sweet mercy, the cool change is here.
yesterday’s 38° and today’s not-much-better was taking its sweaty, stinky toll. my feet were red and swollen like large warm steaks. it seemed like the best place to find lunch was in the freezer. it came so close to being ice cream, but ended up being a mound of peas and a lemon-crumbed fish fillet. this neccesitated both the oven and stovetop going full blast for a while at noon, but it was all worthwhile.
it’s good to have a plan, because then you can be quietly pleased when everything falls into place. in this case, tuesday, the nori rolls were a perfect balance of salty and sour and sweet and umami (there is no place for bitterness in my life), “donnie darko” (apart from the arty digi-montages) was still good, and the coco loco mocha freezer (while too damn watery and ice chippy in texture) was a powerful chocolatey force. for about ten minutes into the film, the number of people in the cinema was one — me, and then sadly four teenagers arrived and took out the back row, and giggled when cherita chen gets told “go back to china, bitch”, and received phone calls on their mobiles, and giggled some more.
teenagers. feh.
having a plan with a bit of leeway on either side is especially good, because then you can duck into kmart before for a pair of new underwear, and pop into harris farm after for beans and asparagus and a tub of raspberry yoghurt.
—
completely unplanned was the sudden waking at 2.30 this morning, the lying awake for an hour before rolling out of bed and the resigned heading downstairs with a handful of pillows and “the new yorker” food issue. having over the last couple of days already read about the struggles to develop a superior ketchup and some guy’s obsession with pasta, 3am seemed a perfectly alright time to learn about the commercial production of salad greens.
here, look:
it took … until 1989 … to mass produce the first retail bagged salads. salad spinners were perfected, shredding knives sharpened, battalions of chemists subcontracted to create the perfect polymers. today’s bags are a triumph of practical ingenuity. their plastic is made up of five to ten layers, each with a different function. some are designed to make the package shiny or crinkly, others to carry print well. together, they have to be just permeable enough to keepthe bag’s artificial atmosphere in balance — the wrong ink alone can suffocate a salad. as the lettuce sits on the shelf, the gases in the bag are constantly consumed, released and replaced. oxygen, nitrogen and carbon-dioxide molecules bond with the polymers on one side of the plastic and are released on the other, diffusing from high concentrations to low. every type of salad requires a different type of bag, tailored to its respiration rate by gas chromatography and computer analysis. every bag is a miniature biosphere.
from salad days: how a lowly leaf became a high-end delicacy
by burkhard bilger
yesterday, at a luncheon in which everyone at the table turned out to be with child (way to go, my fertile friends!), what i ordered off the specials board was a grilled haloumi salad. it wasn’t just slabs of grilled salty cheese; there were lightly dressed baby rocket and mint leaves, cucumber ribbons, fresh beetroot, roasted eggplant, and on top, a dollop of herby yoghurt. there were also two bits of bread which in the end were used to wipe the plate clean.
oh cook + archie’s, i am privileged to be fed by you.
the first day of spring brought such bad things as:
1. the lovely and amazing cafe zoe up the road having black bean and spinach soup on the menu, but no longer in the kitchen, because although the winter menu had changed to the spring menu, they hadn’t printed them up yet. in truth, this was only a bit sad for a little while because the ensuing second breakfast of a spinach and poached egg english muffin with grilled-in-butter mushrooms and a mesclun salad more than redeemed the situation.
2. nellie flying back to new york, which was such a sad bad thing that we began saying “ok… well…” and “goodbye” yesterday afternoon so that we’d be used to it by the time today came around. in addition we had to have first breakfasts (actually the second course of first breakfast) of ice cream sundaes to cheer ourselves up.
the sundaes were composed of a perfunctory layer of tim tam ice cream, strawberries, vanilla ice cream, strawberries, more vanilla ice cream and strawberries, crushed lebanese date biscuits, vanilla ice cream, shaved chocolate and strawberries.
3. coming out of two and a half hours of birth class to discover that it is raining, and arriving home to find all the laundry that was oh so close to sundried is now close to sopping wet. at least now i know how to swaddle a baby.
4. my sister not being here.
i’m doing too much. i’m not doing enough. either way it seems to have resulted in this field of blog lying fallow.
aside from the nonstop happy rollercoaster of my sister being in town, i’m also working to a handful of print deadlines. this basically means that any given day involves moving between a pastry and a computer, maybe even three or four times a day. sometimes a great distance across inner-city suburbs is walked to get to a pastry, other times i only have to stumble downstairs to the kitchen. on these occasions, i hope the foetus is absorbing any extraneous kilojoules.
this morning, what awaits in brown paper bags strewn across the kitchen counter are: a blueberry brioche, a custard brioche, the biggest custard-filled, caramel-topped profiterole in the world (which the boy bought because of its resemblance to the enormous, pulsating, million calorie, poison-creme-filled dessert offered to homer in food critic mode), and a loaf of sourdough spelt fruit bread…
do your teeth hurt? a pot of strong black bush tea will help.
hmm. after a few hours of sleep, alternating left side, right side and on my back, i was awake at 3.30am, sitting up in bed with a tub of vanilla yoghurt, the “new yorker” summer fiction issue, and “rage” on in the background playing old silverchair videos, from back when they were a lowercase band.
i wasn’t lucky enough to have the first “tomorrow” video included in the programming, where the band were little puppy boys loping across the screen (or even the second “tomorrow” video where mark pellington did a convincing job imitating his own “jeremy” video), but it sure was educational to see the progression over the years… as daniel grew his cheekbones and chris grew his neck and ben — well, i guess ben just cut his hair — and more significantly, how the music evolved, because i stopped really listening to the band after the second album.
a random line over at gempires: “grunge on the jukebox. we reminisce about pearl jam.” made me think about how maybe i don’t even have to reminisce about pearl jam because i frequently have them on the CD player, even the newer albums, especially at deadline time. i’ve seen both bands a bunch of times, the most memorable of which were: silverchair at their first big day out, where they played a little stage and the crowd to see them was so inversely big that you didn’t have to stand up, you were just held up by everyone else; and being in the moshpit (twice!) at pearl jam, propped up against the security bar and looking up at eddie and feeling the voice just vibrate through me. how is it that i outgrew silverchair and not pearl jam?
watching the silverchair videos in the wee hours, it struck me that silverchair evolved in a way that pearl jam didn’t: good old dependable three-guitar + bass + drum sound (and dammit, pearl jam even did the rock cliche of revolving door drummers) versus fancy orchestration and operatic tendencies. and thus, really, it was silverchair that had outgrown me.
this drivel was brought to you by the 3.30am waking hour, the tub of vanilla yoghurt and, oh bloody hell, ok, half a bag of sweet chili pretzels.
if yer walking through the scrum that is the underground passageway between town hall station and the queen victoria building (and beyond), and you inadvertantly look backward towards the space beneath the escalators that used to be a flower shop, you will be surprised (or not, seeing as this has been the current growth sector of the small portable food industry for the last couple of years, following sushi roll holes-in-the-walls and those goddamn city convenience stores) to find that it has become a gelato stand called, i think, “mondo”.
it’s one of those places where the gelato is piled high above the stainless steel tubs, with specimens of the raw product that is the main flavour base perched on the crest. in the front corner of the glass case is a milky white mountain studded through with red. it looks like alpine springtime, snow thinning to reveal new blossoms beneath. this is the flavour: white chocolate and raspberry. i want some.
i should be blogging more regularly, no? maybe you really want to know about the leftover fish congee that i had for dinner last night while watching last week’s “ER” on videotape, or the picnic embarked on, solo, last friday at cremorne point (cheese and tomato with seeded mustard and mayonnaise sandwich, a mandarin and two spicy fruit roll biscuits, on a rock, under a tree, watching the spirit of tasmania sail into the harbour).
you might think that being in the family way, as i am, would result in adventures in more and better eating, what with the crazy food cravings and the eating for two and all, but it’s all been very normal: no weird food has been desired, no extra portions dished out. i can’t even provide pitiful stories of throwing up and having to eat nothing but dry crackers and flat gingerbeer. i could blog about pregnancy in general, but really, everything is so… normal, and other people do it so well already.
slowly, though, i’m outgrowing all my clothes, and the speed at which my intestines fill up with gas is most alarming. a bit past halfway, if there’s one effect on good eating that being knocked up has had, it’s that i can’t fit as much food in my stomach at one go as i once could. here is last night’s conversation with my sister:
nellie: how’s the baboo?
bowb: good. umm. it’s growing. it’s taking up too much space in my belly.
nellie: hah! no space for food!
bowb: yah!
nellie: heh! resentful…
lordy, is that the time? i must go make some mushrooms on toast.
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.
oh it’s winter. the sky is clear blue and there are birds chirping outside. if my washing machine wasn’t broken i could be putting a load on and then spending the rest of the day smelling clean laundry ripening in the sun. the repairman is coming today “after twelve”, which i got the friendly service desk lady to narrow down to “anywhere between twelve and three”. sigh.
yesterday i queued for half an hour at medicare to claim $100, and then queued again (20 minutes) at medibank for another $100. i was just down the street from krispy kreme, but when i walked past all casual-like, the line was out the door and onto the street, and i just didn’;t think i could queue anymore, not even for donuts.
instead a brisk stroll brought me to il gianfornaio, where a slice of mushroom pizza was had, and two sicilian canoli packaged up to go: one with a dark chocolate custard and the other with fruit-and-chocolate-studded sweet ricotta. there was also a bottle of fanta, the remains of which i have just realised are still sitting in my mr friendly backpack next to my foot, instead of in the fridge for later.
[ puts fanta in fridge ]
so, the new fanta label says “now with 5% fruit”. mysteriously there is not too discernable a difference in the taste of fruitless fanta and what is now described as a “fruit drink”. i suppose it’s 5%… what? healthier? i definitely didn’t feel as ill as i normally do after drinking a bottle of fanta, but i suspect that has more to do with me just drinking a quarter of it.
i am rambling. why am i rambling? sleep deprivation?; maybe i need some juice. or fanta.
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.
