at maruyu the other weekend, i could not resist this package of choco pies. mochi choco pies! a whole box of ‘em for $2.50! maruyu sits on clarence street, a block west of the queen victoria building — possibly the best city block in all of sydney, with this two-level japanese minimart (that’s, maruyu), an affordable and unfussy french cafe, and a very interesting exhibition space within doors of each other. i’ve gotten many a bargain at maruyu. sure, a lot of it was exotic junk food just past its expiry date, but this one is still good until at least january next year.

so i opened the box, and was somewhat surprised by the size of this little packet. i mean, i assumed each one would be individually wrapped — it’s the nature of this sort of asian snack food, but i really did think that seven to a box would yield a slightly larger pie. what with the plastic wrapper within the carton, and then another cardboard tray in which the little packets of choco pies were nestled, it was a much smaller handful than what i had expected when looking at the picture on the box.

and then when i got that sachet open, all i could do was laugh at the tiny disc inside. choco pie? it looked more like an after-dinner mint.

when i first saw this on the shelf, i was drawn to the mochi part of it, and then the black sesame. that it was covered in chocolate was a bit of a bonus i suppose, but chocolate in asian confectionery is decidedly hit-or-miss. sometimes it’s floury, or grainy, or oily; sometimes it just has a peculiar wrongness. such a gamble, but in this case — chocolate-covered black sesame rice cake — it was a gamble i was willing to take. plus, y’know, two-fiddy.

this particular chocolate — a thin shell — broke with a soft crack when i bit into it, and melted smoothly away. it was not too sugary, and had a rich, dark chocolatey flavour. the soft chewy mochi, which replaced the marshmallow portion of a traditional choco pie, pleased me with its mild sweetness. the inner layer of black sesame paste delivered a nutty taste that lingered, and it was all i could do to stop myself chasing it with another serve.

so i’ll concede that these turned out to be the perfect size after all — the delicate and well-considered balance of the various flavors and textures just called to be contained in a package this petite. and i grant that the individual wrappers make you pause a while, instead of just shoveling the little cakes into your gob, one after the other, until they are all gone, because they are that delicious.

if only they’d thought to put more of ‘em in the box.

reading of dawn’s art collection over at handmadelove reminded me that i’ve been meaning to photograph my cake painting for the longest time. this is what greets me each morning when i wake up, and what sends me off to dreamtime as i lean over to turn off my lamp each night.

strangely enough, i have never had a cake dream. perhaps my average daily cake intake is enough to keep it permeating my subconsciousness.

i remember discussing the painting with the artist, lucy culliton, whom i was lucky enough to meet at the gallery, and who was kind enough to counsel me through choosing which of her paintings i wanted up on my wall. she had originally painted the background pink, she said, but right at the end, had decided to paint it over with white, allowing the barest whisper of pinkish hue to show through.

i like the pale primaries of the painting: pink, blue and yellow rallying round the golden crumby cake.

perched on top, an old advertising card for tea, procured at arthur’s circus a little while ago, and a vintage price tag that my kind sister mailed me last year.

elsewhere in the house, the art is not quite as fancy, but i love it anyway. here is the wall above my computer, filled with stuff the kid has done, mostly from last year at preschool. i’ll be sad to take it all down when we pack up the house, but we’re fast running out of wall space anyway.

i recently started the kid her own tumblr page for her current output, but so far have been not very good at scanning and uploading. it couldn’t be that hard for an almost-six-year-old to learn to use a scanner, could it?

more pink cake! we found ourselves in newtown on friday afternoon, quite famished, and stopped into black star on our way to an errand. being close to the end of trade, there wasn’t all that much left in the counter. on the counter, however, was a large jar of macarons. such pale, encrusted beauties. when i learnt they were rose and lilac, i was a little bit hesitant, because apart from rose, i am not a fan of floral flavours in food.

i should not have worried. the biscuit was crisp and then chewy, and then all heady rose perfume wrapped up in smooth ganache.

it was so good in fact, that post-errand, even with the sidewalk stools piled up high and the countergirl wiping down the counter for the day, we sweet-talked our way into buying another one.

on saturday, an impromptu and fun excursion with my cousin took a displeasing turn after lunch when we found no cake in the city.

no. cake.

to be precise: we did not want dried-out-from-sitting-in-the-display-case-all-week cake (city center); we did not quite want fancy french moussey gateaux (the rocks); we did not want spongy airline chinatown cake (chinatown). two of us wouldn’t have minded cupcakes, but one of us has an ideological issue with them. so we went our separate ways and in lieu of cake, the kid got her first pair of lace-up shoes: silver all stars.

zoom-zoom.

and we saved the cupcakes for sunday. this is what you get when you rock up to cupcakes on pitt and tell them you don’t need a box for your cupcakes because you are going to eat them right away: a little cardboard cupcake caddy. adorable, no? my zero-packaging plans were derailed, but if i remember to tuck it into my wallet, i will always be ready for a cupcake on the run.

i expect i will always be ready for this raspberry cupcake: moist raspberry cake, and a fat swirl (and then some!) of raspberry buttercream. infinitely pleasing, and gone in four chomps.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

so, golly, it was just about a month ago that we were in melbourne. warm-and-sunny-in-the wintertime melbourne, whoulda thunk it. we did such typical school holiday stuff as go the the circus (the amazing circus oz, with no horses or elephants, but wonderful and strong girl-acrobats, and funny and hot — h.o.t. — boy-acrobats, and a rocking live band) and hide out in the tim burton exhibition on the one day it did rain.

first off though, we braved the sunday crowds at the queen victoria markets. i don’t know how i never noticed this before, but in-between the boreks and bratwursts there is a stall — colour of earth — that offers a big range of ready-made pizze. what made the choice even more boggly of mind is the number of different bases available. there were regular bases in white and wholemeal, but then there were a number of gluten-free bases. now, my normal reaction to a gluten-free version of something which is not traditionally gluten-free is to grimace and turn away, however these bases were a rainbow of happy toy colours, corresponding to their flavours: black rice, corn, pumpkin…

i couldn’t go past the beet and meat: hot salami, fetta, capsicum, zucchini and olives on a bright pink beetroot base. they didn’t heat it up for quite long enough in the oven — the center of the bready round was stone cold. however the bits around the sides had developed a pleasing crust around the chewy, slightly mochi-textured interior, and the toppings were generous and fresh.

a couple of days later, we caught the tram to port melbourne, and then made the long trek along the beach to st kilda, just so that we (ok, i ) could get ourselves a kugelhopf from monarch cakes.

they sat in the window, like puppies in a petshop, waiting to be picked. all slightly misshapen in that lovingly handmade way. i picked my cake, and the countergirl weighed it.

“this one’s a bit heavier, because there’s more chocolate inside. is that ok?”

more of that thick, sludgy chocolate wrapped up in chewy, sugar-dusted yeasty cake? well, yes! she rang me up, and that was the week’s breakfast sorted.

one afternoon, we showed up at journal, by the door of the melbourne city library in flinders lane. it was packed to the point of throbbing, and the chatter and clatter of peak lunchtime was more than a little confronting. a harried waiter pointed us to two newly vacated seats at the corner of a large communal table, and then disappeared into the crowd for some 20 minutes before coming back to take our order.

which gave me plenty of time to consider the chalkboard menu. i picked the endive salad, expecting a few leaves on a plate with a dribble of dressing. so i was surprised and pleased when a great mound of shredded endive was delivered, barely concealing many strips of prosciutto, walnuts, and clumps of mildly musty blue cheese. a textural masterpiece! there was even bread, for mopping up the tart dressing.

it was delicious, but i must admit, there was so much of it that towards the end, it almost became boring. almost. nevermind, dessert would surely recalibrate up my palate.

because journal sits within that 10-metre city block of tasty treats, all we had to do was go round the corner, and buy ourselves a little cupcake each, from little cupcakes.

i had the bite-sized pistachio cupcake: moist, nutty cake with exquisitely piped frosting, and a gem of a pistachio placed just so. perhaps next time i’ll be having the large pistachio cupcake.

and then yes, the drizzle kicked in, and we hightailed it to the bowels of the australian centre for the moving image, where we admired the very large and very strange body of work that tim burton had created since even before he went to art school. drawings and models and costumes and statues, and clips of edward scissorhands and alice in wonderland, and a perplexing japanese-slash-new wave version of hansel and gretel that the kid quite enjoyed.

(though i suspect her favourite part was actually the back room with the low tables and pots of textas where ordinary folk like us could sit and draw their own monster outcasts.)

the exhibition goes until mid-october, and i’m recommending it if you like tim burton, or strangeness, and monsters, and drawing.

more drawing! i was hunched over my lightbox on wednesday, drawing a bowl of soupy noodles, when the bell on my inbox went. it was the editor of pan magazine, asking me how the illo was coming along. spooky.

(well, perhaps not so spooky: i was quite late.)

have you bought yourself a pan yet? apparently it is going so swimmingly that a reprint of issue one is scheduled in the coming weeks. i filed my copy for my second column a couple of weeks ago, and it was a vote of confidence when the editor wrote back and asked for an illustration to go with.

i don’t expect issue two to be out for some months yet, but that there’s a taster for ya.

then yesterday, i was persuaded to make a short film for two ply, the annual low-fi film festival held in the loungeroom of a house just at the top of my street. fancy: a salon, in the heart of the upper-middle-inner-west. this year, the theme was “tongue”, and there i was, with no paid work to sully my schedule. the only downside was that two ply was a mere day away.

after dropping the kid off at school, i scrambled myself an idea, and drew a few things with a 6B pencil. i don’t know if it’s conventional, but i put it all together in photoshop, exported several hundred jpgs into quicktime, saved them into 11 separate clips, and then stumbled my way through the edit, all the while googling stuff like “how to lengthen transitions in imovie”.

(which is not possible?)

anyway. 10 hours later…

i premiered “sugar shanty” a few hours ago, to warm applause and kind comments, and despite listening to the same 40 second segment of the song over and over and over again, i am completely not sick of it. in fact, i can’t get it out of my head. rum tara tra la la la la!

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.

i’m not doing a very good job of being here. on the other hand, i’m doing a sterling job of not being here. i mean, i have been here, only i’ve been working. that 300-page textbook job evolved — over more 1-and-2am bedtimes than i care for — into a 384-page textbook job. it’s not over yet, but it is back in the hands of the editorial department, for now.

a couple of weeks ago, i wasn’t actually here at all. i was in melbourne, where the tree outside the cottage industry shop on gertrude street is adorned with a patchwork of lace doilies, and the adjacent sign post wrapped up in a crocheted cozy. all very apt, for the proprietor of cottage industry, one penelope durston, crafts the loveliest arm warmers in a mindboggling range of dusty hues. i must not give in to them, because i already have three pairs of arm warmers, however a couple of years ago i did surrender to a rather fetching shopping bag she’d made out of two vintage tea towels (one was covered in fancy historical teapots and the other presented a nautical scene involving lobsters and lobster pots).

but yes, now i’m back in sydney, with a little breathing room, and where it turns out another pair of arm warmers would not be unwelcome when the temperature dips treacherously at night.

no matter, i turn on my electric blanket before taking the kid into the shower, and then after she’s all clean and shiny, we tuck ourselves into bed and read. we’ve just finished “charlotte’s web”, and towards the end, i started getting that feeling of needing to put the book in the freezer. but we bravely pressed on, into the face of certain death.

afterwards, the kid was subdued, and ventured, “i have a sore throat. you know how sometimes when you’re sad and your throat hurts?” she touched the base of her neck. mmmyes, i was certainly familiar with that feeling.

i could put it down to sleep deprivation. or maybe just the passing of time, or youth, or spiders. maybe the thought of being not here, some day six months from now.

i met a new baby today. lyra. such a snuffly, squishy, sweet, tiny little baby. she came rather a bit sooner than her parents had expected, so although she’s been out for almost two months, it’s only just gone her proper birthday.

we brought her a couple of t-shirts in gender-non-specific colours — and really, who doesn’t need a monster face shirt? rrrRRR. we also brought her parents a guidebook from the 50s that i found in a small secondhand haberdashery up the road. it was a primer for new parents from the maternal and baby welfare division of the new south wales department of public health, on what to do with your kid up ’til the age of five.

i didn’t get to absorb any of the good advice in the book; it’s probably too late anyway. the kid is precise about her age when asked: five and two-thirds.

however, there was a slew of most excellent vintage ads, for all manner of healthful products for your young child.

nibble sticks, milk jelly…

tasty biscuits of wholemeal…

creamy custard eclairs…

and “extra cream” milk chocolate, so good for young children.

are these ads not just as persuasive as (and quite a bit more charming than) the slick photographic ads of today? for example, i found myself really wanting a fat eclair.

it’s been quiet ’round here, i know. well, not so much literally: we’re currently a week into school holidays, so it’s round-the-clock chatter (and singing, and shrieking) from at least one of us. the other of us has been afflicted with the endless lurgy, and then somewhere in there, halfway through the course of yummy yellow-brown antibiotics, i started laying out a textbook on managing blood-thinning medication. 300-odd pages of text and tables and fun diagrams with lots of arrows. lots.

i am less than halfway through, and it may turn out to be 400 pages after all.

i can’t work during the day, so instead we do school holiday things like wake up at 9.30, and eat brioche and apricot jam, and go to the art gallery, or see children’s theatre… this afternoon we walked through misty drizzle to see mr freezy down at the sydney theatre company, in which a high-octane tale of an ice cream scoop unfolds, as does a great mess of flour and sprinkles and jelly babies and drinking straws, and a chocolate-iced donut is thrown into the audience.

afterwards i had a hankering for an eton mess and tried in vain to find the fratelli fresh down by the pier so that we could go to sopra — does anyone know where exactly it is? but anyway, the rain kicked in a couple more notches and sent us scurrying back into the city, where, oh hey! central baking depot.

moments after we plonked our umbrellas in the bucket by the door, the skies broke open. but we didn’t care — i had just enough cashmoney for two hot chocolates and a slice of blueberry-cinnamon-apple butter cake. the large hot chocolate is only a dollar more than the regular, but twice the size, and fully chocolatey. and just look at that cup — so covetable with its heavy china and gold trim.

on monday, it was too wet to sit outdoors with a pie floater from across the road, but we armed ourselves with BBQ pork buns — the baked kind, with the sticky glaze — from furama cake shop in chinatown, and holed up inside the powerhouse museum for several hours. the fashion week exhibition was good fun, and the 80s exhibition was more sensory overload than trip down memory lane, but it was the interactive batik design simulator which held the kid’s interest for more than fifteen minutes. that and the wonderful school holiday activity inspired by sonya gee‘s historic matchbox project.

$2 bought us an empty matchbox, a seat at the big table, and a steady stream of crafty supplies. the kid set out to make a robot cat, but in the end, it was just a regular cat… with a hidden stash of jewels in her slide-out belly. (it’s on until 18 july, if yer interested.)

and in-between? there’ve been rides on the flying fox in victoria park, a mid-week dimsum feast with grandparents, two loads of laundry in the face of the rain, and a little bit of a thrill to finally read myself in print (PAN magazine, last seen at magnation in newtown). also, i’ve been trying to see how best to get any work done during school holidays, but my shortlived experiment involving working until 2am has proved to be unsustainable, with me stumbling somewhat dizzy and nauseated through the rocks today, after just three late nights.

saturday morning, we’re headed to melbourne for week 2 of the holidays. i wonder how many pages of book layout i can squeeze in before then.