ragingyoghurt

Category Archives: blog

as nellie says, buy first, think later.

after i bought the bumper box of 30 assorted mochi for the bargainous price of $7.95, i thought it over, and then tried to get my aunt to take some of it home. “no, no, no,” she said, “i don’t want to eat these fattening things.”

but after she left i checked the nutritional information on the back of the box, and discovered that this magical mochi has 0% fat, 0% protein and 0% dietary fibre; one serving size of mochi — three pieces — is only 67kj. which is surprising, really, as one of the mochi is filled with peanut butter.

this box, almost a kilo of squishy delight, contains a selection of green tea, sesame, taro, red bean and peanut mochi. over the course of the day i managed to sample all five, and i can’t really say which is my favourite. the green tea one isn’t maccha flavoured, as i had assumed, but it’s understandable since this is not japanese but taiwanese mochi, produced by the royal family food co., ltd.

the sesame one is gritty outside and in, coated with black and white seeds, and filled with a ground black sesame paste. it’s the kind of thing that makes you check your teeth before smiling at anyone, after you eat it.

the taro one is a lovely shade of lilac, smooth through and through. the red bean one is as you’d expect, though sprinkled with perhaps more rice flour than necessary, and will leave a powdery white residue on your red carpet when you’re done.

the peanut one is strangely savoury, with its salty smooth peanut butter inside. i’m not a great fan of peanuts, but felt the same way about this as i do when someone else buys a jar of peanut butter, and it’s sitting there in the pantry, and one day he makes a slice of peanut butter toast, and i just have to have a little bite.

the little paper cases have been colour-coordinated with their contents; the red bean mochi sits in a white case, which is printed with fruit: pineapples, grapes, cherries… and the cherry is the same size as the pineapple and the bunch of grapes. that’s my kind of cherry.

some time in the week, this blog will be featured on australianreader.com, as part of their summer feature: delicious indulgence. it’s poetry, fiction and nonfiction by emerging writers, from now until 22 january. go see!

posted by ragingyoghurt on 16 January 2006 at 9:19 pm

permalink | filed under blog, cake

o what an inauspicious start to the new year. somehow my < div > tags have become magic spells, which spirit away everything that follows them.

what i wrote last night was that i had a choice between writing an entry, watching reruns of “lost”, reading and sleeping. the blog won, but clearly i should have spent the hour watching “lost” instead. first time ’round, it seemed like the kid would wake for a feed in the last fifteen minutes of every episode. that and the fact that the promos kept promising things that were never delivered… in the end “lost” lost me. i am assured however, in the promos for the next season, that i will find out what’s at the bottom of the hole, in the first three minutes. we shall see.

new year’s eve, me and maeve were talking to the friendly neightbours across the way, and i asked what my balcony was like for that night’s fireworks. “this is the place to be,” they said, and pointed to a large flat thing being towed across the water into our line of sight. “look! here comes the barge from which they set off the fireworks.”

come midnight, i was perched on the balcony, chin on the railing. the fireworks were right there and the building trembled from fifteen minutes of crackle-crackle-BOOM. miraculously, maeve slept through it all.

this year i resolve to be better.

look ma, no < div > tags.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 6 January 2006 at 7:15 pm

permalink | filed under blog, tv

i just wrote something, and after i tried to attach a picture to it, everything disappeared. like, happy new year. tchk.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 5 January 2006 at 10:48 pm

permalink | filed under blog, grumble

i was writing an entry, which began:

“everything is a little awry. a tad askew. maybe it all started a few days ago when the child pulled at the ribbon strap peeking tantalisingly over the edge of the table, and brought mr camera down with a resounding clunk. despite the clunk-that-means-business, it appeared that everything was fine — still took photographs, and stored them on the XD card — until i tried to turn off the camera and then discovered that the lens no longer retreats all the way into the body of the camera. in fact it retracts as far as it can, than stops and thinks about it, extends itself fully, and then tries again to become streamline… but in vain! all the while it makes a sad little whiny noise, before it gives up into a disappointed silence.”

…and waffled… mmm… waffles… on for a bit more, and then i got distracted and wandered off for several hours, and then i got back and lost interest, as i’m sure you have.

but wait! i have something for you! a festive quiz to celebrate the season which is upon us.

[ via jaki ] what xmas ornament are you?

i am the christmas holly. although prickly, it is said to be able to repel poison and defend from witchcraft. old legend declares that holly first sprung under christ's footsteps, its thorny and scarlet berries, like drops of blood, are symbolic of christ’s sufferings.

ho.ho.ho.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 16 December 2005 at 2:58 pm

permalink | filed under blog, kid

here is second breakfast: a perfect boiled egg, salted and peppered, then smooshed onto buttered sourdough toast.

here is a rotten egg: i was sent an unsolicited email yesterday from a publicist at a publishing house, heralding the release of an upcoming “fictionalized memoir”, a “novel as a food diary” about “a young woman who equates food with love and with disastrous consequences”. the publicist — let’s call her ms. matsumoto — also offered me the chance to announce this book to my readers, or to interview the author. she also pasted into the “to” field of the email, the email addresses of about 80 other food bloggers.

i sent her a reply, thanking her for spamming me and 80 other people and EXPOSING OUR EMAIL ADDRESS TO ALL AND SUNDRY, and i was surprised to receive an apology from her this morning.

“i’m so very sorry! i assumed that food bloggers shared a sense of community and had asked an intern to work from a list called food porn.”

thing is, i consider this only a sort-of food blog. i don’t think i am as committed to the eating or, more precisely, the documenting or cooking as are others out there. so it’s nice to feel validated by being pulled from a food porn list as a target for spam.

and of course i feel terrible at letting the team down, what with my grandious lack of a sense of community and all.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 23 November 2005 at 9:46 pm

permalink | filed under blog, breakfast, grumble

my stats tell me that 80% of the traffic to this page comes from saffron and santos, so, well, you probably already know this story. but anyway.

the ballad of the green tea lamington
a little while back, a cheap and nasty supermarket raspberry lamington prompted the following discourse in my comments box:
santos. 13.09.05 – 12:58 pm: hallo! so lamingtons don’t have to be chocolate covered to still be called lamingtons? oh the possibilities!
bowb 14.09.05 – 6:38 pm: santos: i would like to see you make a maccha lamington please, with a red bean cream filling. on your site in say, a month?
santos. 15.09.05 – 12:48 pm: it’s a deal
saffron 15.09.05 – 10:04 pm: oooh can i try too? pleeeeeeeaaaaaase?
bowb 16.09.05 – 9:06 am: hurrah! a bakeoff!

and so in the ensuing weeks, two cakeheads got busy. me? i figured my work here was done. hey, thinking up ideas for cake is hard yakka.

sadly, because the technology to send food molecules through the ether and have them regroup on the other side hasn’t yet been invented (hurry up, boffins! or, oh wait, you’ve invented it and are keeping it a secret!! which is even worse!!!), i’ve only been able to look at pictures of the wonder that is santos’ lamingtons.

happily, because saffron is only a busride away on a saturday afternoon, i was the lucky and extremely pleased recipient of a cluster of green tea lamington cupcakes.

all the components are present: light and moist maccha-tinged sponge, a glorious purple heart of yam jam, whipped cream and shaved coconut dusted with maccha. an inventive and delicious interpretation!

and now, alas, there are no more of these little beauties. the last one, i just ate her, and scraped the paper clean.

meanwheel, most of the the remainder of visits to this page are from people googling “raging yoghurt”. who are you, mysterious people?

posted by ragingyoghurt on 9 November 2005 at 10:18 am

permalink | filed under blog, cake

being a slack bastard, i still haven’t dealt with the previous two memes hurled my way. i’m sorry. your time will come, memes!

however, this evening, a short, sweet one beckoned, and because i am too full of mashed potato (and sauteed red cabbage and steak) to go to bed (and also i am trying to have the food settle enough that i might have a piece of chocolate), i am playing along:

1 delve into your blog archive.
2 find your 23rd post (or closest to).
3 find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
4 post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.
5 tag five people to do the same.

so. the sentence, from june 18, 2003:

“unfortunately the photographic adventure was cut short, because a maniac was trying to kill us, and we had to throw him off the balcony.”

what!? yes, i know it seems a long way from talk of cake or mashed potato… but you see, the camera was chocolate. now you really want to run over to the archives don’t you?

run! i pass the baton to: carla gypsygirl, gem, hikaru, krissie and stellou.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 20 September 2005 at 8:28 pm

permalink | filed under blog, dinner

i was reading technicolor.org yesterday, when the boy, seeing the whimsical drawing which serves as the page header — who doesn’t like whimsy? — asked, “what’s that?”.

“um, it’s just this girl’s website,” i replied. “just a blog.” the boy does not approve of this blogging business. at the best of times, he shakes his head and rolls his eyes and mutters something about strange lifestyles of the young generation; at the worst of times i am chastised for my affliction of reading and writing on the internet, instead of interacting with real people.

yesterday, after he shook his head and rolled his eyes, i explained that my favourite fiction reading was that sort of first person chatty rambling, all that jay mcinerny, hanif kureishi stuff i read while growing up, and so it wasn’t all that different reading blogs.

one of my favourite blogs is momo freaks out. o how i have laughed out loud reading it over the last couple of years. but momo is ending her blog in a month, and i feel a tinge of sadness. it is only a small tinge. after all i do not know momo, and chances are another blog will come along and win me over with wit and charm.

today he told me he hates me.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 30 May 2005 at 6:40 pm

permalink | filed under blog, boy

and so a week goes by…

anyway. thursday, i received an email from the baker’s wife, so to speak. a girl who had googled “bourke street bakery” as you do (or, as i do from time to time to see if they finally have a website up, with pictures of chocolate tarts), found an earlier posting i made about said bakery, and being the ladyfriend of the bourke street baker, wrote to say she was pleased i like the bakery.

i was quite a little bit thrilled to get this email. it was as though a celebrity, say eric stoltz, had responded to something i had said about him without knowing he was behind me all the while, listening.

the eric stoltz story is that a friend of a friend was in new york once, in a cinema, and before the film began, one of those ads with trivia questions had the answer “eric stoltz”, which prompted a conversation between this girl and her companion, along the lines of “whatever happened to eric stoltz?”. a discussion of eric stoltz ensued, and they noticed that every now and again the guy seated behind them would laugh a quiet little laugh in response to something they had said.

do i need to to continue this story? you already know that the film kicked in, and then it was over, and as they exited the cinema, they came face to face with eric stoltz, who nodded in greeting and smiled and said “hello ladies”.

mmm… eric stoltz. oh wait! i mean, mmm… chocolate tarts.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 1 May 2005 at 11:42 am

permalink | filed under blog, misc

The other night I woke up screaming… well, whimpering, keening, with Evil Cramp From Hell in my left calve. Damn it hurt. After it tired of gnawing on my leg, it settled down into a low growl for the rest of the night. And way into the following day.

Such an odd juxtaposition of sensations as I sat on the northern end of Hype Park eating pineapple and rockmelon, warmed by the sun. If I had a job to go to, I wouldn’t be lying in the grass like this, all happy with fruit and wincing with residual cramp.

So it’s been a year since I partook of fulltime emplyment, and I’ve arrived at these conclusions:
1. Fulltime employment isn’t all it’s made out to be.  
2. I’m a really lazy person.  
Of course, I mean that in a good way.

Nonetheless [and bearing in mind a card I got last birthday which said "welcome to your late 20s"] time is running out, and soon one of them technology-savvy seventeen year olds who knows how to code Java will be on the speed dial of… someone who needs a boffin, and I’ll be… not. It doesn’t matter that even now I’m not a boffin, or on anyone’s speed dial – anyone who’ll pay me big money anyway, but dammit! it’s the sentiment that counts.

I haven’t isolated the sentiment yet either, but bear with me.

So over the next year I’m gonna draw lots more pictures. Drop by occasionally and see them. Also, I’ve just embarked on a Tuesday night foray into the world of website workshops, which means that I have to set the VCR for Heartbreak High and Party of Five. But maybe more importantly it means I’ll soon know how to use a HTML editor and won’t have to write this all on Simpletext.

One more step away from ludditedom.

It’s gonna be wonderful.

- – -
before i had a “blog”, i used to write a sporadically updated letter on the front page of my website. this is one of them. i am consolidating it into these archives, because i can.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 16 September 1999 at 9:26 pm

permalink | filed under around town, blog, werk

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