What I Cooked Last Night

Several Christmases ago, I was giving an average five goats or wells to Third World villages in lieu of receiving gifts from friends. The number dwindled in recent years; and this year, none. The chattering classes seem to have given up on sanctimonious and conspicuous charity dressed up as Christmas cheer. So why do I feel guilty? Every gift I unwrapped this year brought visions of a Third World villager peering to the horizon for a goat who would never come. Happy new year to all.

... will not be on my Christmas table this year. I'm going back to basics.

That kale was useful in other ways. I ran out of the usual greens for pesto, so I took several fronds of kale (examining carefully for bugs), the rest of the coriander that had run to seed in the blink of an eye (actually, two weeks from maturity) and a handful of parsley also running to seed. The rest of the pine nuts and a few almonds, some garlic just out of the ground last week, half a cup of olive oil, and half a cup of grated hard cheese. Plenty of pepper and salt. Blitz. Cook the fettucine (green and red for a little jaded year-end colour), boil cubes of sweet potato, drain the pasta, fold through sweet potato with a little olive oil. Top with a tablespoon of sour cream and the pesto on that. More grated parmesan. Heaven.

The only catch? It's made of dandelion. When I was growing up we had Bushell's Chicory Essence in the cupboard. And Tracy used to drink Caro, which at least looks like coffee. Don't see why we shouldn't try dandelion.

A new ad for a chicken company boasts that its chickens get to run around in the sun and climb ramps. (Then they have their heads cut off and are plucked, but that's later.) The fate of chickens is something of a national obsession, which is why chicken producers are hitting back with images of farmyard bliss, where every fowl is happy, for three months. The producers are on the defensive from chicken freedom fighters, a loose axis of lobby groups battling for territorial expansionism to allow chickens to walk, Rousseau-like, away from the confines of their crowded cages and into a solitude and peace they might not otherwise know. But are chickens their own worst enemy? After giving chickens access to open space via doors leading from their barn to freedom, one major producer found the chickens were actually refusing to venture outside, preferring to sit in their stalls or scratch about in the dirt inside the barn. The freedom fighters hit back, demanding the ungrateful chick...

I started this weblog ten years ago. It was meant to be an online filing system for recipes, because I didn't want to end up with 10,000 yellowing newspaper tear-outs all over the kitchen, which is what happened to this recipe hoarder . I didn't even have comments then, and introduced the feature later in case I wanted to make footnotes to entries. It was a good time to start a weblog, because they were new, and so people sought them out and read them, and I was lucky enough to gain a few readers; one or two or maybe three of which still visit and comment occasionally. Today, because there are so many, it would be next to impossible to open a weblog and attract visitors without publicity, which kind of misses the point. I can imagine Twitter going the same way when everyone has a Twitter account and less time to read everyone else's. One of the first recipes I posted was a simple Asian-style soup of butterfish fillets cooked in stock with onions, garlic, ginger, herbs a...

I spent my early-1970s schooldays covering the empty space in my exercise books with words designed in flower power fonts, using, alternately, an Osmiroid fountain pen and a Ballograf ballpoint pen. There were three reasons for this floral typographical occupation. The first was that such fonts were widespread and very popular then, especially on record album cover art. The letters were beautiful, voluptuous, infinitely variable and very accessible. The second reason was that Form Two schoolwork was so boring it made watching paint dry look like the last quarter of the 1970 grand final or even the pre-match entertainment (if there was any then). I spent hours crafting type while the teacher went on about wool production in the Western District or the Atherton Tablelands, or the Roman who cast his hand into the fire of a brazier. Had Twitter or smart phones been invented then I might never have developed an appreciation for typefaces. I might also have grown up with the memory span...

The road that ran from west to east through the small Gippsland town was its only street. If you kept going you would end up at Neerim South, with Neerim North and Neerim East beyond. There is no Neerim proper; and Neerim West would be in the middle of the Tarago Reservoir. GPS is useless out here. The town was high on a hill and other peaks were visible in the distance. Cows grazed on their impossibly steep hills. They looked like they should fall off, but they stuck, like fuzzy felt. It was a warm Saturday around lunch time. A white sedan pulled up in the main - only - street outside a café. Three women got out of the car. The driver was a sprightly, white-haired octogenarian and wore a cream blouse over tartan trousers and soft leather shoes. She looked like a senior golfer. The two younger women, her daughters, might have been in their early forties but looked years younger. Both had shoulder-length brown hair and wore t-shirts over designer jeans and the kind of running shoes ...

Six years? Must be the quickest six years in history. (This, of course, is literally true, because each passing year is a smaller proportion of your life. Oh, forget it.) It was a warm Sunday morning in November 2007, close to midday. I sat on a deck chair in the back garden of a large, rambling house that was once a farm homestead somewhere south of Warburton. In the distance, the mountains were smudges of blue between the gums. I wasn't alone in the garden. Others were reading newspapers and some were just staring, blinking in the sun and nursing their Ketel One hangovers, silently and reverently. Some guests were emerging from the old house slowly, as if having just woken from a dream. They probably had. The aromas of crisping bacon and toast drifted across the lawn on a warm spring breeze. There was a kind of jubilation among some of the party, if jubilation is compatible with a hangover. It was a little forced, or even wary, for some of the older ones who could still rec...

The green currently rearing its curly head in the vegetable garden is kale, otherwise known as curly kale, named pertinently because its leaves are so curly, you have to examine every leaf minutely to remove any bugs, insects, grubs or whatever might be loitering in its voluminous folds. In fact, the folds of curly kale are so dense, I estimate the average kale leaf, if flattened, which is impossible, would have a perimeter similar to that of Tasmania. The other day I watched as a small bird emerged from the folds of one of the shrubs. The recipe featuring kale takes minutes, unless you count the time looking for bugs, in which case it could take hours depending on how ‘organic’ your garden is. Bugs love organic gardens. Creamy curly kale with mushrooms and prosciutto on polenta. After extracting wildlife from your bunch of kale and washing it (the two processes go, of course, hand in hand), chop it roughly and steam it in a little water until it collapses. (It takes longer tha...

Last week - but the photo is a year old. Gift: first pair of football boots, half price at Rebel Sport. End of season is a great time for football fans to have their birthday. They get twice the value. Second gift: vintage 1950s sheriff's badge and holster set in original unopened packaging, made in England and found in Essendon op shop. Gold for a seven year old. Tom said it was his best birthday ever. Five friends visited after school for an early dinner of spaghetti bolognese.

Although you could, of course, polish your shoes with Vegemite. One of these products is celebrating its 90th birthday. I'm not sure which.

On October 23, before even the Melbourne Cup has been run! A radio commercial for Mercedes Benz cars, backed by Angels We Have Heard on High , the voiceover urging people to 'secure' a demo model Merc, the faux-upmarket jargon designed to impress the cashed-up bogans who comprise today's Mercedes Benz market. MB could at least have spent some money on an original composition rather than a tune in the public domain. I'm off to the supermarket to secure a carrot.

It was a nice stew, almost perfect. It's only taken several decades to refine, but I'm almost there. It can't be taught. You have to learn it by trial and error. How small you cube the beef. The few extra seconds browning it. The amount of flour, salt, pepper. The heat of the pan. The weather. Whether or not you have had coffee yet that day. Where the planets are. Whatever. Even so, it is still better some times than others. That bit is chance. But even the children ate it the other night. Then they wanted more. That proves it. I used oyster blade, which has a thin layer of connective tissue running through it like a vein of gold in quartz, which melts during long cooking and turns the meat molten. I browned it in seasoned flour in a very hot pan, but browning is the wrong word, so we will not use it again. Seal it only. Browning will cook it. The word browning should be reserved for Robert, or the gun. Then it was all routine. Beef stock, a carrot, an onion, a stick of...

Subtitled: The Hunt For Red Cabbage in October. * Why are menu descriptions in restaurants so long and pretentious? Because it helps them sell the meal. A restaurant menu would never offer 'cabbage risotto' because no one would order it, would they? Of course not. It doesn't sound very nice. But it is. Risotto with leek and red cabbage. Finely chop an onion and a couple of inches of leek, and score two cloves of garlic**. Saute these in a generous amount of olive oil until just soft. Pour in a cupful of Arborio rice. Stir the rice to coat in oil. Pour in half a cup of white wine. Then add enough boiling stock to cover the rice. Stir to stop the rice sticking. If you turn down the heat low enough, you can leave it for a while; but remarkably, many stoves can't go down beyond a certain temperature. I used to have an electric stove and found it perfect, but most people don't like them. Finely slice a couple of red cabbage leaves. Add. They will give off the...

Saturday afternoon we were at the indoor pool. It was built some time in the 1980s overlooking City Oval. They put it right behind the northern goal, and the entire south wall is a window, making it a virtual grandstand. You go for a swim and get a VFL football game thrown in, with a view across the brilliant green to terraces, mainly empty, that rise away and almost obscure the Edwardian roofs beyond. The shadows creep across the green late in the afternoon, and sometimes rainstorms blow in from the west. The old grandstand is at the other end. I followed VFA decades ago when Essendon had some lean years and some Essendon players transferred to Dandenong, then a VFA power. Now it's VFL, a blend of the old VFA and the then-VFL reserves. On Saturday, they put the AFL grand final on the loudspeaker system and we - the boys and I - played pool volleyball and listened to the game. The place was almost empty, like two grand finals ago . Everyone goes home and watches it on television,...

Leeks are the world's most under-rated vegetable, except by those in the know, and the Welsh. They can even play a starring role in pasta dishes. While many people think of pasta sauces as either tomato- or cream-based, or rough equivalents, this recipe contains neither, but is as unctuous as the cream versions, and packs as much flavour as the acid-edged tomato ones. Rigatoni with leek, mushroom and gorgonzola. Slice one large leek finely into very thin rings. Rinse to eliminate grit. Slice half a red capsicum into fine dice. Slice six button mushrooms. Place leek, capsicum and mushrooms into a pan and cook slowly with olive oil and a little butter until the leek has 'melted' but not caramelised. The capsicum and mushrooms will look after themselves, the latter shedding a little fluid to keep the whole thing moist. Meanwhile, cook your pasta. For this, I used rigatoni. Drain pasta and fold through the leek 'sauce'. Top with chopped parsley. Perfect as i...

And then, by chance, I was back in the college shown in the previous post, one cold sunny morning in early September. The recently deceased spouse of an older relative had specified that his wake be held on sacred ground. And so, there we were – three cousins, amongst a large crowd of friends and relations – gazing through the panoramic window of the new sports pavilion overlooking the main football oval. At the bottom of a steep hill, a natural valley carved out by Steele’s Creek, the oval is hemmed in by dramatic terracing that rises away at just the right angle to make it a perfect, natural amphitheatre. It’s the only original part of the entire complex. Human architects could not improve it. We watched as a tractor made manoeuvres in the middle of the ground. I think it was preparing the wicket for the cricket season. Beyond the oval, way up on the hill, a Ryan’s bus roared up the Buckley Street ascent towards Essendon Station, just like they did forty years ago when we stared, bor...

St Bernard's College celebrated sixty years in West Essendon last Friday. The college started in 1939 on a postage stamp sized block of land in Moonee Ponds, and the story of how the land in West Essendon was purchased is legendary, with an enterprising Br Murphy intercepting an estate agent with a cheque late one night to stave off the signing of an early morning developer deal. The proposed streets, never to be built, had already been named and printed in that year's Melways street directory, in a pre-emptive strike by the developer. ( See my book Murphy's Lore and Other Stories: A History of St Bernard's College as Told by Those Who Were There .) The sixtieth anniversary was shadowed by the death of 2008 graduate Christopher Lane, who was murdered in Oklahoma, USA last week. R.I.P. * Photo: looking to the west, the original building on the West Essendon hill; not a house to be seen, and a faint row of trees on top of the hill where Milleara Road runs today. I...

Cook pasta - spaghetti is ideal for this olio e aglio -style recipe. Toss spaghetti in a little olive oil. Cut up a dozen anchovies into small pieces. Cut a fresh chilli into very small rings. Toss anchovies and chilli through the spaghetti. This simple dish packs an amazing flavour punch. It's been on high rotation here for years. * I saw a man gazing up into the tree. It was him: the council arborist. "It will have to come down," he said, continuing to gaze at the tree. "But not because of the mistletoe," he went on, confirming the theory, "But because prunus is prone to borers which weaken the forks, and it's too close to the wires anyway." We'll have a new prunus in a couple of weeks. I have a particular fondness for prunus: my mother's street used to be lined with mature trees, and in August they would put on a show. When visiting at night I would turn into the street at the bottom of the hill, flick the headlights onto hig...

Investigation via Google proved fruitless. So I called the council, because who would know more about trees planted on council land than the local government arborist? I held on for a long time, because it was the week the rates notices went out; and half of Moreland was on the phone to council, waiting in silent rage to vent their anger at the huge annual increase in rates. Finally I got through and I said I wanted to talk to the arborist; and the receptionist said which arborist, because they had several; and I said any arborist would do, and then she asked me to describe the growth before she put me through, adding that I sounded like an arborist myself; and I said I was as far from an arborist as a maltster is from an automatic transmission mechanic. That was the end of the conversation, and she put me through. I got the arborist's voicemail. He hasn't called back yet. I suppose they don't hang around the office too much, especially in this weather. There was a gumt...

Tuna pasta usually means tuna from a can - either cooked with a napoli sauce and sludged over spaghetti; or the non-tomato version in which peas nestle in the burrows of pasta shells blanketed with melting cheese. Both are delicious; but I often make another version using fresh tuna. Pasta nicoise. This needs a chunky pasta such as the common rigatoni; I prefer tortiglioni, a similar cylindrical ridged pasta. Marinate a piece of fresh tuna in lemon juice, chopped garlic, salt and pepper for a short time. Cook pasta. Meanwhile, sear the tuna in a little olive oil and white wine. When just done, cut into fat cubes. Trim a dozen green beans, chop into thirds and steam until just done. Do the same with some asparagus spears. Chop two or three very good vine-ripened tomatoes. If very good tomatoes are not available, use semi-dried ones. The tomatoes can be warmed through or left cold, the latter particularly good for a refreshing spring version of the dish. When pasta is don...

OK, so let's investigate. First, a walk down the street. Oh, no! Next door's nature-strip prunus has the same odd outgrowth; but in two or three places. Are we descending into a strange world of Edward Lear-like Bong trees where the leaves of one grow on another completely different type? Evergreen leaves on a deciduous tree? Or is there something more sinister at work? I never read much science fiction but I did read all of John Wyndham. Now let's climb. The parasite appears to have germinated in forks of the tree. These very old prunus are subject to attack by borers of some kind, which leave small deposits that take on a muddy consistency after rain. This mud lodges in the forks. Let's presume it provides a fertile medium for germination. Closer inspection reveals tendrils encircling the bough below the infestation. Hybrid roots? Perhaps. My correspondent, Melbourne Girl, suggested Mistletoe of some kind. But does mistletoe have exterior roots or invade its hos...

Why do I see, way up at the top of the very old and very large deciduous plum tree on the nature strip at the front of our house, a bough which appears to be growing evergreen eucalyptus leaves?

Of course, in the last year of school, we had had an unofficial competition to judge the most miserable book on the curriculum. That year the education bureaucrats, in a final post-modern lurch towards literary desolation, thought it would be a good idea to make English Literature students plumb the depths of human misery on the written page. One prescribed book after another excavated the quarry of human melancholy. The buzzword of the time was 'alienation', a word as common then as today's 'diversity' or 'sustainability'. We took to the task with a morbid sense of purpose. Across the year, I moved through the catalogue of misery slowly, like reading tombstones in a cold empty cemetery. Long Day's Journey Into Night was a day in the life of a dysfunctional, drugged, drunken family who verbally abuse each other as the light dies and the fog rolls in. The End. Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill Desolation score : 2.5 stars. Sum...

Some books just disappear. Then they resurface, years later. I found A Man About a Dog , by Alec Coppel, in the back of a dim, dark secondhand shop (which oddly, or perhaps not so oddly, reminded me of the shop in The Painted Mirror episode of iconic 1970s horror series 'Night Gallery'). Published in London in 1947, the slim volume was in brand new condition and had probably sat untouched on a shelf for sixty years until its owner died. The story: Clive, a psychiatrist, is married to Storm, who has a lover, Bill. Storm also has a Scottish terrier, Montgomery: 'Montgomery was quite a lad. Jet black, relieved only by that flash of scarlet tongue, as worn by all the best Scotties, slightly protruding through the teeth.' Clive catches Storm and Bill in the act. Storm storms off, and Clive takes Bill at gunpoint to a place whose location is not revealed to the reader, or to Bill for that matter. Here, Clive restrains Bill via an ankle chain for some months, until spec...

A bookseller discusses reading therapy in last week's Weekly Review : Every day in our bookshop we meet customers keen to 'disappear into a story' but who are struggling to find, or regain, their literary mojo. Some ... suffer a reading disorder. ... We meet customers with health issues; their chemotherapy, or post-op recovery, drug treatments, or sheer exhaustion, have affected their attention spans. 'I just want an easy read' is a common request from the unwell, the infirm, the emotionally drained, the weary. The writer's 'remedial' reading list includes J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye , Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird , Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carré and Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach . Uplifting or wrist-slashing? Is Catcher in the Rye more likely to reignite one's literary passion, or kill it stone dead? Some of those books are icons of a particular kind of mid-twentieth century literary mindset. It must be d...

Two teaspoons of salt? someone exclaimed (re yesterday's recipe). It’s not that much, I replied. Indian main courses are meant to be small serves filled out by much more rice or bread and vegetables. And in any case, these recipes are upfront about their ingredients, instead of sneaking them in progressively like some others. Take a British-style beef stew, for example; in which the beef is shaken in seasoned flour before being browned. How much salt goes into the flour? More than a shake. Then stock is added to the stew. How much salt in the stock? Who knows. The rest of the seasoned flour usually thickens the stew. If it is served with potatoes, these may be cooked in salted water, mashed with more and then salted further at the table, as are any side vegetables. The whole thing may then get a downpour of Worcestershire, HP, tomato sauce or similar. Thoroughly delicious: and by that stage, quite salty. The curry, on the other hand, is garnished with yogurt and herbs. In o...

It used to be a department store, with six floors, linked by an escalator, with ceilings and interior walls and oil heating; and that was a long time ago, because buildings don’t have oil heating any more. Then the department store closed and architects turned the building into a warehouse ‘shell’, and ripped out the top ceiling revealing skylights way above, and took away the concealing walls and heating pipes, and painted the stone cold walls behind them white; and, finally, cut a giant longitudinal floor-to-ceiling hole - almost the length of the building – through the floors on five levels, and put a steel stairway in the hole, with wire rope barriers winding around each level, so you didn’t go over the edge and fall to the ground. It looked like H division at Pentridge. You could stand at the bottom and monitor the inmates behind the wire around the perimeter at every level. Then the building was leased to a company whose workers sat at computer terminals all day, and froze. ...

Alright, straitened times. So I had to sell the blue whale . (Warning: don't take heavy-handed irony in that story literally, I'm prone to exaggeration.) Before buying it, the new owner, a retired car fancier, walked around it about a hundred and fifty times, which must be a world record. I thought he was going to turn into melted butter. But he didn’t, and bought the car, and drove away in a fairly straight line. I know he will enjoy owning it because he told me the car would be joining, in his garage, an old Mitsubishi Magna and a 1970s Fiat 130. The latter model's engine was reputed to have come from the Ferrari drawing board. More likely, someone at Ferrari sent the Fiat designer a black pen to sketch it with. Fiat 130s are not seen on the roads any more as they cost a fortune to run, and then turn to rust. So in terms of initial and future outlay, buying my 760GLE would have felt like popping down to the shops for a litre of milk. The 940 remains. It has recent...

Do you still do the Vulcano pizza , I asked the girl. No , she said. But I’ll ask the chef. He’s been here about thirty years. He’ll know. She came back. What was on it , she asked, puzzled. That meant the chef didn’t know. Hence I hadn’t been in this place for more than three decades. It must have been the late seventies. I and my first wife used to dine here with her father and Penelope, his Canadian lover, the dimness of the restaurant’s brown-brick interior adding to an almost clandestine atmosphere. He and my mother-in-law had never divorced, but he lived with Penelope in a stark modern 1950s house that hung off sheer Coonan’s Hill like a light on a Christmas tree. My mother-in-law did not approve of her daughter seeing her father, a difficult situation solved by simply ignoring the disapproval. My wife’s father used to order the Vulcano pizza from the menu. It was a thick-based pizza on which was built a fiery mountain of hot salami and prosciutto and fresh diagonally-cut ...

There was a flyer in the letterbox from a semi-government body. It wanted me to "imagine if you could stream videos, download music and play games over the web at lightning fast speeds" and promised that it would "change how we access information, use communications and enjoy our entertainment". I imagined, and then I went out into the street to play football with the boys. On the same day, another semi-government body sent me a flyer offering me a "new online way to reduce your energy usage". It said I could "go online" (currently the most-used expression in marketing) and "track how much energy I was using", "see how the temperature can impact your energy usage", and "build a personal energy saving action plan". Today is just about Melbourne's coldest June day in history. The government is sending me a letter telling me the temperature affects energy use. There was a photograph in the paper the other day ...

On a cold winter night (even for others than a traveller) nothing beats onions fried until golden and then spooned lovingly over creamy potato mashed with garlic and olive oil. The aroma fills the house and seems to isolate it from the outside world. The rare fillet seared with a peppercorn and cream sauce is good too. I like it when items on the plate fight each other for star billing. Look out, more rain coming. The Merri Creek might break its banks again, like it did a fortnight ago. I couldn't walk further north than Queens Parade or be washed away. No, not the one in Clifton Hill; this one . The creek was under water where it winds around to the east. Quick. Pour another glass of red.

The Australian's Wish magazine rents out its expensive pages to world famous brands in return for advertorial articles. It pays to get these right. The latest print edition commences a story on one of Italy's oldest prestige eyewear manufacturer thus: For its latest collection, the Italian eyewear brand Persil has gone for a vintage look ... I'd be asking for my money back if I were Mr Persol.

Gently fry a chopped onion and a clove of garlic in olive oil. Before the onion browns, add a leek chopped into quartered rings, a chopped stick of celery and a few chopped sprigs of parsley. Sweat the aromatics for a few minutes. Meanwhile, in another heavy pan, brown two seasoned shanks well in olive oil. Add them to the pot, cover with stock and add a bay leaf and some chopped dried rosemary. Bring to boil. Turn down heat and simmer an hour. Peel and chop four potatoes into quarters or eighths. Add these to the pot along with a cup of barley. Adjust fluid. Simmer another hour. Stir occasionally. To serve, place each shank over a mountain range of whipped potato. Spoon leek and barley sauce over; add stewed potatoes for the potato lover. That's all of us here. For a side dish, saute whole button mushrooms in the pan in which you browned the shanks. Delicious. Red wine please, but none of that strawberry coloured pinot nonsense. Try a McLaren Vale shiraz. Or a Victorian ca...

Yes, I'm just trying to make things difficult. Make stock? Are you joking? I haven't got time to peel a potato, and you want me to make stock. Ridiculous. People are busy these days, in case you haven't noticed. Just look at any television screen. Half filled with people tweeting at broadcasts. You can't chop a carrot while you're tweeting and staring at a television screen. Ridiculous. Yes, ridiculous. But not the stock-making. It's easy. You just dump a bunch of aromatic vegetables in a pot and boil the hell out of them. I made this during the week and it made the best soup I've ever eaten. Tortellini soup. Vegetable stock In a large pot, sweat one large chopped carrot, one large chopped onion and one stick of chopped celery in a tablespoon of olive oil. Stir for a few minutes. Add one chopped leek, one whole onion studded with two cloves, some parsley sprigs, and a peeled and scored garlic clove, a bay leaf, a little dried rosemary, a spray of cra...

Okay, let's try it out . If you're going to die of arsenic poisoning, it might as well be after a nice dinner. Take several pieces of bone-in chicken, and make cuts in the skin with a very sharp knife. Make a marinade: blend half a cup of chopped basil leaves, five garlic cloves, an inch of peeled ginger, two tablespoons of peanut oil, a tablespoon of lemon juice and a little salt. After blending, fold through half a cup of plain full-fat yogurt. Place the chicken pieces in the marinade ensuring it fills the cut sections. Refrigerate for up to a day. Bake, or barbecue, turning once. The result is sensational. Serve on saffron-infused basmati rice with hot lime pickle to garnish and fenugreek roti on the side. Drink: cold beer. Or elderberry wine if you're a murderous spinster with lodgers in the house. * MORTIMER: Aunt Martha, men just don't go into window seats and die. ABBY: No, Mortimer, he died first. MORTIMER: But how? ABBY: Oh, Mortimer, don...

You might be safer eating the wrapper. Or is this just one of those beaten-up food scares the press loves so much? Arsenic in chicken is also afoot , so expect a raft of plays in which elderly spinsters dish up braised chicken on rice to their lodgers instead of pouring laced elderberry wine ...

The thing about the toaster is that it was the fourth electric cooking machine in five months to go through this household. I already had the regular pop-up toaster, and a Ronson toaster oven for toasted sandwiches (which despite never having been featured in this weblog, have been a popular and ongoing delicacy in this household - possibly the pinnacle of the culinary art). Then I came into possession of two more toaster ovens. This happened when I was trying to stop my mother becoming one of those elderly hoarders whose houses often go up in flames. Newspapers up to the ceiling, books filling every room of the house, makeshift wardrobes made from sheets strung over room corners hiding ceiling-high piles of cast-off clothes; that kind of thing. When I was growing up, my mother’s hallway used to be light and airy and a circular window of frosted glass in the front door used to let in the morning sun, now it is dark and gloomy because the circle window is shrouded and, at the far e...

1969: " ... (I don't advise hard physical training until your late teens because) every young boy in his normal playing activity goes and goes until he drops, and the added physical build-up is not needed. ... I know that I used to swing so long after school that I always used to get into trouble for being late home for my evening meal, and in the football season I went down to the local park and kicked a football around until after dark." - Neil Roberts, in Football the Australian Way , edited by John Craven, Lansdowne Press, 1969 2013: Children as young as eight years are suffering from severe back pain and headaches caused due to over-indulgence in iPads and smart phones. The iGeneration kids now are not only suffering from neck and back pains but also from tendinopathy in wrists and thumbs. The worst affected are children between the age group of 12-16 who are experiencing back injuries typically seen in people over 30, Balwyn Sports & Physiotherapy Centre di...

That was yesterday. Today's reading was stew recipes and the sports results. Onions are cheap at the moment. Beef and onion stew over mashed potato sounds good. We still have wild pumpkins to spare (wild meaning they grew from seeds cast out in the compost and turned onto the vegetable garden) so roasted pumpkin cubes with garlic and cummin seeds to accompany. Coffee with old running friends (old meaning long-time, not aged) at Potter Centre today in the sun, then a long walk home with Alexandra in the stroller. What a life. Well, both of us.

This morning, after toasting almost an entire loaf of white sliced bread and buttering and slicing them into one-inch 'soldiers', to accompany the children's lightly poached eggs, I gently upended the toaster (Tiffany, a Kmart housebrand) over the sink to remove the crumbs. (It also has a crumb tray, but the upending it gets more crumbs out than you find in the tray.) A week's worth of crumbs fell out. Three tiny screws, one tiny plastic bracket and two washers made of heatproof gasket material also fell out. Should I plug the toaster in and switch it on and see if it still works? The question crossed my mind fleetingly, like a nerve telling your brain to remove your hand from boiling water. I threw it in the rubbish. After all, it cost only as much a three full-priced loaves of Flinders sourdough. I'm off to Kmart. Or perhaps I should try one of those cut-price ones at Harris Scarfe. * Incidentally, poached eggs with toast batons is possibly the best...

Keith Richards : "I don't have an iPod. ... I still use CDs or records actually. Sometimes cassettes. It has much better sound; a much better sound than digital." Luddite.

Extract: English literature and expression were lazy, wonderful journeys into other times and places with Mr Johns; along with Mr Forster, Mr Lawrence and Mr Eugene O'Neill. Each of these literary sojourns was brought to a sudden end by the thrumming electric bell and echoing crash of locker doors in the corridor outside as students swapped books for the next period. Wednesday sport still provided mid-week relief from the classroom. Until later, when we were thrown headlong into the workforce's unbroken week, we little realised the benefit of this. Some of us found that getting out for a run on Wednesday afternoons was the perfect way to clear our heads of jargon and the scaremongering futurology of Alvin Toffler. Alternating between running and boundary umpiring, I'd be on a bus for cross-country at Bundoora or Mentone one week; the next I'd be taking a sly peep under my arm before trying to fling a football directly into ruckman Simon Madden's arms. I needn...

Late in the evening, an almost empty larder turns up a can each of red kidney beans and diced tomatoes. Not a lot you can do with that. Let's see. Spice can fix anything. * Heat the kidney beans and diced tomatoes gently in a pot. Add a teaspoon of paprika, half that each of cummin powder, salt and chili flakes - or a little less of chili powder. Cook and reduce a little. Take an avocado - I had one in the refrigerator where it possibly should not be stored - slice and add to bean mixture to heat through. In another pot, cook some polenta. When done, place polenta in a bowl, add bean stew, top with sour cream, grated cheddar and splash on some chili sauce. I used Tabasco Habanero. The stuff is delicious. You can drip it on just about anything. Tick, tock, midnight. Must go shopping tomorrow. The cupboard is bare. * The end of eastern summer time has this household's body clock in confusion. The children are waking at 4.30 a.m. for breakfast and demanding lunch at ni...

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...