ragingyoghurt

Category Archives: tv

what is it with the hoarding? surely not because my grandmother lived through the war? these boxes of cardboard and cardboard boxes, the magazines — you know those stories, the jams, the teas… right now it’s chocolate bars. i go up to the shops knowing that i cannot buy another bottle of jam or packet of tea or bar of chocolate, but despite my best intentions…

despite the valrhona bar (from my kind mother), the pack of haigh’s chocolate-covered marzipan (from my kind father), the scharfen-berger block (from my kind sister, and it’s really cooking chocolate, so it doesn’t count), the slab of italian chocolate nougat (from xmas(s) past… oh dear) all stashed away in a shoe box, i left the supermarket the other day with a lindt intense lemon bar: 47% cocoa with bits of lemon and almond slivers (and oh! apple pulp and pineapple), and then a day later, all giddy like a schoolgirl from being in the wonderland that is about life, i bought (raspberries-blueberries-half-a-pineapple-and) a grizzly bar.

the grizzly bar is one in the managerie of the endangered species chocolate company. the display at checkout was row upon row of chocolate bars with wildlife photographs on the labels: zebras, giraffes, koalas, snow leopards, marine iguanas… the kid started making monkey noises at the chimpanzee bar (72% dark chocolate), but because she is also partial to bears, i managed to get away with the grizzly (70% with raspberries).

you get more chocolate for less money compared to the dagoba roseberry bar and, bonus, it feels creamier on the tongue. later, sitting at the computer, i was going to have a square, and suddenly the entire top row was gone. the thing is, the squares on this bar aren’t even all that clearly delineated; there are suggestive mounds where you can break around if you are so inclined.

at the store, i turned the bar over to see where it was made: unsurprisingly, oregon. 10% of profits are donated to protect endangered species, and the inside of the label contains conservation tips such as:

“Don’t Feed the Bears
Bears that obtain human food, birdseed, pet food, or garbage quickly lose their natural fear of humans. This poses a risk for both human and bear safety. If you visit or live in bear country, learn ways to secure your food and trash.
Protect Our Planet…
It’s the Only One with Chocolate.”

speaking of bears… we have been watching a really good cartoon in the mornings: eddy and the bear. or at least, i have been watching while the kid does her rounds of the living room. nellie, i must insist that you click on the trailer link.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 12 January 2006 at 11:40 am

permalink | filed under chocolate, kid, tv

o what an inauspicious start to the new year. somehow my < div > tags have become magic spells, which spirit away everything that follows them.

what i wrote last night was that i had a choice between writing an entry, watching reruns of “lost”, reading and sleeping. the blog won, but clearly i should have spent the hour watching “lost” instead. first time ’round, it seemed like the kid would wake for a feed in the last fifteen minutes of every episode. that and the fact that the promos kept promising things that were never delivered… in the end “lost” lost me. i am assured however, in the promos for the next season, that i will find out what’s at the bottom of the hole, in the first three minutes. we shall see.

new year’s eve, me and maeve were talking to the friendly neightbours across the way, and i asked what my balcony was like for that night’s fireworks. “this is the place to be,” they said, and pointed to a large flat thing being towed across the water into our line of sight. “look! here comes the barge from which they set off the fireworks.”

come midnight, i was perched on the balcony, chin on the railing. the fireworks were right there and the building trembled from fifteen minutes of crackle-crackle-BOOM. miraculously, maeve slept through it all.

this year i resolve to be better.

look ma, no < div > tags.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 6 January 2006 at 7:15 pm

permalink | filed under blog, tv

of course, the good thing about making something that requires two egg yolks (refer: gnocchi, previous entry) is that it leaves you two egg whites with which to fashion a pavlova.

i once helped to make a four-egg white pav, a pav so big we ended up making it in two parts: a large meringue at the base, and then the whipped cream and fruit, and then another, smaller meringue covered in more cream and fruit, and shaved chocolate, which was a bit controversial with the purists at the table. finally assembled, it looked rather like the titanic, suitably festooned for its maiden voyage. the pav, though, never even made it through the first night.

two egg whites yield a much more modest and manageable pavlova. this is the third pav i’ve made, and all according to stephanie‘s recipe. sort of.

sort of, because this time ’round, i thought i’d try and get the meringue into the oven before putting the kid to sleep, and in my clock-watching, distracted state, i managed to forget all the ingredients after the sugar.

which is exactly half the list. oh no! while waiting for the meringue to be done (done for?), i googled such questions as “what does vinegar do in a pavlova?” but my research proved inconclusive.

so i asked the boy, “is there such a thing as a bad pavlova?”, and his reply, “hmm… i do not think there can be a bad pavlova,” spurred me on to whip the cream, fold in a dollop of yoghurt, and arrange a bloom of thinly sliced mango on top. it were pretty good.

i ate the last wedge tonight while watching “save the last dance“, which i think i like because it reminds me of being eleven and watching “fame” on tv.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 28 October 2005 at 11:15 pm

permalink | filed under boy, cake, kid, kitchen, tv

so another sunday rolls around, but it feels like there’s a great empty hole there, dammit. “carnivàle” is no longer on.

oh my lord, has anyone else been watching it? getting to know the travelling freakshow? marvelling at the slack-jawed yokels? being alert, but not quite alarmed at brother justin?

amber?

yeah, yeah, sure i want to know who management is. and what brother justin has to do with ben. and who gets horribly burned in the cliffhanger caravan fire. (and sure, it would be as easy as going to the website and reading the synopses of the next season… but i won’t.) what i really want to know is: what will be my next tv show?

is it possible that it will end up being “my restaurant rules? say it ain’t so, ferris!

i thought you might like to know that not “australian idol”, not “big brother”, not “the block” compelled me to turn the tv on… and in fact more often than not, made me change the channel, which is asking a lot really, because there is no remote control. yes, last year it was “my restaurant rules” that got me on the reality tv roller coaster. and i called up and voted. just the once though, because i voted for sydney and they ended up being the first to go. the site of that ill-fated restaurant housed a second also short-lived italian place, and is now a malaysian restaurant with nice signage called kl.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 30 January 2005 at 9:23 pm

permalink | filed under tv

i think that the coolest tv chef ever must surely be geoff jansz.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 27 September 2004 at 12:27 pm

permalink | filed under tv

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.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 11 July 2004 at 9:46 am

permalink | filed under kid, snacks, soundtrack, tv

so i could’ve spent today drawing a map of western sydney and delivering a bunch of artwork to a scanning place. instead i sat in a cafe in leichhardt, eating a plate of braised lentils pooled around a silverbeet-wrapped timbale of polenta and molten cheese. somewhat (completely) out of character (for me), my luncheon companion was mother-of-boy. this uncharacteristicness extended further into the afternoon, when sister-of-boy was met and an expedition launched to an eastern suburbs homeware emporium, where cake and coffee were had, and then somehow i managed to get everyone to each buy a pizza stone and cutter set. odd.

and then it started to rain. ^_^ aah.

perfect dvd-watching weather, really. the way this free DVD delivery trial works is you sign up and compile a list of DVDs from the database that you want to see, and they get sent out to you as they become available. it seems like maybe they also get sent out in alphabetical order, because so far what i’ve been sent are:
– 11’09″01 september 11
– 28 days later
– a mighty wind

then again, what showed up in my mailbox today was the “indiana jones” bonus material DVD, ahead of the “hulk” bonus material DVD.

[ what a thing to just be able to get the bonus material DVD and not the feature disc. i really do like the special features on a DVD, but they can’t be just any old special features. like, if the package lists a particular film’s special features as “theatrical trailer” or “subtitles”, i get mildly irritated. did you ever watch the special features on “the man who wasn’t there”, and the deleted scenes included a sequence of billy bob thornton performing various curiously-named haircuts? that was cool. ]

is “raiders of the lost ark” a terrific movie or what? can anyone say they like steven spielberg (at least in the early days, before that unnecessary bit in “A.I.” that began “and then a thousand years passed”) without coming across all dawson leary? but damn they were fun films, and harrison ford was such a fine specimen of hero back then. mmm…

in “the making of…” you will see footage of tom selleck screentesting for the indiana role, and you will laugh out loud because really, it’s magnum p.i.. and then you will learn that the sound effects guy made those squelchy snake noises down in the chamber by squelching his hands through his wife’s cheese casserole.

what’s a cheese casserole anyway?

i think i might want some.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 7 July 2004 at 10:50 pm

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

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

on the inside of the cap of my bottle of apple-cranberry juice — a juice so tart that after every slurp you have to pucker up and say “wooh!” — is printed something called a “liddle fact™”. this one states plainly, “fish can drown”.

are the copywriters at the juice factory disgruntled? are they not supposed to be writing upbeat little morsels like the last one i got, about honey bees? truly, i am surprised.

what i also found surprising, the first seventeen times i saw it on tv, was the ad for new fanta spider. so, there’s a japanese guy studying at his desk and suddenly he sneezes in the way that asian people do: no covering up of facial orifices, no turning away, just open-mouthed “ha-chaah”. and out of his nose? mouth? springs a bottle of fanta. oh how i laughed.

“i must have one of those, ” i said, as two bikini-clad girls popped out of a plastic orange and a plastic ice-cream cone-cup, chirping “it’s fruity! and creamy”.

and it really is. advertising has never been so truthful.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 7 April 2004 at 8:05 am

permalink | filed under drink, tv

yes, the toll of (very bad) reality tv on the commercial networks is all too much to bear, and i’ve taken refuge in old fashioned documentaries. “wild australasia” on the weekend, for example, had some amazing footage of a billion sardines being herded towards mealtime against the west australian shore, by several hungry sharks and a speedy tuna. oh the drama! plus, it made me want sardines, grilled, now.

but has anyone else been watching the documentary series, “our boys” on the abc? it’s about students from a public school in mid-western sydney, which seems to be the antithesis of the kings school as portrayed in that documentary series of a few years ago. where the kings school boys la-di-dahed their way through gilbert and sullivan, the boys at canterbury high struggle to wrap their heads around basic english.

it’s sad to watch. the teachers are almost too dedicated and caring, and the boys are up against… well, a lot of the time, themselves i guess. (i used to watch “heartbreak high” and i thought the wise-cracking, disruptive student was a dramatisation, but it actually is infuriatingly true.) but also, poverty and a lack of resources and not very much to look forward to. and private schools get more government funding, why?

so i think this series is halfway through. one episode tonight, and another next tuesday. i want there to be happy endings dammit.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 24 February 2004 at 5:30 pm

permalink | filed under grumble, tv

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