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i woke up the other morning, and my room was bathed in a glorious golden light. just beautiful, it was, until the kid and i thought we might open up the blinds to see what was causing this enchanting illumination. at this point it became just weird and scary. we were quite unsettled to see… well, not much really. our entire vista had been blanketed in a silent orange fog. we were to learn later that it was a tonne (actually, many thousands of tonnes!) of red dust blowing in from the desert. good thing we hadn’t been up an hour or two earlier, when the sky was red: we might have just crawled back into bed and cowered until the apocalypse was over. at least, had we been forced to bunker down, we would’ve had snacks!

appropriate, no? “remember the passed food” indeed! i don’t remember these from my past (perhaps it is taiwan-centric — note the evocative island-of-taiwan-shaped logo), but i guess someone out there must be nostalgic for these little bricks of puffy fried dough bits held together with a barely perceptible glue of brown sugar. after the soft crunch of the first bite, the delicate block yields to become a chewy mass that sticks to your teeth, and tastes mildly of the sum of its ingredients: wheat flour, milk powder, maltose, brown sugar, vegetable oil. simple pleasures, yes, with a slightly oily (and not thoroughly unpleasant) aftertaste.

next! behold the exotic chocolate gift presented to me by ms d on her return from new york city: the bacon bar from vosges haut chocolat, which contains not only smoked bacon, but smoked salt.

when i first showed the package to the kid, and i mused, “i wonder what chocolate deborah gave us,” she paused a moment to decipher the large clue on the box.

“meat chocolate?” she asked.

“yeah! but i wonder what kind of meat it is.”

“bacon?”

“yeah!!”

her smile was wide. “can i have some?” she asked. o, proud moment for a parent!

so we packed it as part of our picnic two weekends ago, and after the cheese and apple sandwiches, and the mandarins, and the chocolate-dipped greek shortbread biscuits sandwiched with sticky red jam, we were suitably impressed by the rich milk chocolate, the comforting tang of salt, and the nublets of bacon packed all the way through. the meat was not always crunchy — alas — but it was a fine contrast to the sweet and creamy. it’s true, what the slightly overwrought, overwrit guff on the back of the package says: you can smell the bacon. even better, you can taste it! the smoky flavour is most enticing, and the randomness of sometimes crunchy bacon edge, and sometimes chewy meat makes it seem you’re eating the real thing. i will be hoarding this chocolate, making it last. truly, a worthy snack to bring you to the end of the world.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 29 September 2009 at 11:15 am

permalink | filed under cake, chocolate, snacks

it was about 1 by the time we got back home. that’s a.m. i put the kid to bed, which took about half an hour all up, from the wiping of vomit from her lips, and the cutting of hospital bracelets from her wrist and ankle. i was hungry, then, and ploughed through two, then three, then four slices of vegemite on rye. and then as an afterthought, a yoghurt popsicle.

around 9pm, in the waiting room outside the operating theatre, i’d made a cup of black tea from one of two teabags left in the communal trough, and rationed out the two green tea caramels from the bottom of my backpack. and before that? well, i’d been lucky enough to have a delicious brunch of justin north’s best salad nicoise (and tea and pudding after) at the alliance francaise. a little before two.

when i picked the kid up from school, she spent a good twenty minutes playing chaseys around the preschool playground with her new chasing-tickling buddy, and then a good three minutes skipping merrily on the concrete stepping stones over in the main school yard. and then there she was, slumped over a mis-stepped stone, screaming. these things happen often enough, but when i turned her right way up, her face was awash with blood, and there was a cut, a gash, a hole that seemed to go in a distance, just above her right brow.

“blood,” she cried. “blood. i can see blood.”

i reached past her, into her schoolbag. chose in a split second the green stripy hoodie over the pink one. pressed it to her head. there was a lot of blood, but the bleeding stopped quickly.

here’s the weird, spooky, lucky thing. the careflight demo helicopter had been at the school that day, and they were just finishing up their last session. the paramedic ran over with her bag of dressings, and in three minutes had doused a gauzy pad in saline, wrapped the kid’s broken head in a length of bandage, and directed us to the most appropriate hospital. the careflight demo helicopter, you see, has neither propeller nor tail. i called my cousin, who recently moved into the next suburb, and took her up on a previous offer of a ride when i needed one. in the time it took us to walk home and retrieve medicare card and coriander cat, she was at our door.

the kid’s head is in my lap, in the car. she is stretched out across the back seat. she is adamant that no one will be sewing her up, mostly, i think, the bitter memory of watching “coraline” some weeks back. and sometimes her eyes shut, and i make inane chatter as we zoom up anzac parade just so she will respond.

after ten minutes at triage, we are sent to an inner sanctum, labelled — somewhat reassuringly — ‘fast track waiting room’, where we wait for a doctor who is all lighthearted until she undoes the bandage. silence. a quick inhalation. the hole in the kid’s head is beyond the spectrum of ER. we wait then, in the fast track waiting room, for a plastic surgeon to come and see us.

then the waiting, and waiting, and around five, the plastic surgeon tells us that eight o’clock is when we could be scheduled for stitches; the procedure will need to be performed under general anaesthetic, and the kid must not have eaten anything for the preceding six hours. we wait, mostly cheery and chirpy, unless anyone mentions the word “stitch”.

and eventually, the kid is suited up in the children’s hospital’s best puss-in-boots print gown, and given a shiny pink sticker, and a brisk walking tour though the labyrinth of corridors, and fitted with a tiny rubber mask, and made to breathe, slowly. and her eyes roll back, and shut, as she struggles against the sleep. and i am dispatched to the waiting room, with her black cat and her pink sandles, to two teabags in a communal trough.

but it only takes a little more than half an hour, to sew stitches in three layers of tissue. the doctor comes by to say that the cut didn’t go all the way to the bone, as he had expected, and only the muscle and two layers of skin had to be repaired.

when i finally get to see her, she is extremely surprised that they sewed her up after all. “but i didn’t feel it!” she says, eyes wide in wonder, and then she asks for apple juice. later, in the ward, she scores a lemonade icy pole and a jam sandwich, and chats, snug in warm blankets, about how it is way past her bedtime. and some hours later, when the nurse is happy, we are released into the dark and silent hospital corridors. we pad silently across the shiny floors, just us in the world, but for someone’s dad sitting alone in the pale light of an internet terminal. my good cousin drives across town to take us home, and only stops once for the kid to vomit up her paltry dinner.

eyes open or shut, i see the gaping wound. i saw it, right after it opened, and then every time the bandage was unwrapped while assessments were made. i may see it for some time yet, although a day later, the horror has lessened. in the early hours, when the house was quiet, i had four slices of vegemite toast, and watched an episode of “buffy the vampire slayer”, so that i could go to sleep.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 18 September 2009 at 12:04 am

permalink | filed under kid, snacks

it’s the morning after the night we poured ourselves through the chinatown new year night market. every year we go, and every year we say how insane it all is, and then a year passes and we forget, and we do it all again. the kid spent two hours in someone’s arms, buffeted, or on someone’s shoulders, above the crowd, so she basically did ok. the rest of us stopped when the crowd did, moved when it moved, and if we were sweaty enough at a certain point in time, we slimed past whoever was in the way.

me, i seemed to be sweatier than most, because we had thought it prudent earlier in the evening to dine on bowls of bakut teh and steamed buns; my body temperature was already up by a couple of degrees. eventually, when we tired of seeing the same exotic delicacies being peddled by every third shop (this year’s new inclusions appeared to be a range of flavoured taiwanese rice cakes, and fig jelly), we insinuated ourselves into a quiet crevice between two stalls, and replenished our sweat glands with icy cold sour plum drinks.

“will we go again next year?” i asked my mother.

“no,” she said, most decisively. “except maybe to buy mushrooms.”

right now i am fortifying myself with a mug of almond-flavoured soy milk. i had seen an ad for it on the back of a bus on the way home from the airport a week ago, and had rushed out and bought a carton the very next morning. see how effective an 8-ft high photograph of a carton of soy milk can be?

but i am particularly susceptible to soy beans this week. so far i have acquired:
• enormous rice crackers embedded with whole roasted black soy beans
• black soybean hot cocoa mix
• some sort of roasted soybean snack, which i really bought for the carton
• soft serve soymilk ice cream

the last of which i would be quite overjoyed to eat every day, but which would leave little room for the bakkwa-on-white-bread sandwiches, or the sambal prawn rolls, or the mangosteens/duku langsat/jackfruit trinity.

if only this could be my only quandry, rather than the pathological fear the kid has developed, of public toilets which flush automatically. in this city, that is the most tiresome thing of all.

- – -
this was originally posted to the ragingyoghurt facebook page,
while the blog lay dormant.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 24 January 2009 at 11:40 am

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

around the time a rumble of food bloggers descended upon zumbo yesterday — oh! the rapturous prose! the continuing mythology! — i was escorting the kid to her first real birthday party… at mcdonalds! in four years, we have been to mcdonalds three times: twice for little squeezy bottles of water, and once for fries, because we somehow could not find alternative chips in the city on a sunday afternoon.

so it was quite a foray beneath the golden arches with her three-piece chicken mcnugget happy meal, and the shiny lurid furniture in the purpose-built backroom, and the playground made of plastic tubes that amplify the shrieking.

me, i had my own treats to organise. settled into a table out front in the restaurant, with a copy of “the new yorker” in dire need of being read, i concentrated on dipping my fries into my caramel sundae. it wasn’t quite a masterpiece created by a french-trained chef, but it certainly had its merits. the fries were crisp and hot (though a few seemed almost liquid inside — water or oil, i couldn’t tell), and the salt crystals played off the caramel quite well (take that caramel beurre salé). the soft-serve was a cool, creamy foil… though you’d think that ice cream should be colder… shouldn’t it?

no matter. i finished it all, scraped the plastic cup clean, and headed back into the maelstrom just as lolly bags were being distributed. the screaming went up a notch. “where have you been?” asked one of the mothers, “in the cafe? that was a good idea.”

indeed, it was.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 1 December 2008 at 9:55 pm

permalink | filed under around town, ice cream, kid, snacks

aloha! bet you didn’t even know that i was gone… but i was! it was my birthday last week, and my father shouted us a trip to hawaii. funny, my mum brought with her three fat novels and just a couple of hundred US dollars, because she thought there’d be nothing to do but sit on the beach and feel bored.

me, i did my research beforehand, and noted that there was a gap close to the hotel. what did end up being a surprise was that our hotel was a stroll away from the rodeo drive of waikiki, and a brisk walk in the other direction took us straight to macy’s.

but of course, it was all about how much american junk food i could eat in a week. my first move was to take up the two-for-a-dollar offer on pop tarts at the enormous drugstore at the local mall.

i also got myself a slice of the famous ted’s bakery chocolate haupia pie. this one i actually procured from the deli section of a supermarket in the mall (yes, yes, i spent a lot of time at the mall, eight hours in one day if you must know, and my mother and i returned to the hotel to discover that my father had already tried to notify the police); there were two kinds available — one which was merely labelled, haupia chocolate pie, and the one i ended up with, ted’s pie chocolate haupia. i asked a store employee what the difference was, and he replied that the former was made instore, and that they were trying to copy ted. so i asked him which one he liked better, and he paused, and his eyes darted, and he said, “well. the ted’s one is pretty good.” so thank you, shop boy, it was pretty good, with a rich, dark layer of chocolate pudding below, and a light, fragrant layer of coconut pudding above, and a cloud of whipped cream above that.

the kid and i split it, and a blueberry pop tart for breakfast the next morning.

we also ate a lot of japanese food, natch, the highlight of which was probably a tuna and shiso leaf inside-out maki on our last night. and then unexpectedly, i ate quite a bit of mexican food. more, anyway, than you’d think, for hawaii.

behold: the tamale platter from the foodcourt (in the mall) on our second day there. two tamales from a choice of cheese, pork and chicken, and three sides from a choice of… plenty. already wilting from the lack of fresh vegetable accompaniments to american meals, i picked pineapple salsa, macerated oranges, and spicy black beans. and three kinds of salsa. and a flowery drink called, “jamaica”. the corn chips were complimentary. i did not get through it all.

i had not had tamales before, and now i know that they are like chinese zhongzi, except made from cornmeal, and thus possibly stodgier. the cheese one was pretty good until it cooled down and congealed, and the pork one was pretty good fullstop, but i would not necessarily have them again.

on my birthday, we were away from civilisation, walking on ancient volcanos on the big island, and sustenance came from the cafeteria dining hall at the lone, appropriately named hotel on the edge of the national park — volcano house. it was not hot and burny up the volcano, as you might imagine, but cold and drizzly, and tinged with sulfurous gasses. the one hot food option was a tub of chili and rice, so i had that, and because it was my birthday, i also picked a blueberry pie from the glass cabinet. the pie was flown in from spokane, WA… it was nice and all, but i kinda wish it had been trucked up from ted’s.

as i write this, i’m realising that i didn’t actually get around to that much american junk food after all. i must have finally realised my limits, or all those lectures from my good mother about trans fats finally found a receptor in my brain, because all those encyclopedic lists of ingredients on the packaging made every second thing look a little unappealing. only every second thing though, and only a little unappealing. and anyway, you can get peanut butter cups at the newsagents at broadway shoping center here in sydney.

what you probably can’t get are these amakara mochi, fat, sticky rice cakes in a beguiling bath made primarily of soy sauce and sugar. they were definitely intriguing, and somewhat moreish, but somehow i could not give them away. not that i really wanted to; they were not the worst things i ate in hawaii.

this was. the “market fresh” sante fe salad from arby’s, in a surprisingly upmarket stripmall surrounded by lava rocks on the big island. i don’t know if it was the icy cold chicken nuggets, or the leathery kernels of corn. perhaps it was the raspberry vinaigrette the consistency of a blood bank donation (perhaps i should have gone with the default ranch dressing, the consistency of an arterial blockage). i’d already come to terms with the standard, shredded iceberg lettuce served everywhere, so it couldn’t have been that. overall it was inedible, so i didn’t. the one saving grace of this miserable lunch was the curly fries. it was my fault, i suppose: who asked me to eat at a fast food chain outlet? it’s just, i didn’t think it was possible to do such vile things to a salad.

and the best things i ate in hawaii? just outside the hotel grounds was what i’ve since discovered is a local institution, wailana coffee house and cocktail lounge. truly the diner of my dreams, with its roster of waitstaff straight out of “ghost world” and its all-day, all-you-can-eat pancake special.

i did not get to eat the triple-layer cubes of rainbow jell-o from the all-you-can-eat salad bar, nor the giant belgian waffles i’d had my eye on from our first visit. i might’ve had a sandwich or something on that early, bleary night, but then i returned the morning after for the old fashioned french toast — each massive eggy, bready slice concealed a secret pocket of guava jam.

i knew it would be futile trying to squeeze a final breakfast in before our 7am departure to the airport on the last day, so i put in a request for lunch the day before. and this is what i had: the chuck wagon. a smoked pork chop with apple sauce, two eggs (i chose googy sunny side up), two macadamia hotcakes with whipped butter (so large they came on their own plate) and all the syrup i could eat. yes, three pitchers of maple, coconut and boysenberry syrups, jest fer me.

does it not make you weep with joy? the meat — a ham steak, really — was lean and tender, singed just right. the pancakes were soft and fluffy, with crunchy edges round the sides, and chopped macadamias all the way through. i’d already tried the trio of syrups on the french toast earlier in the week, and was happy to go with just an endless stream of maple. happy!

but i still had unfinished business. from my research i knew there was a cupcake shop in the vicinity, and so after lunch, while the kid went for a last hurrah in the swimming pool with her grandpa, i steered my mum’s afternoon coffee expedition in the direction of satura cakes. look — they really do come in cups!

i didn’t actually eat anything then… well, i couldn’t — this is my mum’s konamisu cupcake, a pretty convincing alcohol-free tiramisu with creamy, chocolatey mascarpone and light sponge and locally grown coffee.

because i hoped i might be able to eat again later, i came away with the store’s signature strawberry shortcake for the kid (a light as air confection of sponge cake and whipped cream), and the red velvet cupcake for me. the rich, moist, red cake was topped with a dreamy dollop of white chocolate and mascarpone. i only wish i could’ve been more awake as i scarfed it the next morning before the cab came to whisk us away.

but look. a week in hawaii is more than enough time to eat, even if it seems like you’re eating nonstop. aside from the chuck wagon, the highlight of the trip was probably walking through the 500-year-old lava tube in the middle of the lush rainforest on the edge of the kilauea volcano crater.

because you think hawaii and you think hula, and soft, sandy beaches, and swaying palm trees (and out-of-towners with leathery skin and far less (and more colourful) clothing than they probably should be wearing), but there we were, down from the volcano, on a beach of black sand created by centuries of broken down lava rocks, surrounded by… nothing.

coolness.

i was still eating at the end, of course. i considered revisiting the pumpkin spice cream frappucino i’d had at another airport starbucks a couple days earlier, but decided that the one not unpleasantly pumpkin-flavoured beverage topped with whipped cream and a dusting of cinnamon was enough. instead, i cracked open my final container of pineapple slices. i’d probably already eaten three or four local pineapples cumulatively over the week, but i couldn’t get enough. they were so juicy you’d be sticky all down your chin, and sweet, like they’d come out of a tin. and so, there i was, in the lounge waiting for the boarding call, savouring my last three slices. they went all too quickly.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 20 November 2008 at 3:31 pm

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

i found a small packet of white rabbit candies the other day, not just the plain ones, but special edition red bean white rabbits. these i had bought while i was in singapore back in february. yes, i really am getting better at not hoarding food — by which i mean, actually eating what i buy rather than not buying excessive amounts of (usually) junk food in stellar packaging — but sometimes i do chance upon a box of treats in a most unexpected location in my house. at the very bottom of my bookshelf, for example, or the highest, most out-of-reach kitchen cupboard.

so. i’d acquired these months and months ago, way before the chinese melamine-in-milk scandal, and the melamine-in-white rabbit scandal specifically, and i spent quite a bit of time thinking about whether or not i should eat them. even if they did contain melamine, how much toxicity could there be in a handful of candies? the verdict is still out as of this moment (your counsel would be appreciated, dear reader), but here is something i did decide to eat a couple of weeks ago as i lay dying on the red couch: pearl sago.

i think, at the time, my argument was, well, it couldn’t possibly do any more harm. i was already zombie, and besides, how reassuring is a packet emblazoned with… well, i think it says, “lupenion luality”, which in a parallel universe untainted by melamine in milk, might possibly pass for “superior quality”. maybe.

but i’d received a tip from a reliable source championing the restorative powers of a bowl of freshly cooked sago. so i retrieved the packet from the back of the pantry, and boiled (and boiled and boiled) a cup of these colourful little spheres, and after straining them from their supernaturally gooey residue, i stirred in a couple spoons of coconut milk and a swirl of kithul treacle. twas pretty good, and not in the last bit poisonous. i lived to tell the tale after all.

now, about those white rabbits…

posted by ragingyoghurt on 13 October 2008 at 7:54 pm

permalink | filed under candy, kitchen, snacks

after we made it back to the mainland, we wandered through the labyrinth of city streets until i found the central baking depot. alas, i only know its location in relation to the clarence street blood bank, but my cousins seemed happy to be led, and the kid, well, she wasn’t actually walking, so she had no vote.

we sat and ate an assortment of pastries, and when i finally established that my order of hot chocolate had never even registered with the guy at the counter, we started making the motions of leaving. this included buying loaves of bread to go.
i finally got the cherry, fennel and walnut bread.

it’s a somewhat lighter bread than i’d normally prefer, and for something that lists “cherry” way up front, it contains an almost imperceptible count of little bits of chopped-up fruit. see those two little pink flecks? they be the cherries. what it does have is a very agreeable, completely not overwhelming fennel flavour (from seeds, mind), made more pronounced when a slice, lightly toasted and buttered, is sprinkled with spiced sugar. mmm.

oh how i love fennelly, aniseedy things. like fennel, for example, finely sliced in a salad, or braised warm and floppy.

or these delicious spanish flatbreads i unsurfaced when i was in london a few months back. torta de aceite, they are called, crisp and flaky, rich with olive oil, dusted in sesame seeds and sugar, infused with the aura of anise, each one wrapped in waxed paper. a winning package all ’round! does anyone know where to find these in sydney? i have tried the spanish deli on liverpool street in the city, but… nada.

or these glassati anice biscuits that called to me from a large basket at my feet, at fratelli fresh. i eat more than i should of these crunchy little rings in one sitting, until my throat tightens with the assault of the sturdy sugar glaze. and then i eat a couple more.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 4 July 2008 at 1:25 pm

permalink | filed under around town, snacks

weekend teacup blogging

i think this is starting to become an affliction. i was at the rozelle markets yesterday, and when i said, “i think i’m going to buy that pink teacup”, the kid responded immediately, “but you already have the green teacup”. that’s how bad it is.

but it was $15, less than half the price of the ones i saw in the dusty window of a dusty antique shop in glebe. this (and, ok, a couple of orphaned saucers) were from a woman who said she had moved on to other things, and was purging her personal collection. she had wild hair and a crazy rainbow wooly jumper. bloody hell. i could become that woman.

so no more teacups.

the biscuits, on the other hand… these beauties were from christopher’s cake shop at taylor square. delicate shortbread sandwiched with sugary icing and dipped in coloured chocolate. the pink one is strawberry flavoured, and the yellow one a most engaging lemon.

these i will be back for, oh yes.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 1 June 2008 at 11:13 pm

permalink | filed under shoping, snacks

i love ruby red grapefruit. look at it! the colour, amazing. the taste, pretty good — just astringent enough that no one else wants to share. but the one i got at woolies the other day was a revelation. it was full of flavour, yet mild, with a soft sweetness. it was wet and juicy. the kid, with whom grapefruit has disagreed in the past, took a most tentative suck, her lips already puckered up in anticipation. and then… she wanted more.

back in my childhood, my mum sometimes brought grapefruit back from the supermarket. it was exotic then, in the tropics, the regular, dour, yellow grapefruit. and we would only eat it if it were sprinkled, heavily, in brown sugar. i thought i’d carry on the tradition, just for kicks.

aside from the 21 bars of chocolate i brought back from europe over the summer (you’d be surprised at how long it takes to consume them at a steady though not compulsive pace; i think i have just begun my fifth bar), i also made space in my suitcase for a handsome canister of sugar. not just any old sugar, mind. this one i found in la grande epicerie de paris, in an aisle of fancy sugars. i spent too long gawking, almost fell into a sugar-coma just by being in close proximity. and then, i guess because it was xmas time, i chose the saveur de no’91l, from terre exotique.

here’s the guff, run through babelfish:

this sugar especially was concocté and lovingly prepared for the happiness of all. c’ is while thinking of the crackling d’a chimney, with its soft heat and by evoking the sugar refineries enjoyed at that time l’year that we imagined this “sweeten of noël”. it combines the softness of cane sugar and the savours traditionally used in the receipt of the bread d’spices.”

the savours include cinnamon, green anise, ginger, cardamom, and girole… which seems to translate as a kind of mushroom? wha? it smells particularly anisey, but the flavours of everything could be much stronger. it’s only 5% spices after all, mixed into €6.5 of raw cane sugar. no match, in this case, for the magnificent grapefruit.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 22 May 2008 at 9:32 pm

permalink | filed under snacks

and after that circus (refer: previous post), there was the easter show. yay. the last (and first) time i attended this grand display of warm and fuzzy rural-urban relations was about ten years ago. now that the kid is three, and cognisant, and a year away from having to pay to get in, i thought it was the perfect time for a revisit.

i was most interested in the prize-winning cake displays of course, and maybe a cheese on a stick. and a cream tea at the country women’s association tearoom. the kid mentioned something about milking a cow.

we showed up early, the kid and i, because the bunny judging was on at 9.30. however, bunny judging turns out to be a somewhat unriveting cluster of studious types in lab coats standing ’round a rabbit, cupping it in their hands and holding it up to measuring tapes. huh.

so we wandered for a bit, stopping for a $5 ride on the mini ferris wheel (it went around so many times to make up $5 worth that the kid started heckling the lone carnie about when it would stop.) we played at being radio announcers at the abc caravan. and then when singapore girl finally showed up, we descended upon the woolworths fresh food dome, and that’s when things started to happen.

the kid wanted ice cream, but for the first time ever she did not want pink ice cream. “i want green tea,” she announced most decisively. as you wish. me, i stumbled upon the irrewarra homestead natural ice cream stand, selling organic ice cream made in southern victoria, without the use of chemicals, pesticides, artificial colours, flavours or preservatives. and truly, the banana ice cream was like eating creamy frozen bananas, and the blueberry was flecked with bits of fruit. it was delicious, but the taciturn dairy farmer type manning the booth said it was not available in sydney, and only in health food shops around melbourne.

we marveled at the regional produce displays with their giant animatronic frilled-neck lizards, and we marveled at the amazing decorated cakes in the arts pavilion next door. (at this point the kid tipped over her half-tub of sloppy green tea gelato, and the fun lurched off course for several sad minutes.) but distractions abound in the arts pavilion: just look at this clever champion cake in the shape of a selection of champion preserves. ha!

surprisingly, champion preserves were not a feature of the tea and scones at the CWA tearooms. what you do get with your two (out of a total 22,000 made throughout the show) fresh, still-warm scones are a little tub of whipped cream and two little packs of supermarket jam, strawberry and apricot. and a pot of hot water for your teabag. it was a moment of olde worlde calm before we headed back out into the blazing sunshine, straight into the clutches of the hot corn vendor.

and that is how the day progressed. in between the buttered corn and the yoghurt sample at the dairy farmers milking show, we fed the baby goats (and persistent, pushy sheep) in the nursery farm. in between watching an educational presentation of a pair of butchers cutting up half a carcass of beef and milking a real, live cow in the milking barn, we had a lamb pie and a sausage roll. just for milking the cow, we got some squeezy packets of purple berry yoghurt that you suck out through a nozzle, so we had that too, and by the end of the afternoon, when i finally tracked it down, there was just no space left in my stomach for the cheese on a stick.

because the kid doesn’t yet know about showbags, i bought her another ride at the kiddie carnival before coaxing her aboard the train back to the city. she continues to speak of the music video she will make next year in the abc caravan. a grand time will be had by all.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 11 April 2008 at 2:50 pm

permalink | filed under around town, ice cream, kid, snacks

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