oh nellie. stop this insane notion that you must leave tomorrow. what can we do but have a last hurrah.
a last hurrah at happy chef. a last hurrah with the fancy french pastries. a last hurrah folding up the sofabed, way too early in the morning. a last hurrah of a salty, vinegary potato scallop. a last hurrah singing call-and-answer showtunes. a last hurrah on a ferry, in the last (hurrah) winter sun.
after yoga, after a long walk up to the main road, after a slow ride on the 380, after a time spent deciding what fish would be best battered and fried, and how many potato scallops to get, we finally sat down at a picnic bench facing the sea. it was just short of 4pm, lunchtime this saturday. between us and the view of sparkling bondi, a hefty blue eyed cod and a pile of chips, and two potato scallops.
something happens when chips are served up with anything. the anything is momentarily forgotten as you try to cram fat, hot, salty potato into your mouth. will you be so lucky (or restrained) this time that the delicate skin behind your front teeth will not end up scalded and hanging in painful little ribbons from the roof of your mouth?
and what of the batter? what of that last piece of crunchy brown that fell off the fish sometime during the eating?
“what shall i do with this batter?” i asked.
“leave it,” said nellie.
“i know.” i said this only because i thought she’d said “eat it”.
i’m not sure how the misunderstanding was cleared up, but there were still chips on the greaseproof paper, and i knew what fate would befall me, and them, if i didn’t throw them to the gulls.
my overarm was unstoppable, hurling chips one after the other at the horrible, beady-eyed things. the air was filled with birds and squawking and chips, and finally, that last piece of batter. my eyes were still filled with fire. i never felt so alive.
following too much dimsum at kamfook in chatswood on friday, we waddled slowly and sleepily like fat little puppies (yet bouyantly and almost hysterically, what with the little bubbles of oxygen pumping through our veins — this always happens in the situation i’m about to type) down the aisles of the asian supermarket next door.
ah, jusco. such a trevor trove of japanese candy (including a broad selection of yoghurt and calpis flavoured treats) and instant noodles and exotic beverages. and this: a little cup of biscuit fingers with a pot of chocolate and sprinkles for dipping. based on my highschool level reading of the chinese print on the label, it seems to have come out of the indonesian branch of arnotts, specifically for the hong kong and taiwan market, and the packaging is ocha-ken.
gasp! who is tea dog?
via jascii.net: ocha-ken is a really short anime about tea. it’s about a little green puppy with tea-leaf ears named ryoku whose nose always tells him when there’s tea made just right to be had. he has a lot of different-coloured dog friends who also seem to love tea and coffee. the first episode, “have you been making tea lately?” is about how hard it is to make the perfect tea, not too hot, cold, thin, thick, but just right. when ryoku smells that perfect tea, he calls all his friends and they go over to hana, the purple dog’s place, where they see she’s being a great hostess. tea is the best, isn’t it? when you’re drinking it, maybe you, too, can see the cute little tea puppy!
who doesn’t like tea? and ok, i don’t want to be all weird about this, but look! you can get a plastic teapot toy, and it opens up into some sort of onsen situation where you and your different-coloured dog friends can drink tea and chat and have a dip in the hot spring:
um. management would like to apologise for the inordinate number of plugs in that post.
this week’s getting away from me again, but oh how good it feels to see the deadlines falling away. before the coming weekend tumbles unto me, i thought i’d just record for posterity the following facts about last weekend:
1. there was a drive beyond the blue mountains and up mount canobolas in orange, where capital W weather was experienced — water fell from the sky, simultaneously, in three states (liquid, solid and um, flakey with six points), whited out the view in a fourth, and there was a windchill factor that made my skin break out in a welty rash not ten minutes out of the car.
2. there was, from a bakery in oberon, a wagon wheel as big as nellie‘s head.
i also just wanted to say that the cafe in the local shopping mall has pancakes with banana and maple syrup on the menu. except that the word “banana” has been crossed out and the word “bacon” written underneath.
that is all.
i’m doing too much. i’m not doing enough. either way it seems to have resulted in this field of blog lying fallow.
aside from the nonstop happy rollercoaster of my sister being in town, i’m also working to a handful of print deadlines. this basically means that any given day involves moving between a pastry and a computer, maybe even three or four times a day. sometimes a great distance across inner-city suburbs is walked to get to a pastry, other times i only have to stumble downstairs to the kitchen. on these occasions, i hope the foetus is absorbing any extraneous kilojoules.
this morning, what awaits in brown paper bags strewn across the kitchen counter are: a blueberry brioche, a custard brioche, the biggest custard-filled, caramel-topped profiterole in the world (which the boy bought because of its resemblance to the enormous, pulsating, million calorie, poison-creme-filled dessert offered to homer in food critic mode), and a loaf of sourdough spelt fruit bread…
do your teeth hurt? a pot of strong black bush tea will help.
