ragingyoghurt

Category Archives: kid

over the weekend, i chanced upon a recipe for spinach and ricotta gnocchi. usually i like the idea of gnocchi, but i can’t imagine eating more than maybe two or three before i get bored and start looking around for, um, tiramisu or something. (strangely, i have no problem sitting and eating mounds and mounds of mashed potato, even to and beyond the point of pain.)

this recipe though, was more than just mashed potato. in fact, there was no potato at all. and just look at the picture in the magazine: so green and enticing! and covered in butter and cheese.

so yesterday, after i stopped being distracted by cake, i went up the street and bought a kilo of spinach and a wedge of ricotta, and stood at the stove for a good part of an hour, following the recipe exactly.

after i dropped the first four balls into the lightly salted boiling water, they disintegrated and looked like a bubbling swamp in the pot. hmph. the next four held together a bit more, but when i drained them and put them in a dish, they sighed into each other and became one large, soft… i don’t even think you can call it gnocchi (gnocco?).

each subsequent batch ended up being floured a bit more, and left to cook a bit longer after they had risen to the surface of the water, so by the end it looked less swampy-mulchy and more italian cuisine. sadly, by this time it had been rejected by the baby (and in a cruel twist i ended up making her mashed potato instead, and baked beans), and forsaken by the boy (who thought it was tasty but soft and lacking meat, and then quickly moved on to cake and ice cream), which is why this afternoon, i ate a large plate of them for lunch.

they were still softer than the magazine ones look (oh, maybe the food stylist put some sort of firming agent in to stop them collapsing under the lights, yes yes, that is my excuse), but gawrsh, so yummy.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 26 October 2005 at 3:54 pm

permalink | filed under dinner, kid, kitchen, lunch

i think you know that i really, really like cake. however i am not so much of a baker. my electric mixer broke down a few years ago, and it always seems easier to walk past a shop window with a cake inside, and suddenly i am in there too, buying the cake! than to sit in the kitchen for an hour or so creaming butter and sugar with a hand whisk, and even then not getting the mixture soft and fluffy enough.

but in the tradition of libra babies, whose birthdays stretch across a week, and maybe into a month, saturday meant a birthday picnic in the park. and what better to bring to a picnic than cake?

i anticipated the gasps of glee and horror from the gathered grandparents as i wheeled out the enormous cake with a photo of maevis printed onto the thick white fondant icing… however in the end i opted for cupcakes. sensible yet fun! and the one bowl chocolate cake from “martha stewart kids”, which required half a cup of olive oil rather than a block of wrist-spraining butter, made the choice clear.

when it came to the frosting, i again felt a twinge in my wrist (i have small, delicate wrists). but i found a recipe for banana buttercream frosting which actually contains real mashed banana and not so much butter at all. the instructions said to beat until frosting is fluffy, but alas, my hand-whisking was no match for a pink kitchenaid. in the end, it wasn’t a big swirl atop the cupcake like those lickable american ones, but it did the job, and looked vaguely natural and healthy (because you couldn’t see the three cups of icing sugar that went into it)… and well, the kid seemed to like it.

no, really.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 23 October 2005 at 10:01 pm

permalink | filed under cake, kid

happy birthday, munchie!
may you always be in cake.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 18 October 2005 at 10:10 pm

permalink | filed under cake, kid

nice pear. today, an adventure: the sydney sandwich social whereby sandwiches are made and halved and swapped and eaten.

at ten-thirty, as, all casual-like, i sliced bread, cheese and pear, what the second processor in my head was thinking was, well, i suppose i could make a sandwich, and if all goes well, i’ll be ready to leave the house at eleven-thirty, with a sandwich and a baby. and then it happened! hence, my new plan will be to not make plans, and to let the second processor take care of things.

because then we were on the bus into the city, the magic bus that has a space for a pram, and takes you all the way to the botanical gardens (or the art gallery, if you are that way inclined). and we were walking around under the hot hot sun, looking for a small group of people with large sandwiches. and we were finding them at last, and sitting down in the shade of a tree, and chasing birds and eating twigs and leaves of the ground.

this is the sandwich i made:

pear, pesto and parmesan on walnut bread. last night, when i described the idea to my sister, she paused and thought about it, then said, “unexpected. and tasty.” and then, “does it have to be an alliterative sandwich?” why, no. but they came together all sweet, salty and faintly green.

in the end there were more sandwiches than people, and more cookies and muffins too, and quite a bit of fun for a baby who hadn’t slept in about five hours.

and now i am home, with a baby in bed, and a cup of tea and a delicious apple-streusel muffin, and the saturday review section of movies i will not get to see, not for a very long time, not until they come out on DVD, maybe.

thanks to saffron for the picture of my sandwich, and augustus gloop for the muffins, and to both for bringing all the sandwiches together.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 24 September 2005 at 4:54 pm

permalink | filed under around town, kid, lunch

and so the feta adventures continue. one of my favourite things to do with feta or goat cheese … (or maybe any sort of spreadable or crumbly, salty white cheese, or maybe any cheese — except blue or that maggoty sicilian stuff) is have it with bread and jam. oh that combination of sweet and salty, fruity and creamy, mmm… today’s program was brought to you by a slice of light rye and sweet-tart cherry jam.

in other food adventure news… well, there must have been some food eaten, after all it has been like, 5000 years since the last update. what stands out the most though, has been the daily lunchtime treats of vegetable puree. i have run the gamut from carrot to sweet potato to pumpkin and back to carrot. yes. the child is being “introduced to solids”, and now she probably thinks that all food is orange.

in between steaming and blending and getting it all into a very small mouth, it’s been inevitable that very small spoonfuls have made their way into my mouth too. it really is just so tasty! and it’s a bonus that i don’t have to chew.

today’s lunch of cauliflower puree (tinged orange because it got mixed in with some leftover carrot puree) was well-received by all parties, and ended with teething rusks all ’round.

well. i thought it was important i familiarise myself with these exotic new tastes and textures. (sadly this extended to a sip of the prune juice that the early childhood nurse recommended to deconstipate the child.)

posted by ragingyoghurt on 17 May 2005 at 3:11 pm

permalink | filed under kid, snacks

at about 4am i was on the couch downstairs to escape the boy’s snoring. it was to be the last time i would be asleep all day. i knew i was asleep because i was dreaming that i was sitting at my computer, and i heard the baby cry, and the boy brought the baby to me to be fed, and by “brought” i mean that he held her hand and walked her over, because evidently dream baby could walk. real life baby though, cannot, and so i sleepclimbed the stairs to the bedroom, where she actually was having a bit of a grumble. the boy optimistically thought he’d be able to put her back to sleep and sent me back downstairs, where for an hour and a half i lay awake listening to her emit sporadic beeping noises, just like that smoke alarm whose battery is running low. then at 5.40, when the boy decided that he’d had enough, child was unceremoniusly plonked back in the cot, and the boy appeared downstairs with a frown and a blanket. oh, unhappy baby! so. back upstairs, fed the child, who seemed to go back to sleep up until the point she was put back in her cot, when she decided to be awake for the day. it was 6am, there were birds chirping, fair enough. so. back downstairs, where the next two hours were spent entertaining the baby, washing the dishes and baking a batch of ginger ale scones. before i knew it it was time to put the baby back to bed and get dressed for yoga.

yoga makes it all better.

and so do instant noodles! it was all i could fathom “cooking” tonight following a post-yoga afternoon of a couple of not-quite naps inbetween laundry and the baby and dishes and the baby and the internet and the baby. the alternative was an old christmas pudding and cream — i would only have felt a little bit guilty, and it would have been tasty i’m sure.

but in the end the noodles won. i resisted the temptation to follow the instructions on the pack —
“place the rice vermicelli, soup base and seasoning oil into a bowl. pour in 400cc of boiling water. cover up the bowl for 3 minutes. and now soft and appetizing rice vermicelli is ready for serving.” — yum. and instead put a pot on the stove. it only extends the cooking time to ten minutes, to add such things as pork dumplings, pumpkin, chinese broccoli, lotus root, bamboo shoots and a sprinkle of japanese chili pepper, and makes it a bowl of nourishment and comfort.

my preferred brand is a relic of my childhood: chu qian yi ding. tonight i had the artificial beef flavoured rice vermicelli, but look at all the flavours the normal wheat noodles come in. it’s rather amazing what comes out of a little silver foil packet.

and maybe there is room for pudding and cream after all.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 7 May 2005 at 7:50 pm

permalink | filed under boy, dinner, grumble, kid

i have just been listening to “daisies of the galaxy” by eels, the first time in over a year. it is lovely and amazing, and i really should listen to my CDs more instead of having, like, dr phil on in the background during the day.

yesterday, i finally went back to yoga class. it has taken almost this long to get the kid to the stage where she might not have to eat for the duration of a yoga class and the walk to and fro.

there was a sense of trepidation: does nigh on seven months of no yoga render me all unpliable? could i muddle through a general class, or would i have to go back to beginners all over again?

as it turned out, joy, i could keep up with the generals, and all those months of pregnancy yoga meant that i could still squat like a chinaman during squatting pose. by the end of the class i was feeling rather good — muscles all warm and wobbly, like.

the best part about yoga is that it is just down the street from cafe banchetto, on devonshire, where some days you can get a takeaway sandwich with a large grilled mushroom in it.

there were other roasted vegetables thrown in as well, some salad greens and ricotta — see how the giant mushroom has left a fossilised imprint of itself in the creamy white. oh how it glistens!

posted by ragingyoghurt on 1 May 2005 at 1:57 pm

permalink | filed under around town, kid, lunch, soundtrack

who wants to breakfast on supermarket bread on a fine saturday morning? not i.

with munchie maevis, who’d been up for two and a half hours since five-thirty, obliging us with a morning nap, i patted my bedhead down with a sprinkle of tapwater, checked for eye crusties, and set out jauntily and carefree for the bourke street bakery.

it is a pleasurable thing to run through in your head the kinds of bread you might come away with, while walking to the bakery. it makes the trip pass quickly, and keeps the mind free of such concerns as the fifteen or twenty muggings reported on our street over the last few weeks, some in the daylight hours, one involving my little mother three weeks ago, and one that happened to the boy just this past thursday night as he ventured out to bring us back thai food. yes. vile muggers. however, it is only eight a.m. — any self-respecting mugger would probably still be lying in a ditch somewhere, wasted from shooting up his nightly profits.

today is the earliest i’ve been to the bakery; one window is full of fresh sourdoughs, and the pattern of sweet tarts and muffins in the other is as yet unbroken. also, there is a whole flourless chocolate cake sitting on a cake stand, biding its time.

this is a common story, no? go in for a loaf of bread, come out with a loaf of bread — multigrain sourdough — and a passionfruit and grape muffin, a plum and meringue tart, a wedge of that chocolate cake and a bottle of raspberry and apple juice. i am $20 poorer, but wealthy with baked goods. it is not such an affliction. i think this girl would understand.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 9 April 2005 at 9:23 am

permalink | filed under breakfast, cake, chocolate, kid

today i beat up a door. today i stepped out onto the sidewalk and wanted to run. away. anywhere. because i dislike running, though, i walked very quickly, and found myself heading in the direction of kmart. i haven’t been swimming in almost a year. i haven’t done yoga — aside from the occasional cluster of sun salutes and a cursory stretch every now and again — in over five months. my body is atrophying. my backbone is clenchy. i find myself buying strings of paper lanterns and overpriced (though very beautiful) christmas lights, because everything else seems so dark, dammit. some days i find myself in a place even cake cannot reach.

today i thought i’d catalogue the jams in my moth-infested pantry.

already opened in the fridge and in various stages of gone-ness are:
apricot jam — the last centimetre at the bottom of the jar
raspberry conserve — more than halfway gone
cherry jam — i would like more of this to be gone, but its strange and unjammy liquid state and lack of cherry flavour have kept me from fulfilling its destiny
papaya and macadamia nut jam — a gift, this remains barely eaten after many months; it has a strange solid texture and is studded with distracting fragments of macadamias
rhubarb ginger conserve — almost as unsuccessful as the papaya macnut jam

the jams-in-waiting are:
cottees apricot conserve
hanks pear cinammon jam
harrods christmas mature thick cut marmalade with orange liqueur
harrods ginger extra jam
les palais des thés rhubarbe au thé vert du japon
luxardo 170% fruit marasca cherry preserve
st dalfour gourmet pear 100% fruit spread
young maid cherry jam
young maid raspberry and cashew jam

this is of course not counting the two kinds of honey, cinnamon sugar, vegemite and chocolate sprinkles that grace my bread from time to time. and then, hidden under a pile of clothes on the dresser upstairs is a jar of chocolate body paint (with saucy stencils) that i was given at christmas. the list of ingredients suggest that it could be used as a breadspread instead.

meanwhile, what the hell hints have i been exuding that made chocolate body paint an appropriate gift?

so. fourteen jams in total. one with 170% fruit. it must be a sign of… something, i’m sure. i think, perhaps, i need a new loaf of bread.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 6 March 2005 at 5:40 pm

permalink | filed under boy, kid

this past sunday afternoon saw the kid and i in the shade of a luscious frangipani tree in a backyard in the inner west, for ella berry‘s birthday party. the invitation had said to bring a plate of party food, and somehow, in the best way, everybody had interpreted that to mean “bring cake”. even the piñata was in the shape of a cake: a double-layered, yellow structure with printed-on cream and candles. similar to the coloseum in more than appearance alone, it withstood the frenzied beating of two children, one adult and a third child helped by an adult, and only gave in when it was finally cut free from the tree and jumped upon gleefully by the birthday girl.

when i collected my tray at the end of the afternoon, a selection of little cakes came home with me.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 8 February 2005 at 3:23 pm

permalink | filed under cake, kid

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