| GIRL
| ARCHIVE
| BEYOND
| SHOP
you know that episode of "friends", where joey is halfway through reading "little women", and it's not looking too good for beth, so to spare joey any trauma, rachel puts the book in the freezer? i wish someone had taken the copy of "oscar and lucinda" i was reading, and shoved it deep, deep in the frosty depths of one of the three freezers in the old house at the rock.
but, no. and now, trauma. i'd thought it would be a good chronological following on from "the secret river". how can a man, peter carey, invent such a story within the confines of an average-sized human head? my head tries to blog a lucky last entry for the year, and i get distracted on some other page, pondering the second chance to avail myself of the complete "sex and the city" boxset, with portable pink dvd player, now only $269.83... and an hour (and one fireworks display) later, i'm finishing paragraph number two.
tops.
i looked out the balcony earlier this afternoon, and saw the barge moored a little way off, and it struck me like a kick in the guts, that it had been a whole year since i posted pictures of the amazing fireworks display i'd seen, just me perched on the balcony railing, and i remembered it so clearly, like it was maybe just a couple of weeks ago. not fifty-two.
but so. a week in the parched country heart of new south wales, with not too much to do but read about new south wales a hundred and fifty years ago. midway through, i asked the boy, "i wonder, if all the migrants ever left tomorrow, would the aborigines go back to their dreamtime existence, or would they..." i wasn't sure exactly how to continue: would they successfully take over the lifestyle shaped by this many years of white settlement? would they keep sniffing glue and petrol? would they embark on a crazy spree of looting and pillaging?
but the boy, being quick, seemed to pick up where i had trailed off. "well, the centrelink cheques would dry up pretty quickly, wouldn't they?" which, i guess, still leaves the question unanswered. thinking, on the outside, is most unproductive.
but for the most part, in the last week, we sat around, moving from one room to another, trying to find the cool room on the hot days, and the warm room on the strange freezing ones. we ate ham, ham, ham over days and days, and then for a change we headed up (twice!) to the chinee restaurant at the rock bowling club, the only restaurant in town, and the only eating establishment (out of two) open over xmas.
short soup, honey king prawns, sizzling beef, prawn crackers, fried rice (with ham), vegetable omelette, combination chow mein, satay chicken, steamed dimsims, garlic king prawns, mongolian lamb, sizzling black pepper steak, deluxe combination. and a plate of hot chips, thanks.
we cut slabs out of the tray of baklava from the hellenic bakery, warmed them in the microwave and topped them with blue ribbon vanilla ice cream. we went through tins of beetroot. we sliced more ham off the bone. we devoured a festive pavlova, green in the base and crowned in a cloud of pink whipped cream. there were two birthdays, and four birthday cakes. there were boxes (and boxes) of lindt chocolates. on the last night, there was a magnificent sausage sizzle with fifty or so assorted snags, a large glass bowl holding two tins worth of whole baby beetroots, a small melanine bowl of buttered, salted corn. a pity, the salad from a couple nights before did not make a re-appearance: sliced hard boiled eggs and sliced celery, in mayonnaise. yum.
two hours now to the big fireworks display. the nine o'clock one -- family fireworks -- which this year could be seen from our balcony, and which must have cost an extra billion or so dollars, only succeeded in perplexing the kid. head buried in the boy's shoulder while we two gasped and wowed, and really meant it! they can make pink fireworks which explode into the outline of lovehearts! and this new one, which quietly puffs out into clusters of golddust, just lovely.
happy new year. see you 'round.
Served on Sunday, December 31, 2006 at 08:36 p.m.
---
passionflower, in chinatown, has a new set of menus. the clean white matt celloglazed foldouts are a sight to behold -- quite the encyclopedia of exotic ice cream sundaes -- but the hike in prices was a bit less pretty.
for example, i remember the eastern banana split that i had the last time cost around $12. it has been renamed eastern sunrise, and costs $13.50, which, fortunately, is about all that i'd want to pay for a waffle basket filled with green tea, taro and sticky rice ice cream, slices of banana and a lychee-orange compote. mmm...
as it was, the kid ate all but one of the banana slices, and then proceeded to dig into the big ice creamy mountain with her little plastic spoon that we had swiped earlier from the counter. (apparently if you ask the waitperson for an extra metal spoon, they charge you $1.25, so be warned.) i was torn between eating slowly to savour my $13.50 ice cream, and eating quickly so that i'd actually get any ice cream at all. in the end i was scooping great big spoonfulls, and then slowly devouring each one.
we were having sundaes on a sunday, because it was the boy's birthday, and we'd gone out for early dimsum with a friend of the boy whose birthday it was too. and now we know that early dimsum means not too many trolleys out, and an endless wait (in vain) for the stuffed, braised eggplant, and being back out on the street much earlier than planned with much less dumpling under the belt.
ah well, because just before 11.30 on a sunday morning is perhaps the best time to visit passionflower. no loud young people lolling about the booths, and no terrible young people's music shouting out of the speakers. the only music we hear wafts down from the photo sticker machines upstairs. it is like a siren's call, i tell you: we are halfway up the stairs before the table is cleared.
although we left the boys downstairs, of course. there's something very stadler and waldorf about this, don't you think?
Served on Monday, December 4, 2006 at 01:27 p.m.
---
the new and unexpected thing i discovered about my sister the other day, while i was telling her on the phone about how i had panfried ocean trout fillets with crispy salted skin, and made an enormous amount of buttery mash to go with, out of three mole-sized golden delight potatoes, and put together a large bowl of buttered and lightly salted steamed greens (broccoli, zucchini, peas and cabbage) to round it off... is that she does not care for buttered vegetables.
huh.
"but, green vegetables," i explained, "with butter."
"yeeeaaah... eh," she confirmed.
tchk.
but the other thing i know she doesn't so much care for, because she told me so maybe last year, is leftover pasta. like, not sauced or anything. just that extra tangle of noodles you find in the strainer at the end of dinner, because you can never judge how much dry pasta to put in the pot, because who knows how much a handful of dry pasta will expand in a body of rapidly boiling water.
well. probably jamie oliver knows.
do you like jamie oliver? i am still not sure. his food always looks delicious, but his tv persona is so tiresome. and even then, just that smartarse, jumping-about-the-kitchen, slightly spluttery cooking show persona, mind. the other jamie, the reality tv jamie, to whom bad things happen, is altogether much more likeable. i could not not watch "jamie's kitchen", or "school dinners" or, most recently, "jamie's kichen australia"... which didn't have so much jamie in it actually, and certainly not quite enough tobie.
i do not own any jamie oliver cookbooks, but when i recently came into possession of a 50% off voucher...
[ if you subscribe the the borders email newsletter, they send you discount vouchers every week. ]
...i was convinced i would have to finally buy "jamie's dinners", which i look at every now and again in a bookshop. apart from being a lively collection of fun typography and intensely colourful pictures, it is also full of the sort of food i make / would make. but standing in front of the wall of cookbooks, it occurred to me that since i already make this sort of food, i didn't need to get a whole book on the subject. nevermind. perhaps i would get "jamie's italy" instead. it was right there on the shelf, and i had not been able to not watch the tv show, and i really like italian food.
and then i remembered that i could not get any more cookbooks ever, least of all an italian one, because nellie had only the other week sent me, via amazon.de, "made in italy", a weighty tome by giorgio locatelli. it is an engrossing read, this one, not just a stack of recipes, but a mix of history and culture and photographs of noble butchers and their meats.
so instead, the kid got that maisy book that folds out to become a 3D paper playhouse with a cut-out maisy doll and a closet full of paper clothes.
i tell you lots of stories! but there is a point, see. in the fridge, i had a box of leftover fettucine, which i had oiled to keep from clumping before i stored it. yesterday, lunchtime, the cold noodles separated agreeably to be tossed with a beaten egg, some finely-grated cheese, pepper and salt. i put oil in a frypan; i fried three rounds of noodle fritters. golden crunchy carbs, with salty cheesy bits and peppery bits, and brown crunchy bits where a stray noodle sat too long in a bit of oil. fried up cold pasta, who'd've thought. i saw this, in a jamie oliver cookbook.
and the locatelli? it has a whole chapter on gelato, but chapter risotto came in very handy last night, when i finally decided that i could probably omit the wine in the recipe to not so much detriment. (giorgio locatelli would probably disagree because every one of his risotto recipes called for a glass, but.) plus, i really needed to use up that expired arborio rice in the pantry, two huge tubs out of the many that my uncle swiped from his job at the rice company, more rice than he knew what to do with.
and i had sausages -- chicken, rocket and tomato sausages. so sausage and pea risotto, from the book. it was a lot of stirring in a hot kitchen on a hot evening, longer than the recipe hinted at, but for the first risotto, after years of being intimidated, it was awright.
Served on Sunday, December 3, 2006 at 02:49 p.m.
---
[ chris ware in "the new yorker" ]
and my favourite lunch? not the about life grilled haloumi salad. it is possible to have too much haloumi in a grilled haloumi salad. despite the best intentions of the well-dressed rocket, red capsicum and grilled zucchini to balance it out, every cheesy morsel will burn its way down your throat, leaving a salt trail that the icy mango-watermelon-vanilla-orange beverage will not wash away. and because it is not freshly grilled haloumi salad, but one picked from several large bowls in the glass case, each one of the six or seven slices will also be cold and rubbery.
on the plus side, the salt really disguised the coldness. as burning!
damn, that was salty.
we caught the bus to the newsagent, where the thanksgiving new yorker was not only the cartoon issue, but also came with four different chris ware covers. truly, today is the day where generousity becomes a curse. but i managed to buy just one. and now i see that you can download the series, with an online comic strip thrown in (so you can see the pie and sandwich in action). and a chris ware interview mp3.
well. it got me excited, anyway.
Served on Friday, December 1, 2006 at 03:24 p.m.
---
the boy has a different relationship to food than i have. in that he seems not to need it. sort of. case in point: on any given schoolday, he will break fast with a large mug of sweet, milky coffee, all the sustenance required for a day of beating (metaphorically) classrooms-full of disinterested, grunting teenage boys into submission. in theory, there is recess, and lunch, but apparently there is playground duty to be done at recess, and like, detention or something, everything, to attend to at lunch, so he goes all day without eating. he arrives home in the mid-afternoon, grumpy and hungry, and growling, "i haven't eaten anything since last night." but still, wearing this hunger like a badge of pride.
can it be that all the other teachers are not eating all day either? what is the teachers' federation doing to earn their annual membership dues? what are they striking for if not for recess and lunchtimes for all?
yesterday, there was an extended period of rustling, organisational noises upon his return, and then he lumbered downstairs to announce, "i just bought $170 worth of groceries." part of it, at least, had gone towards the 6-pack of toilet paper under his arm. "i bought us lots of treats," he said. "i think it was because i was starving when i got to the supermarket."
and so, there is a tower of tinned sardines in the pantry. there is bacon in the chiller, and vanilla coke; ice cream in the freezer; just one packet of timtams on the counter, because the other is already open, and stashed away in the fridge.
maybe the teachers' union isn't doing such a bad job after all. (oh yes you are, slackers!)
as for the rest of the household... you must have already surmised that we are obsessed with food. we build playdough cakes during the day. "this is pretend food," i stress, "so we just pretend to eat it." she holds a sticky bun a half centimetre from her mouth, and says, "eat, eat, eat."
Served on Thursday, November 30, 2006 at 04:09 p.m.
---
what is this? two posts in two days?
it's just, work finally dried up enough for me to send my everyday computer to the shop (by sunday, when it went, it was shutting itself down after 40 minutes), and the flowerpower imac that sits, humming noisily, in the corner, is pretty much just good for one thing these days. well, two things, if you count the pixel painting kid pix studio deluxe. yeah, pitas is one of like, the five websites still accessible on OS9 IE5.
so, work, two months of vague unwellness and two weeks of intense, specific illness -- i'm sure i have developed an infected sinus in the last few days, for the entire left side of my face feels like its being crushed in a vice -- and now, time.
i am reading three books at once. three! which i've heard of people doing in the past, but always thought i'd be unable to. it's not so hard; i suppose it helps that they are each quite different, so there's no getting characters or storylines mixed up. and these days i'm getting better at switching on the different sections of my brain as the situation dictates: read a maisy book? sure! build a kind of a house out of blocks? yeah! hey, you kicked it over! build it again? why not! now you want some grapes? in a green bowl? ok!
the kid got me "the secret river" by kate grenville for my birthday. looks like she's inherited the boy's penchant for historical novels about early settlers to new south wales. i'm balancing that out with the kitchen capers of "julie and julia", which i guess y'all know is the result of another blogger with a bookdeal.
the surprise entry into the mix, just arrived yesterday from my good sister, is "mammon inc.", whose author, i've just read reviewed, "might not be in the class of maugham et al, but she is one of singapore's recent literary successes." quite. i much prefer nellie's endorsement: "i read it with a troubled and furious avidity; there was much gnashing of teeth."
not too much gnashing of teeth today. yet. it's true: the twos are terrible. but by lunchtime, we'd been to two playgrounds, with starbucks inbetween. cleverly, she chose the fruit mince tart, festooned with a biscuit star. it was moist and sweet, a perfect accompaniment to a babycino wearing a chocolate smile in a festive xmas cup, and a gingerbread chocolate frappucino.
Served on Tuesday, November 28, 2006 at 10:41 a.m.
---
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.
Served on Monday, November 27, 2006 at 02:42 p.m.
---
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.
Served on Thursday, November 16, 2006 at 03:32 p.m.
---
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.
Served on Monday, November 13, 2006 at 08:58 p.m.
---
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.
Served on Friday, November 10, 2006 at 09:15 p.m.
---
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.
Served on Wednesday, November 8, 2006 at 05:09 p.m.
---
"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.
Served on Friday, October 27, 2006 at 04:36 p.m.
---