ragingyoghurt » around town

Category Archives: around town

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

on the eve of new year’s eve, my funny aunt was adamant that i should partake of the post-xmas sales so she drove me and maeve to chaswood for the afternoon. “i don’t really have anything to buy,” i protested. “well. maybe a non-slip mat for the bath tub.”

and then suddenly there was a melanine bowl and platter, for the child; a mini muffin baking tray, for the child; two dr seuss books, for the child; a non-slip mat for the bath tub, for the child; and a tin of vanilla tea, from the reduced xmas food shelves, for me.

we adjourned for afternoon tea in a basement food court, and i hovered at the bubble tea shop toying with the idea of ordering an ice mountain. the lit-up picture was most enticing: a great matterhorn of multicoloured ice, surrounded with a selection of jellies and red bean. but then i had to point at this thing that appeared on the counter, a tall sundae glass full of colourful swirls and other treasures, green and pink and brown and milky and a high peak of shaved ice drenched in bright syrups.

“what’s that?” i asked the counterboy.
“oh, that is rainbow ice,” he replied.
“ohhh. is it better than ice mountain?”
“…” he thought about it. “uh. ice mountain has five flavours, and rainbow ice has six.”
“oh, so rainbow ice is better?”
“you want the rainbow ice?”
“yes, please!”
“do you want condensed milk or coconut milk?”
“…i…don’t…know… which one is better?”

when it was done, mine was much less swirly and colourful, topped with only a cursory mound of pink ice, and came in a plastic tumbler, so i suppose that woman, who had received the showcase model, she was probably his mother.

but it was sweet and cold. and the child kept l lunging at it with open mouth and crazy eyes, until i distracted her with a chocolate and banana crepe.

making the crepe, the counterboy placed an entire sliced banana next to a handful of chocolate melts. god forbid anyone would want the chocolate melting all over the warm banana. anyway, that didn’t end up being an issue, because barely enough time elapsed on the hot plate for significant melting to take place before monsieur crepe was plated.

“do you want ice cream or cream?” asked the counterboy. this really threw me because the sign said “all crepes served with cream and ice cream.”

in the end, i picked the ice cream, and it was the smallest scoop on the world, as though it were a postage stamp on the surface of the crepe, just enough postage to make it to my mouth. it also had a peculiar gummy texture. but maeve saved me from dwelling on all the deficiencies of it by miraculously mastering the art of the spoon, and scooping the lot into her mouth.

the chocolate was compound.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 31 December 2005 at 10:34 am

permalink | filed under around town, kid, shoping, snacks

two picnics in five days! i really do enjoy a picnic, even (or maybe, especially) when the preparation, in today’s case, has been along the lines of, “let’s get something from that food court,” and “shall we take it to that park on the corner?”.

sunday afternoon, we walked down darling in the hot hot heat. stopping at about life for as long as it took to procure:
– a bag of paprika potato chips
– a punnet of blueberries and a punnet of raspberries
– a large fruit salad, consisting two kinds of melon, pineapple, mango, strawberries and blueberries (so many blueberries — the ladle girl kept scooping extra spoons of blueberries as afterthoughts!)
– a tub of fetta stuffed red peppers
– a pearl barley salad and a roast vegetable salad
– a blueberry pop for me: watermelon, blueberries and sorbet in a blender
– a bottle of organic ginger beer for the boy: the surprise at checkout was that it cost $ 5.20 for 500ml.

…then continued walking (and walking and walking) to callan park where sprawling and eating ensued. dinner that evening was unnecessary, although i suddenly found myself finishing a half-eaten bag of paprika chips, and instantly regretting it.

this afternoon, we caught a ferry into the city and stumbled into a nearby food court that was just working up to lunchtime crush. we came away with:
– a schnitzel and eggplant focaccia sandwich for the boy
– a schnitzel and avocado and lettuce (like, a lettuce patch worth of shredded lettuce) wrap for me
– a very unusual pear, fetta and walnut salad (dressed in wholegrain mustard and mayonnaise. and raisins.

we like a schnitzel, our lot. although we figure the baby probably liked the pear more, the way she shoved fistfuls of it into her mouth, one after the other without bothering with such minor technicalities as swallowing… until we hid the tub of salad and pointed her in the direction of an ugly ibis.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 22 December 2005 at 6:58 pm

permalink | filed under around town, kid, lunch

the apple has left the building.

i never really had the chance to bond with it, so y’know, whatever. in fact, to celebrate the return of $2000 to my bank account, i walked across the mall and bought a $7.15 loaf of bread.

this is the most expensive loaf of bread i’ve ever bought… um, unless you count that time i was in new york when the australian dollar was like, US50c — fiddycent — then i suppose all those loaves of bread win. damn you dean and deluca chocolate challah! $7.15 is not the most expensive loaf of bread i could buy though, around these parts. up the street at victoire, they have a saturday special loaf. this is because the raising agent in this particular loaf is a bottle of french beer. they are kind enough to sell you half a loaf, if is too much (because, obviously for a half loaf is much easier to swallow). why am i telling this story? i don’t know.

for the record, $7.15 buys you a work of art: sonoma‘s organic soy and linseed sourdough. chewy and tangy, and studded with whole soybeans. truly, worth every cent. all 715 of them.

[ insert clever pun: “that’s a lot of bread! guffaw!” ]

i’m sorry. i don’t know what has come over me. perhaps it is the worms.

our backyard has become infested with giant worms. fat, stubby giant worms.

last week, i said to the boy “i was hanging out the laundry today, and there was an enormous slater-looking wormy thing on the ground, and i thought it was dead and after, when i went to remove it, it was gone!”

i hate when that happens. when the dead cockroach/worm/slug/etc turns out not to be dead after all. they scuttle away and laugh at you from the shadows as your head whips round, a little panicky. where are you?

“those are native cockroaches,” said the boy. he is learned. “leave them alone.”

in the ensuing week, these native cockroaches started crawling out of the bushes in great numbers (so call me overreacting, but in the case of giant worms, three is a great enough number), and because it’s been so hot of late — 38°C on thursday — they have been dying of heatstroke on the sunbaked tiles and then gradually blackening over the next few days.

saturday, the boy was out back, and i pointed out the three corpses in varying stages of carbonisation. “why are they called native cockroaches anyway? they don’t even look like cockroaches.”

“oh. those aren’t native cockroaches. i thought you were talking about something else.”

“so they’re just giant worms?”

“yup.”

i was hanging out the laundry later, and i looked over at the child, who’d been quietly poking at a pile of dried leaves with a garden fork. she made a grimacy, wincy face and held out to me a flaccid black thing. it was a dead giant worm!! i don’t know if it was an instinctive girly reaction or if she had actually licked it, but we got the hell out of there, after i checked to see that the worm was still intact (it was), and shook her hand most violently to release the worm. i mean, i surely wasn’t going to touch it.

shudder.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 12 December 2005 at 4:56 pm

permalink | filed under around town, boy, kid

what is a blog for if not to taunt a sibling on the other side of the world about treats you just found on a chinatown expedition? after a wanton display of white rabbits — lychee white rabbits — which i instantly coveted, nellie was nice enough to actually send me some.

you know white rabbits, no? the milky chewy candy wrapped up in a slip of rice paper? i was about to say that the lychee ones are even better, being somewhat less cloying and milky, but perhaps it is more accurate to say they are different. a little sharper with a mysterious and subtle… hmm, what’s that flavour? aahh. lychee!

a package of candy in the mail is a sweet surprise, but candy arranged snug in a blue leather candy purse (from orla kiely no less) is an interactive experience involving placing said purse on a worthy surface and savouring its beauty, unzipping and zipping and unzipping and removing piece by piece the candy, noting the differences between the original white rabbit wrappers and these ones (smiling lychee duo atop a banner reading “lychee” in chinese and english, with a tiny white rabbit logo along the edge), and then placing each little baton neatly back in its place. and then repeating the sequence over the next couple of days before finally unwrapping one and eating it, slowly. well, that was my experience.

a much more awful experience is taking a dud powerbook into the apple service centre at broadway, where the girl on reception will negate everything the phone support guys have told you over the last two days, and ask if you would like to book your brand new dud in and have the problem assessed in seven to ten working days.

“you ask like i have an option,” i said. “why, what else can i do?”
“yeah, no, yeah, you have to book it in.” she was blonde, but also, she was young.

if i want it seen to faster i can pay $80 for a rush service. she will not let me use her phone to call the support line, or the store, to verify all she has told me. “the apple shop and the apple phone support and us, we are all separate agencies and have nothing to do with each other. and we cannot call and speak on anyone’s behalf. ever. we can’t let you use our phones because it will tie up our lines. and we do not seem to have a phonebook we can lend you.”

resisting the urge to break her or the shiny white computer on her desk — or let’s be honest, the chunk of aluminium alloy weighing me down, i embarked on a chinatown expedition of my own. specifically i wanted meats. chinatown meats! but i was open to anything else that might throw itself in my way.

in front of a sweet shop i made the kind of abrupt stop where your whole body goes rigid, and then anchored at the feet, the top of you wobbles a bit and vibrates to a halt. they had constructed a stove in the window and were cooking up a storm of obanyaki. four flavours of obanyaki: redbean, custard (“the best in sydney”, is what the sign said), chocolate, and green tea. “delicious!” said mr. sign, and “buy three for $5!”, which i thought was diabolically clever, because which flavour does one leave out? in fact, none, because i played into their dastardly plan, and came away with custard, redbean, two chocolates and two green teas. “thank you. have a great day,” said the smiley counter girl.

and then meats were procured: char siu and siu yok and, because i couldn’t decide between soya chickane — i typed chicken, and this is what came out instead — and roast duck, i got a half of each. and green sauce. and because the bubble tea merchant is just a few doors down, and there was a sign outside that said, “happy 4th birthday easy way, 20% off all drinks”, i added some mango blended ice (for the boy) and pickled plum blended ice (for me) to my trusty shopping bag.

who’s the postergirl for that modern affliction of buying stuff to make you feel better? that would be me, doing lucky dips for obanyaki at the bus stop. it was the custard one, and may well have been the best in sydney, still warm and cakey on the outside, and creamy-gooey hot custard within.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 3 December 2005 at 7:58 am

permalink | filed under around town, cake, candy, drink, grumble, nellie, shoping, snacks

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 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

i exited the lift on the fifth floor of myer, ostensibly to research the prices of certain books and CDs, but suddenly i was ensnared in a maze of festive food. the happy little christmas elves were setting up the christmas department: shelf after shelf of chocolate, and marzipan, and gingerbread, and stollen, and chocolate covered marzipan, and chocolate covered gingerbread, and marzipan stollen… after my head stopped spinning around and i regained the ability to walk, i noted that there were yet more shelves of condiments and fruit jellies, but i was already halfway to the counter with a bag of lindt christmas almonds: roasted almonds in nougat and milk chocolate, with cinnamon and coriander. (the nougat is a thin crunchy shell. the chocolate is warm and spicy. the almond, eh, it is an almond.)

the backstory is, i bought a bag of these three years ago, actually two bags, because the first one was so amazing that i had to have another in the pantry, for later. but this was the time of the pantry moths, and when i finally opened up the bag, i found that each chocolate had become luxury accommodation to at least one burrowing pantry moth worm. gah! the horror! it was late january, so christmas chocolates were no longer available, not even in the 50% off discount bin, and in fact i would not see this christmas almond variety for two more years.

so you see why i had to immediately buy some, and eat half a dozen of them while listening to CDs at the listening station. oh public headphones, how you make my ears itch!

david jones food hall made me twitch; their christmas display included a handsome white tin containing a kilogram (“1’000g”) of stollen, for just under , and a very large chocolate covered gingerbread pretzel (a comparative bargain at .95). those wacky germans! i really wanted the jar of fortnum&mason christmas spiced preserve, “extremely full of plums, redcurrants, strawberries and raspberries” — which made me think that lola had written the label copy — but then i noticed the ingredients list kicked off with cane sugar. pah. perhaps i should have made do with the long-stemmed strawberries at the fruit counter ( a kilo, and it looked like a quarter of that would be stem)

in the end, the number of christmas treats i came away with, apart from that bag of christmas almonds, was “zero”. instead i signed a credit card receipt at a record store, for new music! that isn’t yet another pearl jam bootleg! now i have discs and discs to listen to: eels, fiona apple, and in a surprising turn of events, pete murray, because i figured out that what i actually had had against him was his chin dimple.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 8 November 2005 at 11:58 pm

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

Category Archives: around town

Click

Search

Categories

Archives