ragingyoghurt

Category Archives: boy

we headed out of melbourne for a mini-roadtrip. it’s not my favourite thing, sitting in a car for hours at a stretch, watching the scenery whiz past, however the regional bakeries sort of make it worthwhile.

it was just after 9 on day 2 when we entered the bakery on the main street of kyneton — the country cob, i think it was — looking for a breakfast that would last us the drive back to the city (and out again to the snow). i cast my eye over the standards in the counter: scrolls, snails, slices, and would probably have settled for a large lamington when i caught a flash of colour from an adjacent display case.

look at that amazing pink cake! filled with chunky jam and just the right amount of cream, topped with sugary pink icing and shredded coconut. the cake itself was moist and strawberry-flavoured in a most agreeably artificial way. when it was gone i had to have a couple of stern words with myself about not getting another one for the road.

the other thing i like about the countryside is its easy curation of vintage signage. sometimes it’s a small moment of pleasure as you past it at 100km/h on the highway. other times you might arrive at a little town where the highway is the main street, and you might stop for a while for a more leisurely review.

pink cake can make you foolhardy, and will propel you into the middle of the road so that you can get a picture of that historic tea mural on an old building on the other side. or you might stand in the gutter just so you can fit a giant rooftop ice cream in your viewfinder.

these lovely signs will soon be just a smidge closer. come january, i am moving to melbourne. in short, the alternately estranged and absent boy came to the decision that he might actually want (and like) to have his family around him. for the last year or so he has been working a new job in melbourne, both of which factors have made him far less grumpy than we have been used to. so, we shall see.

i had been somewhat resistant to relocation, but then a couple of months ago i read of loobylu’s crazy plan to pack up a suburban melbourne existence and head off on an island adventure in british columbia. it struck me that melbourne wasn’t such a stretch after all.

what will be a challenge, will be packing up the house. i’m hoping that when i open up the boxes on the other end of the move, there will be less — maybe even a lot less — than i have around me right now. i like my stuff, and people who’ve been around here have been kind enough to point out what a blast packing it up will be, but i’ve also been reading of people who live with 50 things (or even 75, or 100 things). so, um… we shall see.

i am working on convincing myself that it’s actually just the idea of my stuff that i’m attached to. so far i have been very bad at even starting the cull, and i know this relaxed attitude will turn around and bite me in the ass in four or five months.

in the meantime, i calculate how much gelato i can eat at messina before the summer arrives, and i watch the sunsets over the harbour, coloured ever more rosy by their finiteness. aside from my lovely aunt, who cried out, “how can you leave me?”, people have been saying, “oh melbourne! i love melbourne! i’d happily live in melbourne!”, and i’m hoping that they follow through and come with me.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 14 August 2010 at 12:32 am

permalink | filed under art, boy, cake, trip

well. clearly it’s a cosmic conspiracy against the rice pudding eclair — once again i made it out of zumbo without. but behind every cloud lies… another cloud! the sunny cloud, to be precise.

it was that fella’s birthday yesterday, and for all those times he wistfully mentioned the lemon meringue pies his mother used to make while he was growing up, i bought him a little one of his own. a regal majesty it is, sitting pretty as though carved out of italian meringue by florentine sculptors. but beneath the swirls of gilt-edged meringue (guilt-edged meringue — ha!) is not your average lemon tart. in fact, it isn’t a lemon tart at all.

just look at that delectable triple-layer filling in its crisp shell: lime jelly, lime curd, and a very lively yoghurt creme fraiche. because he was happy to share, i can tell you that oh, it was good. after the yielding, marshmallowy meringue, the lime jelly tasted like a burst of fresh fruit, and the curd was full and fat on my tongue. and yet, i was glad to have only had the modest serve…

… because we were due for a meatfest at braza. you might think that a 6pm start for a traditional churrascaria is too early. the summer sun is still up, say, or the meats might not be ready yet. and this is true.

but this early, the kid is still in good spirits (and so are we, after the lovely waitress gives maeve the once over and agrees to charge her the three-year-old price — free — even though she’s just turned four), and the meat is not too far off.

for a $38 flat rate, we were presented with a host of side dishes — fried cassava wedges, polenta and crumbed banana; potato salad; green salad, with oranges, beetroot and ricotta; an assortment of tiny pickled brazillian chillies; tomato-capsicum salsa, so delicious we ate our way through two bowls; roasted cassava flour; and rice… which remained largely untouched — and an endless parade of meat, borne on skewers by charming brazillian waiters.

according to the menu, there are 18 varieties that go round; i lost count. that’s my plate halfway through, with a bit of grilled haloumi, some fish that came wrapped in banana leaf, some lamb, some beef, a chicken wing, a portion of banana fritter and a cube of fried polenta. i had already eaten a fat slab of pork neck. minutes later, three other cuts of beef came by, and a skewer of succulent prawns. and some more pork.

the highlight was the pork, i think, and the cheese. and the little meaty sausages and the lamb. and the prawns. also: the cassava chips… and did i mention the salsa? some of the beef was over-seasoned, a cunning ploy to get you drinking more, thought the birthday boy as he savoured his $7 beer, but all the meat was perfectly cooked, still pink and tender on the inside, and when it mattered, sometimes charred and crunchy on the outside.

unfortunately, i cannot tell you a single thing about the chargrilled chicken hearts.

late into the game, we tipped our stop-go doodad on its side to signal: respite! but i put it green end up as soon as i saw the pineapple go by. yes, they will bring you two pineapples impaled on a skewer, and carve off as many slices as you desire. the outside is liberally sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar, and the inside is succulent with juice.

we had barely finished the fruit when the particularly friendly waiter came back with another chunk of meat. “more meat?” he asked, and when we shook our heads, no longer able to speak, he continued knowingly, “more pineapple?”

it was a darned good offer, but we had to decline.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 4 December 2008 at 5:30 pm

permalink | filed under boy, cake, dinner

anytime is good for cake, of course, but this time of year, there’s a tiny bit more than usual in this household: october is the kid’s birthday, and then mine in november, and two weeks ago, right at the start of december, the boy’s.

i’d been wondering out loud a few days prior such things as “would you like a chocolate passionfruit tart?” and “what about an old skool cream sponge from the vietnamese bakery? what about a lamington cream sponge??”, but on the day, he requested a pavlova, with passionfruit, and that was that.

except it sort of wasn’t. monday morning, i set the refrigerated eggs on the kitchen counter so they’d be perfect room temperature when the time came for the beating. i took the kid to music class; we went out for birthday dimsum. and then mid-afternoon, we returned home, and i discovered that the eggs had been returned to the fridge. such callous and violent efficiency makes me want to weep. (and maybe i did weep? i can’t remember.)

a couple hours later, back on the bench, the eggshells were still cool to the touch, and i made the fool decision to proceed anyway. the beating of the eggwhites was not a success. well, it was a partial success, but the peaks to which we aspired did not eventuate. and then the hour and a half of baking, and the instructions to cool completely in the oven… as time went by, it became painfully and sorrowfully clear that there would be no birthday pavlova.

but there was day-after-birthday pavlova. and that turned out ok. better than, even. the meringue was a bit spongier than i’d like, but covered in a big, fluffy doona of whipped cream, a couple of sliced-up mangoes and a drizzle of passionfruit, it had no reason to feel a lesser cake. truly, a golden moment.

here’s what you might do with your cream, if you make a mango pavlova. whip your cream as normal, perhaps adding some vanilla extract along the way. when it reaches optimum consistency, gently fold in a small tub of peach and mango yoghurt. hell, beat some more, if you like. the yoghurt gives a fresh tang to the cream, and a little voluptuous body, and the bits of fruit — bells and whistles, sure, but who doesn’t like a little jingle-jangle from time to time.

this was the first pavlova i’d made since acquiring an electric mixer — how could it have been so long since the last one? — and it made me feel like i should be whipping them up every couple of weeks from now on.

but not for the boy. no longer. over the last few weeks, he’s packed his stuff, moved it all into a corner in the loungeroom. it’s a large corner, which shrank substantially this morning when his dad loaded a portion of it into a trailer, and drove off into the country with it. the rest goes after xmas, with the boy. there is sadness hanging over us, and regret. and relief, and warmth. ten years is a long time, but god, it went by quick. so clear, the memory of exchanging numbers on the train back to the city on mardi gras night, and sitting at the base of the rusted metal pubic art on the hill at sydney park, looking at my sneakers… a headphone bud, bursting with accordians from “amelie”, being slipped into my ear on an overnight bus from hue.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 16 December 2007 at 10:34 pm

permalink | filed under boy, cake, kitchen

the house is very still. it is early, true, but perhaps he has already left; he likes to head off before sunrise, when he has a long way to go.

the boy’s grandmother died yesterday. she was just short of 93, went into hospital for something to do with her leg, and never made it out again. the boy is driving some six hours south and west to go say goodbye.

except, i don’t think i should call him “the boy” anymore. i write about him less and less because i no longer know how to fit him into my stories; since january, he has been the man sleeping upstairs on the red couch, who’s off to work each morning by 7.30, who comes home and takes his turn making dinner, giving the kid a bath, and reading her bedtime stories if she lets him, who sits out on the balcony with his beer and his cigar before turning out the light.

me? i sit down here and blog. and i don’t feel a thing as i write this (which, in turn, makes me a little bit sad). earlier on, i’d occasionally feel like a nothing piece of shit. but eight months is a long time to get used to something, and the stuff that got said a few weeks ago — that uppercase moment — made it easier to just shut a part of myself off.

by coincidence, he had spent the last couple of days packing a selection of his things into boxes. the plan was that come the school holidays, he’d be down at his house in the country, fixing it up. this is the house he bought a couple of years ago, just like that, in a small brown town with one main street, where the bakery doesn’t even bake its bread daily and ships it in three days a week, these springy loaves wrapped in plastic. during school holidays, the goth kids hang out on the dusty sidewalk, and the main attraction is the largest grape vine in the southern hemisphere, around which a pub has been built.

– ah. a cough from upstairs. he is still here –

this house, in this town, is close to where his grandmother lived, and so he will be able to drop these boxed-up things off along the way, and take another load in october. it is good, in a way, this gradual emptying of feelings and things; instead of a sudden gash, it is slowly trickling down to nothing. (it is also crap, of course.)

the original plan, i guess, was that we would all move to the country and play happy families, and i don’t know… put down that eyebrow! yes, me in the dusty brown! it might have been possible? with a kinder, gentler boy? a less angry boy anyway.

but this is no longer a blame game. the recriminations, and expectations fallen short, the pointing of fingers — literally, sometimes — i don’t think of them so much anymore, though they are always there.

for the next six days, it’ll be just me and the kid. which is ok too, because she is always up for an adventure in good eating, and because we’ve had lots of practice: that summer he took off to go fix up his house, the six weeks he went walkabout in south america, those early days of parenthood when he’d spend friday nights at a friend’s place so he could drink in peace and get some sleep. the bitterness goes right to the core, kids, which is probably why i eat so much damn sugar.

bear with me, normal transmission will continue shortly. there is a picnic i need to write about.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 11 September 2007 at 6:44 am

permalink | filed under boy

i woke up this morning and the world had disappeared. from the balcony, across the water, it was whiteout. lovely.

i got to zumbo so early, the black curtain across the window was still down; the cake case was empty but for dewdrops; the pastry case was halfway being stocked; the counter was piled high in cakeboxes and crates of bread. the counterboy, seeing me give the bread the once-over, wordlessly slipped a loaf of soy-linseed into a paperbag, because i had mentioned, once, that it is my favourite.

i was distracted by the danishes. there are new ones: pear, and cherry. but for months i had forsaken the pear and macadamia scrolls, arranged, this morning, in perfect glistening rows behind the glass. they are always the ones which promise to be stickiest, and this morning i took them up on it. it was so early, i could take my time.

it was so early, the hot chocolate machine was not warmed up yet, so i must wait for another foggy morning. the macaron were not out, so i said i’d come back later for the blackcurrant one.

i walked past the newsagent with my bread and my danish, and the poster of yesterday’s news was still out front; it was so early. those herald sub-editors sure can write a pun into anything.

the toffee glaze on the pear and macadamia scroll is sweeter, and stickier, than i had imagined. it made me a little bit gleeful as i sat, drinking milky tea and watching the rowers drag themselves through the fog. i only ate half of it, because i also wanted a slice of bread and butter, and i thought it could (should) have been much pearier, although maybe all the fruit is in the other half, and my thoughts will shift accordingly tomorrow.

sometimes the sadness sits so tight in my throat.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 25 August 2007 at 10:59 pm

permalink | filed under boy, breakfast

friday, two fridays ago, it rained and rained and rained. though not while we made our way to waffle on to break fast. i know purists — and monsieur waff — would strongly recommend the plain waffle, adorned with nothing more than a dusting of powdered sugar. but. the waffle with maple syrup is an amazing thing. the air around you tingles with a mapley, syrupy aura, and your teeth go soft. since before we left sydney, i’d been telling the kid about how we could go have waffles in melbourne. she was happy to play along, perched up high on a barstool, with her waffle in a brown paper bag; the waffleman thought it might be easier to eat that way. “are you leaving today?” he asked, because he remembered that we are from sydney. “tomorrow,” we replied. there was a sadness in the air. i was already a regular. “you should move to melbourne,” he said, “you will love it.”

as the kid slowed down at the halfway mark, we folded the bag over, popped it into my backpack, and headed off on another adventure. while the boy made a pilgrimage to the fred williams room at the ian potter centre, maeve and i wandered through the indigenous collection, picking out our favourite shell-studded, feather-adorned, hand-woven satchels; making faces back at the totems; looking for native animals hidden in the dots. there was a tale which accompanied a little family of colourful woven dolls:

a woman was out in the bush looking for food for her children. two men killed her. when they noticed that milk was leaking from her breasts, they realised that she must have children nearby. they found their way back to her camp, where they discovered her two children, and killed them too.

tops.

it was heaps more fun ambling down by the yarra, past the australian poster annual. in the shadow of the circus oz tent and a creaky old ferris wheel. we took a ride on “the grand carousel”, a small scuffed thing with a ring of tired animals jerking up and down and a soundtrack composed of the whirr and hum of machinery.

we walked on: the boy led the way up the green slopes into the botanic gardens. and it was fun for a while, even though it was bitingly cold, and even when it started to rain, because by then we were right by the tropical greenhouse, and i knew that inside it would be warm, if a little moist. the kid finished off the rest of her waffle surrounded by steamy exotic vegetation. and then we stepped outside because we thought the rain was easing.

but it tricked us.

it got heavier and heavier, and i got wetter and grumpier: why was there no place to take shelter? by the time i spotted the visitors’ centre and stomped off towards it, my shoulders were sodden, my hair saturated. i fingered the plastic rain ponchos in the garden shop, and gazed longingly at the fat sandwiches and wedges of cake behind glass in the cafeteria. truly, i would’ve been happy to stay.

but the boy had his sights set on a walk beside port phillip bay, and was leaning out the glass doors in the direction of the st kilda tram. fortunately, i had no such desire to slosh around the outdoors for an unspecified time, so me and the kid caught a tram in the other direction, and headed underground.

there is a cute little boutique in the pedestrian tunnel under flinders street, where cute skirts can be found. sadly, everything on the rack was either an 8 or a 14. so we went next door to sticky, floor to ceiling, wall to wall zines and other scraps of paper, and a desk with badge machines where you can sit and press out your own buttons. one of us came away with a little button with a black cat on it; one of us bought too many zines.

and we climbed the dark stairs back up to the street to find sunlight! and life! and the lord of the fries! twas a lovely picnic indeed, on the tramstop bench, with a crate of hot chips smothered in brown vinegar and tomato sauce, and two tiny forks.

and then you know, one thing led to another, and suddenly, one night later, we weren’t in melbourne anymore. we were in a stone-cold motel room in tumut, discovering that the advertised “free cable in your room!” was three sports channels. even the ones that on the handwritten tv menu were assigned to “lifestyle channel” and “fox-something” (not “fox sport”), had since been switched over to something with a football game on it.

we read the interesting takeaway menu that i’d picked up in reception, for a local chinese restaurant. there was an entire section titled “sweet & sour”.

and really, for a while we considered regional chinese for dinner. but then we thought that maybe a counter meal in a pub, or a slap-up feed in the bistro of the RSL club would be more “authentic”. the tumut bowling club is a big, concrete bunker, the inside of which is lined in spectacular carpet of a glitzy pattern you just don’t see anymore. we followed the corridor around several bends to the packed dining room, and it became clear from the laminated menu on the counter listing such classic australian cuisine as “honey king prawns” and “mongolian lamb”, that the tumut RSL bistro was in fact a regional chinese restaurant, albeit with a small selection of steaks and chips tucked away in the extended menu.

we were not really disappointed, but it was very hard to choose. in the end, we had sweet and sour pork — not as lurid and padded out with pineapple and celery as i’ve enjoyed in other country towns, garlic king prawns, and mixed vegetables with cashew nuts. the order took about an hour to arrive, during which time i tried without success to keep the kid away from my lemon, lime and bitters. and then minutes later — well, maybe 20 minutes; we are not swine — it was all gone.

and now, looking down the barrel of a surprise annual report to be designed in five days, these golden memories of melbourne are flashing before my eyes, taunting me, like a cavalcade of well-fried chips.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 21 July 2007 at 10:15 pm

permalink | filed under around town, boy, cake, kid, snacks, trip

two thursdays ago, we walked along the tramline through north melbourne, to breakfast at the queen victoria market. there was a jam donut van parked in the heart of it, and two hot jam donuts with our names on them. there is a hand-lettered sign proclaiming 6 for $4.80, but you are not obliged to make a glutton of yourself. a handy pricelist taped to the window of the van lets you know that 1=80c, 2=$1.60, 3=$2.40, and so on. it was a very long list.

the kid face was all smiles and granular sugar. when she hit the main artery of runny, red jam, she seemed surprised: “it’s like blood!”. i was already onto a fat kransky buried in a mound of sauerkraut. i had asked for double sauerkraut, but when the lady brandishing the ladle asked if this was enough — about five times what you get at those twee german sausage stands at cultural festivals — it turned out that that was the normal amount. wuh!

we wound our way into the city, poking about in some of the shops surrounding the market. so by the time we made it to the larger-than-life-size pixar logo outside the acmi, it was princess maeve in her $2 tiara.

we swanned around the art gallery for a while, and then caught a tram to the prahran market. two markets in one day? well, i was on a cupcake mission. we must have found the crabapple bakery a little past noon, but most of the cupcakes were already gone. “i had a rosepetal one today too,” the shoplady said helpfully, gesturing towards a little tray empty but for a scattering of crumbs. the kid had no trouble choosing; her pink-iced cupcake was also pink on the inside. i hovered for a while, eventually deciding on the chocolate-raspberry cupcake: a mudcake base with raspberries baked in, topped with a swirl of ganache.

the boy had no time for cupcakes. and so, with this fragile package in the crook of my arm, we barrelled on, stopping for a large bag of tiny mandarins, on the lookout for the chocolate stall.

and there it was, three aisles down, monsieur truffe. the frenchman himself was not there that day, but a very hospitable girl offered us truffley treats from the array of samples before her. having already done my truffle dash at koko black, i thought it would be improper to acquire more of the luscious, meltaway beauties. no matter though, because monsieur truffe also peddled a great variety of bars. milk bars and dark bars of varying percentages of cocoa, organic bars, single origin bars, single origin bars with cocoa nibs… i was having a very hard time choosing.

but the shopgirl rescued me, asking what my preferred level of cocoa content was, and then saying, “that’s my range too!” when i told her it was somewhere between 65% and 75%. she recommended a few, and brought out secret samples from the fridge behind the counter. and so i learned that this was wonderful, creamy dark chocolate, not at all like the usual dry and shattery french stuff. before too long i had a little brown bag stuffed with four slim bars. it’s not really hoarding if it’s from interstate, right?

and then it rained. and we went into too many secondhand shops along chapel street, and the boy bought a year’s worth of clothes for $4, $6, $8, and i bought vintage paper coasters from a box out on the street. we were riding the rollercoaster of missed naptime, but a late afternoon cupcake back at the apartment made it all better. for a short while.

getting from north melbourne to north richmond at dinnertime is a trial. the tram you think will take you there would have stopped running, and so you will end up catching a tram to a tram to a tram. the kid will get louder and shriller before the jugga-jugga motion rocks her to sleep on her father’s shoulder, five minutes before you need to get off. but it all works out in the end, because dinner is the biggest banh xeo in the world, somewhere in north richmond.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 19 July 2007 at 10:22 pm

permalink | filed under around town, boy, cake, chocolate, dinner, kid, trip

i had second breakfast at cupcakes on pitt this morning; their $5 deal of cupcake and coffee also includes tea, so i sat down to a large cup of milky english breakfast and a vanilla sundae cupcake: crumbly cake topped with two flavours of icing, a sticky maraschino cherry and a slightly soft wafer roll (from sitting in a puddle of moist icing, i expect).

melbourne was great. all objectives were met, some even twice! and now i’m back in sydney, looking down the barrel of deadline after deadline, and this sunless dungeon of a room is damn cold.

i wrote a blog entry a couple of nights ago, because Things were Said (see the capitals? in this lowercase blog?), and Things Happened. and then the next day everything seemed to reverse itself, with the sun coming out, and a picnic of chips and sauce at the zoo.

sigh.

i wish… i mean, i don’t even know what to wish anymore.

well, actually, i wish i could tell you about melbourne, but i’ve got so many other things to do.

speaking of which, is anyone on facebook, that i should know about?

posted by ragingyoghurt on 13 July 2007 at 3:54 pm

permalink | filed under around town, boy, cake

i don’t get to wear my rainboots too often, a birthday gift from a few years ago, from my sister — one gift of thirty that she mailed me, madly, when i turned thirty. but today they kept my feet warm and dry in the big wet.

my house is the big empty this week; boy and maeve gone bush. yesterday, after waking at 5.30am to wave them off into the not-quite-sunrise, i tried to get back to sleep and then stayed in bed until ten-thirty, finishing off the novel that’s taken me many months and false starts and week-long lapses to get through. then, feeling unsettled, i tidied the house. i popped out to buy some art supplies, and lunch from bagel house. the NY reuben: pastrami, sauerkraut, pickles, cheese, all steaming in a toasted dill bagel. i rented a DVD from a hole in the wall. you reserve your movie online, show up at the great dispensing machine on the street, swipe your card, listen to the chunk-chunk of machinery, and then “infernal affairs 3” slides out the slot. (video store clerks? so 90s.) i bought tofu. i came home, and drew.

today, i drew (work) and painted (a dollhouse, pink). put on my boots, went back to the hole in the wall, got out “the devil wears prada”. at the post office, i bought the selvage of reg mombassa’s big things stamps. at about life, i propped myself up at the counter with a bottle of honey ginger beer, and ate a plate of bruschetta: three slices of perfectly toasted, garlic-infused bread, topped with marinated button mushrooms; artichoke puree; marinated peppers with pesto and goat cheese. and then because i could, i stopped at the fine food store and bought a tub of gundowring raspberry ice cream. for later.

i came home and drew some more. i’m working on a publication for an arts organisation — a sort of legal-aid-for-artists organisation. so i sent them a bunch of sketches for the cover design, and thought (hopefully) that they might go for the… dare i say, spunky, quirky, striking one. instead, they picked the ultra-traditional one: drawings of various artists’ tools contained within a grid. sigh. at least it will be the easiest one to produce.

i put on the heater, and a radio birdman LP. i lit my spicy tea-scented candle. i traced the roughs i had drawn this morning. because i have no lightbox, i trace standing up, with my paper flat against the window. i can only trace in the daytime, and it makes my arms ache.

my house is the big empty, and this hole that has opened up inside me, sunday night, things were said about mistakes made, shaky ground shifts again.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 26 June 2007 at 5:32 pm

permalink | filed under around town, boy, shoping, snacks, werk

we walk the tightrope constantly. the tension is all wrong. we pull and push at one another, and each time we fall it is harder to regain any balance.

i turned on my phone yesterday evening after recharging it, and a txt came through from ’round about lunchtime: i am staying with my parents until i decide where to go next.

a txt, for fuck’s sake.

i decided not to call for thai home delivery; we had scrambled eggs and grilled tomatoes on toast instead.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 25 January 2007 at 4:15 pm

permalink | filed under boy, dinner, grumble

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