What I cooked last night.

The school made a little less than $30,000. That's a lot of jars of jam. That will buy some computers. The best thing isn't what they do with it, but that the children saw the work that went into it. You can hold out your hand for a government grant courtesy of the taxpayer, or you can get it the old-fashioned way: earn it. They see their mothers slaving over a stove or a sewing machine for weeks. Lucky children. They just don't know it yet.

A jar of home-made tomato sauce, bought at yesterday's school fete and no doubt made by someone's grandmother, was the base for this easy dish: Chicken Provencale. Saute a couple of chopped onions and a clove of garlic in olive oil. Add about a kilogram of cubed chicken breast; stir and and brown slightly. Now add two dozen pitted kalamata olives; a red capsicum cut into strips; ten button mushrooms, halved; a cup of peas and the jar of tomato sauce. Simmer gently for an hour. Cook polenta to instructions, adding parmesan cheese. Spoon into serving bowls. Add chicken stew. Garnish with gremolata. * The school fete? Rides, food stalls including devonshire teas, home-made curries, and gyros; a book stall, a silent auction, lucky dips, a talent quest, and a perfect sunny day with 24 degrees. You can't buy that. William, in a red check shirt and corduroy pants, kicked off the talent quest with, predictably, Hound Dog . In the craft centre Tracy - dressed as a fairy

Incompetence, lies, bad policies and inability to govern wisely are one thing, but this story from a couple of weeks back may have tipped the balance in the eye of the public, which does not tolerate tawdriness in public office. Public office includes 'partners'.

We ate Mexican last night. No, not chili and cornbread; fresh asparagus, from the supermarket, labelled Product of Mexico . Usually it's Peru. I wondered which airport they'd flown out of. I boiled them lightly and sprinkled them with lime juice and cracked pepper, they were a good accompaniment for: Ssalmon with lime butter To 50g softened butter, add the zest of two limes and the juice of one, a tablespoonful of finely chopped parsley and two chopped cloves of garlic. Combine and refreeze. Slice into rounds. With your knife blade on the horizontal, slice thick pieces of salmon almost in two, leaving a join. Insert rounds of lime butter into the fish. Barbecue the fish: I did mine in a heavy cast iron pan on the coals in order to catch the melting butter and pour over the fish when serving, along with with extra lime juice from quarters of the second lime. Drink: cold sauvignon blanc. Or a gimlet.

Yes, it's been busy. A lot has happened. Here are a few things. 1. The heatwave ended. Fortuitously, the school had ordained the Tuesday following Labour Day as an in-service day, making a four-day weekend corresponding with the last four days of the heat. Sometimes you can be lucky. We had four days at the beach. 2. On the last of the four days, a cargo ship sliding down the bay in full view of hundreds on the shore issued a large cloud of black smoke which detached itself and drifted off towards Queenscliff. Black smoke? Was this some kind of a joke? It was the day before they ... 3. ... elected a new Pope, who told the world he would just go with the guys on the bus. I'm trying to find a Latin translation, but the internet translation sites do it literally and make no sense. 4. Alexandra fell off the coffee table, and hit her head on the sofa on the way down, and cried uncharacteristically for the next thirty minutes, holding her neck. You can guess the next bit: an

(Or scroll to the baked chicken recipe below.) * Everything is dry. Two heavy downpours in two months; nothing in between. But I've been watering the garden regularly - all summer long - and it is a lush, shady haven to come home to on these hot nights. Yesterday I got the quarterly water bill. Surprisingly, it wasn't much higher than usual, the usage component overshadowed by parks and gardens charges, sewage fees, water supply costs, waterways and drainage charges, various levies, desalination plant extortion fees, GST, carbon tax, whatever. I made some of those up. So why do they call it a water bill? I don't know. The water's the cheapest thing on it. Yesterday I saw an elderly woman hosing her Coburg driveway in broad daylight, as elderly people seem to enjoy doing. Watering your driveway is probably going a bit far, but the fact that she was doing it brazenly, like robbing a bank without a mask, meant that people are slowly recovering from the quasi-crimin

I have noticed men in the hip inner suburbs wearing hats. Suggestion: gentlemen, take off your hat when you are in a restaurant. You look like you are in a hurry. This is especially the case with boaters, fedoras, homburgs, Akubras, bowlers, trilbies and tricornes. Yes, I saw a man wearing a tricorne in a Southbank cafe once (although he might have been an actor on his way to a Gilbert and Sullivan production at the State Theatre). Time to bring back the hatcheck. Other recent dining out etiquette breaches here .

Axl Rose : Regarding social media, I really don't understand what appears to be the general population's lack of concern over privacy issues in publicizing their entire lives on the internet for others to see to such an extent... but hey it's them, not me, so whatever. However, when so many seem to be making similar choices regarding their privacy to where it seems to become the norm, and in turn businesses use someone's lack of involvement with social media to marginalize or stereotype and stigmatize them, or use it as grounds not to hire someone, I feel it's extremely unfair and seems a bit Orwellian.

Replies to my 'one book' post turned up in comments where they might have been missed, so I'm sure my correspondents won't mind if I post them here. From Melbourne Girl : I loved Race of a Lifetime, which is all about the run up to the 2008 presidential election. I started Lindsay Tanner's "Sideshow" and got about a third of the way through and thought I really need to be in the right frame of mind to read it, so put it down. The same with Flat Earth News by Nick Davies. There are some books you need to be in the right mood for. A few books have made me cry, but the first was a novel about kids on a farm that was hit by a bushfire. I read it as a kid and I remember the animals in it perished in the fire. I thought it was by Colin Thiele, but I'm not so sure now. Not really sure who wrote it but it's stayed with me. I'm not sure a book really ever changed my life, but I do remember "Catcher In the Rye" pretty vividly...and I

From that world authority on everything, Wikipedia: Salisbury steak is a dish made from a blend of minced beef and other ingredients, which is shaped to resemble a steak, and is usually served with gravy or brown sauce. ... Salisbury steak was invented by an American physician, Dr. J. H. Salisbury (1823–1905), an early proponent of a low-carbohydrate diet for weight loss; the term "Salisbury steak" has been in use in the United States since 1897. ... The dish is popular in the United States, where it is traditionally served with gravy and mashed potatoes or noodles. Does that make Philip Marlowe a closet health nut? (Come to think of it, he never seems to eat carbohydrates other than toast at breakfast.) The book was The Long Goodbye and Marlowe balances the health food with a few gimlets here and there, at least one with orange instead of lime. He doesn't like it, of course.

The title company had closed for the day. I closed for the day too, and drove over to La Cienaga to Rudy's Bar-B-Q, gave my name to the master of ceremonies, and waited for the big moment on a bar stool with a whiskey sour in front of me and Marek Weber's waltz music in my ears. After a while I got in past the velvet rope and ate one of Rudy's "world-famous" Salisbury steaks, which is hamburger on a slab of burnt wood, ringed with browned-over mashed potato, supported by fried onion rings and one of those mixed up salads which men will eat with complete docility in restaurants, although they would probably start yelling if their wives tried to feed them one at home. After that I drove home. As I opened the front door the phone started to ring. No. 1 here.

Two Coles supermarket face each other across Waterfield Street. Two hundred metres away is a Woolworths. A couple of weeks ago, NQR opened next door to Woolworths. Coles and Woolworths sell 825g Australian-produced tinned fruit for $3.65 to $4.99, or imports from Thailand or China (but sometimes elsewhere) for $1.50 to $1.60. NQR sells Australian tinned fruit produced for the export market, but recalled or cancelled, for $1.49. Some commentators and politicians want the ACCC to examine the duopoly's role in reducing competition. Looks like NQR is doing the job with no cost to the taxpayer.

It was recorded by Jerry Lee Lewis, the Spinners, Lulu, Elvis Presley, Willie Nelson (who wrote it), the Supremes, Billy Joe Nelson, Al Green, Dorothy Moore and many others; but no version could touch this version , recorded by eighteen-year-old Jimmy Elledge - his first and arguably only big hit. Well hello there My, it's been a long, long time How am I doing? O I guess I'm doin' fine It's been so long now And it seems that it was only yesterday Ain't it funny How time slips away Another one for the turntable.