ragingyoghurt

Category Archives: boy

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

at about 4am i was on the couch downstairs to escape the boy’s snoring. it was to be the last time i would be asleep all day. i knew i was asleep because i was dreaming that i was sitting at my computer, and i heard the baby cry, and the boy brought the baby to me to be fed, and by “brought” i mean that he held her hand and walked her over, because evidently dream baby could walk. real life baby though, cannot, and so i sleepclimbed the stairs to the bedroom, where she actually was having a bit of a grumble. the boy optimistically thought he’d be able to put her back to sleep and sent me back downstairs, where for an hour and a half i lay awake listening to her emit sporadic beeping noises, just like that smoke alarm whose battery is running low. then at 5.40, when the boy decided that he’d had enough, child was unceremoniusly plonked back in the cot, and the boy appeared downstairs with a frown and a blanket. oh, unhappy baby! so. back upstairs, fed the child, who seemed to go back to sleep up until the point she was put back in her cot, when she decided to be awake for the day. it was 6am, there were birds chirping, fair enough. so. back downstairs, where the next two hours were spent entertaining the baby, washing the dishes and baking a batch of ginger ale scones. before i knew it it was time to put the baby back to bed and get dressed for yoga.

yoga makes it all better.

and so do instant noodles! it was all i could fathom “cooking” tonight following a post-yoga afternoon of a couple of not-quite naps inbetween laundry and the baby and dishes and the baby and the internet and the baby. the alternative was an old christmas pudding and cream — i would only have felt a little bit guilty, and it would have been tasty i’m sure.

but in the end the noodles won. i resisted the temptation to follow the instructions on the pack —
“place the rice vermicelli, soup base and seasoning oil into a bowl. pour in 400cc of boiling water. cover up the bowl for 3 minutes. and now soft and appetizing rice vermicelli is ready for serving.” — yum. and instead put a pot on the stove. it only extends the cooking time to ten minutes, to add such things as pork dumplings, pumpkin, chinese broccoli, lotus root, bamboo shoots and a sprinkle of japanese chili pepper, and makes it a bowl of nourishment and comfort.

my preferred brand is a relic of my childhood: chu qian yi ding. tonight i had the artificial beef flavoured rice vermicelli, but look at all the flavours the normal wheat noodles come in. it’s rather amazing what comes out of a little silver foil packet.

and maybe there is room for pudding and cream after all.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 7 May 2005 at 7:50 pm

permalink | filed under boy, dinner, grumble, kid

hmmm. does it seem like i haven’t posted in a week, and all of a sudden there is a deluge of four? well, maybe to you, not now. but it will when you’re done reading this and the next three down.

it’s just that i had an extremely tasty second breakfast of mushrooms on toast this morning, and i had to share it with you. regular readers probably already know that breakfast is my favourite meal of the day (such a favourite meal that it is not uncommon for me to have two, three or even four of them in the span of a morning), and that mushrooms on toast is my favourite favourite. today i was even lucky enough to have an avocado handy as well as a second loaf of bread.

two loaves of bread? i bought a loaf for 89c at the supermarket on “fresh friday”, and on saturday the boy decided that supermarket bread was objectionable enough not to mention supermarket bread that had been bought yesterday, and procured himself a whole new loaf from the mall bakery. please note that this is the same boy who has, in the past, returned from the supermarket proudly bearing a 50c reduced-for-quick-sale-before-it-expires ham and cheese pizza roll. the bread i bought was baked fresh on “fresh friday”, and um… it was 89c. but see, it wasn’t like he got a fancy artisan loaf. it was just plain old cottonwoolly white bread; it couldn’t have been that much better than the supermarket vienna, could it?

as it turns out, yes, his bread was much better because when i went to cut a slice of mine for the toast component of breakfast, i noticed with horreur that there were tiny little cockroaches crawing all over it. they had infiltrated the bag, which was sealed with one of those bread clippy things and were crawling all over it!

i don’t know that there is a moral to this story. i mean, the moral could be “always have a spare loaf of bread in the house in case of unexpected cockroaches” but that would just be silly.

do you ♥ breakfast? do you flickr? perhaps you are a breakfast fiend.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 1 May 2005 at 3:18 pm

permalink | filed under boy, breakfast, grumble

today i beat up a door. today i stepped out onto the sidewalk and wanted to run. away. anywhere. because i dislike running, though, i walked very quickly, and found myself heading in the direction of kmart. i haven’t been swimming in almost a year. i haven’t done yoga — aside from the occasional cluster of sun salutes and a cursory stretch every now and again — in over five months. my body is atrophying. my backbone is clenchy. i find myself buying strings of paper lanterns and overpriced (though very beautiful) christmas lights, because everything else seems so dark, dammit. some days i find myself in a place even cake cannot reach.

today i thought i’d catalogue the jams in my moth-infested pantry.

already opened in the fridge and in various stages of gone-ness are:
apricot jam — the last centimetre at the bottom of the jar
raspberry conserve — more than halfway gone
cherry jam — i would like more of this to be gone, but its strange and unjammy liquid state and lack of cherry flavour have kept me from fulfilling its destiny
papaya and macadamia nut jam — a gift, this remains barely eaten after many months; it has a strange solid texture and is studded with distracting fragments of macadamias
rhubarb ginger conserve — almost as unsuccessful as the papaya macnut jam

the jams-in-waiting are:
cottees apricot conserve
hanks pear cinammon jam
harrods christmas mature thick cut marmalade with orange liqueur
harrods ginger extra jam
les palais des thés rhubarbe au thé vert du japon
luxardo 170% fruit marasca cherry preserve
st dalfour gourmet pear 100% fruit spread
young maid cherry jam
young maid raspberry and cashew jam

this is of course not counting the two kinds of honey, cinnamon sugar, vegemite and chocolate sprinkles that grace my bread from time to time. and then, hidden under a pile of clothes on the dresser upstairs is a jar of chocolate body paint (with saucy stencils) that i was given at christmas. the list of ingredients suggest that it could be used as a breadspread instead.

meanwhile, what the hell hints have i been exuding that made chocolate body paint an appropriate gift?

so. fourteen jams in total. one with 170% fruit. it must be a sign of… something, i’m sure. i think, perhaps, i need a new loaf of bread.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 6 March 2005 at 5:40 pm

permalink | filed under boy, kid

wednesday, we drove out west to visit the boy’s grandma who is was dying in hospital. we got there at lunchtime. lunch was a large brown blob and two smaller blobs — beige and orange — sitting in a plate of skinned-over brown gravy. helpfully, a menu had been included on the tray:

PEPPER
SALT

poached chicken with gravy PUREED
EXTRA GRAVY
mashed pumpkin
mashed potato

poached pears PUREED with custard
tea

the patient in the next bed looked over and said to grandma, “you’ll die eating that.” sixteen hours later, she did.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 25 February 2005 at 9:02 pm

permalink | filed under boy

two weeks ago, we fired up the barbeque on the balcony. nothing fancy, just some sausages and steaks and cheeses and houseguests. a thoroughly pleasant affair that ended with the sound of midnight oil wafting over from aussie stadium. rock!

and then.

over the last couple of days, we’d been sticking our noses up into the occasional breeze, sniffing, then asking, “what’s that smell?” or “hmm… what died?”. yesterday, the boy walked over to the corner of the balcony where it smelt deadest and fossicked around a little. quite a bit of spluttering ensued as detective goren revealed…

the bloated corpse of a sausage lying at the bottom of a bin. the deceased had been a raw sausage that had fallen off the grill the night in question, and had been picked up and tossed into the bin, and then forgotten. in the meantime, there had been crazy hot days, and days of welcome gentle rain, and so now, mr sausage was rotting away in a small amount of stagnant collected rainwater. with the lid of the bin fully removed, the smell of death intensified, and made its way into the living room. oh how our eyes watered!

quick! shut that door!

eventually the boy picked up the deadly sausage of decaying flesh (using the hand in plastic bag trick used in dogpoo removal, but still!), and carried it through the apartment to the garbage room downstairs. but the odour lingered, and a couple hours later, far, far away in the park, we could still smell the sausage.

on a happier note, this morning the boy asked, “if i made pancakes, would you have some?”. i thought it was a trick question at first, forgetting that i’d already had a breakfast a couple of hours earlier. whatever, the answer was “YES!”.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 13 February 2005 at 8:31 pm

permalink | filed under boy, breakfast, dinner

fancy that. just as i settled in to gussy up this previously posted account of my jaunt into the golden brown country and the golden brown (and pink! and red!) cakes that were encountered, chairman kaga revealed the secret ingredient on “iron chef“: it was dessert battle! in particular, it was strawberry dessert holiday battle!! well!!!

um. so that put the business on hold. this morning i settled in at mr computer with a cup of vanilla green tea and a platter of chocolate sprinkles on white bread… and then a lightning storm thundered in. and then maeve woke up… and then i had a cup of blueberries with yoghurt… and a nectarine… and then maeve went back to sleep… so now it’s three hours later, and before i get too distracted by the gapkids website, i thought i’d best continue.

so. where we were headed, with the car packed to the roof with all the portable baby furniture (and baby) and fishing rod and travel snacks we could fit, was country victoria. ned kelly country victoria, to be precise. there was no set date for our return; we had as much as two and a half weeks if we wanted, house sitting for the boyss aunt in rutherglen. we were welcome to eat anything from the garden: the beans, the eggs, the mulberries, the potatoes from mick’s prized patch. if they had been ripe we could also have gorged ourselves on the peaches from the tree in the middle of the yard right next to the enormous hills hoist, and the grapes, and what appeared to be 20 kilograms of kiwifruit hanging from the trellis. perhaps it was just as well the hanging fruit wasn’t ready for harvest — there is a bit of a rat infestation in the roof, and they run along the grape and kiwi vines, and i’m sure they lick the fruit every now and again. lick, lick.

i was promised driving lessons along country roads, and a cheese factory excursion, and a visit to the beechworth bakery that had been too crowded the last time we breezed through. in the end, i had just the one driving lesson (my second ever, don’t worry, i won’t be hitting a road near you just yet), the milawa cheese company was a gracious host with a counter lady who let us sample every single cheese — and there were lots — on her tray, and the beechworth baker served up this raspberry and pastry cream extravaganza:

mmm…

in rutherglen itself, the black dog bakery had two sorts of cream lamingtons on display: regular brown cube, and little pink ball. there was only a brief discussion in my head as to which it would be.

back in the kitchen i cut it in two –half for now, and half for later. but after eating the first half, i discovered that my hand, all cream and coconut fingers, was rifling in the paper bag for the other bit.

in corryong, home to the man from snowy river, the bakerylady asked if i wanted the apple and blueberry pie with cream or without. this time there was no discussion at all. it was stowed carefully in a shady spot of footspace in the car, and due to the ham and pickle on pumpkin bread sandwiches that we had packed for the drive, wasn’t actually devoured until cooma, on the picnic blanket under a tree.

homeward, we stayed the night in canberra, at a motel next to the harmonie german club. oh how we rubbed our hands in glee at the thought of schnitzel or fat sausages and sauerkraut for dinner. but after we signed in and walked the 20 metres through the gaming lounge which was enough to infuse us with a cigarette-smoky odour for the rest of the evening, we discovered that the little nook of a restaurant offered such standard pub fare as steak and chips, or chops and chips, or fish and chip [sic], or thai style salmon rissoles and chips. right at the bottom of the chalkboard, though, was the schnitzel, so we had that. it ended up being a homey, tasty, gravy-covered thing nestled amongst the boiled pumpkin, peas and potato, and the mound of sauteed mushroom-silverbeet. the counter lady, who had started off a bit surly when i asked what the mustard chicken at the top of the menu was (“well, it’s chicken, with mustard…” she said, pointing at the grimy jar of grainy mustard on the counter), came over to admire maeve, and then a little while later brought us a small bowl of chips and gravy while we waited for her to boil up some fresh vegetables.

the next morning found me in a kingston bakery buying breakfast. the apple pie looked magnificent:

and indeed the pastry was a sugary, crunchy treat, but its interior turned out to be a cavernous space with a gummy, apple-studded filling hugging the edges like a big mass of boogers. perversely, i persisted, and it seemed to improve with each bite. sort of. just.

anyway, what i was really excited about was the tray of cake by the counter, above which the placard read: “new red velvet cake”. i had been reading of this cake recently, and being too lazy to actually make one, i didn’t think i’d get to experience it any time soon. and here it was.

here it is, having survived the trip back up the remembrance driveway, sustaining me as i ploughed through a week and half of mail, comprised mainly of bills and kmart catalogs:

it was red and velvety, with a very sugary frosting — so sugary i contemplated not actually finishing it, though in the end nothing remained, not even the superfluous compund chocolate button. in short, it was a tasty cake, and i should have saved it for the horrible chore of wading through the week and half of email, which totalled 767, and out of which only one was not smutty, or an offer of pain relief, or a newsletter. thanks mum!

so there you go: the cakes of my recent past. somewhere in between there was the mammoth slice of mars bar cake that i somehow forgot to photograph. well. you know how it is… the cake frenzy.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 20 January 2005 at 7:19 am

permalink | filed under boy, cake, dinner, snacks, trip

in the longstanding tradition of homemade bittersweet sundaes in the last hours before she gets on a plane, we put on a modest display of ice cream, chocolate sauce, crushed walnuts, raspberries and a cherry on top. the photo was taken by nellie, because i was quivering with so much anticipation that my pictures were all out of focus.

at the airport, in defiance, we flaunted our frosty starbucks beverages before the boy, whose opinion is of the “damn american multinationals who think they can show the world how to make coffee” variety. “that’s why we’re not getting the coffee,” we had retorted, before flouncing off in the direction of the neon mermaid via the krispy kreme stall. so now we had a grande green tea frappacino, and a tall strawberries and cream frappacino — in fact nellie had ordered the new neopolitan frap, but the exhuberantly gay counter boy was far too busy being camp to put the chocolate and vanilla in, feh — and a small box of sour cream doughnuts and pumpkin spice doughnuts, for later.

two weeks ago when i made the doughnut dash while waiting for nellie to come through immigration, the featured-doughnut tray was bare, and i had been waiting weeks to try the special festive offering. “you don’t have the pumpkin spice doughnuts?” i asked. “um, not today,” said the counter girl. i was so surprised and disappointed that i could not get my question out: “why would you not have the featured doughnut!?” and then she said, “we usually have them, but somehow they didn’t show up today.” i was so surprised and disappointed that i could not get my question out: “what!? you don’t bake them here!?” and then she said, “oh, you like them?” and i had to express my disappointment at never having tried them, and my surprise that they hadn’t shown up today, and my disappointment at not getting to try them once again.

anyway.

we sat and watched some planes and then nellie held the baby for one last time, bopped her on the head and called out “babboo-babboo” before disappearing past the sliding doors with the last of the strawberries and cream frappacino. there was no extended bowing and waving today; there was a hungry baby to feed.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 5 January 2005 at 11:50 am

permalink | filed under around town, boy, drink, kid, nellie, snacks

is this my week of bizarre food-related mishaps or what? following closely after the lip-nougat battle, comes this afternoon’s liver-on-scone debacle. yes, that’s liver. on. scone. sigh.

it all began with the buttering up of a supermarket scone. i put the knife down while i went to fetch the new raspberry jam from the pantry, and then picked up the knife and broke the flat new jam surface and continued on my merry way. mmm… jam. then i took a bite of jammy scone, and there was a surprising undercurrent of liver!

what!?

and so it transpired that, by mistake, i had picked up the boy’s knife with which he had just applied thick livery layers of pate to some rye toast! and i had stuck it into my new raspberry jam! and spread it all over my scone!

i was very unhappy, and each bite of strange raspberry-liver scone made me just a bit unhappier, and then i had to get a spoon and scoop out the liver-tinged bits of jam from the jar, and eat them.

ok, well, i probably didn’t have to eat the livery bits out of the jar.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 17 December 2004 at 5:21 pm

permalink | filed under boy, snacks

last year, maybe the year before, i bought a wire-bound notebook: dusty pink, with a faint houndstooth-checkered pattern running through it, like the material of a suit a granny might wear. in the top right corner, under a magenta foil-stamped row of six olde worlde milke bottles, is the slogan, “dairymen are the cream of the crop!”. in the bottom left corner, under a tiny silhouette still life of a pitcher, a milk glass, milk carton and a wheel of cheese with a wedge cut out of it, is the poem…

“Love is like more than an emotion, / it’s the substance of our being / Each morning as I awaken your (sic) the reason / I smilke, Your (sic) the reason I love / A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you whe you have forgotten the words.”

[edit: what i meant to type was “your the reason i smile”. evidently the milk, which is all i think about (and smell of) these days, is more pervasive than i realised.]

i thought that this notebook, after languishing a year, maybe two, in my amusing notebook box, would be a most appropriate logbook for my breastfeeding diary (date, time, duration, side).

yesterday at 3.45 in the afternoon, maeve drank for twenty-eight minutes, eight minutes on the left and twenty on the right. then she had a vomit, which although moderate in volume, was nowhere near the torrent of the day before, which came up in four great gushes and took even the child by surprise, judging by the look on her face. this time she seemed unfazed so we loaded her into the stroller and walked into chinatown.

we caught the lift up to happy chef, and ordered bowls of soupy noodles (me: wonton and mushroom with rice noodles; the boy: spicy beef and wonton with egg noodles), and then after, we stopped by the bubble tea place and got bubble teas to go (me: jasmin milk tea with pearls; the boy: taiwanese style lychee milkshake). we walked home the long way, and then split up at the last set of traffic lights, the boy to get some DVDs, me, maeve and the stroller to get another bumper packet of nappies. maeve was still asleep when we got home. we felt like very normal people.

there have been eight feeds since, all varying in length, but generally a punctual two hours apart. in the notebook, on the top right corner of each page, next to the six olde worlde milke bottles, “You look brilliant like morning sunshine”.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 28 November 2004 at 9:48 am

permalink | filed under around town, boy, dinner, drink, kid

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