ragingyoghurt

Category Archives: boy

two weeks ago… or was it three? either way. a recent weekend, and it was hot. the boy’s family thought it might be a nice outing to have a picnic at the botanic gardens in auburn. the plan was we’d all meet on the main street in auburn, pick up picnic supplies, and then head over to the gardens where we would sprawl on the grass and eat ourselves silly.

i seized this opportunity to make a tart, because who doesn’t want a slice of tart, all sticky summer fruit, while lying in the sun on a saturday afternoon? amalgamating two… (or was it three?) recipes from an old donna hay magazine, armed with a kilo of just right plums and a scant-used food processor, i spent friday night and saturday morning at the kitchen counter. minutes before it was time to head out west, i had this: a ricotta and plum tart in a hazelnutty crust. it was still warm — actually, hot — from the oven, radiant on my lap with two folded up tea towels in between.

we got to auburn road early, and inside of twenty minutes we’d bought fresh baclava and custard eclairs and little buns filled with salty white cheese and chopped herbs, and had finally come to a halt outside mado. i’d been wanting to come here for years, for the turkish ice cream.

late summer in 2000, the boy and i caught a ferry up the bosphorus to the edge of the black sea. we thought it was a boat trip there and back, but the steward ushered us off and told us not to return for two (or three) hours. we bought grilled fish sandwiches in an alleyway, climbed a grassy hill to a fort and ate our delicious sandwiches in the presence of hilltop cows. when we climbed back down to the town on the ground, our boat was ready and waiting. we had just enough time to get ourselves ice cream cones from a nearby café. what strange and gummy ice cream, full of fruity bits; gleeful, we chewed on them as the ferry puttered towards istanbul.

and now here on the main street in auburn, dondurma, waiting in tubs out front, for us. these were some of the labelled flavours: date, pistachio, mulberry, mango, turkish coffee, and cherry. there were also two unlabelled flavours, yellow with bits, and white, which the counter girl revealed to be apricot, and “… special turkish ice cream”. the price list only went up to three flavours, but i wanted four or maybe even five. but also, i wanted tart later, so i made do with cherry, apricot and special turkish.

it is fun, this stretchy ice cream. but we have to eat it quickly, so quickly, because not only is it very hot and melty sitting by the road, but if we do not shovel it into our mouths fast enough, the child will devour it all. as it is she has great red rivulets running down her chin and onto her AB/CD tshirt, so she looks like she’s on the losing end of a pub brawl.

but here comes the boy’s family now, and there we go to the big kebab shop on the corner.

to be continued…

posted by ragingyoghurt on 15 March 2006 at 2:39 pm

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

the boy brought home a fundraiser box of maltesers this afternoon. i generally won’t eat cheap and nasty chocolate, but the maltesers? they have undone me. you know them. they are the marble-sized crunchy malty centers in a polished chocolate coat. who’da thought — all that crunchy malt center, and still, according to the ingredients list, the chocolate makes up 75%. the nutritional information below said list informed me that a serve of maltesers would be me consuming just over 10g of fat. there were four servings in the box, and i’m afraid i could quite easily have eaten them all. so i stopped, and put the box back in the fridge, and while i was there i made a simple sundae of vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce and a topping of a crumbled up pistachio biscotti, a bright green chewy almond pastey biscuit coated in whole pistachios. hey, i feel good about not getting 42g of fat all from the one source.

i feel bad about not blogging though. it’s not that i haven’t been eating delicious things almost every day…

a couple weeks ago, delirious with hunger on a thursday night shoping expedition, i stumbled into the australian homemade store in the city mall. such a naff name for a shop selling premium chocolate and ice cream, and such a blah logo, but lordy! the chocolate! i bought three squares: dark chocolate with cranberry, earl grey milk chocolate with nuts, and a fig bonzer.

“oh, that is my favourite,” said the chocolate boy. it is a slim layer of soft chocolate and then a fat layer of seedy, figgy bits in caramel, all walled up in milk chocolate. in fact, it was so good it is now my favourite too, and i went back the next week and bought three more.

so, delicious things. the boy made a delicious risotto a few nights ago, with zucchini, peas, parsley and a can of shitake mushrooms. no wine, and no extra-dry vermouth, as counseled by well-wishers on my messageboard, but it was salty and buttery and lacking in nothing. he made it with a whole bag of arborio, so i also had risotto for lunch the next day, and dinner again, and then lunch the day after that.

we also had some delicious pizza one night, from zesti's, up the road, where you can look into the big windows off the street and see chinese people making your pizza.

an ad for some delivery place came on tv as we sat eating.

“argh! look! now they’re making pizza on puff pastry!”
“that looks bloody awful.”
“but is it worse than that three-cheeses-sandwiched-between-three-layers-of-bases thing they did before?”
“that looked awful too.”
“but what about the one where there’s a ring of little cheese-filled rolls around the edge of the pizza, so you can pull them off and eat them one by one?”
“that was revolting!”

our pizza had lovely thin bases, with crusty polenta bottoms. one was topped with: baby octopus, prawns and scallops, none of which were rubbery. the other was topped with: green — pesto and minced-up spinach, and many little cubes of fetta.

so, delicious things a-plenty. but i’ve also been working, and reading a really good book — “the language of baklava“, and coming to terms with the fact that the child may no longer take a second nap in the day, and well, i’ve been trying to not watch so much primetime tv (daytime kid’s programming chews up enough hours), although in my post-malteser-sundae stupor i found myself slumped in front of the men’s olympic ice-figure-skating coverage…

and of course, there’s been “carnivàle“. monday morning i woke at 5.30, and couldn’t get back to sleep. a combination of anticipating the child grunting herself out of slumber, and also the memory of brother justin crashing through the cornfield with a sickle and sophie with her eyes gone black. mainly brother justin though, and as it was, maeve slept in until seven. tchk.

um, what was i saying?

posted by ragingyoghurt on 17 February 2006 at 9:49 pm

permalink | filed under bookshelf, boy, chocolate, dinner, kid, tv

here i sit with a baker’s dozen of sweet fat cherries. it is allowed, because these days i am a baker, don’t you know. ok, so it was just another loaf of banana bread, but it is a damn fine loaf of banana bread. i’m sure this is because it’s such a forgiving recipe; even with slightly less butter and quite a bit less sugar, and more bananas, it comes out good. this time ’round i threw in a cup of the sweet fat cherries, quartered, in place of blueberries, and i want to sit down and eat slice after slice, toasted and buttered.

week number three sans boy is coming to a close, and things are going much better than i anticipated. really quite good, actually. as he fixes up his country estate — digging up floors, pouring new concrete, liberating asbestos, hosing himself down at the end of the day with cold water in the backyard — me and the kid have sorted out a routine (starting at 5.30 most mornings) involving hanging out laundry; meals on the balcony; an occasional luncheon (with chips!) at the portuguese chicken shop up the street; walks in the park; perhaps a swim on an extra sweltery afternoon; cartoons and picture books; bathtime; storytime; and “hmm… isn’t it almost bedtime?”.

i have just enough work on for maeve’s morning and afternoon naps, and no resentment towards the boy sitting down and watching tv instead of attending to child… because i have to do it all myself. since the boy isn’t here to help me out by cooking dinner and using every single pot, pan and utensil in the kitchen, i have about half the number of dishes to do at the end of the night. the end of the night is a lot earlier because i eat dinner with maeve at 6.30 instead of 8 or 9 after she goes to sleep. there is no loud primetime tv, and no snoring in the wee hours sending me out to the couch. could i get used to this? eeeeeyes.

last night i shut down the computer and made up a sundae of raspberries, icecream and yoghurt, and a muji green tea biscuit. i ate it in bed, reading a “new yorker”, which maeve had dropped in the bath a month ago, and which i dried by blotting and smoothing each page with kitchen paper, before sunning it on the hot tiles in the backyard. bliss.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 12 January 2006 at 9:05 pm

permalink | filed under boy, ice cream, kid

call it reality blogging; this is what i’m eating as i type. a bowl of cherries, strawberries and raspberries, all sweet and flavoursome. it’s making me quite delirious with joy (or is it just the fruit sugars?)… except. there’s a sound of something being dropped in the sink upstairs, and some swearing, and then soft footsteps later, here is the boy at my side holding my most favourite drinking glass which i bought in new york several years ago, in three pieces.

call it irony; the emblem, now in two pieces, says, “drink cheer up”. meh.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 20 December 2005 at 8:54 pm

permalink | filed under boy, grumble, snacks

the apple has left the building.

i never really had the chance to bond with it, so y’know, whatever. in fact, to celebrate the return of $2000 to my bank account, i walked across the mall and bought a $7.15 loaf of bread.

this is the most expensive loaf of bread i’ve ever bought… um, unless you count that time i was in new york when the australian dollar was like, US50c — fiddycent — then i suppose all those loaves of bread win. damn you dean and deluca chocolate challah! $7.15 is not the most expensive loaf of bread i could buy though, around these parts. up the street at victoire, they have a saturday special loaf. this is because the raising agent in this particular loaf is a bottle of french beer. they are kind enough to sell you half a loaf, if is too much (because, obviously for a half loaf is much easier to swallow). why am i telling this story? i don’t know.

for the record, $7.15 buys you a work of art: sonoma‘s organic soy and linseed sourdough. chewy and tangy, and studded with whole soybeans. truly, worth every cent. all 715 of them.

[ insert clever pun: "that's a lot of bread! guffaw!" ]

i’m sorry. i don’t know what has come over me. perhaps it is the worms.

our backyard has become infested with giant worms. fat, stubby giant worms.

last week, i said to the boy “i was hanging out the laundry today, and there was an enormous slater-looking wormy thing on the ground, and i thought it was dead and after, when i went to remove it, it was gone!”

i hate when that happens. when the dead cockroach/worm/slug/etc turns out not to be dead after all. they scuttle away and laugh at you from the shadows as your head whips round, a little panicky. where are you?

“those are native cockroaches,” said the boy. he is learned. “leave them alone.”

in the ensuing week, these native cockroaches started crawling out of the bushes in great numbers (so call me overreacting, but in the case of giant worms, three is a great enough number), and because it’s been so hot of late — 38°C on thursday — they have been dying of heatstroke on the sunbaked tiles and then gradually blackening over the next few days.

saturday, the boy was out back, and i pointed out the three corpses in varying stages of carbonisation. “why are they called native cockroaches anyway? they don’t even look like cockroaches.”

“oh. those aren’t native cockroaches. i thought you were talking about something else.”

“so they’re just giant worms?”

“yup.”

i was hanging out the laundry later, and i looked over at the child, who’d been quietly poking at a pile of dried leaves with a garden fork. she made a grimacy, wincy face and held out to me a flaccid black thing. it was a dead giant worm!! i don’t know if it was an instinctive girly reaction or if she had actually licked it, but we got the hell out of there, after i checked to see that the worm was still intact (it was), and shook her hand most violently to release the worm. i mean, i surely wasn’t going to touch it.

shudder.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 12 December 2005 at 4:56 pm

permalink | filed under around town, boy, kid

what is this ethereal thing, all nestled in white tissue?

there is a stall at the balmain markets, selling small, gluten-free cakes. you may think that small, gluten-free cakes would be mean little pellets, like hockey pucks… but they are not. after standing in front of the display trying to choose between the raspberry-coconut (pictured above, so you already know who won) and the lemon curd (a sunny yellow thing topped with a swirl of meringue), the shopman helped me out.

“the raspberry-coconut is very good” he said.
“yes, i cannot decide between that and the lemon curd.”
“ah,” he said. “that is very good too. but take the raspberry-coconut.”
“i’ll come back next week for the lemon one.”
“yes, come back, next week is my last week here.”
“…” my face was a question. “and you’re never coming back, ever?”
“i have a baby,” the shopman said, “and so i have found another job, working for someone else, less hours for the same pay. so i get to stay at home sometimes and my wife can work too.”

to which i nearly fell over, because goddammitt, that is the complete opposite of the life i live. i’m not bitter, o wait, yes i am.

i came away from the markets with a short stack of old books, despite my resolve not to buy any more cookbooks. but one was a 1970s penguin paperback of japanese recipes, written by a european couple who had lived in japan for a few years “and spoke the language”. and another was a slim hardback, also from the 70s, called “chinese dinner party” from the “international party series”, offering not just a menu and recipes, but advice on “dressing up for your party” (“oriental styled clothes are fairly popular and easy to find. specialty shops and department stores often carry beautifully designed oriental dresses, jackets, slacks and fashionable slippers.”) and “oriental hospitality” (“you can create a relaxed party atmosphere with a smile and a simple bow as you welcome guests to your home for a happy and wonderful time.”)

the raspberry-coconut cake was a layer of almondy-biscuity stuff, with a raspberry-studded cakey bit, and then a macaroony crust on top. it tasted of sweet, and i wanted it to be somehow better. i think i should have picked the lemon curd.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 7 November 2005 at 12:01 pm

permalink | filed under around town, bookshelf, boy, cake, grumble, kid

of course, the good thing about making something that requires two egg yolks (refer: gnocchi, previous entry) is that it leaves you two egg whites with which to fashion a pavlova.

i once helped to make a four-egg white pav, a pav so big we ended up making it in two parts: a large meringue at the base, and then the whipped cream and fruit, and then another, smaller meringue covered in more cream and fruit, and shaved chocolate, which was a bit controversial with the purists at the table. finally assembled, it looked rather like the titanic, suitably festooned for its maiden voyage. the pav, though, never even made it through the first night.

two egg whites yield a much more modest and manageable pavlova. this is the third pav i’ve made, and all according to stephanie‘s recipe. sort of.

sort of, because this time ’round, i thought i’d try and get the meringue into the oven before putting the kid to sleep, and in my clock-watching, distracted state, i managed to forget all the ingredients after the sugar.

which is exactly half the list. oh no! while waiting for the meringue to be done (done for?), i googled such questions as “what does vinegar do in a pavlova?” but my research proved inconclusive.

so i asked the boy, “is there such a thing as a bad pavlova?”, and his reply, “hmm… i do not think there can be a bad pavlova,” spurred me on to whip the cream, fold in a dollop of yoghurt, and arrange a bloom of thinly sliced mango on top. it were pretty good.

i ate the last wedge tonight while watching “save the last dance“, which i think i like because it reminds me of being eleven and watching “fame” on tv.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 28 October 2005 at 11:15 pm

permalink | filed under boy, cake, kid, kitchen, tv

dinnertime thursday i was running about the house, grabbing whatever chocolate i could find and stuffing it into my going-out handbag. in the drizzle, we walked briskly up the hill, caught a bus, realised it was the wrong bus when it stopped way (way) short of where we wanted to be, walked even quicker (downhill, thankfully) for about twenty minutes, and arrived at the wharf just as the ferry did. on the top deck, in the drizzle, looking at the twinkly city, i tore open my emergency bag of muji roasted black soybeans covered in soy chocolate. do not be alarmed — there was only the thinnest shell of soy chocolate coating the crunchy, pulsy soybeans, and i ate many of them.

before too long, in the drizzle, a pointy thing covered in fairy lights appeared on the horizon: luna park! it got bigger and grinned at us, and soon we were there.

we were there to see eels!

somehow the boy had managed to get us on the guestlist. ’tis a very useful thing to have friends of friends.

in the big top (which possessed none of the magic and flair conjured up by its name) there was a russian animation about a crocodile and a small furry bear-like creature; a girly folk singer channeling phoebe buffet; and a bar of lindt pistachio chocolate.

“chocolate at a rock concert. that’s funny,” said the boy, as he helped himself to a square.
“funny, how?”
“funnier than beer and cigarettes.”
“i don’t think that eels are so beer-and-cigarettes a band.”

and in fact there was a string quartet, a double bass, a couple of keyboards, a saw, some other stringy things, and E in a bowler hat and a sharp suit, who drank what appeared to be whisky, and smoked a cigar. there you go.

eels = so very, very good.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 23 October 2005 at 9:51 am

permalink | filed under around town, boy, chocolate, soundtrack

behold, this glossy zeppelin in my hand; why, it is actually a custard brioche with a jaunty and tastalising splodge of yellow peeking out the hole on top, from the bakery next to victoire.

“you know that bakery next to victoire? it’s really good.”

“yes. i go to that bakery.
i had an excellent meatpie there once.
i don’t go to victoire.
only you and your sister go to victoire.
what a pretentious name.”

“um. i’m sure lots of other people go to victoire besides me and my sister.”

“i meant in this household. only you and your sister, from this household. i mean, vic-toire.”

“it’s a french bakery. why wouldn’t they have a french name?”

“but the word itself. there are pretentious english words and unpretentious english words.”

“i think any french word would sound pretentious to you.”

“what about ‘bread’? what’s the french word for ‘bread’?”

“it’s ‘pain‘, but it’s spelt like, pain. people would go there thinking they were going to get pierced.”

“well… … …”

and this is the boy who had a (non-french) friend, who wanted to name her son ‘papillon’.

anyway, whatever. speaking of pretentious, i really want one of these villeroy and boch silver-plated tea infusers, to replace my misshappen, tannin (or is it rust?)-stained mesh one. will it be the twiggy?

posted by ragingyoghurt on 13 September 2005 at 9:54 pm

permalink | filed under boy, nellie, shoping

my desk is littered, happily, with little dishes and tea cups. three dishes and two cups now unburdened of their treats — surely they haven’t been there that many days — and the currently active set bearing tea, and a lamington and a truffle.

the lamington is not just notable for the fact that it was marked down for quick sale at woolworths yesterday; the boy came at me, brandishing the package. six for a dollar, and three whole days before they expired. they are frosted in raspberry butter cream, which seems like a bit of a luxury, no? for a dollar?

the truffle is notable for the fact that it is perhaps the best damn truffle i have ever eaten. it tastes of dark and bitter, and chocolate and cream, and it melts away on your tongue, leaving behind a rabid desire for more! more! you can avail yourself of one such truffle (or an entire bag) at la renaissance patisserie down at the rocks.

the tea is tetleys, and is best forgotten.

these little plates of sugary snacks fuel me. i am drawing again, only small drawings for small sums of money in the small amount of time i have, but it feels good to do, and i shall try to do more.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 11 September 2005 at 5:49 pm

permalink | filed under around town, boy, cake, chocolate, snacks, werk

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