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do you eat chicken? do you watch sunrise? i do, quite a bit, and i, um, do… only sometimes, and in small amounts, honest. this morning they had a lady from the chicken board on, to set the record straight on the state of today’s poultry.

and now that i’ve googled “australian poulty association”, i see that that the board are actually called the australian chicken meat federation, and three days ago revealed in a press release that “almost 80% of australians believe that something is added to the australian chicken to make it grow artificially larger, with a staggering 66% of australians believing added hormones are a contributing factor making chickens larger”. ok.

well, i mean, that’s what i thought! have you seen the size of those chicken breasts in the supermarket deli counter? monstrous! sometimes, from my old supermarket at least, they even tasted like chickens of death. but in fact, what the chicken board woman said was that modern chickens are a different breed from the dainty specimens of the past, and comparing the two was like comparing a shetland pony with a workhorse. (and also that any antibiotics given to the birds are no longer in the meat by the time it reaches the consumer, and that organic chicken is no better for you than the other kind is.)

so. you’d believe it wouldn’t you? this chicken lady on a tv show where businesses and tourist attractions pay money to be included in the lineup?

it’s just, having read “my year of meats” (ruth ozeki) a couple of times, and sort of wanting to read “the way we eat: why our food choices matter” (peter singer) — but being sort of afraid to — and to be honest, the size of those chicken breasts is still a little disconcerting…

it’s just, the kid really likes chicken.

hormones and antibiotics aside, organic may not necessarily be better for us, but it probably is a bit better for the chickens. but then after the playground we went to the supermarket to buy a roast chicken for lunch, and the woman behind the counter asked if i wanted the regular $8.48 chicken, or the reduced-for-quick-sale $6 one.

“why’s it reduced for quick sale?” i asked.

“because it’s been out here for more than four hours,” she said, almost like a challenge.

the unspoken question, i suppose, was, how much longer than four hours had it been out here? (and also, did the chicken have a good life?)

but i took it. it fell apart in the woman’s tongs as she wrestled it into a bag. it made a tasty sandwich, on soy and linseed, with avocado, tomato and cheese for the kid, and avocado, sesame seed furikake and chili pepper sprinkles for me.

i still don’t know how i feel about the chicken debate. i want to read the book, even though i know it will make me (more) uneasy about the food i choose to eat. i mean, we can’t all be fruitarians, can we?

posted by ragingyoghurt on 30 June 2006 at 9:45 pm

permalink | filed under bookshelf, lunch, shoping, tv

[ back cover, “apples for jam” ]

last week i bought a new desk ornament: 300gb of space, cleverly hidden in a compact block of industrial plastics. when i say “last week” i mean “thursday night”; around dinnertime, i clicked my mouse on the purchase button, and shortly after lunch on friday, a courier knocked on my door with the parcel in hand. if only all internet shoping could be like this. i bought an external hard drive once, years ago. it was all of 2gb, and cost me $800. so i’m much happier with the new one, which cost less than half that, and which allowed me last night, for the first time ever, to back up my computer (which has been making a disconcerting whirring noise of late). if you live in sydney and would like to pay substantially less than retail for all manner of computer stuff, and have it delivered to you before teatime, you could try shoping here.

this weekend i bought a lovely book of colourful and tasty treats, “apples for jam” by tessa kiros, despite my vow not to buy any more cookbooks ever. having finally decided that i didn’t really need a copy of “falling cloudberries”, i was ambushed by this book. it’s sort-of italian, and the food is photographed on vintage tablecloths or vintage china, and there are kids’ drawings, and a recipe for pudding made of greek yoghurt and condensed milk. and a bookmark of pink satin ribbon. right beside it on the shelf was the next book that i vow not to get: nigel slater ‘s “kitchen diaries“, which has none of those things that make “apples for jam” so warm and sparkly, and which reads like what this blog would be if it were better. hem.

next week, fingers crossed, i will be buying a ticket to pearl jam. ridiculous! aren’t we too old to be doing this? (clearly, no, because while i haven’t rushed out and bought the album, i did hand over good money for the latest “rolling stone” with eddie of the cover) i have seen pearl jam five times. in 1995, i slept out overnight on the pavement outside the ticketing booth, showed up late at my newish job the next morning, and watched the band, small as ants, from the nosebleed seats. in 1998, deep in the throes of that job laying out pop magazines, i wrangled my way into three shows, two of them in the moshpit. in 2003, post-rothskilde, there were no more moshpits, and no more pop magazines. the seats weren’t too bad: the band were as big as… large ants. who knows what this year will bring. next week i’ll be sitting here, finger poised on my mouse, hoping the ticketing site doesn’t get shut down by traffic overload, hoping the seats won’t be too crap in an arena twice the size of previous shows — stadium rock!! whatever. there’ll be guitars, and eddie will start singing, and it’ll be really, really good! waarrgh!

posted by ragingyoghurt on 14 May 2006 at 10:40 am

permalink | filed under bookshelf, shoping, soundtrack

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

the boy brought home a fundraiser box of maltesers this afternoon. i generally won’t eat cheap and nasty chocolate, but the maltesers? they have undone me. you know them. they are the marble-sized crunchy malty centers in a polished chocolate coat. who’da thought — all that crunchy malt center, and still, according to the ingredients list, the chocolate makes up 75%. the nutritional information below said list informed me that a serve of maltesers would be me consuming just over 10g of fat. there were four servings in the box, and i’m afraid i could quite easily have eaten them all. so i stopped, and put the box back in the fridge, and while i was there i made a simple sundae of vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce and a topping of a crumbled up pistachio biscotti, a bright green chewy almond pastey biscuit coated in whole pistachios. hey, i feel good about not getting 42g of fat all from the one source.

i feel bad about not blogging though. it’s not that i haven’t been eating delicious things almost every day…

a couple weeks ago, delirious with hunger on a thursday night shoping expedition, i stumbled into the australian homemade store in the city mall. such a naff name for a shop selling premium chocolate and ice cream, and such a blah logo, but lordy! the chocolate! i bought three squares: dark chocolate with cranberry, earl grey milk chocolate with nuts, and a fig bonzer.

“oh, that is my favourite,” said the chocolate boy. it is a slim layer of soft chocolate and then a fat layer of seedy, figgy bits in caramel, all walled up in milk chocolate. in fact, it was so good it is now my favourite too, and i went back the next week and bought three more.

so, delicious things. the boy made a delicious risotto a few nights ago, with zucchini, peas, parsley and a can of shitake mushrooms. no wine, and no extra-dry vermouth, as counseled by well-wishers on my messageboard, but it was salty and buttery and lacking in nothing. he made it with a whole bag of arborio, so i also had risotto for lunch the next day, and dinner again, and then lunch the day after that.

we also had some delicious pizza one night, from zesti's, up the road, where you can look into the big windows off the street and see chinese people making your pizza.

an ad for some delivery place came on tv as we sat eating.

“argh! look! now they’re making pizza on puff pastry!”
“that looks bloody awful.”
“but is it worse than that three-cheeses-sandwiched-between-three-layers-of-bases thing they did before?”
“that looked awful too.”
“but what about the one where there’s a ring of little cheese-filled rolls around the edge of the pizza, so you can pull them off and eat them one by one?”
“that was revolting!”

our pizza had lovely thin bases, with crusty polenta bottoms. one was topped with: baby octopus, prawns and scallops, none of which were rubbery. the other was topped with: green — pesto and minced-up spinach, and many little cubes of fetta.

so, delicious things a-plenty. but i’ve also been working, and reading a really good book — “the language of baklava“, and coming to terms with the fact that the child may no longer take a second nap in the day, and well, i’ve been trying to not watch so much primetime tv (daytime kid’s programming chews up enough hours), although in my post-malteser-sundae stupor i found myself slumped in front of the men’s olympic ice-figure-skating coverage…

and of course, there’s been “carnivàle“. monday morning i woke at 5.30, and couldn’t get back to sleep. a combination of anticipating the child grunting herself out of slumber, and also the memory of brother justin crashing through the cornfield with a sickle and sophie with her eyes gone black. mainly brother justin though, and as it was, maeve slept in until seven. tchk.

um, what was i saying?

posted by ragingyoghurt on 17 February 2006 at 9:49 pm

permalink | filed under bookshelf, boy, chocolate, dinner, 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

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

what is this ethereal thing, all nestled in white tissue?

there is a stall at the balmain markets, selling small, gluten-free cakes. you may think that small, gluten-free cakes would be mean little pellets, like hockey pucks… but they are not. after standing in front of the display trying to choose between the raspberry-coconut (pictured above, so you already know who won) and the lemon curd (a sunny yellow thing topped with a swirl of meringue), the shopman helped me out.

“the raspberry-coconut is very good” he said.
“yes, i cannot decide between that and the lemon curd.”
“ah,” he said. “that is very good too. but take the raspberry-coconut.”
“i’ll come back next week for the lemon one.”
“yes, come back, next week is my last week here.”
“…” my face was a question. “and you’re never coming back, ever?”
“i have a baby,” the shopman said, “and so i have found another job, working for someone else, less hours for the same pay. so i get to stay at home sometimes and my wife can work too.”

to which i nearly fell over, because goddammitt, that is the complete opposite of the life i live. i’m not bitter, o wait, yes i am.

i came away from the markets with a short stack of old books, despite my resolve not to buy any more cookbooks. but one was a 1970s penguin paperback of japanese recipes, written by a european couple who had lived in japan for a few years “and spoke the language”. and another was a slim hardback, also from the 70s, called “chinese dinner party” from the “international party series”, offering not just a menu and recipes, but advice on “dressing up for your party” (“oriental styled clothes are fairly popular and easy to find. specialty shops and department stores often carry beautifully designed oriental dresses, jackets, slacks and fashionable slippers.”) and “oriental hospitality” (“you can create a relaxed party atmosphere with a smile and a simple bow as you welcome guests to your home for a happy and wonderful time.”)

the raspberry-coconut cake was a layer of almondy-biscuity stuff, with a raspberry-studded cakey bit, and then a macaroony crust on top. it tasted of sweet, and i wanted it to be somehow better. i think i should have picked the lemon curd.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 7 November 2005 at 12:01 pm

permalink | filed under around town, bookshelf, boy, cake, grumble, kid

some nights what you want to do is sit, legs up, lengthways on the couch, reading “vogue”. eating an ice cream sundae. see? it’s even a suitably gaunt ice cream sundae. (i’ve actually only done this the once, last week, but it was so pleasant i will do it again.)

[ in response to your question from the other month, hikaru-san, i don’t subscribe to any magazines — call it a lack of faith: maybe next month will suck — but if someone were to bestow a subscription on me, “vogue” would be on the wishlist. whoulda thunk? and then would it be the US, UK or um, Australian edition? one day i will buy myself a subscription to “the new yorker”. when i was younger, i subscribed to “new internationalist”, and then younger still, the “lucasfilm fanclub newsletter”, and further way back, “stickers and stuff”. in between i was also given subscriptions to “readers digest” and “national geographic”. i know. ]

the morning after the ice cream sundae, i was cold sweating and blacking out in a photo gallery, vomiting a bottle of fizzy apple juice into a gutter, entangled in stomach cramps and dizziness, and seeing through the weekend on all of two cups of sweet black tea and three slices of buttered toast. no doubt some strain of monster flu to herald in the spring. however by sunday night i decided that the dizziness and pangs were by now actually caused by hunger, so i cooked up a pot of spag bol (but with curly fettucine. have you seen it? it’s like normal fettucine except one edge of it is ruffled! oh the mouth feel!) and staggered down the road to recovery.

is this what blogging is? i can’t quite remember. a couple weeks away becomes a month, and then another month of being without the internet as the ISP passes you on to the phone company and the phone company returns the volley… to another phone company. ch. and so a new season, and a new suburb…

…and this morning at the supermarket there was a new product, i think a cross-promotion with the willy wonka movie: bite-sized chocolate pikelets — “eat them straight out of the bag!” said the bag. i just did, and i think the people who wrote the bag were being optimistic. the pikelets were chocolatey, but somewhat flaccid, and cold. yes, i ate the second one to be sure, and then the third because hey, they had grown on me. the thing is, don’t eat them out of the bag, but toast them lightly and then put ice cream on them, and berries, and chocolate sauce.

you see? always it comes back to the sundaes.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 6 September 2005 at 4:25 pm

permalink | filed under bookshelf, snacks, something new

fueled by two slices of pumpkin sourdough toast and a cup of milky tea, i am in the throes of… throwing out magazines. again. long-time readers may recall an episode — more of a mini series really — almost a year ago, when gripped by the fervour of impending baby, i shifted a pile of old magazines as tall as myself (ok, so that’s not so tall) out of my wardrobe and into the recycling bin. at the time, i was like, what am i doing?? there’s history here!!” but of course, aside from the odd early twinge of loss of my complete collection of “juice” magazines, i haven’t longed for a single issue.

today i find myself much less traumatised as i attack a stack of “details” from the mid-to-late nineties. this was my favourite magazine from the era, and thus survived the previous cull. as i flip through them before casting them on the recycling bin pile, i am taken aback by how much i absorbed at the time. no, not just the chris heath celebrity stories or the articles addressing issues pertinent to brash young men (despite so not being a brash young man); looking at the pages now, it appears that every single design element (especially picture boxes with rounded corners sitting on coloured slabs) and typographic trick (testosteronic sans serif type forced into a slant, maybe even set on an angle!) in “details” filtered through my impressionable young brain and ended up on the pages of the magazines i was designing at the time.

i remember a reader’s letter from 1995 or 1996, saying that i should stop copying “spin” magazine, but clearly they were mistaken. i should have stopped aping “details”. in my defense, i would like to think that i inherited the practice from my predecessor… but now that both my collections of “details” and “juice” are n’more, who can really tell? well, ben. ben could probably tell.

anyway. there is no point to this story. i just wanted to remind myself that i threw out all my “details” magazines today. and found appreciative new homes for half my “new yorkers”. it’s all a lead-up to when i tell you that i’m gonna be offline for a little while: first to go overseas, and then to move house.

be seein’ ya.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 28 June 2005 at 10:14 am

permalink | filed under bookshelf, snacks, werk

every now and again i get one of those beige cards in my mailbox, the ones from the post office, that say “we tried to deliver an item to you earlier, but you weren’t in, so now you have to come to us and stand in a queue for twenty minutes and lug it home yourself”. thing is, i don’t believe the post office actually tries to deliver anything other than letters and bills anymore. i am home all the time and no one ever rings the doorbell to say “parcel delivery for you”.

never.

the upside to this farce is that a couple weeks ago, when i got to the front of the line at the post office and handed my beige card over to the counter lady, she said, “oh i don’t need to see your i.d.. i know you,” which was dang near the nicest thing that’s been said to me at a post office.

today i queued again, with a card that appeared in my mailbox on friday, which meant that every time my eyes fell on it all weekend, it made me wonder “what is it? what is it?” what is it, in that fat, warm yellow envelope with my name writ large in fancy handwriting?

a luscious comic book!

thank you, nellicent!

incidently, the fine folk at mcsweeneys who put out said comic book also run a page about “new food“. no, nary a diatribe on genetically modified brussels sprouts in sight. more a growing collection of tantalising new products like white chocolate peanut butter cups, a beverage called “pom” and microwave piroshki. those of youse who were intrigued by the melted butter twisties of two posts ago might like to investigate.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 31 January 2005 at 6:01 pm

permalink | filed under bookshelf, nellie

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