i made a drawing a couple of weeks ago. did some picture research on the internet, sketched a rough on paper, redrew all the components in a loose and scribbly fashion on the back of some official letter i’d been sent, scanned them in, then pieced it all together in photoshop. i was pleased that day to finally figure out how to drop colour into a tonal greyscale drawing, without the colour layer obscuring or compromising the pencilled outlines.

layers > multiply

that’s all it took. for years i’d wondered. i sent it off then, to where it was needed, and not an hour later, received a two-word reply: oooooh! beautiful! how warm and shiny i felt.

the kid works much quicker. she takes a sheet from my tray of one-sided printouts, and draws directly in any shade of felt-tipped marker. a few days ago she grabbed the nearest biro and made my new favourite drawing: a joyous supermarket excursion with a cat, a mouse, and a family of tiny kittens. it really sums up the happiness i feel when i’m at the supermarket.

(though not the bit where i stand in a queue for 20 minutes because my woolies refuses to put more cashiers on, grumble, gnash.)

something else that makes me happy is the super speedy three day sydney zine from dawn at handmadelove, full of drawings of smiley food to eat around sydney (in three days, oh the pressure!). just look at the lovely watercolouring, and the cheery lettering. here’s one of my favourite cafes, badde manors, #3 in glebe. it’s true: they do have a way with potatoes.

[ picture from handmadelove ]

an adorable mini chocolate kugelhopf from lüneburger. it is a rich burst of cocoa for a mid-afternoon slump, moist and just a little bit sticky (awful in late summer weather but just about perfect in a cake). and scattered here and there, chocolate chips. such a tiny treat! and at $2, quite the cheap thrill.

a 56-year old cherrybrook woman died after losing control of her blue toyota tarago van on the golden highway at dunedoo about 2.30pm.

at that time, we were in chatswood, just finishing up a lunch of shanghainese dumplings and garlicky eggplant, and trading tales with my cousins about our assorted ailments (me: a hurty sternum; my cousins: a current cold and a recent kidney infection). my aunt was reaching into her handbag for a small foil packet of hard candy made up with mysterious chinese herbs. she gave then to me, and said they would be good for my cough; it had made hers much better.

meanwhile, the van had come off the road, and had flipped and rolled, several times, and had come to rest on its roof. the five passengers managed to free themselves, but my aunt’s friend in the driver’s seat was trapped in the wreckage.

the news report mentioned the other passengers: a female with broken bones, two men aged 58 and 27, a 24-year-old woman, another woman whose age was unknown…

you couldn’t assume that the men were her husband and her son, and the first woman her sister, and younger woman her daughter. the third woman was her other sister, who had only last month been in an induced coma overseas, from a lung infection, and who had miraculously recovered, and come to australia for a recuperative holiday.

you wouldn’t know that the woman trapped in the car had been a nurse, and an artist, a painter with a studio in her backyard. she could whip up a batch of pumpkin scones just like that, and once, when she somehow coaxed the kid away for an afternoon, she whipped up a tray of pink cupcakes, from a packet mix, but still. that afternoon, the kid returned with take-home cupcakes, a case of lovely waxy crayons, a sketchbook, and a pair of enormous sparkly fairy wings. on her fridge door, this woman displayed a picture of a mermaid that the kid had drawn. the last time i saw her, almost six months ago, was across a grimy laminate table, over bowls of mediocre phở delivered by suitably surly waiters.

she didn’t make it out of the van. she died while the emergency crew tried to save her. it’s strange: i didn’t really know her that well, but i feel the break in my periphery.

summer took the stage for a last curtain call.

saturday, we traipsed across the lush green lawn of a historic house in a leafy north shore suburb, and watched chocolate suze get hitched in jolly rollicking fashion under the impossibly bright and burny sun. afterwards, there was coca cola, and orange juice, and fairy floss, and a fat, sprinkled krispy kreme doughnut — and that was just the kid. afterwards, her head didn’t quite spin around, but the sugar gave her enough of a buzz to carry around, for the rest of the afternoon, the enormous lollypop she charmed out of the bride.

it was still summery when we got back to the city, so we sat a while in our box seat above the town hall intersection, watching the finely-tuned ballet of crisscrossing pedestrians in the golden light. and because the box seats are actually three big corner windows in the children’s department at kinokuniya, we also kicked back, made ourselves comfy, and fashioned a small pile of books to pass the hour.

on one of the shelves, i found a book called “all kinds of families!“, with pictures by one of my favourite illustrators, marc boutavant. we sat and read it for a bit, this jaunty rhyme by mary ann hoberman, but when i got to the verse that went:

clams in the sea make a clammily family
lambs in the field make a lambily family
jams in their jars make a jammily family
and yams in the cupboard a yammily family

i knew that i would have to take it home with us. books are family too!

happy days to you and the mister, mrs noods! we are honoured to have been there to see the beginning of your own little family. may your fridge always be overflowing with treats.

so yes, it was hot in melbourne, but it never got too hot for pizza. one day in january, after a short spell at luna park —

[ the kid is still too short for most of the rides, but we did qualify for the ghost train (a dud), and then the mini-roller coaster in the shape of a large green dragon (rollicking god fun for the 105cm-tall set). after which she procured for herself the largest fairy floss in the world. it was roughly half her height, and weighed enough that it eventually pulled itself off the stick. she kept calm and carried on, slipped her arm through the mass of spun sugar, and fashioned herself a fine edible bracelet. ]

– and a large amount of gelato that melted before we even made it down the street, and a good bout of digging in the sand beneath the promenade, and the merry side-stepping of washed-up jellyfish on the shore, we stumbled, somewhat sundazed, into il fornaio, which hangs off the prince hotel on ackland street. i’ve always come by at the wrong time, too late for lunch service, and this time, alas, we were once again told we could have drinks only, or anything from the display case.

fortunately, the display case still held a handful of small pizze. i picked the prosciutto. the waitress was kind enough to put it in the oven for a spell, and it was just the salty, crunchy-edged kind of mid-afternoon snack you might wish for, just in from the beach with your legs all sandy.

some days later, we took shelter at the NGV international. for a while, we pretended to look at art, though really we were more interested in standing over the impossibly sleek airconditioning vents in the floor of the gallery. and then also, lunch. the gallery kitchen beckoned, from its hiding place behind the ground floor escalators. and you will see this picture, and yawn and say, ho hum. i couldn’t help it! i am completely powerless against the lure of a prosciutto pizza, but look! this one was also decked out with fat slices of field mushrooms and a smattering of olives and fetta.

ahh… such pleasurable little discs of modestly puffy, barely charred dough, their sharp flavours uncompromised by just a scant amount of cheese. it’s a rarity around these parts i tells ya. if they had been just three bites larger, they would’ve been perfect.

what a long, terribly hot summer it’s been. our fault, i suppose, for spending most of it in sunny melbourne. on the most horrible day, we took shelter in the airconditioning of the arts centre; my plan was to see as much of the AC/DC exhibition as the kid would allow. except that we found ourselves drowning in a deluge of pink tulle. turns out it was fifteen minutes away from the lunchtime matinee of the angelina ballerina show, and hundreds of little girls in ballet dress-ups swarmed the lobby. the kid turned her large limpid eyes my way; the temperature in the street was the wrong side of 40; i handed over my credit card, and spent the next hour or so sitting in a sea of battery-operated glowsticks, watching lithe, human-sized mice dance across the stage.

but the temperature kept climbing, and at 1.40 in the wee hours of the morning, i woke up stifled. i poured myself down the hallway, and had a cold shower, and eventually got back to sleep. later we were to find out it was hovering in the lower-mid-40s all night, and when the temperature finally dropped at about 8am, it was to a refreshing 34°C.

ugh.

so we went out in search of icy treats, often. the lemon-lime and bitters sorbet at trampoline was truly delightful. a very fetching shade of palest pink which dissolved gracefully into a gentle citrusy tang on my tongue. i liked it so much i went back for more.

there was the emergency slurpee from a hole-in-the-wall 7-eleven one afternoon in the melty city, and a golden gaytime krusher at KFC one sunday when nothing else was open in shimmery rural victoria. it was a most unappetising shade of… bilge, a pale and lumpy yellow in the plastic tumbler, that tasted better than it looked, until it warmed up to room temperature.

and then, holy moley, there was the organic cinnamon donut gelato from fritz gelato at the souf melbourne markets. lush and milky with a streak of sticky red jam all the way through. behold its majestic crest sitting atop an enormous scoop of caramelised fig and roasted almond yoghurt gelato, equally lush and milky, and filled with crunchy little fun bits of seeds and nuts and burnt sugar. good times…

and then we came back to sydney, and the holidays galloped to a close, and the kid grew up and went off to school. no tears were shed from anyone involved.

i don’t know how these things happen, but suddenly i’m 10 kilos heavier than what i’d like to be. hmm… ok, so i do know. i follow the cake, is what happens.

a couple of weeks ago, we followed it down hot and dusty king street, to cool and sweet-scented buppa’s bakehouse in newtown. we like cake, deborah and i, and we like american cake, and buppa promises the real thing.

that saturday morning, the air inside was tinged with sugar and by the time we reached the front of the moderate queue, i was somewhat delirious with sugarlust. there wasn’t a lot of choice on our visit — maybe three pies and three cakes — but we only needed one each after all.

turned out, we didn’t even need that. the red velvet cake was a little dry and the frosting was so painfully sweet — and gritty with sugar — that i felt my teeth wince, and my throat spasm in protest. it was near impossible to eat one without the other, and yet eating both together was not much better. in the end, with regret, we left it. i hardly ever leave frosting, but today the billowing mass left over mocked me triumphantly from the plate.

much more successful was the chocolate-peanut butter pie. i hardly ever order peanut anything, but the combination of the creamy, salty, savoury peanut butter and bittersweet chocolate was quite alluring. at the glass-fronted counter, this had seemed a plain-looking pie, a beige mass held demurely in a dark cookie crust. however, it was plated with gay abandon: chocolate syrup drizzled over the top, and then extra cookie crumbs from the pie dish strewn about. all sorts of crunchy-crispy-sticky-creamy. mmm… this is truly the sort of thing i’d be happy to eat, feet up and slumped in my sofa… until i find myself 10 kilos heavier than i’d like.

i ordered tea to go with, and on the counterperson’s recommendation, chose the $5 pot over the $2.50 cup. what came to the table was a teapot with a single teabag floating forlornly in the hot water. this is the sort of tea service that irks me, and the kind of pricing structure which makes me cranky, hrumph.

so i marched back up to the counter, and got a slice of pie to go. apple. the pie had already been cut into, and appeared to be sitting in half its depth of pie juices. i asked the man with the cake knife if it was possible to make a fruit pie and have the bottom of the crust remain crisp, because, y’know, disintegrating pie crust from a year-and-a-half ago. proudly, buppa chimed in to say that this was a sign that no unnecessary thickeners had been added to the filling; the apples were fresh, and peeled and sliced by her fair hand.

and so, it was sort of sloppy when they gently slid it into the takeaway paper box, and quite a mangled mess when i transferred it to a plate at breakfast the next morning. but the crusty edges were still crunchy, and the top flaky, and the apples, cinammon-spiced and still tart, were delicious. thinly sliced, they retained a bit of bite, some cooked a little more than others.

i can’t wait to try the cherry pie. it’s homely food, unpretentious and a little messy, and i’d probably even recommend eating it at home. the shop itself, despite its tables and chairs and sweet, sweet smell of cake-baking, is somewhat lacking in character… and may i just say again, $5 teabag.

we blinked as we headed back out into the big bright that saturday morning, dazed with sweetness and light. little did we know — well, perhaps there was an inkling — that not quite an hour later we would be fingertips deep in dhal and chutneys and thick curry sauces. there were hoppers, and a big, brown dosai, and when we finished those, a plate of parathas. at last, we were free of the sugarhigh.

so. tetsuya aside, i’d say that this has been a pretty low-key birthday. by low-key, i mean, there was no cake. sure, there were several fancy desserts, and quite a bit of ice cream, but no, nothing with candles stuck in the top and a mess of crumbs at the end.

sometime last week, i thought i’d check out the newly launched summer range at adriano zumbo patissiere, with the thought that i might finally get me some birthday cake. but when i got there two lush tarts batted their eyelids at me, and i was sold.

well. they were.

may i present, to the left, “through the looking glass jessica rabbit”. from a distance, it looked like a glistening fried egg atop a pastry shell, but as i swooped in close, it became apparent that it was a delicate construction of shavings of coconut (chewy and slightly savoury, even) and a UFO filled with sour. below, silky layers of pandan jelly and coconut creameaux in the coconut pate brisee almost made it seem like it wasn’t 40° out. i liked it a lot.

and then there was “weekend in the cross”, though surely not the seamy, steamy, slightly salty kings cross you know, and maybe even love. this one, i adored. the rose creme in the pistachio pastry was positively dreamy; the plump raspberries and sweet-juicy watermelon sitting in a puddle of tart rhubarb compote, a perfect foil. it didn’t even need the baggy of sweet-sour watermelon powder, but why turn down a sprinkling of good, harmless fun?

because the kid was there, we also got a modest array of macarons: lychee, pink grapefruit and jasmin, mango and sticky rice… and darned if i can remember what that speckled one was.

they were all painfully sweet, although the fruity flavours were quite pleasant. i especially liked the lingering notes of jasmin after the citrusy burst of the pink one. i especially disliked the hard, crunchy, grains of rice in the purple one. raw? toasted? certainly not sticky. tchk.

no. i lie. the way to end a birthday is lunching at tetsuya’s the day after.

way back in march, the prospect of november birthdays prompted a flurry of emails and a flutter of stomachs, and a booking at tetsuya’s ensued. back then we laughed giddily — deborah and i — about fancy pants lunches, and stretchy pants, but as the months went by, i started to feel nervous about the prospect of sitting down and eating 13 courses of food.

i made a half-hearted attempt to train for the event, aiming to stretch my stomach to capacity, but all that happened was lots of my clothes don’t fit so good no more. truly, in the final stretch, those last weeks that galloped by, my greatest concern was that i’d have to excuse myself to vomit in the toilet halfway, hopefully not more than once.

and so, the morning of, right before i left my kid to a day of ice cream and ferry rides with her grandfather, i took us all to breakfast at le grande cafe, where i had a big serve of buttery, buttered brioche toast, and a pot of tea. did i mention the butter? in retrospect, it may have been a slight miscalculation on my part. but there was no time for recrimination; i had to catch the bus home to fossick through my wardrobe for a skirt with enough give.

and you know what? it was fine. a cosy group of six scorpios-and-friends walked through the heavy steel gates, were greeted with big smiles and seated at a long sunlit table (diffused sunlight, through venetians) looking out onto the white pebble beach and the miniature waterfall.

the food was presented slow and steady, each a modest portion of perfectly balanced — sometimes literally — produce, so that there was enough time for tasting, and then savouring, and then shifting our bellies to find our balance. each course was formally introduced, and then we were left to enjoy the moment.

and it was all very enjoyable, although some at the table may argue that a different word be employed for the opening gambit of a cold sweetcorn soup served with a daub of saffron ice cream; it was hardly challenging food. well, it was challenging for the kitchen, i’m sure, to send out these intricately arranged platters en masse, but for us long lunchers, the flavours were well-considered, classic pairings with no jarring, challenging ingredients and no didactic textures. (foams! soils! i’m looking at you!)

crab and avocado. prawns and brie. duck and beetroot. berries and white chocolate. bread and butter — but what bread, and what butter: tangy, chewy sourdough rolls, and pots of butter whipped with ricotta, parmesan and black truffle into ethereal yellow splendour which we could not stop eating. there were surprises, yes, like a sticky soy caramel (a regular sugar and water caramel with a dash of soy sauce — kikkoman, the waitress thought — added in at the very end) over prawns, and then later, over the cannellini beans and mascarpone that served as the “transition” between savoury and sweet. or the pink peppercorns hidden in the sharp lime curd sandwiching a chocolate macaron.

and there were particular favourites that we wanted more of, and some that others vowed to recreate in sandwich form. though of course, it was hard to dislike anything when everything was cooked so perfectly. vegetable purees that were sublimely smooth, meat tender and juicy all the way through, seafood plump and moist, delicate tangles of exotic microherbs… and which pixie was it, whose light hands diced the pineapple into miniscule and perfect chunklets, and left it in the puddle of syrup at the bottom of the pineapple and amaretto sorbet? i would happily eat this every day.

at one point, when it became clear that we were more than halfway through the meal, a sadness came over me, a sense of regret that the experience would soon be over. but we live in the now, dammit, and the fourteen nows that passed that afternoon were thoroughly relished.

we sat down and ate for just short of five hours, and i did not have to get up and go to the toilet after all (and so will just have to go by wayne’s account of the linen napkins upon which to wipe your hands).

there was much laughter, and talk of good food (Q: what is your favourite food? A: chips!), and the waiters, in their crisp, fitted white shirts and tiny gold fleur-de-lise pins, were smiley and attentive, and ready to call you “sir” even if you were a ma’am.

around five o’clock, the petit fours numbered three — a coffee and date friand, a maccha marshmallow, and a chocolate macaron — and tea was poured from cast iron pots. we talked about how full we were, and then picked off the little treats one by one.

the sun outside was still beating down hot, but inside we were gloriously warm.

the official birthday celebrations kicked off the night before, with the drama of a thunderstorm beating against the plate glass windows of ocean room. two cousins, the kid and i, presided over by my good father, sat down and ate some really good sashimi, some anchovies topped with tomato sorbet, some soft-shelled crab tacos (not quite enough soft-shelled crab tacos, if you ask me), some shoe-string fries topped with a tantalising sprinkle of shichimi pepper — and here’s the thing, you think japanese, and you think delicate little bits of food, but we also had a whole wing of of a yellow fin tuna, so large that it came with a map to guide us.

there were three zones marked out, and the meat — slow roasted over 40 minutes — tasted different from each part. milder white meat up top, slightly dry, and more intensely fishy flavour, from the moist and dark underside. all even more delicious with the crushed cucumber ponzu dipping sauce.

friday morning, i marked the turning of 37 with a tall paper cup of rich hot chocolate, and a short plastic one of central baking depot’s house granola. it’s oats and sesame seeds, and sunflower seeds, and whole hazelnuts, and dried dates, and a bunch of other stuff too i’m sure, baked golden brown, broken into crunchy chunks, and topped in plain yoghurt and tart stewed fruit.

is it healthy? i don’t know, but it was packed with enough hidden oils and sugar to keep me fortified for a terrible hour-long busride out to bondi for sculptures by the sea.

it’s true, what all those bondi locals have been grumbling about. the coastal walk slowed down to a coastal crawl, as every body stopped to look. and look. and look. even funner than seeing the sculptures was watching the hardcore joggers trying their best to run around the punters, the school kids, the old ladies, the dogs, the sculptures, and then looking irritated to find their path blocked, again. again. dear bondi locals: stop grumbling! find an alternative jogging route for a couple of weeks! do you see me spleening about the queues out of zumbo, keeping me from cake?

the funnest thing of all though, was the magical dream house on top of the hill, a life-sized cubby house completely covered by one jane gillings in an armour of found toys and plastic bottle caps.

oh how we wanted to buy it and take it home with us! instead we opted for hot chips and potato cakes down by the beach.

we had gelato then, once the spuds had settled, not by the sea, but tucked away in the cool and dark of messina. the mythical gingerbread gelato eluded me, so i made do with a triple chocolate extravaganza. chocolate fondant — rich and creamy with a hazelnutty edge; chocolate sorbet — smooth and light and intensely cocoa-y; and chocolate yoghurt — milky with a pleasant tang, my pick of the pack.

and you might think a birthday would end there, what with the kid falling asleep in the car on the way back to my dad’s hotel suite in the city and all…

but she performed that trick of bouncing out of bed about two minutes after she was tucked in, so we trekked into BBQ king and they brought us soup, all porky and ribby with a single chunk of carrot.

then they brought us a great bowl of roast duck congee, infused with delicious ducky flavour and a wonderful surprise of ginger slivers hidden deep in its heart.

and then a platter of fat, fried you tiao. the rice grains in the porridge had broken down into lush creaminess, just perfect for dipping.

now that’s how you end a birthday. lips glistening with oil, a starchy rice mass expanding slowly in your belly.