and so a month goes by. it kicked off with a txt from a concerned well-wisher, letting me know that all the pictures on this page had been replaced by a dramatic highway-by-night photograph. dramatic indeed! my domain had quietly expired, who knows when, and evidently my registrar is not the kind that sends out a renewal reminder. after an almost frenzied exchange with the helpdesk, who helpfully sent an email which confirmed, “your domain name expired. you were supposed to log in and renew the domain…”, i typed my credit card details into a box, hoped for the best, and then left a few hours later for new zealand.

my good mother is visiting this month. her first week here, we did the rounds: about life, circle cafe, bar contessa, david jones food hall… we had every intention of doing sopra, but barrelling up crown street, we passed by bills and our plan came undone. she’d been talking about trying the ricotta hotcakes for years, and i figured it was now or never. and now, perhaps, never again; is it neccessary to have that much pancake on a plate? tchk. we shall try again for sopra this friday: as part of the sydney italian festival, they are presenting “special prosciutto menus“!

we had cupcakes from cupcakes on pitt (the promising sticky date cupcake was a bit dry and quite heavy and strangely muffin-like — i am not recommending it; the strawberries and cream was much more delightful — pretty pink cake with fresh cream and a single sliced up strawberry), and cupcakes from the colonial bakery at the milsons point train station (the lemon cupcake had a generous dollop of whipped cream and a splodge of dayglo yellow lemon jellycandycurd), and then my mum briefly talked about a new cupcake cookbook and how she might buy it and bake cupcakes in her impending retirement. (she has since recanted, and will now be baking muffins, which really sums up the difference between us, i think.)

we did circle cafe again…

and for a week in-between, we went — my olds, my kid and me — to new zealand, where babycinos are called “fluffies”, and the marshmallows that come with them are invariably a little stale. the lamb is delicious though, in all its forms: lamb pie, lamb burgers, more lamb pie, lamb salad. somehow i photographed none of it.

this lamb salad is from about life, and is one of the best things i’ve eaten, ever. tender roasted meat, shaved fennel, pomegranate seeds, this gorgeous beast i captured.