oh all right. a photo. day five of banana bread, and it’s still going strong.

we spent the lunching hours of saturday in the old neighbourhood. it was time for maeve’s twelve-month immunisations, and upon discovering that the balmain doctors would charge for the privilege, we packed maeve, half an orange and a slice of banana bread into the car and drove to the surry hills medical centre, where for children at least, it’s still free. there we encountered a frontdeskman so rude and unpleasant and snatchy of medicare cards out of my hand, that we had to immediately go next door to café mint to while away our estimated one hour wait.

and what a pleasant hour it was.

“what’s the chickpea salad like?” i asked the waiter.
“well… you’d really have to like chickpeas because there are a lot of them.”
“but what is it like? are the chickpeas crunchy, or soft… or al dente? does it come with leaves? or other vegetables?”
the waiter was very patient. “it is not like a regular salad,” he said. “there are other things in it, like apricots –”
“oh, ok, i’ll have that!”

there was also a grapefruit and almond frappé.

the chickpea salad was all chickpeas, with torn herbs and little cubes of pumpkin, and no apricots. instead, baby figs! it was a big bowl of cool, served with hot shards of za’atar toast and fried halloumi.

the baby sat calmly, mostly, and deigned to be forkfed chickpeas… until a supplier walked past with a bunch of bananas. “ba.nana.” she intoned. her eyes followed the yellow trajectory.

“na-naa.”

“naa-naaaaa.”

and suddenly the chef was striding out of the kitchen and offering her a banana. as simple as that. all i have to do now is train her to say “chickpea salad” and i’ll be set.