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for a larf, contrary to my usual shy and retiring demeanor, i nominated myself in the best design category at the 2004 food blog awards run by accidental hedonist. the thing is, i managed to scrape through into the final roundup -- go, hand-coded transitional html!
it's a veritable smorgasbord of tasty blogs in sixteen categories, and i think you'd find something you'd like. plus you could vote for ragingyoghurt, although i'd probably give the vote to 101cookbooks.
Served on Wednesday, December 22, 2004 at 06:12 a.m.
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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.
Served on Monday, December 20, 2004 at 06:35 p.m.
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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.
Served on Monday, December 20, 2004 at 06:05 p.m.
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is this my week of bizarre food-related mishaps or what? following closely after the lip-nougat battle, comes this afternoon's liver-on-scone debacle. yes, that's liver. on. scone. sigh.
it all began with the buttering up of a supermarket scone. i put the knife down while i went to fetch the new raspberry jam from the pantry, and then picked up the knife and broke the flat new jam surface and continued on my merry way. mmm... jam. then i took a bite of jammy scone, and there was a surprising undercurrent of liver!
what!?
and so it transpired that, by mistake, i had picked up the boy's knife with which he had just applied thick livery layers of pate to some rye toast! and i had stuck it into my new raspberry jam! and spread it all over my scone!
i was very unhappy, and each bite of strange raspberry-liver scone made me just a bit unhappier, and then i had to get a spoon and scoop out the liver-tinged bits of jam from the jar, and eat them.
ok, well, i probably didn't have to eat the livery bits out of the jar.
Served on Friday, December 17, 2004 at 05:21 p.m.
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ok. so i was skinned by a piece of nougat.
yesterday afternoon, i cut a little finger off the stick of italian dark chocolate nougat that my good mother bought me at fratelli a few weeks back. it is a moist, fudgey thing full of whole roasted hazelnuts, with a protective layer of rice paper. mmm...
i put it to my mouth wherein the moisture from my lips adhered to the rice paper, so that when i removed the nougat after taking a bite, it removed the skin from my lips.
sure, it stung at the time, but i didn't pay too much attention until a couple of hours later, at dinner, with the boy's olds no less, when my lower lip was really, really stinging and i was having trouble speaking because it seemed like i couldn't close my mouth properly. still, how much attention will you pay to your lip when the table is covered with a bounty of sashimi?
not too much.
and then i got home and looked in the mirror, and well...
Served on Wednesday, December 15, 2004 at 12:28 p.m.
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last year, maybe the year before, i bought a wire-bound notebook: dusty pink, with a faint houndstooth-checkered pattern running through it, like the material of a suit a granny might wear. in the top right corner, under a magenta foil-stamped row of six olde worlde milke bottles, is the slogan, "dairymen are the cream of the crop!". in the bottom left corner, under a tiny silhouette still life of a pitcher, a milk glass, milk carton and a wheel of cheese with a wedge cut out of it, is the poem...
"Love is like more than an emotion, / it's the substance of our being / Each morning as I awaken your (sic) the reason / I smilke, Your (sic) the reason I love / A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you whe you have forgotten the words."
[edit: what i meant to type was "your the reason i smile". evidently the milk, which is all i think about (and smell of) these days, is more pervasive than i realised.]
i thought that this notebook, after languishing a year, maybe two, in my amusing notebook box, would be a most appropriate logbook for my breastfeeding diary (date, time, duration, side).
yesterday at 3.45 in the afternoon, maeve drank for twenty-eight minutes, eight minutes on the left and twenty on the right. then she had a vomit, which although moderate in volume, was nowhere near the torrent of the day before, which came up in four great gushes and took even the child by surprise, judging by the look on her face. this time she seemed unfazed so we loaded her into the stroller and walked into chinatown.
we caught the lift up to happy chef, and ordered bowls of soupy noodles (me: wonton and mushroom with rice noodles; the boy: spicy beef and wonton with egg noodles), and then after, we stopped by the bubble tea place and got bubble teas to go (me: jasmin milk tea with pearls; the boy: taiwanese style lychee milkshake). we walked home the long way, and then split up at the last set of traffic lights, the boy to get some DVDs, me, maeve and the stroller to get another bumper packet of nappies. maeve was still asleep when we got home. we felt like very normal people.
there have been eight feeds since, all varying in length, but generally a punctual two hours apart. in the notebook, on the top right corner of each page, next to the six olde worlde milke bottles, "You look brilliant like morning sunshine".
Served on Sunday, November 28, 2004 at 09:48 a.m.
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this was knocked together for grandparents and the extended overseas clan, but some of you asked, so here are some baby pictures:
it's not quite anne geddes, although there is that one picture with gloomy bear...
Served on Sunday, November 14, 2004 at 04:26 p.m.
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is this not the most beautiful birthday cake ever?
it was bought for me as a surprise, a few days after the boy, sitting a metre away from me and confirming picnic details over the phone with his mother, said, "and while she's not listening, i don't know if you know, but saturday is bowb's birthday."
there was meant to be an proper outdoor-in-the-park picnic, with full family and grandparent attendance, but an hour before we were due to meet, the sky turned grey with raincloud, and great gusts of wind were slapping trees about. plan b: we met up on the verandah in the backyard with pies and quiche and rolls and cold chicken and coca cola... and then the gusty winds blew the clouds away and it was clear blue skies once more.
of course.
after consuming more curry chicken pies (three) and coca cola (one) than i should have, the cake appeared. the candle was lit and relit three times during the song -- the gusty winds hadn't quite abated -- but i got to blow it out in the end.
Served on Sunday, November 14, 2004 at 03:41 p.m.
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hem. well, i meant to blog, and then
a. there was a baby to be fed
b. there was a nappy to be changed
c. zzzzz.
actually, no. c never happened, or at least never for longer than two hours at a stretch. ah sleep, how i miss you.
um. hold that thought. must go feed the kid.
maeve likes to eat every hour and a half or so. i can't really complain; obviously she's a girl just like me. i haven't been eating quite that often, but i've been eating well. thanks to my mother, who shows up at the door every day with a bag of groceries and then cooks a high-protein dinner to aid the milk production; and the good fairies amber and ella berry, who arrived yesterday in between feeds bearing a tray of hot chocolate and large round shortbread-and-red-jam sandwiches; and ben and lena, who came 'round one weekend with half a kilo of chocolate seashells, and who doubled up as beds for the kid for a couple hours.
Served on Tuesday, November 9, 2004 at 08:39 p.m.
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in the last week and a half we have received bunches and bunches of pink flowers, three chocolate cakes and a card made out to "little mauve".
this is not a bad thing.
Served on Friday, October 29, 2004 at 05:58 p.m.
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early on, maybe on day two, i bent over a meconium-filled nappy, and marvelled at the similarity between the sludgy brown excrement and the gravy that a merimbula chip shop smeared over my order of chips two christmases ago. oh the stunned silence that greeted me and my packet of hot chips and gravy when we made our entrance at the boxing day screening of "the lord of the rings: the two towers".
i thought maybe i could call her "maevy gravy". i'm sorry to say that a song ensued.
Served on Tuesday, October 26, 2004 at 03:34 p.m.
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and then there was...
...maeve.
born 3.15am, monday 18 october,
49 hours after the first faint contraction.
woohoo!
Served on Sunday, October 24, 2004 at 07:04 p.m.
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waiting.
Served on Saturday, October 16, 2004 at 11:00 a.m.
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well. i just wanted to say. that. the. show. might. have. begun.
that is all.
Served on Friday, October 15, 2004 at 09:09 p.m.
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sweet mercy, the cool change is here.
yesterday's 38° and today's not-much-better was taking it's 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.
Served on Thursday, October 14, 2004 at 10:07 p.m.
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beneath the sombre pall that descended after the lavish turkish feast that was last night's dinner...
[ lavish turkish feast interlude ]
it was the first birthday party of the boy's sister's kid, a smiley half australian-half turkish boy who always grabs at my glasses whenever we meet. there was a kid's party in the park with rolled-up jam and vegemite pinwheel sandwiches (not in the same pinwheel) and avocado and shredded carrot finger sandwiches, and pass-the-parcel with a jackson five live tape soundtrack, and bubbles, oh -- and kids. so many kids. and then there was a grownup party back at the house with dolmades and olives, pide with a mean beetroot dip, four kinds of shish kebab: beef; chicken; veggie, with mushroom, green capsicum, asparagus and haloumi; and seafood, with scallops with the roe on, and green capsicum. and salads, including one with green beans and broad beans in yoghurt. and a great dome-shaped pavlova sandwiched with yoghurty cream and raspberries and rose syrup and covered in sugared rose petals. yes there was.
...we awoke this morning, confused. the words, "very depressed", were put forth by a member of this household, in a tone of voice that could not have been flatter or sadder. but the confusion was because, despite the fact that everyone i know and most people in this country whose blogs i read appear to vote for not john howard (and also not any of those loopy christian / family values / otherwise insane parties), and despite the awful campaign ads and the shouting and pointing and jutting-out lower lip and overall less-niceness of the man, and um, the stuff that's been done in the last few years... going to war, locking up children behind barbed wire, that sort of thing... it is john howard who'll be putting on his tracksuit and power-morning-walking his victory lap for [undisclosed period of time] to come.
how can it be?
Served on Sunday, October 10, 2004 at 12:58 p.m.
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so i looked over at the still-unwrapped chocolate bar on my bookshelf, and along the spine of it, next to "extra creamy milk chocolate" in gold print, were the instructions "open here".
ok, mr chocolate bar.
my bookshelf is now much closer to my desk -- which explains why i managed to read the tiny type on the side of a chocolate bar despite near-legal blindness -- since i moved it over from the opposite side of of the room, to make space for the crib and change table for the new person who will soon be upon us, holy fucken crap.
aside from moving furniture around, the mammoth magazine cull continues... the last couple of days i finally made it to my pile of "juice" magazines. if you read the previous post about cutting down the swathe of "spin"s and detected a faint poignancy about the exercise, this new challenge has been a few notches more melancholy. because these, i actually worked on.
i have issue one, and two, and three (you get the idea), from when i had to buy them at the newsagent... through to a couple from around issue ten when i did a spell of work experience there in third year uni, and then a bunch more, and then every issue from march 1995 when i was deputy art director for a couple of years, and then the year's worth from november 1997 (issue 57) when i became art director, to october 1998, when i went postal and had to leave the company, and then a random few from after. yeah, i have a lot of issues.
now there's a pile, facedown, at the top of the stairs, awaiting transfer to the recycling bin downstairs. it feels like i'm throwing out a chunk of australian publishing history, and every time i walk past i wonder if i've been too brutal. of course, i did keep all mine, and took clippings of choice layouts from the rest, where "choice" includes both the aesthetically pleasing and the "what the?" ludicrousness of that heady mid-nineties period of cutting edge magazine design. but aside from a very select few from the very early days (issue three, with evan dando in love beads and nothing else on the cover; issue eight: nirvana; issue 18: eddie vedder "on kurt's death"), there they are, facedown, top of stairs.
sigh. there's a feeling not so far back in my head that if my entire stash had not been so dotted with cockroach shit (just the outside covers, but still a misadventure in storage if there ever was one), i would have blogged instead about the extremely delicious watermelon i procured this week from the supermarket at a bargain 95c/kg.
Served on Friday, October 8, 2004 at 12:53 p.m.
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i think that the coolest tv chef ever must surely be geoff jansz.
Served on Monday, September 27, 2004 at 12:27 p.m.
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what better way to start the week than plunder the magazine cupboard for another stack of old magazines to cast upon the steadily growing pile by the door. after a lengthy bout of procrastination, the cull finally began in earnest mid-last week.
started off with the "wallpaper"s and "the face"s, which were easier than i expected. and then a stack of those trendy, purposeless magazines out of LA or new york -- easy. then the "esquire"s, which were a bit harder because there are actual articles in there that i found myself re-reading, including a trio of david sedaris stories, and a 1999 interview with osama bin ladin, and a bunch of randomness by ted from "queer eye", like the one where he gets a fragrance made up especially for him, called "ted" . still, nothing i couldn't add to the pile by the door.
this morning though, i have unearthed a couple boxes of ten year old "spin"s. the stacks of pulpy paper covered in grainy grungy photographs of kurt, the stories about river phoenix dying on the sidewalk, the introduction of alanis, the reviews of "pulp fiction" and "bakesale". so now i've got "bakesale" on the CD player as i speedread courtney love's lollapalooza diary and bloody hell it's like a trip down memory lane.
a few days ago the boy was mocking "all those memories" but he has little idea of what's tied up in these boxes of "spin"s. it's all about the waking up in the middle of the night to pearl jam songs on the radio, the university work experience at a pop (culture) magazine, the design school major projects about rock music and junk food, the graduating and getting a job at the pop (culture) magazine, the shameless ripping off of other magazines for design tips... the design award, the gradual boredom and disillusionment with working on a magazine, the exiting the industry, the occasional yearning to be moving those slabs of words and pretty pictures around a page again...
Served on Monday, September 27, 2004 at 10:55 a.m.
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oh happy day. because i only had $7 in my wallet yesterday, and wanted to get some DVDs and a chicken kebab for dinner, and didn't want to walk all the way to the ATM in the dark, i ended up standing in line at the supermarket with a large paper bag of mushrooms (and two punnets of strawberries and a bar of chocolate), just so i could get some cash out at the register.
which meant that not only am i now halfway through "bowling for columbine", which is much less hysterical and boorish than i thought it would be, and that flush with cash i was able to splash out on a bottle of turkish sour cherry juice to accompany my extremely succulent chicken kebab, but also that when i woke up this morning, there was a large bag of mushrooms in the fridge ready to be fried up into my favourite breakfast of all: mushrooms on toast. mmm...
Served on Sunday, September 26, 2004 at 11:43 a.m.
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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.
Served on Tuesday, September 21, 2004 at 09:20 a.m.
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um. i want one. (please?)
Served on Monday, September 20, 2004 at 10:33 a.m.
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during what was akin to an archaeological dig, i unearthed a small pink carton in the pantry the other day. i think i bought it in a supermarket in singapore at the start of the year, but really, your guess is as good as mine. it was only just past its use-by date so i boiled up the requisite litre of water, dissolved the pink powder and some refrigeration time later... guava pudding!
so light and tangy. so agreeably pink.
Served on Friday, September 17, 2004 at 04:14 p.m.
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it's good to have a plan [see previous post], 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.
Served on Friday, September 17, 2004 at 12:10 p.m.
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ok, shhhh, don't tell anyone, but in two hours i'm gonna skive off werk, and walk out into the blue and sunshine down to broadway, where i will procure two nori rolls -- one beef teriyaki (or maybe eel) and the other most likely some sort of vegetarian option (the one with the pickles and shredded inari tofu is pretty tasty) -- and perhaps a raspberry mocha frappacino, and settle myself into the cool and dark of "donnie darko: the director's cut". yeah.
Served on Tuesday, September 14, 2004 at 09:39 a.m.
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breakfast time, when you can't be arsed doing mushrooms on toast (and there are no mushrooms in the house anyway), and when you haven't the time to go up the street for pancakes, and when you've already had chocolate sprinkles on bread-and-butter twice this week already, and when the kitchen is devoid of sweet pastries, it is perfectly acceptable to open up a tin of beans. mmm... beans.
Served on Tuesday, September 7, 2004 at 04:43 p.m.
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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.
Served on Wednesday, September 1, 2004 at 10:03 p.m.
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