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Category Archives: dinner

ok. so i was skinned by a piece of nougat.

yesterday afternoon, i cut a little finger off the stick of italian dark chocolate nougat that my good mother bought me at fratelli a few weeks back. it is a moist, fudgey thing full of whole roasted hazelnuts, with a protective layer of rice paper. mmm…

i put it to my mouth wherein the moisture from my lips adhered to the rice paper, so that when i removed the nougat after taking a bite, it removed the skin from my lips.

sure, it stung at the time, but i didn’t pay too much attention until a couple of hours later, at dinner, with the boy’s olds no less, when my lower lip was really, really stinging and i was having trouble speaking because it seemed like i couldn’t close my mouth properly. still, how much attention will you pay to your lip when the table is covered with a bounty of sashimi?

not too much.

and then i got home and looked in the mirror, and well…

posted by ragingyoghurt on 15 December 2004 at 12:28 pm

permalink | filed under dinner, snacks

last year, maybe the year before, i bought a wire-bound notebook: dusty pink, with a faint houndstooth-checkered pattern running through it, like the material of a suit a granny might wear. in the top right corner, under a magenta foil-stamped row of six olde worlde milke bottles, is the slogan, “dairymen are the cream of the crop!”. in the bottom left corner, under a tiny silhouette still life of a pitcher, a milk glass, milk carton and a wheel of cheese with a wedge cut out of it, is the poem…

“Love is like more than an emotion, / it’s the substance of our being / Each morning as I awaken your (sic) the reason / I smilke, Your (sic) the reason I love / A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you whe you have forgotten the words.”

[edit: what i meant to type was “your the reason i smile”. evidently the milk, which is all i think about (and smell of) these days, is more pervasive than i realised.]

i thought that this notebook, after languishing a year, maybe two, in my amusing notebook box, would be a most appropriate logbook for my breastfeeding diary (date, time, duration, side).

yesterday at 3.45 in the afternoon, maeve drank for twenty-eight minutes, eight minutes on the left and twenty on the right. then she had a vomit, which although moderate in volume, was nowhere near the torrent of the day before, which came up in four great gushes and took even the child by surprise, judging by the look on her face. this time she seemed unfazed so we loaded her into the stroller and walked into chinatown.

we caught the lift up to happy chef, and ordered bowls of soupy noodles (me: wonton and mushroom with rice noodles; the boy: spicy beef and wonton with egg noodles), and then after, we stopped by the bubble tea place and got bubble teas to go (me: jasmin milk tea with pearls; the boy: taiwanese style lychee milkshake). we walked home the long way, and then split up at the last set of traffic lights, the boy to get some DVDs, me, maeve and the stroller to get another bumper packet of nappies. maeve was still asleep when we got home. we felt like very normal people.

there have been eight feeds since, all varying in length, but generally a punctual two hours apart. in the notebook, on the top right corner of each page, next to the six olde worlde milke bottles, “You look brilliant like morning sunshine”.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 28 November 2004 at 9:48 am

permalink | filed under around town, boy, dinner, drink, kid

beneath the sombre pall that descended after the lavish turkish feast that was last night’s dinner…

[ lavish turkish feast interlude ]
it was the first birthday party of the boy’s sister’s kid, a smiley half australian-half turkish boy who grabs at my glasses whenever we meet. there was a kid’s party in the park with rolled-up jam and vegemite pinwheel sandwiches (not in the same pinwheel) and avocado and shredded carrot finger sandwiches, and pass-the-parcel with a jackson five live tape soundtrack, and bubbles, oh — and kids. so many kids. and then there was a grownup party back at the house with dolmades and olives, pide with a mean beetroot dip, four kinds of shish kebab: beef; chicken; veggie, with mushroom, green capsicum, asparagus and haloumi; and seafood, with scallops with the roe on, and green capsicum. and salads, including one with green beans and broad beans in yoghurt. and a great dome-shaped pavlova sandwiched with yoghurty cream and raspberries and rose syrup and covered in sugared rose petals. yes there was.

…we awoke this morning, confused. the words, “very depressed”, were put forth by a member of this household, in a tone of voice that could not have been flatter or sadder. but the confusion was because, despite the fact that everyone i know and most people in this country whose blogs i read appear to vote for not john howard (and also not any of those loopy christian / family values / otherwise insane parties), and despite the awful campaign ads and the shouting and pointing and jutting-out lower lip and overall less-niceness of the man, and um, the stuff that’s been done in the last few years… going to war, locking up children behind barbed wire, that sort of thing… it is john howard who’ll be putting on his tracksuit and power-morning-walking his victory lap for [undisclosed period of time] to come.

how can it be?

posted by ragingyoghurt on 10 October 2004 at 12:58 pm

permalink | filed under boy, dinner, misc

crap. clearly, i have lost the ability to write. a whole week since getting back from whirlwind vacation jaunt, and alls i’ve had time for is to post a picture of a sugar-crusted apple turnover that was eaten on a sunny, grassy spot in narooma. a week gone by filled with werk to be done, dishes to be washed (and cups… so many cups), and um, actually that seems to be it. what the hell?

so, yvette, while that last “entry” may have appeared random, it was actually intended that a roundup of the fun and hijinx surrounding the pastry would soon follow.

alas. but look:

it was a short but intense roadtrip, bookended on one end by enormous and tasty fish and chips at summer-in-wintertime jervis bay, and on the other by a whole grilled trout with buttered almonds and three veg up in the wintery mountain town of adaminiby, “home of the giant trout”. in the middle, aformentioned apple turnover, not quite enough baked treats from bakeries in small coastal towns, a cooler bag full of flavoursome mandarins that the boy had picked off his nanna’s tree just the week before, a visit to the bega cheese factory…

…cheese samples, more breathtakingly gorgeous beaches than you could shake a bit of driftwood at, and — two hours in from the sunny south coast — alpine climes in the snowy mountains.

strange. we awoke in our toasty roadside motel, too early, to the sound of revving 4WDs and families setting off for the snowfields. watched the parade of beanies through the picture window, drinking motel tea and breakfasting on anzac biscuits. hot showered, dressed, stepped outside… and the snow had come to us. it was a just light dusting, and good lord! just like the books said! six points, and all unique! not quite an hour after driving past the statue of the trout in the town centre, there we were standing on the site of the old town of kiandra, except that kiandra was not visible under two feet of fresh powder snow.

well, i was surprised, anyway.

and now, bloody hell, a week’s gone by, and what i’ve done is dishes, and scanning, and fixing up scans, and moving stuff around a page. this week coming up brings more (and more) of the same, but hurrah, culminates in the arrival of nellicent, who’s been meeting, greeting and eating her way around the world, and finally, oh my god, makes it here.

yay a yay.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 26 July 2004 at 9:38 am

permalink | filed under boy, breakfast, dinner, lunch, nellie, snacks, trip

argh. my life seems to be happening faster than i can blog it. the thing is, i don’t seem to have anything to show for it and i suspect this may have to do with the number of naps being taken.

yesterday, though, no naps were had, and as a result i was able to make pizza (with flour and yeast and tepid water, and kneading and rising!), one with pumpkin, tomato, red onion, chili salami and fetta, and one with a hoisin sauce base topped with slivered ginger and spring onion, sesame oil-drizzled broccoli and some incredible, sweet and tender char siu, the best hostess gift ever, from ben.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 29 June 2004 at 10:39 am

permalink | filed under dinner, kid

last night, after a large bowl of moonfish and calamari (and eggplant, zucchini, tomato, white bean, olive and parsley) stew on couscous —

no picture because i was so hungry it went just like that WHOOSH , and i only regretted the inhalation of dinner after it was all gone and i struggled, sitting straight, lying flat, perched cross-legged on a large cushion on the floor, pacing, pacing, to let the food find a balance in my bloated self

— we sat (or perched or paced) and watched a documentary called “why planes fall”, which included snippets of a play in which actors in the roles of cockpit crew recited actual lines recorded on doomed planes’ blackboxes as they hurtled from the sky. i thought maybe it would make me never want to get on a plane again, but instead it was very reassuring. who woulda thought that something goes awry only once every one million flights, but there you go.

i have a cousin who is a commercial airline pilot, and we always suspected that he got into it so he’d have an excuse to wear aviator sunglasses.

the ~~one thing~~ two things i miss about airline travel is are emerging from the aeroplane and finding myself in new york, and airline food.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 19 May 2004 at 7:29 am

permalink | filed under dinner, kid, tv

sometimes i just fall off the blogging train, and even though it’s just a week, it feels like much longer. it’s not that there’s been no good eating… there was, for example, the first spag bol i ever made which began with a large onion sauteed in a mound of sambal terasi. not so authentic, but damn it was flavoursome, and there was enough to last an extra four (pregressively smaller) meals. the best part was i didn’t even have to touch the meat. just sliced the top of the pack open with a knife and prodded (with said knife) the block of mince into the pot.

and then last night there was the roast pumpkin, fetta and sage pizza that showed up at the door just in time to distract us from the nightly news footage of those photographs of the beaming brown-haired american girl soldier pointing at iraqi prisoners’ genitals. home delivery rocks.

it’s not that no adventures have been had. last week i got to go to kinko’s three times! once, a print job that should have taken ten minutes evolved into an hour-long saga with a hapless employee who was really the wavery-voiced teenage boy who works at all the fast food restaurants on “the simpsons”.

and the last couple of days i’ve spent scanning a stack of faint yet grubby colour pencil drawings for a book(let) of work by newly-arrived-in-australia teenagers. the fun, she does not end.

and just for the record, well, there’s this:

posted by ragingyoghurt on 7 May 2004 at 10:01 am

permalink | filed under dinner, kid, werk

when a salmon dies, does it know that it will be wrapped in a strip of prosciutto and roasted and served up alongside a pile of sauteed vegetables? will it take its revenge by cunningly concealing a larger than expected bit of cracked black pepper, so that midbite, a boy with a slightly cracked but otherwise intact tooth will hear a loud crack in his head, wash his mouth clear with a swig of pink grapefruit fizzy, and discover that said tooth is now a third smaller than it used to be?

—

while i’m here, and while zucchini are like, $1.99 for a bundle of seven or eight, i could tell you to sautee some bacon, onion, garlic and cubed-up zucchini. add chicken stock and simmer. blenderise most of it and simmer a bit more. sprinkle with toasted flaked almonds. think about doing the same with a head of broccoli. mmm… green(ish) soups.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 30 April 2004 at 8:47 am

permalink | filed under boy, dinner

best monday ever

anzac day continues…
a cross-continental conversation with nellie

nellie: um. are you working?
bowb: umm. sort of, but not really. it’s a public holiday!
n: oh! is it anzac day?
b: eh! yah! how did you know?
n: because it’s a biscuit!
b: ummm. yesss. but there isn’t like, oreo day…
n: hngh. you can keep oreo day.
b: … and there isn’t tim tam day…
n: but there should be!

and with that the twinkies were off for three, count ’em, three hours. the phone company should start paying *us* money.

what to do after a marathon phone session, with ear hot and hand cramped into craw, than finish up my goddamn business activity statement, make a bacon, avocado and chutney (pear and fig) roll and walk briskly up to oxford street where the cinema is already quite packed with a holiday crowd ready to see “eternal sunshine of the spotless mind”.

when joel says “i love you” to his last remaining fading memory of clementine, oh it brung a twinge to my nose.

and then, another brisk walk to pellagio providore for a litre of pink grapefruit fizzy and two bits of $4 (each!) turkish delight studded with pistachios and covered in white chocolate (sometimes if you’re lucky, pink chocolate. today i am unlucky, but only just), and then on to infinity sourdough bakery for a walnut sourdough loaf swaddled in tissue like baby jesus.

sadly the only thing awaiting me after another powerwalk into the city, is a queue at kinko’s while the toner is replaced in two photocopiers, and then once i am at the machine, another queue to get some paper for the machine. so. it takes half an hour to photocopy one double-sided business activity statement form.

happily what awaits me on returning home is a boy on the sofa who is quite agreeable to the idea of me buying him end-of-school-holiday dinner in the malaysian restaurant up the street. not only is there a flavoursome mee siam with an egg boiled for so long it has a grey circle around the yolk, there is also ice kacang with bits of jackfruit hidden in the bottom.

except for kinko’s, best monday ever.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 27 April 2004 at 8:18 am

permalink | filed under around town, at the movies, boy, dinner, grumble, lunch, nellie, snacks

road trip report

no, there was no easter road carnage. not involving us anyway, and surprisingly few incidents that involved squished marsupials. there was nary even an attempt to learn to drive (let alone start up the car) on my part. mainly, i handed out snacks and gazed out the window at brown and cows. ahh cows.

there were many tasty treats along the way, including such fabled delights as a curried prawn casserole for tea and a breakfast involving two kinds of sausages, bacon, fried eggs, toast, sweet tea and a surprise delivery of lambs fry (with bacon). there was a roasted loin of lamb wrapped in vine leaves perched atop a tomato and olive salad, drizzled with tzaziki, with a bowl of buttered vegetables on the side. there were pasties and sweet buns, and a pizza experience the likes of which may i please o please never have again. there were two sips of a yummy sparkling shiraz before my throat started to close. there was a kebab. there was a turkey and salad sandwich half the size of my head, and a strawberry thickshake. there was a fat burger from a takeaway shop in yass, which had a refrigerated counter full of coleslaw…

there were mountains, and walks up and down mountains, and valleys, and the magnificent murray river, and the bewildering national museum of australia in canberra. there were good times, dammit.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 22 April 2004 at 6:09 pm

permalink | filed under boy, breakfast, dinner, lunch, snacks, trip

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