What I cooked last night.

After quoting Helen Hanff in the previous post I hesitate to admit that 84 Charing Cross Road comes under consideration for that author’s own solution to limited shelf space.

Some months back I was puzzled about the irrationality of throwing things out that work but retaining things that don't. I gave as an example old scissors. They never get thrown out, just tossed in a drawer. Another example might be books: people will keep a forgettable $19.95 paperback on a bookshelf for decades. Helene Hanff remarked on this in 84 Charing Cross Road (Andre Deutsch, 1971):  "I houseclean my books every spring and throw out those I'm never going to read again ... It shocks everybody. My friends ... read all the best sellers, ... get through them as fast as possible ... skip a lot ... never read anything a second time ... don't remember a word of it a year later. But they are profoundly shocked to see me drop a book in a wastebasket or give it away. The way they look at it, you buy a book, you read it, you put it on the shelf, you never read it again for the rest of your life but YOU DON'T THROW IT OUT!" I personally can't think of anythi

I drove from Williamstown through Footscray and down into the Maribyrnong flatlands where the mud is still visible. I grew up on a ridge overlooking this valley and we would walk down steep Afton Street every time the river flooded to watch the water lapping at some park bench or even a house. Few thought it would happen again, falling victim to the common misguided belief that the world is on a continual improvement plane, and disasters (except for climate change) are all in the past. Indeed, the painted post showing the height of the 1920s and 1974 floods was some kind of local curiosity, a kind of totem pole showing ancient events, to gaze at knowing the water could never - in a million years - go up again to that neck-ricking height. Impossible, they said: the river mouth had been widened, the estuary had been dredged, weather bureaucrats had insisted rain would never again fill dams. Maribyrnong in spate, let alone the river flats flooded? Never.  You can fool yourself into believ

This tuna pasta recipe uses fresh tuna rather than the usual canned variety in tomato sauce. (Nothing wrong with canned tuna - one of my all-time favourite comfort dishes is pasta with canned tuna, grated cheese and peas.) Marinate a piece of fresh tuna in lemon juice, chopped garlic, salt and pepper for a few hours. Bring back to room temperature before cooking. Cook pasta: this is best with short, chunky pasta such as fusilli or rigatoni.  Cut the tuna into fat cubes and sear in a little olive oil and white wine until just done. This should be timed to synchronise with the pasta cooking time. Trim some green beans and asparagus spears, chop into thirds and steam until both vegetables are bright green and just starting to soften.  Chop some vine-ripened tomatoes, or use semi-dried ones and gently warm them through in a little olive oil together with some halved pitted black olives and a scattering of capers.  When pasta is done, drain. Add cream and white wine to the still-warm pan; r

Term break. Four times a year now; they seem to happen every few weeks. We had driven out of Melbourne mid-morning under a slate sky and a rain-blowing southerly on a cold late-winter Saturday. North, north, north: trying to outrun the weather. Around midday we pulled in for lunch on the run at a truckstop cafe on a great curving main road in a town west of Bendigo: salty, deep-fried, battered food: food you'd probably never eat standing still or sitting at a table. Food that reaches way down into the prehistoric DNA. Does salt enhance the view of mountains sliding by on the horizon or, conversely, does that incredible panorama make the food taste better? After the western roll we corrected northwards again, munching, and in the rear vision mirror grey fingers of cloud groped towards us, chasing again, like fingers of a giant. Small towns swung or swam into view and out again; Bridgewater on Loddon, Serpentine (describes the river, not the town), Durham Ox and Kerang, a 1950s relic

The AFL's Essendon Football Club was founded in 1872. Essendon was a respectable suburb in the lower middle class sense of being seen to be respectable. Many early players were drawn from local churches. Anglicans, Baptists and Methodists gravitated to the Club. Catholic footballers, largely Irish and working class (although some were better educated and culturally richer than many of their bovine-like overlords), knew they need not apply to play at Essendon, and generally went to the neighbouring industrial suburban clubs of Foostcray, North Melbourne or Fitzroy. Reasons are lost in the mists of time, but history yields clues. In 1916 the highly-patriotic Essendon Football Club, exclusively Protestant, airily proposed along with many of the more affluent clubs that players compete as amateurs and that the League turn all gate receipts over to the Patriotic Fund. The proposal was rejected as a drain on the poorer clubs, and the four working-class largely Catholic suburban pillars