What I Cooked Last Night

A hot afternoon close to Christmas. I was in the car heading north on the Sydney Road hill in heavy traffic, so I wasn’t so much driving as sitting behind the wheel and punching the radio to try to make it play something good. It wouldn’t, so I turned it off instead. The boys were in the back seat finishing off their most recent riot. We were behind a tram and it was inching forward and we were inching forward with it, along with about a million other cars whose drivers were probably all punching their radios. Or texting. The tram lurched forward with an electric whine and we made a whole hundred metres before it braked at Bell Street and I stopped behind it again. Passengers hunched over with shopping bags got down from the tram and laboured across the road to the footpath. Then the tram clanged and rocked across Bell Street through the red, and we stayed right there. The boys, suddenly silent, gazed out the window. I looked at them in the rear vision mirror and followed their gaze ...

It’s Christmas week, so the old traditional turkey-and-ham versus seafood debate is on again. They have to sell newspapers. Without doubt, roasted turkey and ham are unsuitable fare for the middle of an Australian summer day. This is why we drink so much alcohol. You have to stimulate the appetite. Only after three or four gin and tonics or sparkling reds is it possible to stomach the prospect of sitting down at midday in 28 degree heat to what is essentially a cold climate meal of roast turkey with cranberry sauce and stuffing, baked ham with a sweet, sticky glaze, hot roasted potatoes, carrots and minted peas followed by plum pudding with brandy butter sauce, Christmas cake with Scotch whisky, or trifle made from custard and red jelly on a bed of sponge cake soaked in port and topped with two inches of whipped cream, grated chocolate and nuts. Yes, nuts. The official antidote to this Edwardian stodge is seafood, but given interest rates and utility prices, cold lobster salad with m...

Click to enlarge.

That noise you hear is man fighting nature and man losing. They’re out there early in the morning and late into the evening cutting, hacking, chopping, slashing, line-trimming, power-edging and leaf-blowing. I cut the lawn twice in a week just to restore the horizon. Fourteen years of drought, and then enough rain to kick-start things into life that haven’t grown for over a decade. I've seen weed and grass species that haven't been sighted in years, their evil little seeds lurking patiently and potently under the ground. The rain has put the 'nature' back into 'strip'. Some are three and four feet high. Take a walk down the street and you'll see gardens disappearing under greenery, even those geometric ‘drought-tolerant gardens’ made of concrete squares and cordyline. They might be good in a drought but you still have to weed them, especially if the geometry has river pebbles in it. And then where do you put the weeds? I have two compost bins and both are fu...

The best guitarist was(is): (a) Eric Clapton (b) Jimi Hendrix (c) Carlos Santana (d) Richard Clapton (e) Les Paul

Peel it and chop it up. This is easier said than done. Pumpkin's dense texture means a good knife and a steady hand are essential. One slip and you'll lose a finger. The following recipe means the peril is worth risking. Pumpkin with spinach, corn and fresh basil. I am fond of the vegetable known in some parts of the world as being food fit only for pigs. ( Only ? The pig is one of the noblest creatures, if your moral universe extends to an animal pecking order. Orwell was right, but he got the order wrong. Squealer should have been a snake.) I like pumpkin’s sweet, mellow flavour when it is baked or sautéed, especially when eaten with contrasting flavours or textures. I’m not so fond of it when mashed together with potato, a common childhood side ('golden potato') and one which, it seemed to me, masked the assets of both vegetables. Having arduously made small cubes of a one-kilogram pumpkin, don't put away the knife. First, chop two onions and then cut six ...

Sunday. Late afternoon walk under grey skies heavy with the threat of more rain. It had rained all the previous night, a welcome soft hissing sound with a background slash and groan of the midnight traffic. Merri Creek was in spate, flooding the bicycle pathway that runs beside the northbound path on its left bank at several points. I followed it past its junction with Merlynston Creek, detoured at Bakers Road, crossed the baseball park to Mathieson Street and back onto the pathway. Blocked again, I backtracked to Queens Parade, and rejoined the creek where it turns east. Here, it was running as wide as a river. I hit water again and climbed the hill to the Fawkner plain where the creek turns north again and drops into a valley. It was running brown and fast and flattened reeds on either side showed its high point, reached earlier in the day. There is a new bridge here that crosses to Reservoir, but I turned west with the creek, followed it around, and eventually came out at Sydney R...

1964 The first sung words of my younger sister, born the previous year, are ' yeah yeah yeah ', from the Beatles’ She Loves You . Father brings home plastic Beatle mop-top imitation wigs, a giveaway at Golden Fleece service stations (or were they?). They resemble punctured black soccer balls with a section missing. 1967 The battle begins in earnest. My older brother purchases the Rolling Stones' Ruby Tuesday single with Let's Spend the Night Together on the B side. Neither mother nor father impressed with lyrics of latter song. Older sister trumps with the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band . Ten-year-old Kitchen Hand doesn't buy into the debate, considering Tom Jones' Green, Green Grass of Home to be the vocal performance of the year. 1968 Older sister triumphantly brings home the Beatles’ double white album. Travelling to a cub camp in the family car one day, I boldly turn the car radio to full volume when a newly-released song comes ...

People used to approach me in the street with a loud greeting and a smile and I would open my mouth to answer them, and then they would walk straight past me and I would realise they were talking on phones connected by wires to their ears. Then I would shut my mouth and determine not to be fooled again by such an obvious if unintended trick. But I always was. Now it's different. No-one looks at you any more because they're walking down the street with their heads down, gazing into 'apps', a word I don't like.

There comes a time when a spice jar gets so old you keep it anyway, for curiosity value. I have a nutmeg jar, nearly empty, that has ounce weight on the label. That makes it pre-1972, when we changed to decimals, much of which nobody understands. How tall is a 165cm gangster? Beats me. The nutmeg jar is a nice imitation cut glass design with a silver and blue label and a red Hoyts logo. Since spice jar use-by dates give you a few years, someone must have bought the jar in the late 1960s, possibly when Hey Jude was topping the charts. How did it come to be in my kitchen? No idea. Picked it up somewhere. Probably borrowed it from my mother's kitchen years ago. Spicy barbecued chicken. One tablespoon each chili and coriander powder One teaspoon each turmeric, fenugreek leaves, peppercorns, and salt 5 green cardomom pods 1 black cardomom pod 1 piece star anise 2 cloves garlic 1 inch peeled ginger 1 inch cinnamon 1 clove 1 pinch asafoetida 1 grate of nutmeg One half-teas...

I started thinking about this in about 1963, or around the time car model names started ending in '-a' (e.g. Falcon Futura, Vauxhall Viva, Toyota Tiara); and I have made a decision. The Rolling Stones were better than the Beatles. Your indignation, concurrence, outrage, praise, fury, shock, abuse, favourite songs, sightings, anecdotes etc etc in comments below.

I don't plant them any more, they come up all by themselves right on cue for November 11. Previous poppies: 2009 , 2008 (scroll down to November), and 2007 . * I was in town this morning, waiting to cross Swanston at Collins, close to 11 o'clock. Before the town hall clock struck the hour, two cops stepped onto the road and stopped both directions of traffic. Trams heading in three directions ground to a halt and the horses pulling carriages for tourists shook their heads. A few pedestrians ignored the cops and crossed anyway. Cars idled. Then a howling roar. Four RAAF planes in formation screamed overhead, following the spine of the city towards St Kilda Road and the Shrine of Remembrance, and were gone. In the sudden silence, a uniformed bugler stepped out of the shadows on the north-east corner of the intersection and marched onto the road. You could hear his footsteps. The horses shook their heads. The bugler raised the bugle and played The Last Post . Then a minute...

It was early evening on the day after the Melbourne Cup. I was walking up Sydney Road towards Dawson Street past the cafes and bars and vintage clothing shops and second hand book stores. It must have been almost eight o'clock. The footpath and road were partially taped off and a large vehicle with a flashing orange light was standing in the blockage and its crane was propped against the Brunswick Town Hall and workers were at the top of the crane in a cherry picker. They weren't putting out a fire; they were hanging the year's first Christmas decorations on the town hall. Merry Christmas. * I came out this morning about five-thirty to get the paper from the shop around the corner and the world was red. It wasn't just in the east. Bars of orange and pink hung in the sky right over to the west. It was gone within half an hour. There is stormy weather expected.

One box rigatoni. One bunch new asparagus (i.e. local rather than Peruvian or Chinese). One cup fresh shelled broadbeans. One pack fetta (local is fine; it doesn't have to come from Greece or Bulgaria or Denmark). Olive oil. Garlic. Boil rigatoni, adding broadbeans and asparagus chopped in two a minute or two before completion. Drain. Return to pan having added a little olive oil and a finely chopped garlic clove. Stir over low heat to coat in oil and garlic shards. Serve with fetta crumbled over. Drink: chardonnay, if you can find one that still tastes like chardonnay. They used to call it the red wine drinkers' white, but that was a long time ago.

Tracy, the gin and tonic thief, submitted the following recipe to this year's most important publishing event, the kindergarten cookbook. Ingredients 250g butter, softened ½ cup icing sugar, sifted 12/3 cups plain flour ¼ cup rice flour Baked in a pre-scored round for easy dividing into segments, the secret to this shortbread is kneading the dough minimally, resulting in the crumbly texture characteristic of traditional Scottish shortbread, not found in the commercial product. Children love a segment of this shortbread with milk for morning tea. Method: 1. Beat butter and sugar in a bowl with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. 2. Sift in flours and combine well with a wooden spoon. Press dough into a ball. Lightly knead. Over-kneading will result in too fine a crumb. 3. Cut dough in half. Shape into two balls. Pat into rounds one centimetre thick. 4. Place rounds on a greased baking tray. To decorate, pinch edges with floured fingers, score radially into ei...

It's funny how you remember where you were. 1962: Even Stevens. In the garage shed with my father in a sea of wood shavings. HMV radio on shelf. He was building a boat. I was five. 1963: Gatum Gatum. The shed. The boat. The radio. Bert Bryant, 3UZ. 1965: Light Fingers. In the backyard. Family lunch. Mother won the sweep. 1968: Rain Lover. Inside the rail at Flemington with my father, photographer. Watched the horse round the turn alone. It won by eight lengths. 1971: Silver Knight. At home in the living room. Bert Bryant on ancient radiogram. 1973: Gala Supreme. In father's studio in back yard. I used to paint and read there. Taped the race on my new cassette recorder. I still have a scrap of Bill Collins' call on 3DB. 1974: Think Big. Living room at home. 1975: Same horse, same place. 1976: Van Der Hum. Abandoned picnic in Dandenongs due to weather. Pulled car over halfway down mountain due to heavy rain. Read Peter Smark's Epicure column in The Age w...

And now the sun is a red ball falling down behind the thirty foot lilly pilly* and the last of the chili peanut sauce has been swiped with a spring onion and there's steam coming from the grill on the barbecue. This is something I've taken to doing because it's easy and easy is what I like to do at this stage of my life. Wait, we've had three children in five years. Yeah. Maybe that's why other things are easing up. I never stress about having people over any more and what to cook and what the house looks like and if the lawn's mown and the hedge trimmed and the right music going. The hell with it all. I find a gin and tonic cleans up the house magically and two even better. Tracy, on the other hand, being a woman, cleans the house from top to bottom if there's any chance of a human being outside the immediate family entering the house. The steam was coming from the cast iron frypan on the grill and it smelled great. It's the easiest way to cook pota...

They sit in the kitchen cupboard, stacked high, their handles generally turned the same way, but sometimes in all directions like a clock with too many hands. Some have flat thumb-sized handles, others have cylinders that flare out and are hollow. Some have lids. Some don't. They are ramekins. They were popular in the 1950s. Some food trend or other, like square plates in the 1990s. Then, like square plates, everyone threw them out and they could be found in opportunity shops and flea markets for next to nothing, or landfill completely free of charge. Eventually, like most things from the 1950s except me, they gained a kind of retro cool. Whether people actually use them or just display them in the 1950s Parker cherrywood lowboy is another matter. I once had a set of round ones in highly glazed brown, with lids and flared cylindrical handles. I used these often for French onion soup, a purpose for which they were well suited. They were robust enough for the rustic dish, hel...

It took more than two and a half years to rebuild. Inside, one of Australia's best pipe organs sits in the north transept. One of the first things the fire brigade had done on entering was to throw a tarpaulin about the size of a tennis court over the organ to lessen water damage. Then they put the fire out before the whole place went up. Nice work. Major rebuilding took place in the roof and ceiling . Most of the furnishings - pews, carpet etc - had to be replaced due to water damage. Although the interior is now almost complete, scaffolding fills the apse - the 'east wall' - which in this case really is at the east end of the building. Fabric has been draped over the scaffolding to partially obscure it during services, so that the altar has the appearance of a movie set designed to look like a church. The centre aisle is patterned marble where before there was red carpet. It's a little over the top in design, shines like a mirror and is very echoey. Drop the crysta...

... mixed with aroma of brewing coffee at dawn before the traffic has started and the world is still quiet ... when you were ten and your mother took the pie out of the oven and cut it at the table and steam curled in the air and the aroma of baked egg and bacon and pastry was like something you had never smelled before ... in a takeaway when you are as hungry as a tiger and the sandwich hand slips your freshly toasted $5 bacon and egg sandwich (extra butter on top) into a brown paper bag and you sit in the park and pull out your newspaper and tear open the paper bag that is now partially translucent ... when it is cooked so long in the pan it crumbles into deep red shards of salty crunchiness, because that's how you like it best ... on the fish shop grill when George the Greek throws it down next to the meat pattie and the onions and the egg and he drags the bacon around to turbo-charge the heat and it sizzles and pops and then he builds your burger ... when it comes ou...

You know you're famous when the papers keep wishing you happy birthday after you die. The Weekend Australian of October 9 carried a panel on its front page below the masthead that read: John Lennon Turns 70 . Turns? I thought he died in 1980. The article was OK and they said he was a genius and they ran lists of his five best songs but they run it every ten years, sometimes every five. They just change the age. One day last January, while I was painting the house, I had ABC radio on to pass the time. They were talking about the 75th anniversary of Elvis Presley's birth. His music was all over the airwaves and a panel discussion decided he could not, after all, be bestowed with the mantle of 'genius' because he didn't write his own songs as did John Lennon, who seemed to be the benchmark or high water mark for pop genius in the eyes of those who know. I don't know. Did Beniamino Gigli write any songs? Look out, here's another birthday: Chuck Berry . ...

The zucchini is one of my favourite vegetables, except that it's a fruit. (Oh, not that debate again.) Not only are they fruit, but they also have a different name depending where you are in the world. In some places they are summer squash, while in others they are courgettes. I once had something like this fractured conversation with someone who misheard, asking "Did you say Corvettes?" Nice. They grow fast. Shame they're not red, because then you'd have little red courgettes. I like the little white ones best. They're called white, but they are pale mottled green. Their flesh is delicate and they are good sliced and boiled with chopped onion and a little butter and a dash of nutmeg and salt and pepper. In the following recipe they support sardines in a dish which combines the characteristic strong flavour of the fish with the warm earthiness of the rice-filled zucchini, accentuated with the tang of lemon juice. Kind of Sicilian, I suppose. Stuffed zucch...

I had to find out what had happened to my name. When I changed my template, Blogger substituted the word 'writer' for the words 'kitchen hand' in the footer of every post in my blog. And there are more than a thousand posts. I couldn't put up with that. First a quick fix. In advanced template design, I made the 'posted by' section white over white so it could not be seen. Of course, I could have left it at that and just typed 'kitchen hand' at the base of each post and to hell with the footer, but that wouldn't really solve the mystery. I had to go in and investigate. Into the netherworld I slipped, silently, like Philip Marlowe into General Sternwood's orchid greenhouse. The atmosphere was similarly stifling. Jagged, ugly, indecipherable HTML was everywhere, running off in absurd line-breaks and full of words like maxwidget and fauxborder. Brave? I'm taking my life in my hands even typing those strange words in this post. They migh...

Except now I've lost my byline altogether. I'm going to climb inside the edit box with a spanner and a flashlight and push some HTML around and find out where the hell my proper name is. I could blast the whole thing sky high and take Blogger with it. Send out a search party if I'm not back in a week.

The snow peas are still popping out, the last cos lettuce went into a Caesar salad last week, and I've just picked the last red cabbage. Ten of them sat in the front row of the vegetable garden, a straight line of perfect round purple balls wearing large bluish outer leaf collars, like Elizabethan royalty sitting up at a long table. We gave some away and ate the rest. Much went into salads; I cubed some of it and boiled it and served it on platters of gado gado and similar hot-and-cold dishes featuring peanut or chili sauce variants. The leaves are densely packed and they stay together well when cubed. Of course, you can just boil the stuff and eat it in the ordinary way. Or try this: Red cabbage and onions. There's a million variations on this dish, but this version was easy and good. In a heavy pan, fry a couple of chopped medium size onions in ghee. Cut a red cabbage in two. Shred one half and add it to the pan. Stir gently to coat in ghee, then turn heat way down and ...

Farewell, Dame Joan Sutherland . This record (yes, record) still hits my turntable every Christmas. It's not Christmas dinner fare but is good for a quiet Christmas Eve with a drink. There might be enough trills on it to decorate the tree, and the old record might crackle like a Northern Hemisphere yuletide fire, but Sutherland's voice is sweet and pure and soars like an angel, reminding you somehow of childhood Christmases and the joy they held. Choice cut: O Holy Night .

It's a monster. It rests patiently and silently all the long winter in a corner of the windowless shed at the bottom of the garden under a corrugated cement-sheeting roof and a layer of dust. Then spring arrives and it comes out and I dust it off by hosing it down, like an elephant at the zoo. It is made from cast iron and it weighs either a ton or a tonne, the French version. Who knows? It's heavy. But it is humble. My barbecue has none of those things that copywriters call 'features'. It has no side burners, no cabinet, no window, no quartz ignition, no batteries, no warming rack and no rotisserie, motorised or not. It has no wok feature, no built-in lighting, no flame-tamer and no fancy name like Tuscany or Renaissance GrillPro . I couldn't bring myself to cook on a barbecue called Tuscany . It would just be too ridiculously pretentious, like wearing an apron and a chef's hat while you grill for your guests. If they must give barbecues names, why don't...

It didn't pour like fluid, it fell like coiled rope into a well of oil. Something rose from it that was chocolate, or dried figs, or a timber yard on a warm morning after rain. Maybe all of them. Maybe none. Maybe it just smelled like red wine. Then I got the chocolate again. I don't even like chocolate that much. Hardly ever eat it. But in here it smelled fantastic, like something you've eaten long ago and have memories that get fonder with time. But what was the chocolate? It wasn't bar chocolate, or soft chocolate made with extra butter, or creamy Easter egg chocolate. It was something else. How specific can you be with the aroma of chocolate in red wine? Then I tasted it. It tasted like Kiri te Kanawa's voice sounds. The chocolate was still there. I wasn't sure now whether I was tasting it, or smelling it, or both at the same time. I should ask a wine bore how it all works one day, and request he keep the answer to ten words or fewer. Red wine is just...

I'd never grown snow peas before. Last year in the front garden bed we had a row of carrots. They didn't grow, and they took all winter to do it. They sulked and took up space that could have yielded something more useful than hard orange sticks good only for horses to chew. My fault of course. Probably didn't feed them enough. I'd heard of horse carrots when I was a child. Always wondered what they were. (Always wondered what those warning signs on the back of horse floats meant, as well. Caution horses , the signs used to read. I asked my father. He told me they were very careful horses, never bucked or shied.) So no more carrots. (And never believe your father when he has a smile playing about his lips.) We planted snow peas in winter instead. They grew, and they started sprouting snow peas a month ago. The vine winds about a simple three-sided pyramid of three stakes meeting at the top. The pods come out and dangle like earrings, or decorations on a Christmas tr...

The Heart Foundation is stressing about a rise in butter sales thanks apparently to Junior Masterchef . Relax, Mr Heart Foundation. Stress is bad for your health. It gives you heart attacks. Aside from that, don't they realise that that 9.3% rise in butter sales means more people are going to the supermarket to fetch ingredients to cook their own meals? With completely natural products? Would they rather people phoned out for pizza and burgers? That would really give them a coronary. But no; cooking at home instead of ordering takeout is a big health hazard if that toxic substance, butter, is involved: Heart Foundation healthy weight director Susan Anderson said MasterChef "does certainly seem to be contributing" to the problem. "When we ask people what's the reason for using butter, they say it's because that's what the recipe says," Ms Anderson said. "It would be great to see leading chefs use margarine in their recipes." What the he...

The first warm day. It was latest arrival of spring I can remember. I sat on the beach reading the weekend broadsheet while the boys tore up and down the sand. Then, following a story I had read them earlier about a windstorm blowing a beach away, they threw it. I was the victim. The idea was I had to use the paper as a shield or a tent against the gale of sand. It worked well for them. Next morning my pillow was full of sand. Tracy joined us with the small one. The gale had subsided by then and they were ready for afternoon tea. Their mother produced fresh shortbread, still warm with the characteristic grainy texture provided by the use of a combination of rice and wheat flours. They sat and munched while the small one blinked tiny eyes at her first view of sea. What do they think? Later, I walked back to the house with Tom through quiet ti tree-lined streets. It was unnaturally still. Dead. Not a car. Not a human. It was a ghost town. It must have been early in the last quarter o...

Two weeks ago, my brother posted this photograph dating to 1971. The two aunts - sisters - at far left and third from left died in 2001 and 2008 respectively. By chance everyone else in the picture met again last week at the funeral of the middle aunt's husband. He made 95. My second-cousin, holding her grandmother's hands, is now in her early forties. Her hair is still the same colour. Second from right is my mother.

The drought is over and wool production is on the rise : The rain has come at the right time for wool producers. For three years sheep numbers have fallen and last year the state produced a record low of 50,000 bales of wool. This year growers are expecting to fill about 10,000 more bales. William wears vest by Grandma Annie. (Thomas as usual wouldn't stand still, but he'd thrown off his vest (same pattern, red/navy colourways) earlier. Alexandra wears hat by Aunt Kirsty. Get knitting, ladies. Those bales are piling up. And anyway, polar fleece is made from petrochemicals. (How many hats in a bale, at a minimum 110kg?)

Late one night. Home from work in an office in the city by train that was late and dirty and full of those newspapers they give to commuters to stare vacantly at while they ride the rails back to suburbia, and then strew on the floor as they get off at Ginifer or Alamein or Mount Waverley or Mooroolbark. They call it Mx , but it's just tomorrow's Herald Sun without the Terry McCrann column. Close to midnight. But you have to eat. I turned on the radio. There are two classical music stations. Sometimes they play classical music. Other times the ABC one plays endless audience applause while the announcer draws out his vowels, ABC-style, and gushes. It sounds like a live weather report. Over at MBS the announcer tells you the composer's life story and then plays a two-minute minuet. I rolled the dial to an oldies station. Pasta shells with tuna, cheese and peas. I set a pot of water on the stove and salted it and threw in a few drops of oil and lit the burner. Yawn. ...

Long-term readers might recall, or they might not, my search for the perfect Caesar salad 'experience'. Once, I encountered, in fact ate , a particularly nasty one in a food court at the law end of Bourke Street. Another, ordered at one of those mezzanine outdoor cafes at the base of a St Kilda Road tower, was quite good but blew away before I could eat it. It was a very light salad of dressed lettuce and wispy croutons served in a shallow bowl. The café was like a wind tunnel and bits of eggy lettuce kept blowing off into the air, probably ending up up in the plane trees on the St Kilda Road median strip, or maybe even on a tram into town. My dining companion that day said I should have ordered the lasagne, which she declared the best she'd ever eaten, as well as not blowing away. My worst Caesar salad ‘experience’ to date was in a café in the Keilor Road, North Essendon, shopping strip one day last year. It was served from a chiller display cabinet in which they put all t...

Once upon a time, I read a science fiction story about a scientist who discovered that time passed in a helix pattern, rather than in a straight line. Through experimentation, he fused the present with an earlier time strand, and found himself in the past. I can do that by reading a book. A month or so ago I had plenty of time on my hands. Unable to find my copies of A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu , Poor Fellow My Country or Clarissa (I did have them, didn’t I, somewhere?), I hauled out my copy of Lord of the Rings (the single volume 1970s Unwin edition with the yellow cover) and set off on the journey once more. 37 years is a good space of time between readings of a book; you remember the plot vaguely, but you have forgotten enough to enjoy the story again. And that’s exactly how it turned out. I hadn't forgotten about the Ring, of course, but I had forgotten characters such as Ghan-Buri-Ghan and Finuviel. (The new baby came this close to being named Finuviel or Galadriel. ...

The 'independents' are only installing a government. There is no guarantee they will pass legislation. Their sanctimonious 'parliamentary reform' should include a rider that independents in a position to decide government are obliged to choose the party higher on their how-to-vote card.

A vegetable-growers' industry survey has found the carrot to be Australia's favourite vegetable, ahead of the potato and the tomato. I'll allow that if the fruit growers are allowed to claim rhubarb.

Life is hard. Now you have to count fish so you know how many are left. People glare at you in the fish shop when you stare hungrily at the ‘endangered’ one, juicy and glistening on the slab and just begging to be drizzled with some delicious sauce or marinade and barbecued. But how many have to be left before you can eat its brothers and sisters? What's the morally acceptable number of fish in the sea? What are the ethics of all this? I'd hate to be a fishmonger. Customer: "That silver fillet lying there. Did he have family? Or did you kill them all already?" Fishmonger: "Nothing to do with me. I didn't catch them. Talk to the fisherman." Customer: "You're the middleman. You’re just as much to blame. Like the pilot who flew the plane that dropped the bomb." Fishmonger: "You're the customer. It's your fault. Don’t eat fish. Go next door to the butcher and buy yourself a steak." Customer: " Are you kidding? ...

The first of spring, it rained most of the day. At lunchtime I walked from Collins Street up narrow Church Lane, where noodle shops and tiny cafes gaze at each across cobblestones. Water was escaping from an ancient round iron manhole cover and running across the stones. Umbrellas collided apologetically, and smokers banished to the wet street huddled into shop windows and shielded their cigarettes from the rain and the sanctimonious. I crossed Little Bourke where Church Lane becomes Church Street, because it is wider, and runs behind the AMP plaza, a 1969 tribute to rake-angled brown marble and corporate sculpture . The buildings and plaza were completely encased in demolishers’ hessian, like a Cristo installation. Is it coming down or being ‘renovated’? And what have they done with Clement Meadmore's Awakening ? Don’t know. I got a sandwich - chicken, avocado, tomato and cheese on sourdough - from the food plaza in Bourke near King Street and went back to the office. Later, w...

It was an office in a tall anonymous building at the end of town in which people walk about with name tags hanging around their necks, just so they don't forget. They even wear them on the train. To and from. I wonder where they hang them when they get home. Maybe they leave them on. Percy Grainger, Level 65, Collins Street, Melbourne. Over red striped flannelette pyjamas and brown checked Grosby slippers. I love the adventure of working in a new office. Not new, but new to me. Sometimes I get called in just for a day, sometimes a week, sometimes two or more, depending on what they want done. The adventure of a new office is whether the computers work, if the people are nice, and what's in the kitchen. The people were nice. It's a funny thing. The first thing they tell you when you arrive is the way to the kitchen. 'Grab yourself a coffee,' they say. 'Kitchen's that way.' And they wave an arm about wildly. I'd fortified myself with tea before ...

Recorded 40 years before the event, and would have been useful 30 years ago when Alexandra's (and W.'s and T.'s) much older sister was born. But no internet then, of course. Nice strings and harmonies. Not sure about about the 'bought her' and 'daughter' rhyming, however. A little clunky. Glen Shorrock went on to form Little River Band; Brian Cadd previously mentioned here .

I dusted some flathead tails in flour and a little salt and pepper and threw them into the pan. I had to hurry. The boys were hungry. It was early evening, about six o'clock, still patchy light in the western sky now, but overcast with the threat of heavy rain. The pan was hot and lightly greased with a mixture of peanut oil and ghee. I shook it once or twice as the fish sizzled and the flame caught the oil and the ghee and flared up over the stove. The boys screamed with excitement, thinking I was about to burn the house down, and the fish finished with a nice barbecued flavour. Rounds of potato were frying in the other pan and turning golden brown. Just how they like them. * I had taken them to the pool earlier, the indoor heated one. Tom has almost learned to swim and William at last can place his head under water. It's a start. Tom flies off the edge into the water with a running jump and surfaces in the middle of the pool. No fear. You have to watch him. William wades ...

The weather’s been bleak. I took the boys up to see the waterfall at Coburg lake. This is a regular trip in very rainy weather, but the view of the waterfall had been spoiled by the installation of one of those exercise stations, a kind of grown-up playground in which people climb on to machines that look like medieval torture racks and make their arms go around in circles while their legs pump up and down, or look like a chicken while their legs do fast scissors. Don’t people go for a walk any more? The waterfall crashed and the boys watched the water flooding over the Merri Creek bike path, and superimposed in front of the scene two exercisers were swinging around madly. Then they tired of it and walked away, slowly, as if exhausted. The waterfall continued to crash and roar and we got to see it properly for a while, and then more fast-scissors and chicken people came along and spoiled the scene again. That night it rained and the wind blew and it seemed like winter was only jus...

Last Sunday morning, ten minutes to seven.

Yes, a recipe. It's about time. This one goes back a few weeks when I was ill enough to be eating soup, but not too ill to want a little heat and taste and colour in my food. Sweet potato and carrot soup. While the sweet potato (orange type) and the carrot were cooking in one pot, I sweated a large chopped onion in some peanut oil in a frying pan, adding a scored clove of garlic after a few minutes. When they were done, I reserved a little cooked onion and processed the rest with the sweet potato and carrot, adding a cup of the cooking liquid (or use stock) along with a chopped raw medium-hot chilli pepper* and two cardomom pods. Adjust stock as required. I tipped the puree into a pot and reheated the soup, adding half a cup of full-cream milk and salt and pepper. To serve, I added a spoonful of the fried onions and some thick (e.g., Greek-style) yogurt. I took it in bed with a book and the early afternoon sun streaming in the window. I could get used to this. *The long red...

My mother-in-law says they cannot smile yet. It looks like a smile. She is a week old in the picture. Retrospective: William , in his second day; and Thomas at three days.

FATHER is now standing over the crib. MOTHER is reading; the elephants have retired for the night. Silence reigns. FATHER gazes at the infant. He turns momentarily back to MOTHER. FATHER: Sure is a big one. You must have a champion hammer-thrower in your family tree. MOTHER: Not that I know of. Maybe a caber-tosser. But I thought it was you. FATHER: Not us. We were distance athletes. Thin as rakes. Except for my grandfather. He used to laugh at us when we'd be madly lacing up our shoes to go out for a run, and tell us he'd never jogged a step in his life. He died a week short of 99. MOTHER: That was the breathing he saved along the way. Actually, my grandmother's responsible. She was tiny, the size of a sparrow. One of my aunts was 10 pounds at birth. That was in Scotland in the 1930s. And born at home. Turned out to be an average sized adult, but she just got off to a good start. FATHER: All that porridge and clootie dumpling during pregnancy I suppose. MOTHER:...

And the stage is in darkness for a second or two, until a soft spotlight falls on a small item of furniture at stage left. It is a crib. In the crib is a newborn infant. The infant is a girl. She is asleep. A soft click is heard. The light over the crib fades low and another spotlight falls stage right on two easy chairs on either side of a round table on which rests a lamp. MOTHER, reading a $9.95 Penguin reissued copy of Brideshead Revisited , and FATHER, reading a newspaper, sit in the chairs. The remains of afternoon tea rest on the table alongside the lamp. The scene remains thus for several seconds until broken by noises off. The noises sound like the approach of stampeding elephants. A door crashes, unseen. A boy, pursued by a smaller boy, gallops onto the stage. The latter boy follows. His arm is outstretched, and his finger and thumb are cocked, as if to shoot. They slide to a stop, glance at MOTHER and FATHER, and remain in position for several seconds. FATHER's ne...

And here we are in the depths of winter - and the coldest snap for fourteen years - and immersing ourselves in stews and soups; and toasted sandwiches the size of doorstops, with cheese melting out onto the plate; and porridge with honey in the morning and raisin toast with honey at night; and red wine and black beer and mashed potato and well-roasted pumpkin and caramelised onions cooked in ghee piled up on mountains of rice and red lentil cooked with cardamom and nutmeg and cinnamon and black pepper. All well and good. But not if you can't taste it. I had a slight winter chill last week and thought nothing of it. On Saturday morning I got out and set myself the task of removing a section of invading agapanthus. I took a splitter out of the shed. It was like digging up a rainforest. The further you go in, the more there is. I turned the radio on and listened to Off the Record and that kept me going. They played more of The Dingoes' new release and a bunch of other great mus...