it was my birthday a couple of weeks ago, except now that i write this, i see that it was actually five weeks ago, gah.

my olds were in town, as were the boy’s, and an aunt of his, and a cousin, and we thought we might wander into carlton for a catch up and celebratory luncheon. pizza and gelato were on the horizon (essentially, a replay of the kid’s birthday do some weeks back, but without the paint), but i knew that we would never get into D.O.C. at peak lunch hour. so we tried the aunt-recommended place, and when that proved to be a heaving mass of lunch crowd, we crossed the road to the place previously vetted by the boy’s parents: cafe trevi.

what it had going for it was that it was empty. where it fell short — way, waaayyy short — was the food. the boy and i shared a couple of pizzas, and they were so awful we couldn’t bring ourselves to finish them (and you know, just for perspective, on the occasions that i’ve had say, domino’s, i eat until it’s gone). the bases were sturdy, bland dough trays on which some nasty plastic cheese was melted, and toppings — some strips of leather masquerading as prosciutto for instance — artfully arranged. the others seemed to be enjoying their food, so perhaps we just ordered the wrong things.

however, everybody agreed that the mixed salads were dismal: some roughly chopped pallid iceberg, a couple slices of cucumber and a wedge or two of anaemic tomato, carrot sticks, and — here’s the kicker — dressing perched precariously atop the lot in disposable plastic tubs, one of balsamic vinegar and another of commercial salad cream. low fat mayonnaise, even.

i must say i took a perverse pleasure in dipping carrot sticks in the salad cream. maybe i even enjoyed it, far more than i did the pizza anyway.

dessert down the street at casa del gelato almost made up for it. but not really, i was so grumpy.

last sunday, the boy proposed a carlton excursion, which began with an expedition through the melbourne cemetery. i love a good cemetery: that old one in the middle of athens, where the boy and i wandered 11 years ago; paris’s pere la chaise, in which my sister and i became lost, and cold, and hungry one wintery afternoon in 2007; waverly cemetery in sydney, the site of a fine twilight picnic overlooking a chinatown cream cake and the crashing waves of the tasman sea… good times!

melbourne general cemetery is a world class cemetery. the internet tells me it was established in the 1850s, and that it houses around half a million. what i can tell you is that it is a wonderful collection of gilded script in slabs of marble…

it’s a place where all the branches of christiandom exist peacefully…

there is a chinese section,

and a jewish section.

many angels, some beheaded.

it was shortly after we discovered the amazing shrine to elvis presley — a grotto covered in succulents and engraved marble plaques that looked like velvet elvis paintings — that we realised we were hungry. we meandered through the historic gravestones…

…to the exit, and found ourselves on lygon street just before three. and then after some discussion, we found ourselves at D.O.C. negotiating pizza.

sadly, the special from the other time — porchetta with mustard fruit — wasn’t on the menu, however there was a most agreeable offering of parma ham with buffalo mozzarella, fresh figs and a pungent undercurrent of gorgonzola. we were similarly smitten by the porcini pizza, which included a melange of mushrooms, all cooked to perfect succulence on a white base. the kid had her own margherita, because some things are just too delicious for her. case in point: unsatisfied even with this plainest pizza on the menu, she removed every basil leaf before it was deemed acceptable. by the end, we were so satiated we couldn’t even manage gelato. still, it was the birthday pizza luncheon that was meant to be.

four months ago, i got an email of just two sentences: “…just been diagnosed to have possibly lung cancer with metastases to the spine. i feel so bad we did not take her back pain seriously, attributing it to the hard physical housework she’s been doing.”

during the week just past, an update: “…sadly not responding to her treatment. yesterday’s scans show that the cancer has spread to her brain, liver and more bones, and fluid has collected around her heart and in her lung. she remains brave and is taking whatever comes.”

at what point does living with cancer tip over into dying from it? i am not convinced it is all just a state of mind.

so yes, i’m afraid i wasn’t so good at being confined. (and that’s only 4 weeks according to chinese tradition. we were chided by some lebanese ladies at the kid’s school for bringing harlan out to the twilight picnic a couple of weeks ago — “we don’t let the babies out until after 40 days!” they said, and, “put a hat on him — he is cold!”). the monday after the saturday birth, i was trawling the aisles of bas foods with my mother, in search of treats (peach nectar, pistachios, and ülker chocolate biscuits). in the couple of weeks that followed, i turned down my mother’s numerous offers of sesame-oil-ginger-chicken — instead, we did the rounds: mr close, lux foundry, arcadia…

surely this is as nourishing (and heaty!) as anything soused in ginger wine? behold the baked eggs at arcadia, on gertrude, which come with a 25-minute-wait warning. i picked the option with the lentils, and there must’ve been almost two cups in there, buried under the eggs, all salty and herby and crusty-topped. (the surface was all salty and stinky, from a layer of melty taleggio.) it tasted so deliciously of hearty good health that the sheer volume of lentils never got boring (the intermittent pieces of juicy celery helped).

this dish proved easy to eat with one hand, as the other hand occupied itself with the intricacies of breastfeeding. i ate every last pulse, and every last herby leaf from the sprig, and then rolled up the street to bask in the friday sunshine.

i zoomed past slowpoke back in the depth of wintertime, but i was on my way to lunch further up brunswick street and couldn’t do much more than peep into the window and take note of the long room lined in rough hewn timber. it was brightly lit and airy, and there was a glass case of baked goods midway down. fitzroy-cute, rather than mountain-manly. i made a mental note to return. newly into spring — the first day of school holidays — after a jaunt through the carlton gardens playground, the kid was hungry for eggs. so we strolled up gertrude — coming distracted and somewhat unstuck only by the papier mache skulls at amor y locura — and rounded the corner. “i think we can get eggs here,” i told maeve as we stood on the threshold. “let’s go here,” she said.

we perched ourselves at the counter fronting the window, overlooking an open bowl of sugar, an open cup of pink salt, and a host of bicycles chained up outside. we ordered a pot of chai and watched the trendy kids wander down the road with too-big hair and too-small jeans.

from the tidy chalkboard menu, the kid picked the boiled eggs with toast soldiers, just about as eggy as you can get. they arrived, twins in matching cups, with a platoon of very liberally buttered sourdough fingers. after her tentative attempts, i cracked the top of the first egg sharply, and elicited a horrified gasp from the kid: a massacre! but once she’d picked away enough of the shell with her itchy little fingers, the translucent white came into view, and the googy yolk poured forth, and all was forgiven.

i had a hard time choosing — from the short and sweet menu of simple sandwiches and smashed avocado, everything appealed — but eventually settled on the lentil soup. oh my. the veritable swamp of light and colour puddled at the bottom of a large bowl was not what i was expecting, but gee, it was good. far from a gluggy mass of pureed lentils, this was a rich brothy thing with clearly identifiable pulses. the fresh tomatoes and baby spinach leaves brightened up a long slow chilli burn. the scattering of chilli flakes, of course, added to it. i ate it all, mopped up the dredges with bread. the smear of softened butter was most welcome.

the amazing expanding powers of lentil soup meant it was impossible right then to consider the tiny slivers of caramel slice and other homemade fancies from the cake counter, but that was ok. our feet were itching to get back to the street. it’s a world of fun and toys and vintage kokeshi dolls and shoo-fly buns out there in fitzroy, and it was ours for the taking.

but of course, i did eat that day. after the inkpad and gloves (ok, and crocheted necklace and teatowel), and the vintage letterheads and comics, i found myself in need of sustenance. i’d been reading about the cafe, mister close, for a little while, but couldn’t really figure out where in the city it was. turns out, it’s in a shopping arcade i walk through sometimes, my shortcut to chinatown. my chinatown dash usually happens around dinnertime though, and after hours, a clever sliding wall device makes quite a vanishing act of the mysterious mister close.

but here i was, right at the tail end of the what appeared to be a busy lunch crush — the eat-in area was still packed. behind the expansive front counter, the staff in sharp aprons were bustling. within the glass display, the salads and casseroles, somewhat depleted in large bowls, looked a little tired. however, the wall of readymade sandwiches was still going strong, offering such cheek-tingling combinations as grilled pumpkin – salsa agresto – buffalo mozerella – oven roasted tomato, and haloumi – roasted capsicum – eggplant – rocket – dukkah. i felt lucky to snaffle the last thyme buttered mushroom – zucchini – goats cheese.

after some minutes in the sandwich press, it was presented to me in a brown paper bag stamped with the cafe’s dapper logo. now, what to do? where in the city could i sit quietly to eat my toasted sandwich? would i find an empty bench in front of the library? could i wait the walk to the train station? would i be so unglamourous as to eat it on the train?

in the end, i took my sandwich just a few steps across the corridor to starbucks, ordered a green tea frappucino (i had seen them oh so small and innocent on the internet a few days before and had not been able to get them out of my mind) and sat at a quiet table round the back. it was a delicious frappuccino, sweet and mildly green with a lovely cloud of whipped cream on top, and i wondered why i had not had one in at least a couple of years.

the secret smuggled sandwich was delicious too — from the grilled buttery crunch of the seedy, nutty bread, to the succulent marinated mushrooms mingling saucily with the musty goats cheese, to the bitter green foil of salad leaves. mmm… salty, slippery goodness.

i thought my beverage choice made the perfect accompaniment to my perfect sandwich, however a reading of mister close’s blog revealed (with unnecessary glee, i thought) that the starbucks would be moving out. when — i do not know. clearly, an incentive for me to return sooner rather than later for the haloumi sandwich, which i’m sure it will pair just beautifully with the delicate spices of a chai frappuccino.

what the hell — let’s go for three in a row. i don’t expect people come this way anymore looking to read about food anyway, so here’s another post about printed paper.

on my way down to the comics last friday, i made a detour into city gallery — a little room at the melbourne town hall — for “paper city“, an exhibition of historical melbourne letterheads. yeah!

featuring an assortment of letters sent to the town hall since the mid-1800s, this collection showcases the evolution of design, print technology, language, industry, society and culture all in one fell swoop. even if you just go for the pretty pictures, you will witness how the overwrought charm of the victorian-era specimens eventually gave way to the unfortunate clunk of the 1980s. inbetween, there is a great mix of striking and quirky.

each piece of correspondence was worded most eloquently. each missive received was stamped and dated by the office, with an annotation by the clerk of what action was to be carried out. of course, there are some samples of lovely handwriting. ah… i used to have handwriting.

the grey threat that winter’s summery turn was about to end forced me out onto the streets today. that and the fact that i hadn’t really left the house in a week, and i thought i might chew my own arm off in protest. i’d been feeling blue, it’s true, and i wondered if buying myself treats would cheer me up. i tested this theory with an ink pad of sky blue, and then fingerless gloves crafted in navy wool, with white anchors handknitted into them. it totally worked!

my meandering eventually led me to “inherent vice” at the ngv studio at federation square, in which eight local comic artists have been holed up for some weeks, drawing. here you may walk freely amongst this elusive species in their (somewhat augmented) natural habitat. observe them at work. quiz them about their craft. look at their stuff.

and there was much stuff to look at: every last skerrick of wall space was covered in pictures…

every desktop a fascinating curation of bits and pieces…

(i must admit, there was more fruit than i’d expected to see on the desktops of comic artists…

…in comic-drawing mode, i’m sure it was chocolate i had within easy reach.)

this beautiful and inspiring installation is on for another week. after a couple of visits, i still gape at the walls in wonder. any minute now i might give in to the urge to draw something. good thing i didn’t gnaw off my arm after all.

so it’s not just outside trendy cafes and mexican cantinas that you have to queue; friday afternoon at the olde time hopetoun tea rooms in the block arcade, we waited behind the red velvet ropes for 15 minutes or so before a table became available. nevermind — the bejeweled waitress was kind enough to give us frequent updates on the table situation (“there should be people leaving soon, but they are just sitting there sipping at their tea.”), and we had ample time to consider our choices from the two cake-laden shelves in the window. on top: fruit crumbles, tarts of lemon or lime or pecans, teacakes and, yes, macarons…

down below: a spectrum of technicolor cheesecakes, and a couple of sponges layered with cream and festooned with berries and flaked almonds. inside, perched atop the counter, above a display of antique silver and heavy crystal, sticky date puddings with a towering jug of toffee sauce, caramel slices, and chocolate and strawberry swiss rolls. it really was quite overwhelming.

i’d been working myself up to a simple afternoon tea of scones and cream and jam, but as we approached the front of the queue, the thought of two lumps of breadiness sitting in my belly so close to dinnertime saw me veer towards a slice of the sunny orb of passionfruit tart in the corner of the window.

at our cosy table in the small and tightly packed dining room, i found that the filling was, as i had hoped, bright and tangy, but the pastry, though a fetching shade of golden brown, was much less crisp than i would have liked. it had a lovely buttery taste, but its texture lacked any real distinction from that of the passionfruit curd.

both my tart and the slice of pavlova that the kid picked to celebrate the last day of term were thoughtfully plated up with artful puddles of passionfruit and/or raspberry coulis, dollops of thick cream and extra bits of fruit. but i must say that the attention to detail might have extended, if not to removing the skin from the kiwifruit, then at least to removing the stickers from the kiwifruit skin. gah!

the tea service, when it first arrived, looked promising despite the splodge of red jam on the strainer. alas, my dahl house tea — black, flavoured with ginger and peach — was served with a litter of leaves on the floor of the pot, so while the first cup was light and fragrant, by the third cup, it had brewed itself bitter.

i’d really like to like this place. i mean, i’d like to like it more. i mean, i think, i like it fine. the waitresses are friendly, and will not rush you on even though a queue is forming outside. the decor, with the marble table tops, emerald green wallpaper and swathes of stripy fabric hanging from the rafters, is not without its charm. when you look closely though, at the lingering produce stickers, and the just-short-of-soggy pastry, and the endlessly steeping tea, and the torn and peeling wallpaper, you get a sad little feeling that this is not so much the grande dame of tea rooms as it is the slightly doddery aunt.

(which is not to say i wouldn’t visit again. because after all, who doesn’t like a homely tea-and-cake sit down with a doddery aunt in her well-worn sitting room? it’s just a little bit of pomp and some tired splendour. perhaps next time, i will have the scones.)

you wander down to the cafe right by the very last stop on the 96 tramline. there is only one table left, on the footpath, separated from the saturday arvo hoonsters by nothing more than a flap of plastic sheeting. the table may be almost disastrously wobbly, and that guy with the hotted up engine snarling up nicholson street threatens to send the salt and pepper shakers vibrating onto the floor… and then the tea service arrives, and it’s all good.

here at milkwood, the pot of house-blended chai comes with all the trimmings: a strainer to catch the tea leaves and spices, and a little pot of pale runny honey. there is enough tea in the pot for three large gold-rimmed cupfuls. which gives you something to fill your mouth with as you wait (and wait) for your food to show up. but when it does…

well! i was quite unprepared for the mountain of mushrooms on my plate. they were plump and succulent, blushing with the faintest kiss of lemon thyme. the crunchy toast was buttered and then generously slathered in ricotta. it all made for a big plate of rude good health.

the kid, having embraced the wonder of googie eggs, ordered poached eggs on toast with a side of avocado, which came drizzled in lemon oil and whole peppercorns its own little dish. niiice! the eggs were pretty much perfect — pristine white globules that we broke open to release their molten golden yolks. the kid was polite enough to share.

mmm…

we sat and watched the trams roll in and out; we would not be moving for a while. but when we did finally make it to the counter to pay, i discovered a display cabinet filled with house-made treats. lamingtons, for example, covered in big chips of coconut… fat rounds of wholesome cakes, cut into generous slices… a tidy pile of very homely monte carlos, quite unlike the uniform incarnations out of an arnott’s packet. there was no room in my belly, but i bought one anyway.

later in the afternoon, i tossed it to the kid and her dad, and let them fight it out amongst themselves. (i did get a large enough crumb to let you know that the biscuits were cakey, and the jam seedy and tart. if i’d had a cup of tea handy, i might have kept the cookie for myself.)

i don’t know why it’s taken us this long to get to milkwood. ok, well, i do know: we’ve been past every saturday in the last couple of months, but we’re always coming from chinese class and jumping on the tram to the city, or the beach, or the museum or wherever. now we know better. there is no reason why we should not linger, and the lamington behind glass (the tea and mushrooms, the eggs, the love heart cinnamon toast, the grilled ham off the bone…) is clearly reason why we should.

there was talk of a mamak roti breakfast, but by the time we got round to it, it was lunch with another kind of flatbread: pizza at D.O.C.! i’d been wanting to come here for aaages — a couple of months, anyway — and beloved interstate friends with errands in carlton and a penchant for pizza were the perfect excuse. arriving at the tail end of conventional lunchtime, we were lucky to get the end of the long table by the big window, and i was lucky to have the winter sun streaming through said window, warming my back.

a compact, handsome italian man presented us with menus, typed up in a 90s typewriter font: it felt like coming home. we saw the antipasti at the next table, and smelt the truffle oil wafting from passing pizze. we took too long to decide; we wanted one of everything. what we ended up with was a fat plait of mozzarella with a small salad of shaved fennel and sweet, meaty mouthfuls of whole white anchovies…

a pizza of salsicce and pureed broccoli — which caused me to gasp in amazement when it was placed in front of us. it was like a platter of spring meadow, with the delicate green crema di broccoli and the rosy blossoms of sausage meat. i believe i may have clapped, and then when i actually did bite into it, the applause rang loud in my head. i find myself thinking about it a day later, and plotting my return.

and the pizza abruzzese — topped with paper thin slices of porchetta, mustard fruit and radicchio. how festive! if it is the intriguing premise of mustard fruit that compels you to order this pizza, be warned that an uneven distribution of the tiny cubes of candied fruit means that your slice might only be pork belly fatty crunchy. even though it will be delicious, you may be disappointed. fortunately, my slice had two bits of mustard fruit on it, and i can tell you that it made my experience a little bit like christmas. the combination of pork belly fatty crunchy and candy sweet fruity softness made my brain wobble with glee. (of course, the stern radicchio kept deliriousness in check.)

we also had a salad of rocket and pear dressed in pecorino and the tiniest hint of honey, and then we sat, sated, and considered the dessert menu: a tiramisu made with sweet goat cheese; a nutella calzoncino, before taking ourselves, after a detour at the spice shop round the corner, across the road to brunetti.

here is how you cap off a meal of gold standard pizza: behold the piemontese with its jaunty golden hazelnut crown, a crunchy profiterole filled with an almost unnecessarily tall column of hazelnut cream — that’s cream, flecked with ground-up hazelnuts — all the better to hide its central artery of sweet-savoury hazelnut praline. there will be waddling after, waddling to the corner to bid your farewells, and then waddling the three blocks to the homeward-bound tram… but absolutely no regrets.

apparently it is 19° today, and sunny. i should pop outside.

we did pop outside last sunday, when it was cloudy and grey, and some 4° cooler. no matter. a good section down by the yarra was festooned with big orange balloons (and all manner of installation and artwork) to celebrate the 150th birthday of the art gallery. lured by the promise of a dancing rhinoceros (and for some of us, a taco) we sauntered across the river, impressed in varying degrees by: an ancient indian carpet recreated in coloured rice and lentils; a staircase covered in ornamental stenciled mud and ash; the goddess guanyin sculpted in sand; a painting of a digger rendered in real life by a street performer; a bronzed and smiling buddha walking serenely down the avenue… and then, finally, across the road: the rhinoceros. the kid was surprisingly disappointed to find that it was only a puppet, albeit a life-sized puppet operated by two concealed humans.

nevermind. life’s great disappointments can be soothed with a cupcake. outside the arts centre, at the very edge of the sunday craft market, sophisticakes had a stall with some very compelling specimens. billowy buttercream, sugar butterflies… that sort of thing. a sea of pinks and pastels which the kid eschewed for a brown on brown cookies ‘n’ cream cupcake topped with a miniature oreo. i was sucked in by the gold-glittery new york, new york — chocolate cake with tahitian vanilla buttercream. the frosting was not great; it had a rich vanilla flavour, but it was more sugary than buttery, a little too crunchy and harsh. the cake, on the other hand, was quite amazing: all dark chocolate moistness. when it was gone, i was immediately wistful.

in lieu of more cake, we tracked down the taco truck, tucked away amid a grove of orange balloons, and ordered lunch. from a modest menu of three tacos — fish, chicken or potato, i got us a taco plate: two tacos and corn chips for $12. and then we waited, and waited, and reminded ourselves that it was fresh food, cooked to order, and then after a few more minutes of admiring the lovingly handpainted truck (sweet video on the painting of here)…

…

…

…a waxed paper box traversed the pass.

mmm… my fish taco had a freshly fried bit of fish — succulent in its crunchy batter. the red cabbage slaw was a perfect purple foil, cabaggy juices mingling with the poppyseed mayo to leave trails of vibrant violet as i made my way through it.

the kid was similarly impressed with her grilled, marinated chicken taco, and especially with its sublimely sweet and juicy corn relish.

we sat in the shadow of the truck and ate, and just a couple of bites in, a tableau of the sydney nolan footballer painting sprang to life around us. the kid ran off to play pretend footy, leaving me with a cluster of corn chips. i’m pleased to say they were all limey tang and salty crunch.