$4.50 + $4.50 + $4.50 + $4.50 = ?

sometimes you know the solution to a problem. that is, you know of its existence, independent to the relevant problem, but you haven’t quite put the two together.

for example, i’d known about the orange grove organic market since shortly after i moved into the area. i’d also known that the 445 bus sort of headed in that direction. but to me, the market was always just a little bit too much of a walk. i’d say it would have taken over half an hour to hoof it. it was only recently that it clicked that i could take a bus there, and that the bus actually stopped right outside the market. brains — what would we do without them?

saturday morning, we walked to the bus stop with a spring in our step, and not too long later, we were on the bus with three other families with young ‘uns. off the bus, there were kids, and dogs, and sunshine, and bouncy castles. it was spring!

we did a couple of laps around the market, with no particular plan, just to see what was available (which was lots). i take a little while to warm up at markets, but then once the first purchase is out of the way, it always spirals out of control.

as it happened, that first crucial purchase involved standing in front of the artisanal lemonade stall for longer than you might expect. there wasn’t actually a queue, mind, it was just me trying to decide if i wanted the pineapple lemonade — a great beehive of glass filled with sunny yellow, with small chunks of fresh pineapple floating inside — or the raspberry lemonade — deep red, and copiously seeded. there was also a rather complex looking ginger ale with bits of chopped up chillis and other vegetation, but i thought that i’d save it for when i didn’t have to share with the kid. the lemonade guy recommended the pineapple… and it was nice and all, but i was too busy trying to drink my share of it, before maeve guzzled it all. the last i saw, her grimy little paw was sloshing about in the dregs, fishing for the fruit.

but so. now the purse strings had been freed! there was interesting bread, but we already had two loaves at home. there were two stalls with pink lady apple pies, but it was too soon after breakfast. there was some lovely rose geranium soap, but it was $5.50 a bar. we worked our way through the maze, accepting samples of nougat and oranges and raspberry ricotta cake. the south american food was inviting, and the calabrian too. the gözleme ladies were there too, with variations i hadn’t yet encountered: organic chocolate and banana (must have been $15 gözleme).

i bought: a brown bag of pink ladies; a packet of eumundi smokehouse double smoked bacon and a red wine and garlic salami; a small tub of gympie farm butter; a tomato and olive pastry, for sustenance; and some mushrooms.

ah the mushrooms. they were spread out in boxes across the counter: button, swiss brown, oyster, king brown, shitake, enoki, chesnut. i wanted them all. “can i buy a mixed selection?” i asked the mushroom man, and “how much are they?”

“they all cost the same,” he replied, “$4.50 for a hundred grams.” he even measured out 100g of oyster mushrooms, so i could see what 100g of mushrooms looked like. and then i asked for a 400g mix of the five more exotic funghi.

there were so many, he packed them into two of his sturdy brown bags. “$18,” he said.

see, i know that four times $4.50 is $18, but somehow i didn’t do that calculation in my head when i put my order in. and so when we caught the bus home, i had just under a dollar left in my wallet. but a bounty! of tasties! in my shoping bag.

dinner was fettucine with a myriad of mushrooms, fried with bacon and garlic in gympie butter. all together now: mmmMMMmmm.

going circles

earlier in the week, we were on our way to starbucks to try the new signature hot chocolate, when we stopped by the menu posted outside circle cafe. top of the hand-chalked specials list was turnip and chesnut soup!

it was so unexpected, interesting and enticing, that i immediately pulled the plug on the starbucks idea. maeve didn’t seem to mind; “this one?” she said, “climb stairs?” and up she went.

the soup was a lovely shade of camel, sweet and smooth — a potage, if you will. even maeve liked it, although she had her own plate of sourdough toast with grilled mushrooms and roma tomatoes to contend with. but the trouble with soup is that it leaves no room for belgian hot chocolate, to say nothing of the chocolate brownies doing laps in the revolving dessert case up front.

so when carla gypsygirl came to visit us friday lunchtime, bearing gifts of ice-cream hairclips and rainbow beaded bracelets, we went back to circle. you must know by now that my favourite lunch is breakfast, and that is what i had. the all-day big veggie breakfast is similar to the all-day big breakfast: eggs, mushrooms, hashbrown, tomatoes, and sourdough toast, with a mountain of sauteed spinach replacing the tangle of bacon and sausages (which is what carla had to counter the effects of a dodgy chicken dinner. props!).

half the big veggie breakfast though, is not quite enough to fill a belly; after maeve polished off all the tomatoes and half the mushies and an unexpected amount of toast, i was back at the front counter ordering my belgian hot chocolate and the lucky last brownie on the tray. the brownie is studded through with big chunks of chocolate, and is served warm so that all those chunks go moist and runny. i had ordered it to share, three ways, but i think that the kid won that battle. of course.

why we like the internet

my computer shut itself down twice today. once while i read about stellou tripping about the french seaside, slippery with butter; and once while i read about sons swanning about the lindt cafe, buttery with pain au raisin. i know it seems like i’m not doing very much work at all, just frittering away my time blog-reading, but it’s not true at all (and fritters are yummy!): the wound care manual, despite some last minute surprises, is tapering to a close, and the catalogue for the yoof culture exhibition is steadily picking up speed and megabytes.

[ might i say that the material submitted for the catalogue is a complete contrast to the wound stuff: a CD containing the text documents, including a complete list of captions for the pictures, which came on their own CD. and a hard copy of the text, marked up with which pictures should go where. and there is barely a tab in all 60 or so pages. ]

the computer? i cannot send it away to the tech monkeys, because i need it, for blog reading work. maybe in three weeks, after the deadlines are over, but for now i just save a lot, and hope the files don’t become corrupted as a result. and that mr computer doesn’t get worse through my wilfull ignoring of its sickness. i mean, i’m not really ignoring it… just neglecting it. and the thing is, it turns itself off, and i wait half an hour, and then it lets itself be turned back on again.

this morning, my martha stewart e-newsletter arrived, and alerted me to the existence of these charming labels for one’s school notebooks and lunchbags. i love the diabolical messages in the too-cute drawings –– the cruel playground taunting of the little pig who can’t wait for lunch; the unspoken fates of the white mouse who thinks science class is cool, and the squirrel who may be allergic to nuts; and the best one: the stereotypical asian kid who’s really smart and knows it, and is clearly cruisin’ for a bruisin’.

or maybe i’m reading too much into it. back to work!

better than frootloops

i read somewhere that the ricotta you buy from the deli section of a supermarket has a higher water content than the ricotta you buy from an actual deli. this means that supermarket ricotta will give you a mushier result to your recipe. that aside, there is also the risk that the server will scoop your ricotta with the same ladle he previously used for someone else’s olive tapenade order. eaten straight, your ricotta will have an particular savoury edge.

you can fix this by beating the ricotta until it goes creamy, and then adding vanilla and icing sugar to taste, and beating some more. fold in some raspberries, frozen ones even, thawed overnight.

i’d been thinking about this raspberrry ricotta since the sandwich picnic the other sunday, and made a small batch midweek. it takes just minutes to whip up, and you don’t even need chocolate bread; it’s just as delicious on a toasted blueberry bagel. perfect for an early weekday breakfast while watching atomic betty with the kid.

it was a cakey sort of weekend.

saturday morning, me and the kid walked up the hill to the church fete. i’d been working up her enthusiasm since the day before, saying things like, “do you wanna go to the fete?” and “we’ll meet our fate at the fete!” and “there’ll be cake!”

back in may, we went to the fete at birchgrove public school. there were singing children, judo displays, a giant slippery dip, a petting zoo, lote tuqiri, and a cake stall with interesting, upmarket offerings such as austrian apple cake and an $18 loaf of banana bread.

there were no famous people at the church fete — well, i suppose god was probably there — but the cake stall was brimming with affordable treats. when we passed by the second time and maeve made a lunge for the pink cupcakes, the old lady behind the table reached into a large jar and handed her a biscuit. it really doesn’t get more affordable than that. but still, a ziplock bag of apple slice and a pink cupcake set us back just $3.50.

we bought a pair of wooden salt and pepper shakers ($2) and a handful of children’s books (four for $1), by which time maeve had finished her cupcake, so we headed out to the “cafe” area and had a plate of scones with cream and jam ($2.50). all before 11.30am.

8 o’clock sunday morning, i said to maeve, “hey, do you wanna go on a train today?”. she seemed agreeable: “oooookay.” this was good, because saturday night i’d discovered that the olympic park market had a sweet pudding theme and was all things cake!

as it turns out, it wasn’t all things cake — just a ho-hum row of tents selling stuff and another row of tents selling regular festival/market food and, at the end of it all, a large tent with a bunch of empty tables and a demonstration kitchen up front; after the bus and two trains out there, we’d still arrived too early for things to have been set up. so we found a playground, and watched little sk8er bois at the skate park, and chased magpies, and examined the magnificent pole display outside the main stadium, and wandered back to the big tent to find that the first demonstration started in 15 minutes!

it was just enough time to join a short queue for dutch poffertjes, and to secure a table not too far back from the stage. our healthy serve ($6.50) of bite-sized pancakes, fried in purpose-built moulded pans, in what looked like quite a bit of melted butter, until golden-crunchy-brown on the outside and fluffy on the inside, came topped with a warm blueberry compote and icing sugar. it’s true what they say, a dusting of icing sugar makes anything look good, even when it’s served in a plastic takeaway tub.

but now, here’s joanna savill introducing the husband and wife patissiere team from beb fine patisserie on broadway. today they would show us how to whip up a frangipane tart with cinammon chocolate ganache and caramelised pears, in just over half an hour. olivier offered such tips as “it’s a fruit tart, so don’t be afraid to put big chunks of fruit in it. when i go out and buy an apple pie, and you see the apple filling, it’s only 1mm thick… it makes me… it makes me crazy!!” and “when you make a ganache, if you use chocolate with 50% cocoa, the you would use the same amount of cream. if you use a higher cocoa content, then you must increase the cream in proportion, accordingly. for example, if you use 120g of 72% cocoa chocolate, then you should use about 150g of cream. because the higher the cocoa content, the harder the chocolate.” beatrice (beb) weighed in with, “you can use any fruit you want, according to your tastes. but if you use just almond meal in your frangipane, then you can use raspberries or blueberries; if you use some hazelnut meal in the pastry, the taste is stronger than just almonds, so maybe for the fruit, you should use apples or pears.”

there you go: pastry-making, a sort of exact science.

maeve was surprisingly obliging, even after the poffertjes ran out, sitting through the display of mixing and melting and joanna’s inane patter. it was only in the last minutes that she went a bit limp and began to emit a whining noise. even pointing out the trays of sample tarts that would soon come around didn’t help. but when the server came by and handed the lady at our table a slice and then whisked the tray away without looking our way, the child (and i) were stunned into silence. from the two spoons on a tiny plate, it appeared that we — strangers! — were meant to share the tiny slice. clearly, they assumed that we would be brought together in the spirit of cake, but they had no idea of the child’s appetite… and besides, our table companion had already licked the plate clean.

some desperate arm waving soon set things right; there is no such thing as pride when it comes to chocolate dessert.

the next demonstration was a stawberry marscarpone cake from yellow bistro in potts point, but we were crashing towards naptime. a steaming hot japanese-style pork bun ($3), all tart and gingery on the inside, was enough sustenance to keep us going on the two trains and one bus back home.

someone’s got a new computer

last night after my computer died, i hopped over to the one across the room and blogged about it. after a little while, i heard a clicky-clunky noise from deep within the silent beast. and twice more. and then when i casually pressed the startup button on my way to bed, it did.

it’s working fine today, but every now and again, the clicky-clunky noise. unsettling. i know i shouldn’t think too hard about getting a new computer, because old faithful here will pick up the vibe and then cark it for sure. this is what happened to my previous machine. it was working fine, and then i bought the G4 and while it was still sitting in its box waiting to be set up, the powermac 7200 looked across the room, rolled its eyes and breathed its last.

maeve of course already has her own laptop. there was an ad in a magazine the other week, from which i cut out an almost life-sized keyboard. i glued it onto the corner bit of a nappy carton, and viola: she spends a good few minutes on her typing each day. these are precious minutes!

i’ve been a bit slow on the crafting pickup, but amber has a terrific thing going on at kid’s craft weekly. go look.

some unpleasant things

my computer shut itself down twice today. the first time, earlier in the afternoon, brought about a great sense of unease as repeated pressings of the startup key resulted in no start up. the guy on the apple helpline was quite helpful… but for the first few minutes didn’t seem to understand that i wasn’t using a laptop computer. “so you mean like, a desktop computer? with a separate screen?”

he then tried to figure out which model it was. “the 2003 model? with the mirror front?” i laughed darkly. “no, it’s 2000-ish.” i think my computer predated whatever he had handy on his system. but somehow we managed to locate the little (4mm square) silver square button with the black circle in the center, next to the battery, tucked away in the hinged door of the CPU. i pressed it, and nothing happened. i was already thinking about laying out the wound care manual again, from scratch, but then the second time i pressed it, it worked.

i backed up my work folder.

and then just ten minutes ago, my computer turned itself off again. apparently something is making it blow its own fuse. i’m thinking of checking into a hotel for a weekend; i think that might help.

the second time it blew though, i figured work was over for the night, and hopefully when i press the secret button tomorrow morning, it will deign to start up. i suppose i’ll have to think about procuring a new computer. this raises several unpleasant issues… like how it won’t be able to boot up in classic mode, and how i’ll have to update a bunch of murderously expensive design software… with the money i won’t have left over from buying the new computer.

it will also put a kink in my plans to buy organic meat. i’m almost all the way through “the ethics of what we eat”, and the current chapter is sort of pushing the “vegans are better for the environment” angle. i do not think that i will become vegan, so yesterday i bought an organic chicken. it was on special at the supermarket for just a whisper over $20. the whisper is the hushed tone in which you say the price. who knows what the normal retail price is?

i stuffed it with mushrooms, sage, garlic and butter and surrounded it with potatoes, pumpkin and carrots. i put it in the oven, and then maeve and i went to the playground. when we returned, dinner was almost ready. the mushrooms were especially tasty, having cooked in chicken juices. but was the bird itself more delicious and tender than its pitiful, debeaked cousin?

when the boy returned a few hours later from the prefects’ investiture, he said he couldn’t tell the difference. but then he’s hard to please.

the previous night i made what i’d considered a satisfying meal of fettuccine pre-primavera: pumpkin, zucchini, mushrooms and chickpeas in a garlicky-tomato sauce. the boy peered closely into his bowl, then disappeared into the kitchen. he returned with a tin of tuna, which he tipped it into his bowl before stirring unceremoniously.

yeah, a weekend in a hotel — just me — would be nice. i wonder if there’ll be room service.

it’s all about time management innit? if you get it into your head that you might make something for a sunday picnic? the monday plan to meet up for a hot chocolate on sunday morning quickly snowballed, and suddenly, a sandwich and dessert picnic was only a handful of days away. not even a freak hailstorm could put us off. by friday, the sun was shining again.

friday morning

playground excursion, followed by supermarket excursion, to buy such exciting things as almond meal, cocoa and icing sugar. i’ve spent days convincing myself that i can make macarons, though i haven’t quite decided from which recipe.

friday afternoon

naptime for some, half an hour spent pushing almond meal through a sieve for others. have i made a horrible mistake? it’s not too late to just buy a packet of bisuits from the deli up the street. still, small circles are dutifully drawn on sheets of baking paper. when maeve awakens, the electric mixer goes on; the batter does not “flow like magma”. in fact, it’s a real bitch trying to pipe it through the unwieldy cookie press into 80 or so small discs.

when the boy gets home from work, i am still brandishing the cookie extruder like a pistol. a cup of tea later, boy takes kid to the park, i do some “real” work, the biscuit dough sits for a couple of hours to develop a skin.

friday evening

while the biscuits bake, i make a quick salmon congee for the kid. after the biscuits bake, i realise i can’t be bothered making a “real” dinner, so it’s salmon congee all ’round, supplemented with a plate of frozen dimsims, steamed, for the boy. the biscuits look nothing like what they’re supposed to.

saturday morning

awake too early. playground excursion involves two parks — at the second one, a charming boy steps on maeve’s head as he asserts himself on a climbing thing. supermarket excursion for…

saturday afternoon

back home, i make lemon curd with the egg yolks left over from friday’s biscuit recipe. the boy goes out to watch football game. make maeve a sandwich and sterilise a jar while she eats. activate some yeast in warm milk. sift flour and cocoa. let maeve pretend to mix the dough… pretend to let maeve mix the dough? knead the dough. the dough feels nothing like it’s supposed to. dough rests, maeve naps, i make chocolate ganache.

maeve wakes. dough is punched down. biscuits are sandwiched with ganache. they really do not look anything like what they’re supposed to. an apple does not appease maeve, so it’s off to park #3.

saturday evening

boy not home from football. just the two of us for dinner: panfried salmon with capers, mashed potatoes, steamed beans and corn. bread goes in the oven, bread comes out of the oven. it looks… only somewhat like how it’s supposed to, but it smells deep and chocolatey. whisk ricotta with a dusting of icing sugar, vanilla and lemon juice. for dessert we each lick one whisk bit clean.

boy not home from football. wash the kid. read to the kid. kid goes to bed. boy txts to say that he’s out drinking and will be home tomorrow. put some frozen raspberries in the fridge, to defrost.

sunday morning

while maeve breaks fast, i fold raspberries into ricotta. slice chocolate bread — why is it so dense? why is it so wet-doughy in the middle?? it’s not too late to dash up the street to buy a loaf of white bread for emergency plan B lemon curd sandwiches, is it? passable bits of chocolate bread are sandwiched with ricotta mixture. a jasmin tea bag is chucked into a bottle of iced water. we scrub up, we are out the door! the bus is coming! keep walking, maeve!

halfway to the bus, meet the boy driving home. he does the right thing and offers to drive us to the park.

a glorious time is had by all: after a civilised start across the road at toby’s estate, we traipse back to the park: helen, deborah, the kid and i, to find a shady sunny spot close to the playground. we unpack a picnic of sandwiches to find that everyone’s had cheese on their minds, and chocolate. helen’s sister arrives with husband, babies, and more cheese in the form of a whole greek ricotta cake.

this sort of fun, it could go on forever, except it’s way past naptime, and there’s a bus due, and a funky brown something wafting out of maeve’s nappy. we bid our farewells amongst hurried gifting of chocolate and cheesecake, and then it all collapses into a three-hour nap for the kid, and me? i eat my rare and precious mountain pepper truffle, from deb, (and i cunningly leave the single origin lindt, from helen, for later) and then collapse too, on the couch, to watch “the incredibles” supplementary behind-the-scenes dvd.

this behind-the-scenes stuff; always fascinating. like the way you get to see how half the recipes went a little bit awry, and somehow at the end — through the magic of springtime and cheese sandwiches — it all tasted just fine.

ah, blogging, that thing i used to do.

ah, blogging, that thing i used to do.

such is life in balmain…

we went to the toyshop the other day, and while i paid for the kid’s latest booty: two paintbrushes and a fetching nylon smock, the counter lady asked if i was a member of their loyalty scheme. she went on to explain that the scheme was: for every dollar i spend “on toys”, i get a point, and when i have collected 400 points, i get a $40 voucher.

thing is, i actually do like to collect points and get vouchers (and the like), but i also like to be realistic, and so i asked if the points had an expiry date. she hesitated, looked momentarily bashful, and then said that i would have six months.

“wow. um, i don’t think i could spend $400 on toys in six months,” i said.

“people say that,” the counter lady said encouragingly, “but then they do!”

“it’s true!” said a lithe woman who had just entered the shop. “you’d be surprised! it all adds up!”

i paid the counter lady $20.45, and she printed out my receipt and showed me where i could see my points balance. “only 380 points to go!” i exclaimed gamely… except it wasn’t — the computer had only given me 19 points. i’ve barely begun and already it’s a losing battle.

then we walked a block up the street to a café for some orange-ginger juice and a babycino, and the counter guy was steve bisley.

but the reason why there’s been no time for anything else is that for the last couple of weeks, i’ve been immersed in the eye-straining, RSI-inducing, yet educational world of laying out (and proofreading, and copyediting) a manual on wound care. oh the three different numbering/labelling systems in the same chapter! oh the glamourous photographs of sliced-open toes! oh the email of amendments that arrived yesterday, which says: “page 225 should be relocated to page 180. urgosterile is a dressing! you may have to renumber the pages! sorry lah!”

quite.

so.

now for something completely different. my head is in sandwich mode, and springtime, and picnics! these last couple days i have washed many mixing bowls, and many things have been mixed in-between. i’m waiting for a pot of chocolate ganache to cool down. and already there is a sweet and tart by-product of yesterday’s eggwhites: today’s lemon curd.

nice buns

sometimes (though not often!), you may not want an inventive maccha-infused, bean-studded bun from a shiny modern asian bakery. sometimes, the exercise of walking the edge of chinatown in search of a printer capable of spewing out a two-metre wide poster will put you in the vicinity of the grimy little chinese bakery perched above the burlington supermarket.

you may have already bribed the child to get back in her pram again, after the half-hour wait for the bus, and the half-hour busride, and the half-hour spent looking at polypropylene samples in the backroom of said printer, with the promise of a bunshop.

so there you have it.

where the newer bakeries may have 20 or so cases filled with all manner of bundom and flossy bread, this one — and i have no idea what its name is; i just call it “the chinese bakery on top of burlington supermarket” — has a small wall of nine. but the nine cases hold more than what we need. it is always difficult to choose just one, from the bank of old-skool classics: pork with pickled mustard bun, ham bun, curry bun, taro bun, pineapple bun, pineapple custard bun, pineapple red bean bun, chocolate bun (filled with solid slabs of chocolate in lieu of the chocolate creme patisserie you might be expecting), those tall spongy cupcakes…

but here is an empty case, containing none of the bun i really want: the best ever baked charsiu bun, with a sweet sticky glaze and a sweet sticky filling containing actual bits of meat (rather than bits of fat and gristle). i looked around, panicked, those minutes passing all too slowly until a cheerful girl emerged from the inner sanctum with a fresh tray.

they were still warm.

i tonged one, and then two, and then a pineapple red bean bun, and then an afterthought, this ethreal “sticky rice with custard”. a soft, moist mochi (even a day later) in a coconut coat, with a pale yellow centre. it was sweet and delicate, and why have i never bought one before??

we ate the pork buns on a park bench, before a steadily advancing arc of seagulls, pigeons and ibises. at the end, maeve wore a joker smile of red and sticky.