » 2006

Monthly Archives: March 2006

i had already shut down the computer for the night (what! only 8.30!) and was feeling so sorry for myself that i wasn’t even going to make myself a sundae to cheer myself up. fortunately i came to the same conclusion that you did, just then: it is stupid to let abject self pity get in the way of dessert. so here i am, back, with a cup of vanilla green tea and a glass of double chocolate ice cream, chocolate sauce and strawberries. i feel better already.

why, apart from the ice cream, am i feeling so crumpled? the spongihead is upon me! and with it, the sneezing, the drippy nose, the mildly throbbing temples, the smarting eyes, the tinge of a sore throat… (so clearly i should not be having this chocolate sauce — so heaty!)

but more aggravatingly…

about a month ago i was offered a job laying out an annual report. at that stage none of the copy had been written, and so based on the calculation that i would need two weeks to design it, and the printers would need two weeks to print it, and the report was needed in about that time, i declined the job.

“that time”, you might have surmised, is now. you are sharp. a couple of weeks ago i was contacted by the editor who’d been hired to pull the report together. she explained that it was in fact a concise 20 page book, and that each page would have essentially the same layout: a small picture, a highlighted quote, and a slab of text. it was a tight schedule, but once the design was sorted ahead of the wednesday copy deadline, the text could be dropped in easily and quickly, and it would be at the printers on friday. today. somehow they’d managed to find some magical printer who’d do the job in 24 hours.

i should have been more wary of this straighforward task when the sample story came through early in the week, and despite having agreed on the style of the report (based on someone else’s annual report they’d seen and liked), the word count was about three (if not four) times the length of what was required. of course, of course you can fit 750 words into an A5 page, with a picture and a headline and a picture caption and a quote. oh yes, of course.

wednesday came, and then thursday, and now friday — printer day! and just right now, 9.13pm, the first half of the text has arrived in my inbox. along the way, i’d been sent reassuring (yet threatening) emails saying things like, “text arriving later today” and “first half of the text arriving tomorrow”, and then the one yesterday afternoon that made me laugh (it was not a pretty laugh):

“I will have half text pages for you tonight.
Images tomorrow.
Financials over the weekend.
Aim for printer Monday depending on the time you need…??…”

on top of all that, the book has grown to 36 pages.

on top of that, this is one of the sentences in the 36 pages:
“While one of the positives of this project was that the participants were the center of the project, and they were driving it artistically, because it was their lived experience and there were so many big issues that they had a strong desire to deliver them.”

but wait! this is the next sentence:
“The process was cathartic and emotionally difficult for the filmmakers, but highly rewarding to create something which has a broader reach than their own communities.”

i’m the graphic designer though, right? i should just typeset it 8.2/11.5pt and leave it at that. it’s just, i can’t. i sit here, reading while i lay it out, and maybe this is what’s causing my face to hurt.

but, haha, this is where i say, “HAHA! i have fooled you, you april fool!”.

but, no. alas it is only 31 march.

i am so grumpy. and my ice cream is gone.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 31 March 2006 at 8:48 pm

permalink | filed under grumble, ice cream, werk

there was a brief moment on friday, as i walked down the crap end of pitt street with a box of cupcakes in my hand and central station rising up before me, when i thought i was in new york. sure, it was the crap bit of midtown manhattan that flashed through my head, but i was there, man.

how distant that moment is now, with me sitting here eating vegemite toast much too quickly, stealing minutes to blog in between too many jobs that involve fitting too much text into too small a page.

but, friday. cupcakes. rewind. << i'd been wanting to go to cupcakes on pitt for months and months, even before reading about saffron’s happy adventure back in november. but somehow i never got to the city before closing time, or i was never in that part of the city, or i just, um, forgot. but, friday. cupcakes on pitt just happened to be on the way to where i needed to be (the department of immigation).

it was like it was meant to be: the boy was off sick from work, the child was having her nap at home, the buses conspired to run off-schedule… and one of the two little tables in the shop was empty. there is a cupcake and coffee deal for $5 (cupcakes $3.50 each), so i had a latte, even though i’d given up coffee again. as for the cupcake…

how long does it take you to choose a cupcake? is there a length of time, after which it becomes embarrassing (or just freakish) to stand swaying before a display of eight-ish frosted beauties, trying to pick the one that will be just right? in the end, the classic combination of pink and brown won. the smiley counter girl brought it over, my chocolate cupcake with strawberry frosting. it was a bold, pretty thing, and when i turned it around, i discovered its deformity: a overhang of cake where it had risen unevenly in the baking tray. i was delighted, because… well, more cake. but that countergirl, did she know something about me? spooky.

i tried to make it last, but the cake was so light and moist and chocolatey and the frosting… see, i like the idea of twice as much frosting, but i’m thankful that they took the sensible route here; it was quite buttery, with a delicate strawberry flavour. and no doubt you would have noted the generous curls of good dark chocolate perched so jauntily on the top. it was really good, and just the right, sensible size.

it was so tasty that later, faced with the decision all over again for takeaway cupcakes, i eschewed the white chocolate cupcake, the dark chocolate cupcake, the plain chocolate, the jaffa on chocolate, the strawberry on vanilla, the passionfruit, the cappuccino, and picked the chocolate with strawberry frosting again. the cupcakes here are a flavoured frosting on either a vanilla or chocolate cake base (which saved my brain from imploding while trying to decide frosting as well as cake flavours), so i thought it would be good for the survey to also pick a vanilla one. this ended up being the lemon cupcake, topped with a modest swirl of baked meringue.

[ i have this fantasy of buying a slice of foot-high lemon meringue pie whenever i pass one by in a cafe window; it always seems like way too much meringue, though i suspect i would eat it all, and perhaps regret it, maybe.]

i wondered if there might be a dab of lemon curd beneath the meringue, and cutting into it when i got home, i discovered that there was. hurrah!

posted by ragingyoghurt on 28 March 2006 at 11:13 am

permalink | filed under around town, cake

who likes ice cream? bunnies do! no wait, i mean, i do! sometimes (rarely) i make my own, in the machine we were given a couple of xmases ago. this year there has been the coconut-lime-turkish delight extravaganza (coconut milk + cream + sugar + lime rind + lime juice + toasted coconut + bits of turkish delight = over the top confection with a curious hint of savoury flavour) and the lemon-buttermilk-blueberry affair (buttermilk + milk + brown sugar syrup + lemon juice + lemon rind + blueberries). i made that one on a very hot afternoon, so it didn’t freeze quite enough, but it had a lovely light texture, like uncle louie g‘s italian ices. oh cherry chip explosion, how i miss you!

so far i’ve avoided those recipes with the rich egg custard bases — a combination of fear of lots of egg yolks and fear of undercooking the egg yolks and contracting salmonella, and ice cream’s not about fear, dammit — but so far i haven’t noticed anything amiss. maybe for the next one i’ll try that handy hint i read about, where the homecooked custard base is replaced with a carton of supermarket custard. maybe i’ll just go out and buy a tub of sara lee.

what i did buy recently was a new drawing pen, made by the mitsubishi pencil company. i love it! how it glides across the paper, leaving a smooth, shiny black trail. i drew the bunny over the last couple of days, and it’s in the running — run rabbit run! — to be put on a threadless tshirt. if you could be so kind as to click on the thingy below and vote for it, i would be most appreciative (because, i’m sorry, you will need to sign up). oh no! it’s been taken out of the running due to a poor showing in the first 24 hours. harsh. ah well, click on the thingy below if you’d like to see the whole bunny.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 25 March 2006 at 10:26 am

permalink | filed under ice cream, kitchen

shall i finish telling you about the picnic, and the tart, from before?

it’s just that, if a group of people goes into a kebab shop to pick up some supplies for a picnic, you might imagine that there may be a platter of meats shaved off the great revolving thing behind the counter, if not from the special grill set up by the door, with those kebabs that are minced lamb moulded onto a mean skewer, or chunks of marinated meat and onions; several tubs of salads and dips; maybe a handful of falafel; and a fat bundle of bread — maybe even a couple of those tasty-looking ones drizzled with oil and za’atar — for everyone to share.

instead, there was an unspoken consensus that each mini-group within the entourage would cater for itself. hence, boy’s olds bought themselves a doner kebab plate, boy’s sister bought herself a doner kebab plate and a bag of chips for her son, boy’s other sister bought herself a vegetarian pide and a can of coke zero, and boy tried to buy us and the kid a chicken kebab plate and a falafel plate but the shopgirl misheard and made us roll-ups.

thusly laden, we bundled ourselves back into our cars and drove to the botanic gardens, but waiting in line with our picnic, we saw the sign on the gatehouse telling us to stay on the path at all times, which is just not condusive to picnicking, now is it?

no.

we ended up at the picnic tables a short hike away, close to where some kids were playing with a heavy metal chain hanging off a tree branch. i suppose it used to be some sort of swing, but now, without a seat, it was just a braining waiting to happen, flung about as it was with glee and stupidity.

but we got through the meats without incident, and then there was baklava on the table, and the custard eclairs, and well, the plum tart had been there from the start. “this baklava is so fresh,” someone said, lips glistening with sugar syrup. “the chocolate on this eclair is really good quality,” someone said. (it was!) “it’s a pity we didn’t think to bring any tea,” someone said, “because it would be very nice to have with your tart.”

and then, with the tart still pristine, someone said, “i couldn’t eat another thing.” and reached for another piece of baklava.

so the tart went back into the car as we walked round the garden, and after the garden, no-one wanted tart still. well, i wanted tart, but no-one else did. i asked the boy if we should cut the tart up and give some to his family to take home. i mean, i had made it to share with them, but it seemed that these were people who did not want tart. could i force it upon them? was it more polite to leave them with tart or without? in the end, the boy cut a portion of tart that was uncomfortably just short of half, whacked it on a paper plate and saw it unceremoniously into his mother’s arms.

when i got home and finally had a piece of my plum tart with a cup of tea, i j’regretted that i had brought it along to that shamster picnic. i should have kept it all for myself. it was fantastic.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 24 March 2006 at 10:05 pm

permalink | filed under around town, cake, grumble, kitchen

i was ready to leave at 11, but due to dawdling on everyone’s part — though least of all, mine — it wasn’t until after noon that i left the house, and when i reached the top of the street, i saw the bus pull up at the stop, and then pull away. this turned out to be a good thing, because i walked a few more blocks, to starbucks.

it’s been a few weeks since the new promotional banner appeared on the footpath: for “coffee with a taste of the tradewinds”, the banana caramel frappucino. i was sceptical at first; i mean, banana and coffee! and also, i had sworn off coffee (again) a couple months ago after a raspberry mocha knocked me out for half the day. but then five minutes later the jaunty yellow banner won me over. i had just been biding my time. today was it!

the chalkboard behind the counter said “we’ve gone bananas!”, and in case you doubted the conviction, there was also a drawing of two bunches of bananas. so, apart from the banana caramel frappucino, there was banana caramel cream, banana caramel bread, banana cake and banana chocolate chip biscuit slice. do not think that there would be no customer so obsessive as to tailor a complete banana-themed meal; just before xmas i snuck in there and had a gingerbread frappucino and a slice of gingerbread loaf — a dense brick frosted in thick cream cheese and bright orange candied ginger.

it wasn’t until i was mid-way through ordering that i looked up at the menu board to check the prices and discovered that there is also banana mocha frappucino, which immediately cancelled out the banana caramel frappucino. sitting in the corner, reading annie proulx, i was pleased to find that it tastes like chocolate and banana paddle pops.

such are the little pleasures to be had in a child-free afternoon. there was also: a fantasy about buying a new teacup; a slow trawl through the borders magazine aisles; the following conversation:
“oh, and may i also have a brownie please?”
“would you like a big one or a small one?”

posted by ragingyoghurt on 19 March 2006 at 6:22 pm

permalink | filed under around town, drink, snacks

two weeks ago… or was it three? either way. a recent weekend, and it was hot. the boy’s family thought it might be a nice outing to have a picnic at the botanic gardens in auburn. the plan was we’d all meet on the main street in auburn, pick up picnic supplies, and then head over to the gardens where we would sprawl on the grass and eat ourselves silly.

i seized this opportunity to make a tart, because who doesn’t want a slice of tart, all sticky summer fruit, while lying in the sun on a saturday afternoon? amalgamating two… (or was it three?) recipes from an old donna hay magazine, armed with a kilo of just right plums and a scant-used food processor, i spent friday night and saturday morning at the kitchen counter. minutes before it was time to head out west, i had this: a ricotta and plum tart in a hazelnutty crust. it was still warm — actually, hot — from the oven, radiant on my lap with two folded up tea towels in between.

we got to auburn road early, and inside of twenty minutes we’d bought fresh baclava and custard eclairs and little buns filled with salty white cheese and chopped herbs, and had finally come to a halt outside mado. i’d been wanting to come here for years, for the turkish ice cream.

late summer in 2000, the boy and i caught a ferry up the bosphorus to the edge of the black sea. we thought it was a boat trip there and back, but the steward ushered us off and told us not to return for two (or three) hours. we bought grilled fish sandwiches in an alleyway, climbed a grassy hill to a fort and ate our delicious sandwiches in the presence of hilltop cows. when we climbed back down to the town on the ground, our boat was ready and waiting. we had just enough time to get ourselves ice cream cones from a nearby café. what strange and gummy ice cream, full of fruity bits; gleeful, we chewed on them as the ferry puttered towards istanbul.

and now here on the main street in auburn, dondurma, waiting in tubs out front, for us. these were some of the labelled flavours: date, pistachio, mulberry, mango, turkish coffee, and cherry. there were also two unlabelled flavours, yellow with bits, and white, which the counter girl revealed to be apricot, and “… special turkish ice cream”. the price list only went up to three flavours, but i wanted four or maybe even five. but also, i wanted tart later, so i made do with cherry, apricot and special turkish.

it is fun, this stretchy ice cream. but we have to eat it quickly, so quickly, because not only is it very hot and melty sitting by the road, but if we do not shovel it into our mouths fast enough, the child will devour it all. as it is she has great red rivulets running down her chin and onto her AB/CD tshirt, so she looks like she’s on the losing end of a pub brawl.

but here comes the boy’s family now, and there we go to the big kebab shop on the corner.

to be continued…

posted by ragingyoghurt on 15 March 2006 at 2:39 pm

permalink | filed under around town, boy, cake, ice cream, kid, kitchen, snacks, trip

don’t you love going to the supermarket? i do! don’t you wait patiently every monday morning while the new woolworths catalog downloads, all 3.1mb of it, so you can see what’s on special this week? i, um, do.

it’s just, my way of keeping the junk food beast in check is to only buy things like chips or chocolate biscuits or ice cream when they’re on special.

ok, plus, i’m just sad that way.

monday night, almost 8.30, i walked to the supermarket after putting the kid to bed. we needed milk. it was drizzling a little and the sidewalk was mostly clear except for those people outside the thai restaurant and the kebab shop. the supermarket aisles were easy.

this is what was on special, that i bought:
– two bottles of fresh peach fragrance dishwashing detergent
– a bag of frozen baby peas
– a toothbrush
– an avocado

this is what was on special, that i didn’t buy, although i really wanted to:
– english lamb and mint flavoured potato chips
(i think they’re a special release for the commonwealth games. there was also australian sausage sizzle and canadian bacon and cheese, but, hmm, no representatives from all those other countries with predominantly black or brown or yellow people.)
– oreo wafer sticks
(chocolate wafers filled with that pigfat stuff, covered in chocolate. i almost got them, until i read the ingredients list and discovered the primary ingredient was vegetable oil. maybe i should have got them anyway; i mean, what a testament to alchemy!)

then there was this:

what happens when a 23-year old marketing graduate gets together with a brand management guru with 20 years experience is tampons in a little pink stripey tin. apparently they are redefining tampons as “a premium fashion accessory” and “a gorgeous indulgence”.

they weren’t on special, but i bought them anyway. clearly i need to do the grocery shopping in the daytime, with the increasingly grumbly kid in the unwieldy stroller, bumper to bumper with all those other urban warriors. clearly.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 15 March 2006 at 10:11 am

permalink | filed under packaging, shoping, something new

in spite of being in a bit of a lull — the result of a sudden influx of paid work, tight deadlines, and the ensuing throbbing, smarting eyeballs the instant i looked up at the screen — this here blog found itself on other eminent pages this week.

there was the dubious (but welcome and gleeful, oh yes indeedy) honour of being someone’s “sad little fetish” at the sydney morning herald blogs. and then being quoted on rice bowl journals about running amok in the aisles of mr wong’s grocery. why, it made me feel like i had cake in my belly.

thank you for coming to read. i will tell you about the dondurma, and the lemon buttermilk ice cream, soon.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 12 March 2006 at 12:59 pm

permalink | filed under blog

there is a vague queue to get on the bus. having secured my window seat, i only hope that i do not get:
– that musty, musky old chain smoker who sucked his cheeks hollow on his cigarette waiting to get on board, exhaling downwind on everyone
– that obese woman
– any of that quartet of skanky boys, in their big shorts and thin singlets and baseball caps and dirty face scruff

in the end i get a slim, clean asian girl who eats what smells like a salty toasted cheese sandwich, and then spends the first hour of the drive drawing clothes in a sketchbook.

i’m going to canberra to renew an expired passport. a couple of months ago, on the verge of applying for australian citizenship, i called the immigration department helpline, received no help at all from cantankerous old beryl, and so i’m staying malaysian for a little while longer. i know this means that if things went awry, i would be deported to malaysia, despite having not lived there since i was six, but what the hell. it’s mercenary isn’t it, choosing citizenship on the basis of convenience?

this is my first trip away without the child, and without the boy, in forever. in my own bubble of a hotel room, i sprawl across the bed to watch “the amazing race”, and wake up at five the next morning purely on my own volition. stupid volition.

it takes about an hour to walk from the city centre to the malaysian high commission, and from there, about 40 minutes to walk along the foreshore to the national library for an exhibition of ephemera. by this time, you will feel like breakfast, even with that 6.30 cup of tea and sydney brownie under your belt. bookplate, the “not exactly a café and not quite a restaurant” at the library, serves up mushrooms on toast until 11.

see those crunchy brown bits? you have never had mushrooms on toast like these. buttery and salty, yes, but the burnt edges are a bonus. the toast — is it helga’s? — is so buttery you might contemplate not eating both slices, but do so anyway. the magazines on the rack are either australian gourmet traveller or waitrose food illustrated, and you can read them in the mozaic light of the stained glass windows. you can flip through waitrose, while eating mushrooms on toast and drinking a “chai latte” (why does it roll off my tongue to say “raspberry white chocolate frappucino”, but only wince and curdle up inside when i have to order a “chai latte”?), and then be so surprised and pleased to come across an illustration by a girl you used to know.

in the national art gallery bookshop, i bought a book on the fundamentals of illustration, because during the week i drew a horse for money, and things like this could happen more often. but when i picked up my passport later that afternoon, it turned out that the clerk had been too lazy to type in “illustrator” in the profession box, after “graphic designer”. tchk.

in that last canberra hour, i stepped into a chocolate shop in a mall and found the mother lode of desirable chocolate, emerging some time later with $19 of truffle –marzipan–marzipan–chocolate in a white paper bag. “you’ve chosen all french chocolate today,” said the counter woman, “top of the line.”

“my mother gave me a box of valrhona once,” i said, “and now i can’t go back.” counter woman didn’t need to know about the milk chocolate bar with M&Ms minis peanut butter chocolate candies at the bottom of my backpack.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 12 March 2006 at 9:53 am

permalink | filed under bookshelf, chocolate, lunch, trip

things to blog about:
plum tart
dondurma
custard eclair
lemon buttermilk ice cream,
with blueberries

posted by ragingyoghurt on 5 March 2006 at 8:32 pm

permalink | filed under blog, snacks

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