ragingyoghurt » adventures in good eating etc.

the third time the swede caught sight of us, according to deborah, he had to look again, just to make sure. i didn’t notice; my attention was on the daim cake.

he had first seen us four hours earlier. we had worked our way through the magical maze that is the ikea showroom, and had arrived at the cafeteria, only an hour and a bit into the adventure; we had a modest haul of wooden cutlery caddy (to double up as pencil organiser), teddy bear bedlinen and two notebooks. it was still early, as lunchtimes go, but i figured if we ate early then there’d be an opportunity for afternoon tea later. we joined the queue and filled our trays. organic apple-guava juice, salmon with chips and vegetables for me, organic apple-guava juice, meatballs and chips, herby bread roll for deb. potato salad and beets to share.

“can we have chips and vegetables with the meatballs?” asked deb as the efficient lunch ladies plated up.

“no.” said the efficient lunch ladies.

i suppose we had already taken up too much of their time deciding if we should get ten meatballs, or fifteen. we were going to split everything, but lurking in the back of my head is the awareness that there can be too many meatballs. even if meatballs have been the main drawcard for a long-overdue ikea excursion.

it only seems like i have too much spare space in my brain, for lurking.

the swede, you remember, from the start of this story, checked us out., by which i mean, at the checkout. “ah!” he exclaimed, on spotting the pink juices, “this is organic apple and guava juice! it is new.” he seemed pleased that we had chosen so wisely.

and then a long and leisurely lunch, where i discovered a couple of the carrots had a strange frosty appearance, even though they were perfectly… room temperature. despite being hard and crunchy, they had an un-carrotlike texture. i was flummoxed, and then in spite of that, i decided that ikea should launch a string of ikea cafés around town — no furniture or curtains on show, just a refurbished mcdonald’s with cheap meatballs and salmon meals behind the counter, and a room full of coloured plastic balls for the kids. you would go, wouldn’t you?

it only seems like i have too much spare space in my brain, for lurking.

and then a long and winding wander through the downstairs maze of the market hall, where our restraint from upstairs was gradually undone. damn you, kitchen department! but we got through it. we even sat down on a saggy, discounted sofa in the bargain basement and reviewed our loot. one of us, not me, even put stuff back on the shelf. we joined a short queue and paid. and then we came face to face with the ikeafood(c) store.

sigh.

at least i had known ahead of time, had not pretended that the rows of swedish jams and cordials and ginger thins would not move me. too soon a shopping bag — “the taste of sweden” — was filled with cloudberry jam and blueberry jam and lingonberry jam, a single daim bar, a bag of salty licorice fish (for the boy; i shall not touch the stuff again), a bag of dillchips — and this is where the swede bumped into us again. “ah, these chips are really good! but i like these ones better,” he said, pointing to the american style sour cream and onion. but, ch, you can get sour cream and onion potato chips anywhere. dill-flavoured chips are hard to come by.

remember, in greece, all those oregano-flavoured potato chips you ate, not because they were so delicious, but because, where else will you come across these exotic crispies?

things that didn’t make the bag this time: creamed crab in a tube (30% crab meat!), gingerbread house kit, instant meatball sauce powder. as it was, the magical display of pulling rabbits out of this hat was quite a sight to behold, this show i put on at the checkout counter.

we were pleased, but wilty. the girl on welcome duty at the foot of the escalator looked confused as we rode back up; we were already weighed down with sweden’s best. back in the cafetaria, we sat beneath jaunty polka-dotted lamps and ate cake and drank tea. that’s when the swede did the double take. we’d been there about five hours. by the time the last crumb had been eaten, we’d have nudged it closer to six.

the feeling we had on realising it, i do not think that you could call it pride.

but it wasn’t bad.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 27 November 2006 at 2:42 pm

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

such is the lot of a vegetarian, that if you were attending the soya awards at the after hours art gallery tuesday night, you would have been waiting, waiting for one of the few circulating platters to come by with maybe a stuffed mushroom or a scrap of artichoke atop a cracker. alas, time and again you would have been confronted with a disc of duck sausage on a melba toast, or a grilled scallop nestled in a cauliflower puree, or a minced prawn satay conconction, or an artfully crafted block of layered sliced potato with a knot of mystery meat, possible airdried, perched on top.

fortunately i am not vegetarian, so i ate them all. apparently there was a platter of salt and pepper squid, but it never made it this far. understandably.

but because amber is vegetarian, and krissie semi-vegetarian, and i, someone who needs more than five bite-sized bits of dinner, we thought it best that we sneak out in search of real food.

i suspect that amber was a little doubtful as i led the way to BBQ king, with the meats still hanging in the window after 9pm, and the lurid photo montages of a thousand roast ducks. but listen, you vegetable lovers, it is possible to share a three-course vegetarian meal at this most meaty bastion. a mountain of salt and pepper tofu, with its dense covering of coriander and sliced chillis, will be completely demolished, the most delicious thing in the world tonight. virtuous mixed vegetables topped with cashews, mostly conquered. buddha’s vegetables chow mein, all crispy-edged and drenched in brown gravy… only the smallest tangle of noodles remain.

my friends, they have gone back up the mountain, but we will always have the tofu.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 16 November 2006 at 3:32 pm

permalink | filed under around town, dinner, snacks

last night while on the phone to my mother, after she had told me all about how she skipped the last day of her gardening society trip to the flower expo in thailand to go shopping instead, and found a really good blue and white jacket that she ended up not buying [hey, i know you think this is a great story, but i wrote it in one sentence, while she told it to me over ten heartbreakingly slow minutes], she said, like an afterthought, “oh, it’s your birthday tomorrow right? so, happy birthday!”

to which i replied, “i know! don’t you feel old?”

she said, “me? how old will you be? thirty four? actually, you know, you don’t look a day over twenty two.”

which is the same problem that momo had a couple of weeks ago, and which i figure is the way our mothers cope with having aging children.

this morning i awoke to no bread in the house, so i defrosted two krispy kreme doughnuts that had been hibernating in the freezer for, um, whenever it was that i cashed in my free dozen doughnuts card that kk sent me for my birthday last year.

and then me and the kid took a walk up the street to buy a loaf of bread, and a small selection of celebratory cakes. why buy one cake, when you can compile a little birthday cake buffet platter? $12 buys you a good representation of the classics: cupcake; lemon curd cheesecake; chocolate tart. barely out of the shop, maeve had wilted onto the sidewalk, begging for pink cake. when we got home, she ate all the dragees, and then all the pink frosting, and then most of the cake. it was a dense, buttery crumb.

twenty minutes later the aunts arrived, with a bunch of gerberas and a white chocolate mudcake, so we all had a sitdown with cups of tea. these days maeve can do a pretty convincing rendition of “happy birthday to you”, and if you’re not quick enough at the end, she will also blow out the candle. just so you know.

when the boy came home that afternoon, he said, “there’s a lot of cake in the house,” for you see, he had come home with a large nutmeg cheesecake. but after dinner at the old skool pizzeria up the street, where in a fit of genius he ordered the ‘touch of summer’ pizza: prawns, bacon and pineapple, i could only manage the wispiest little sliver of cheesecake.

the lemon curd cheesecake will just have to wait for breakfast. the chocolate tart… it’ll keep. i don’t say this too often, but i’m all caked out.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 13 November 2006 at 8:58 pm

permalink | filed under boy, breakfast, cake, dinner, kid

things i have learnt today:

1. there is a very nice waiter at the lindt cafe, who looks like orlando bloom. i’ve never had a thing for orlando bloom, but it worked really well for the waiter. the babycino at the lindt cafe is quite special: an espresso glass with a puddle of dark chocolate below, and then pure white milk and a pillowy crema, topped with a generous shaving of dark chocolate. a thing of beauty, and free. after the kid wiped half of the chocolate on her face onto my shirt, orlando bloom came by and said to her: “i don’t mean to embarrass you, but you have a little something on your face.” he gestured a circle around his mouth. then she threw her sippy cup on the floor so that he would have to retrieve it for her. this is how a two-year-old flirts, apparently. from next week, the lindt cafe is open sundays.

2. when we go out for a walk, the three of us, and i am holding maeve’s hand and walking at her pace, the boy’s long legs prevent him from keeping to this pace, and he has no choice but to walk about three metres in front of us. every now and again he will stop to wait for us to catch up, but then his legs get in the way again, and not a minute later we will have fallen behind. when called on this, he will claim that it is not his fault. after all, he is not expecting me to match his pace; i am free to walk as slowly as i like behind him. i just like to get angry at things, expecting that he walk alongside us. i have a very bad temper to throw a tantrum over nothing.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 10 November 2006 at 9:15 pm

permalink | filed under around town, boy, chocolate, grumble, kid

the time, she goes quickly.

i was early for the early train, but just before it pulled up an announcement came through overhead that the next train to arrive would be held at the platform indefinitely because someone had been injured on its platform at the next station. rush hour, everyone got on anyway.

onboard, the driver’s announcement was more informative: we would not be moving because a person had been hit by a train, and we had to wait until the person had been removed. how long does it take to move a person who’s been hit by a train? a bruised person? a person with limbs torn off? (you would have to find and remove the limbs too.) a person puree? i figured i had up to an hour. and i was armed with a book, two nori rolls and a tube of fruit fizzers. but not ten minutes later, we were on our way.

so a bus and two trains later, i had a twilight picnic on a stone bench outside the olympic stadium. murakami open in my lap, beef yakiniku maki followed by one filled with a bright yellow pickle. i still don’t know quite how i feel about murakami. “norwegian wood” reads better than “the wind-up bird chronicles”, but sometimes i think i’m losing something in the translation.

and then it was time. well, almost time. a walk up to the acer arena in the drizzle, to queues and bag searches (unexpectedly, the one thing they ask about is chewing gum), through the turnstyles, into the dark belly where kings of leon is rocking like the seventies.

i started this blog in 2003, after a pearl jam show. given the recent inactivity on this page, it crossed my mind that maybe i’d be ending it after a pearl jam show too. i don’t know. perhaps i’ll feel differently after i get my computer fixed, or maybe a whole new machine — macbook vs mac mini: discuss.

last night. pearl jam. eddie. so good.

tonight, another go.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 8 November 2006 at 5:09 pm

permalink | filed under around town, dinner, soundtrack

“would it be inappropriate,” i asked deborah, “to have a choc top during the film?” i bit into a whole tempura’d shiitake, and slurped some cold soba.

thursday night, rather than go late night shoping, rather than stay at home and watch “jamie’s kitchen australia”, we were off to see the al gore global warming movie. because we are thinking girls! thinking about issues such as: what would be not too frivolous a snack to have during a serious and important documentary?

turns out, a chocolate choc top, and a blended icy-biscuity-chocolatey drink, topped with chocolate cream and chocolate syrup from gloria jeans downstairs. go us!

who woulda thought people would pay money to go see a film about how the world is doomed? i mean, one without bruce willis in it. and if bruce didn’t end up saving the world, would the audience take that responsibility home with them? and the people who choose to see this film, they’d be sort of that way inclined anyway, wouldn’t they? what of the rest?

we are already living in one of those made-for-tv movies, about when the weather went crazy.

a couple days ago, a nice man from the electric company came ‘round our place and changed all our regular light bulbs to low-energy ones, gratis. everything’s a much lower wattage, but burns twice as brightly. monday, i’m switching to green energy.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 27 October 2006 at 4:36 pm

permalink | filed under around town, at the movies, chocolate, dinner, drink, snacks

i have so many things to tell you, like the dream i had last night, where i was watching some sort of animal conservation tv show, and one of the scenes to tell you to conserve animals was a large platter of chinese whole steamed fish, with delicate brown sauce and sprigs of coriander and three whole steamed baby platypuses.

o.0

i woke up and stayed that way for hours, seeing those glistening platypuses in my head, listening to the seagulls across the water and thinking then that daylight was almost upon me. (it wasn’t; i eventually got back to sleep again.)

i have lots to tell you, but i am consumed with work, and my computer now shuts itself down every hour and a half, so you see, i really have to prioritise my computer usage.

say, have you seen lobstersquad, a foodblog with drawings?

posted by ragingyoghurt on 22 September 2006 at 3:07 pm

permalink | filed under misc

going walkabout.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 8 September 2006 at 8:20 am

permalink | filed under trip

sometimes you know the solution to a problem. that is, you know of its existence, independent to the relevant problem, but you haven’t quite put the two together.

for example, i’d known about the orange grove organic market since shortly after i moved into the area. i’d also known that the 445 bus sort of headed in that direction. but to me, the market was always just a little bit too much of a walk. i’d say it would have taken over half an hour to hoof it. it was only recently that it clicked that i could take a bus there, and that the bus actually stopped right outside the market. brains — what would we do without them?

saturday morning, we walked to the bus stop with a spring in our step, and not too long later, we were on the bus with three other families with young ‘uns. off the bus, there were kids, and dogs, and sunshine, and bouncy castles. it was spring!

we did a couple of laps around the market, with no particular plan, just to see what was available (which was lots). i take a little while to warm up at markets, but then once the first purchase is out of the way, it always spirals out of control.

as it happened, that first crucial purchase involved standing in front of the artisanal lemonade stall for longer than you might expect. there wasn’t actually a queue, mind, it was just me trying to decide if i wanted the pineapple lemonade — a great beehive of glass filled with sunny yellow, with small chunks of fresh pineapple floating inside — or the raspberry lemonade — deep red, and copiously seeded. there was also a rather complex looking ginger ale with bits of chopped up chillis and other vegetation, but i thought that i’d save it for when i didn’t have to share with the kid. the lemonade guy recommended the pineapple… and it was nice and all, but i was too busy trying to drink my share of it, before maeve guzzled it all. the last i saw, her grimy little paw was sloshing about in the dregs, fishing for the fruit.

but so. now the purse strings had been freed! there was interesting bread, but we already had two loaves at home. there were two stalls with pink lady apple pies, but it was too soon after breakfast. there was some lovely rose geranium soap, but it was $5.50 a bar. we worked our way through the maze, accepting samples of nougat and oranges and raspberry ricotta cake. the south american food was inviting, and the calabrian too. the g–zleme ladies were there too, with variations i hadn’t yet encountered: organic chocolate and banana (must have been $15 g–zleme).

i bought: a brown bag of pink ladies; a packet of eumundi smokehouse double smoked bacon and a red wine and garlic salami; a small tub of gympie farm butter; a tomato and olive pastry, for sustenance; and some mushrooms.

ah the mushrooms. they were spread out in boxes across the counter: button, swiss brown, oyster, king brown, shitake, enoki, chesnut. i wanted them all. “can i buy a mixed selection?” i asked the mushroom man, and “how much are they?”

“they all cost the same,” he replied, “$4.50 for a hundred grams.” he even measured out 100g of oyster mushrooms, so i could see what 100g of mushrooms looked like. and then i asked for a 400g mix of the five more exotic funghi.

there were so many, he packed them into two of his sturdy brown bags. “$18,” he said.

see, i know that four times $4.50 is $18, but somehow i didn’t do that calculation in my head when i put my order in. and so when we caught the bus home, i had just under a dollar left in my wallet. but a bounty! of tasties! in my shoping bag.

dinner was fettucine with a myriad of mushrooms, fried with bacon and garlic in gympie butter. all together now: mmmMMMmmm.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 3 September 2006 at 9:05 pm

permalink | filed under around town, dinner, drink, kid, lunch, shoping, snacks

earlier in the week, we were on our way to starbucks to try the new signature hot chocolate, when we stopped by the menu posted outside circle cafe. top of the hand-chalked specials list was turnip and chesnut soup!

it was so unexpected, interesting and enticing, that i immediately pulled the plug on the starbucks idea. maeve didn’t seem to mind; “this one?” she said, “climb stairs?” and up she went.

the soup was a lovely shade of camel, sweet and smooth — a potage, if you will. even maeve liked it, although she had her own plate of sourdough toast with grilled mushrooms and roma tomatoes to contend with. but the trouble with soup is that it leaves no room for belgian hot chocolate, to say nothing of the chocolate brownies doing laps in the revolving dessert case up front.

so when carla gypsygirl came to visit us friday lunchtime, bearing gifts of ice-cream hairclips and rainbow beaded bracelets, we went back to circle. you must know by now that my favourite lunch is breakfast, and that is what i had. the all-day big veggie breakfast is similar to the all-day big breakfast: eggs, mushrooms, hashbrown, tomatoes, and sourdough toast, with a mountain of sauteed spinach replacing the tangle of bacon and sausages (which is what carla had to counter the effects of a dodgy chicken dinner. props!).

half the big veggie breakfast though, is not quite enough to fill a belly; after maeve polished off all the tomatoes and half the mushies and an unexpected amount of toast, i was back at the front counter ordering my belgian hot chocolate and the lucky last brownie on the tray. the brownie is studded through with big chunks of chocolate, and is served warm so that all those chunks go moist and runny.

i had ordered it to share, three ways, but i think that the kid won that battle. of course.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 2 September 2006 at 9:50 pm

permalink | filed under around town, breakfast, chocolate, kid, lunch

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