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Category Archives: shoping

behold, this glossy zeppelin in my hand; why, it is actually a custard brioche with a jaunty and tastalising splodge of yellow peeking out the hole on top, from the bakery next to victoire.

“you know that bakery next to victoire? it’s really good.”

“yes. i go to that bakery.
i had an excellent meatpie there once.
i don’t go to victoire.
only you and your sister go to victoire.
what a pretentious name.”

“um. i’m sure lots of other people go to victoire besides me and my sister.”

“i meant in this household. only you and your sister, from this household. i mean, vic-toire.”

“it’s a french bakery. why wouldn’t they have a french name?”

“but the word itself. there are pretentious english words and unpretentious english words.”

“i think any french word would sound pretentious to you.”

“what about ‘bread’? what’s the french word for ‘bread’?”

“it’s ‘pain‘, but it’s spelt like, pain. people would go there thinking they were going to get pierced.”

“well… … …”

and this is the boy who had a (non-french) friend, who wanted to name her son ‘papillon’.

anyway, whatever. speaking of pretentious, i really want one of these villeroy and boch silver-plated tea infusers, to replace my misshappen, tannin (or is it rust?)-stained mesh one. will it be the twiggy?

posted by ragingyoghurt on 13 September 2005 at 9:54 pm

permalink | filed under boy, nellie, shoping

if you do not hear from me in the next… whenever, it could be because the “yoshi's island” cartridge that i “won” on ebay for my gameboy advance sp finally arrived. woohoo.

the story with the cartridge is that i already have a “yoshi’s island” cartridge. what i mean by that is i already have a cartridge called “114 in 1, no repeats”, on which one of the 114 games is “yoshi’s island”. a couple of years ago, when i fronted up at the counter of a cartridge shop in singapore asking for the latest super mario game for my shiny new gameboy, the guy behind the counter asked quite sincerely, “why would you want to pay $60 for just one game, when you can buy this one –” reaching into a hidden drawer under the counter “– with 114 games for $100?”

yeah, it only kind of made sense back then too.

incidentally, “no repeats” means variations on a theme are rife, for example “mappy” is on there three or four times, where mappy is replaced in each version by mario or a rabbit or someother random 80s-style pixelated arcade type character. but, also, there are two kinds of tetris, yay.

anyway. so one day, “yoshi’s island” lost the ability to save the game progress, and i was doomed to spend eternity wandering world 1-1. let’s call it karma. or, “oh, so that’s why i would want to pay $60 for one game instead of $100 for… oh never mind.

fast forward to a couple weeks ago, when my latest ebay trawl for “yoshi island gba” yielded “new in box” for $8. before too long, the price was up to $9.50, and it was mine! it showed up in my mailbox yesterday, and after i tore it out of the envelope, i noticed that a line of print on the box read, “not compatible with other gasme boy systems”. yes, gasme.

hem. at least it saves game progress.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 8 April 2005 at 8:47 am

permalink | filed under shoping

on the way home from such trivial saturday morning activities as “looking in shops” and “buying two magazines”, i stopped in at the organic food place to get a bottle of ginger necktar. this is a tasty beverage, made of ginger, lemon, honey and “energised water”, by an outfit called, appropriately enough, “ginger necktar drink company”. i’m not sure why it’s spelt “necktar” … but thinking about it now, i’m guessing it’s because you can’t actually get nectar from ginger so this cunning mis-spelling removes any sort of “you told me it was nectar” finger-pointing on the part of the consumer.

“that’s shree dollars,” said the guy behind the counter; his mouth was full of something.

“um. three dollars?”

“yes,” he replied, after swallowing.

i was fumbling in my wallet for exact change, when i thought i heard him say, “would you like a bean?” and when i looked up, he was holding a long bean at me.

“oh yes please!” i said.

it was a cold and crisp bean. raw. the most refreshing bean i ever did have. i told him so.

he beamed. “where have you bean all my life?” he said.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 22 January 2005 at 6:31 pm

permalink | filed under drink, shoping, snacks

is this normal behaviour? yesterday at marrickville metro, accompanying the boy to do his desperate and ultimately unsuccessful burst of christmas shoping for the year, i popped into the rather good metro grocer for a tub of yoghurt.

not ten minutes later, we stood at the cashier and i was signing a credit card receipt for $62 worth of yoghurt, halloumi, chocolate mousse, calabrian chili-marinated sardines, artichokes, plums, a vanilla pod, a marzipan stollen and a $20 panettone.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 20 December 2004 at 6:35 pm

permalink | filed under around town, shoping

some days, once a week, say, it is good in clement weather, to strap the kid in the baby bjorn, get on the bus and head into the city. timing it just right, directly after a feed and a nappy change, will buy us a two-hour excursion, plenty of time for a stroll through the aisles of department stores looking at what i like to call “things”, and then a quick whirl through the david jones food hall for lunch and/or a treat. maevis would have fallen asleep sometime during the bus trip or the subsequent wandering, and on the bus home is when the first gruntings of awakening emerge. perfect.

a week ago, such an excursion resulted in a turkey and brie baquette, three nudie smoothies, a tub of chocolate mousse, and a $20 box of the special christmas assortment of lindt gingerbread truffles. today was a much more modest affair, yielding a small tub of roasted tomato couscous and turtle bean salad from the salad bar. en route to the bus though, i did stop by starbucks, the one which opened up in the space where half the commonwealth bank’s counters used to be. remember, nellie, when we walked across the brooklyn bridge in the windchill, and my face broke out in hives, and on reaching manhattan we had to take shelter in a starbucks for gingerbread lattes? today there was no such need, even though i really wanted to, for christmas. instead i went the maccha frappacino, in a lovely shade of green. in a very non-christmassy display of meanness, starbucks now charges 30c extra if you say “yes” when they ask, “and do you want whipped cream on that?”.

humph.

ah these heady days of carefree consumption of pregnancy danger foods. i was hardly strict about it over the gestation — a couple bits of sushi here, a runny egg yolk there, with no ill effect except mild worry if my stomach flip-flopped after the fact — but in the last couple of weeks i’ve gleefully eaten two brie sandwiches, two chocolate mousses (with a newly acquired third in the fridge), an enormous amount of sashimi at one sitting, and today’s whipped cream on my frappacino. all i have to tackle now is soft serve ice cream.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 20 December 2004 at 6:05 pm

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

hem. yesterday, after years of gazing up at the maple syrup shelf in the supermarket, i finally decided to spend $6.99 on 250ml of real canadian maple syrup rather than $3.99 on half a litre of made in australia maple-flavoured syrup. and the thing is, i think i might prefer the cheap stuff; it tastes more mapley.

o.0

still, the french toast and boysenberry yoghurt didn’t seem to mind being drenched in it this morning.

—

yoghurt-buying conversation, sunday

me: mmm… that passionfruit yoghurt is so pretty [indeed it had a golden swirl throughout, and was studded with beady black seeds], but the boysenberry looks tasty [i like the look of a thick layer of pulpilicious purple berry pooled at the bottom of the container].
boy: get the boysenberry. it’s always a tasty berry.
me: i don’t think there are any berries that are not good and tasty.
boy: well. there’s poisonberry.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 21 September 2004 at 9:20 am

permalink | filed under boy, breakfast, shoping

um. i want one. (please?)

posted by ragingyoghurt on 20 September 2004 at 10:33 am

permalink | filed under misc, shoping

following too much dimsum at kamfook in chatswood on friday, we waddled slowly and sleepily like fat little puppies (yet bouyantly and almost hysterically, what with the little bubbles of oxygen pumping through our veins — this always happens in the situation i’m about to type) down the aisles of the asian supermarket next door.

ah, jusco. such a trevor trove of japanese candy (including a broad selection of yoghurt and calpis flavoured treats) and instant noodles and exotic beverages. and this: a little cup of biscuit fingers with a pot of chocolate and sprinkles for dipping. based on my highschool level reading of the chinese print on the label, it seems to have come out of the indonesian branch of arnotts, specifically for the hong kong and taiwan market, and the packaging is ocha-ken.

gasp! who is tea dog?

via jascii.net: ocha-ken is a really short anime about tea. it’s about a little green puppy with tea-leaf ears named ryoku whose nose always tells him when there’s tea made just right to be had. he has a lot of different-coloured dog friends who also seem to love tea and coffee. the first episode, “have you been making tea lately?” is about how hard it is to make the perfect tea, not too hot, cold, thin, thick, but just right. when ryoku smells that perfect tea, he calls all his friends and they go over to hana, the purple dog’s place, where they see she’s being a great hostess. tea is the best, isn’t it? when you’re drinking it, maybe you, too, can see the cute little tea puppy!

who doesn’t like tea? and ok, i don’t want to be all weird about this, but look! you can get a plastic teapot toy, and it opens up into some sort of onsen situation where you and your different-coloured dog friends can drink tea and chat and have a dip in the hot spring:

um. management would like to apologise for the inordinate number of plugs in that post.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 22 August 2004 at 7:37 am

permalink | filed under around town, packaging, shoping

you know what’s weird? when you don’t really go to a place — say parramatta — very often, and then a month or two after your last trip there you catch the train to a job-related meeting at said place, and you get there and bloody hell, the train station has moved! sure, it’s only moved about 30m along the track, but when you descend the wide new escalators and exit the shiny new turnstiles and stand out on the street, facing unfamiliar buildings and streetscape, unfamiliar only by being 30m down from where you normally step out onto the footpath… you will be utterly confused.

ok, well *i* was confused.

but happily, i oriented myself in the end, made it to the meeting, had a salad, avocado and pesto wrap and cloudy lemonade lunch bought for me, and then found myself blissfully wandering the aisles of the wonderland that is harris farm market for half an hour. which is why i sit here now with a bag of sweet tart cherries in front of me, and a slab of triple cream brie downstairs in the fridge.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 28 July 2004 at 4:20 pm

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

hurray for the queen; if not for her royal highness, there would be no public holiday to celebrate her birthday, in a land sorely lacking in public holidays. monday, given the choice between filing photocopies into a stack of new folders, and going for an excursion to cabramatta, the boy wisely chose not to file. that’s why he’s the school teacher. not too soon, we were on a good train — an express service with no stupid, reasonless stops inbetween stations, and airconditioned — whizzing our way out west.

a very short walk from cabramatta station, we fell into a small dimsum factory and found ourselves in possession of a small paper bag each of assorted dumplings. not ten minutes later, i was perched at a bakery counter, handing over $1.20 for a wedge of pandan chiffon cake. we decided we had to put a stop to this disgraceful behaviour by sitting down to lunch.

egg noodles, glisteny with garlicky oil, and an assortment of roast duck and porks.

something happens to the boy, where having eaten his fill, he is rendered incapable of thinking about and preparing for subsequent meals. fortunately i am free of this sad affliction, and despite our post-lunch activity being primarily the quest for a bamboo steamer (so much harder to find than you would expect in such an intense asian community), my cloth bag slowly (quickly) filled up with these:

an assortment from lawrence cake shop: green and red jelly cakes, a pandan slice and — oh happy nostalgia — a cream horn; and this:

the label says “sticky rice cake”, but in fact it is black sticky rice, and pandan flavour sticky rice, and sandwiched inbetween, mung bean paste and shredded coconut and ground-up peanuts, wrapped in a pancake. surprisingly, the rice is sweet, the mung bean salty, and it is all extremely flavoursome;

and a tub of ginger flavour tofu pudding, and bag of dried longans from thailand.

we were there only for two and a half hours, but it was freakishly warm for winter, and we were wilting. later that night, a dinner made up of a selection of exotic cakes revived us.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 15 June 2004 at 1:08 pm

permalink | filed under around town, boy, cake, lunch, shoping, snacks

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