but we haven’t been making a habit of sailing off to bedtime on a big maudlin cloud, no. for example, mere pages before charlotte was dispatched, we read of templeton’s all-night bender, eating discarded fairground food. there was an illustration on the page: a line drawing of the corpulent rodent.

“he looks like matt preston,” the kid said.

“rat preston!” i countered.

oh, how we laughed.

ah, life after masterchef. what to do with the extra six or however-many-hours-it-was per week? i must be finding something worthy on which to fritter it away, because i have absolutely nothing to show for it.

the kid, on the other hand, assures me that she will be participating in junior masterchef as soon as she is able. so we shall spend the next two years in training. i set her dicing bacon, and then slicing olives, and not three olives in she had sent the knife into her finger, and was whimpering in a most pitiful manner. she spent the rest of dinner prep curled up on the couch, finger aloft, watching “snow white”.

she had really been counting on callum winning, and in the week before the masterchef final, had prepared this drawing celebrating his victory. judging from the masterchef logo on her shirt, i think she had projected herself into this reality too. in this reality, i wear tiaras and long slinky gowns, and my hair goes down to my feet.

ahhh… disappointment on all counts.

ok, fine. we watch “masterchef“. even though i hate the clunky musical cues, the repetitive editing, the explanations and narrations by the contestants even as the very events unfold right before our eyes… the kid does not really mind — she usually gives her own running commentary over the top of the soundtrack anyway, though the appearance of the burning m logo and the cut to ad break at dramatic points sends her into conniptions.

last year, we went through a stage of playacting “masterchef”: i’d serve up breakfast, and she’d say, “now tell me, poh, how did you make this jam toast and hot chocolate?”

“well, first i got a piece of bread…”

this year, she has been documenting the action with the occasional masterchef drawing. here you see the judging of the recent onsite afternoon-tea challenge. we were very impressed with callum’s crown jewels rendered in the medium of macaron. so were the judges. WAW!*

*pronounced: WOW!

is hank moody the new carrie bradshaw? is this just sex in the other city? i much prefer new york, but i do like david duchovny. on tv. remember when he was on “the larry sanders show”? or when he did that episode of “dr katz“? a pan could not be deader. i’m pleased he’s not doing stoopid alien movies anymore.

at zumbo yesterday morning, i admitted my unease at the delicious way the cakes just melted away on my tongue. “you know why that is, don’t you?” asked counterboy.

“because they’re the fattest things on the planet?”

“yep.”

alas.

behold the chocadz. the salted butter caramel ganache melts away to nothing; so quickly, it is just a memory of a ribbon of salty-sweet. sitting on its crunchy hazelnut meringue biscuit base, it is draped in a thin coat of milk chocolate, and a dense sprinkle of rough-hewn hazelnuts. the first time i had this, i was on a plane, too early in the morning, up in the air somewhere between sydney and melbourne. i liked it then, hence the reprise, however it was much funner eating it in bed.

i recently met this woman… ok, another mum in the kid’s tuesday music class, and this is what she said to me:

“my husband is away on business tonight, so i’ll be having a lean cuisine — pasta with salmon — and a glass of white wine. and watching “the bill”.”

i mean, in essence this is probably what i’d do too, except what i’d be pulling from my freezer is that braised lamb, mushroom, brandy and rosemary ravioli from peppe’s pasta. while that was boiling, i would saute diced onions, garlic and carrots in olive oil and butter, with a bay leaf and a few drops of water to keep it from drying out. towards the end, i’d add some small florets of broccoli. and then, probably, right at the end, i’d stir in a little extra bit of butter, i dunno, for shine?

by then the ravioli would be ready, and i’d add it to the sauce and swirl it all around just to get it all coated, and i would empty the pot into a large bowl, and it would be delicious, because there is real meat in the pasta, and none of that sawdust or breadcrumb filler you get in the $4 bags of tortellini at the supermarket.

i would eat, propped up with cushions on the blue sofa, and i’d be watching my season 1 DVD of “gilmore girls” with no commentary from the sidelines, and it would be great.

(and then later, while tidying up, i would try to open the fridge with the same hand i’d be using to hold my ceramic butter dish — the one with the cow moulding on the lid — and the fridge door would jerk open suddenly, and the butter dish would spring from my hands, and shatter into several pieces on the floor. which would not be so great, actually, but i would not be upset.)

this woman also said to me, “i don’t eat a lot of bread, because when you think about it, it’s just flour and water, and what is that? glue!”

i don’t know that we can be good friends, is all.

my desk is a mess again, and i haven’t even arrived at the busy time. i am circling the periphery, looking in, pacing myself. just pacing.

at my elbow i have sheets of paper, covered in scribbled lists: lists of amendments to layouts; lists of drawings to make; lists of invoices to send; lists of where to go in queensland.

i have passes to a film on the weekend: “an epic tale of mothers and sons, mothers and daughters, unrequited love, betrayal and secrets… the true story of a glamorous shanghai nightclub singer, who struggles to survive in seventies australia with two young children“. phew!

i have tea: muji jasmin tea ball in a muji glass teapot, good gifts from my good mother.

i have chocolate: a monsieur truffe bar with cocoa solids of 64%. there is some guff on the back of the package about fresh fruity notes and bouquets of dried fruits, but i am simply impressed by how a dark chocolate bar — french, no less (by way of melbourne) — can be so goshdarned creamy.

i have an urgent calling to watch that hideous show, “age of love“.

you feel a little uncomfortable, don’t you? like you need to cross your legs, or check to see if i moo, or something? i can assure you, i continue to be simultaneously enamoured and repulsed.

so, i guess they are more socks than sneakers: japanese socks with rubber soles. apparently, in japan, construction workers and miners wear them? i wonder if pickaxe-through-the-toes incidents are much higher in japan than over here in the land of steel-toecap boots.

of course, i have no need to worry about pickaxe accidents as i whisk deftly up the street in my new cloven-toed sneakers! or, as deftly as i can move while keeping pace with a small person whose legs are just over a foot in length.

when i returned to the store last friday afternoon, the shopgirl asked in greeting, “so, shall i pack these up for you?” she pointed at the ones i’d tried on that morning, black soles, black fabric, chunky white numbers. i looked around the room, trying to buy time, and out the corner of my eye, i saw the flash of red. and i asked to try them on. and i don’t know why i do this to myself, because now i had another thing to wrestle with.

[ red shoes on, red shoes off; black shoes on, black shoes off; repeat ad infinitum... ]

by the end of it, i was squinting into the mirror with a red shoe on my left foot and a black one on my right, and the shopgirl was pretty convinced that i wasn’t a black shoe kinda girl.

so yeah, i got the red ones, and they have a lovely pink lining which matches my pink cloven-toed socks, with the chunky white numbers. they are so light to wear, and the thing i thought would bug me — that wedge inbetween my toes — my feet got used to pretty quickly. in fact, my toes are spread out most comfortably, and there is none of the crippling pain that comes after a day of having them wedged into my allstars, or that pinchy twinge on the side of my little toe from the slightly more comfy jack purcells. the only thing that concerns me is that such whispery light and thin soles are not cushioning my heels as i pound around my concrete environment, and i’m going to pay for this fashion moment with years of chronic knee problems.

(the only other thing that concerns me is that i may have to go back and get the black ones after all.)

but, y’know, fashion! it affects us all at some time. like, the kid has been seeing the new bonds ad on teev. the one where a ring of nubile underwear-clad girls cavort joyously to an infectious brazilian tune? the second time it came on, she said, “give me a little bra and panties, so that i can dance like that.” so yeah, advertising, your work here is done. clearly she is on track to wanting a harem of hideous bratz dolls by the time she’s four. meh.

farewell, my battered jack purcells, you have served me well.

i am about to be buried in an avalanche of werk, and will certainly need sustenance. i recently read about someone designing a 144-page exhibition catalogue in four weeks (via india, ink.), so perhaps it can be done after all; i think i have three weeks, for 124 pages.

i wonder, though, if the designer of that catalogue looks after a kid all morning, going to pirate storytime at the library, or two playgrounds on the way to the supermarket to buy watermelon, or like this morning, a meander through the tokyo fiesta in martin place followed by a quick look-in at the lindt shop followed by a sushi picnic at circular quay followed by a clamber up the opera house steps to buy tickets for the babies prom, “yummy in my tummy” in a couple of weeks followed by a trek through the botanical gardens (including somersaults in the grass and duck-chasing) followed by a busride through the city and home followed by stories and successful pottytime and tucking in for naps (followed by eight daims and procrastination reading about the riot at target for stella mccartney frocks. people are crazy.).

my mum has a friend in singapore — her boss, really — whose daughter had twins a little while ago, and worked out this arrangement: the babies stay over at the grandparents’ house during the week, nights included, and then the parents retrieve them for the weekend, unless the boss’s daughter has like, a dinner to go to, or an appointment for a facial or a massage or something, then the babies stay at the grandparents on the weekend too. nightfeeds, night wakings… all done by the grandparents. she’s lucky that way.

because maeve is going through this phase at the moment, where her sippy cup has to be tucked in, and every last finger too, and if something should come untucked during the nap (or, even worse, during the night) then the keening begins.

“maybe her toes are cold,” said my mother, mishearing, over the phone a couple nights ago. “maybe you should put socks on her so she won’t feel the cold and wake up.”

“no, not her toes. she wants her cup to be tucked in.”

my mother is speechless for a time. “wha… her cup?”

“yah.”

“that is sooo funny!”

“funny meh? why don’t you come and tuck her in?”

anyway. so, mother’s boss’s daughter. works in the logistics department at apple. on a whim, i wrote to ask if she could do me an employee discount on an ipod shuffle. she said she had a spare one sitting on her desk, because they just give her one every few months and she’s had so many that she didn’t know who else to give them to anymore. and so she gave it to me. we picked it up on the way to haw par villa. i am lucky that way.

i christened it with “take on me“. mostly, though, i’ve been using it to listen to the mr brown show while doing the dishes after dinner.

i wonder if that exhibition catalog designer has to do the dishes.

you may then already know that he will be heading the melbourne franchise of jamie oliver’s fifteen restaurant, and that he has a cookbook just out, “daily italian“. from this book came the recipe for friday’s potatoes.

sliced potatoes baked in milk with rosemary and garlic. it comes out with a curdly-crunchy crust. the perfect accompaniment for salmon panfried with capers, and a melange of green beans, broccoli and peas cooked up in a tin of tomatoes.

and now that i’ve googled “australian poulty association”, i see that that the board are actually called the australian chicken meat federation, and three days ago revealed in a press release that “almost 80% of australians believe that something is added to the australian chicken to make it grow artificially larger, with a staggering 66% of australians believing added hormones are a contributing factor making chickens larger”. ok.

well, i mean, that’s what i thought! have you seen the size of those chicken breasts in the supermarket deli counter? monstrous! sometimes, from my old supermarket at least, they even tasted like chickens of death. but in fact, what the chicken board woman said was that modern chickens are a different breed from the dainty specimens of the past, and comparing the two was like comparing a shetland pony with a workhorse. (and also that any antibiotics given to the birds are no longer in the meat by the time it reaches the consumer, and that organic chicken is no better for you than the other kind is.)

so. you’d believe it wouldn’t you? this chicken lady on a tv show where businesses and tourist attractions pay money to be included in the lineup?

it’s just, having read “my year of meats” (ruth ozeki) a couple of times, and sort of wanting to read “the way we eat: why our food choices matter” (peter singer) — but being sort of afraid to — and to be honest, the size of those chicken breasts is still a little disconcerting…

it’s just, the kid really likes chicken.

hormones and antibiotics aside, organic may not necessarily be better for us, but it probably is a bit better for the chickens. but then after the playground we went to the supermarket to buy a roast chicken for lunch, and the woman behind the counter asked if i wanted the regular $8.48 chicken, or the reduced-for-quick-sale $6 one.

“why’s it reduced for quick sale?” i asked.

“because it’s been out here for more than four hours,” she said, almost like a challenge.

the unspoken question, i suppose, was, how much longer than four hours had it been out here? (and also, did the chicken have a good life?)

but i took it. it fell apart in the woman’s tongs as she wrestled it into a bag. it made a tasty sandwich, on soy and linseed, with avocado, tomato and cheese for the kid, and avocado, sesame seed furikake and chili pepper sprinkles for me.

i still don’t know how i feel about the chicken debate. i want to read the book, even though i know it will make me (more) uneasy about the food i choose to eat. i mean, we can’t all be fruitarians, can we?

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?