What I cooked last night.

I was chopping some carrots using a vegetable knife with a short non-serrated blade. The carrots were quite hard. I slid the knife across and into the third carrot. The blade of the knife snapped suddenly at the point where it is imbedded in the handle. It rebounded against the force of my hand, flicked up and around like a soccer player doing a scissor kick, and stabbed me in the forefinger before flopping onto the table. I threw the handle and the blade into the bin, after examining the break. The imbedded section was far too thin. It was the last cheap knife I will buy. Lesson: sack your cheap cutting knives before they crack up under the pressure and do you an injury. * I had been about to make a recipe I always drag out in autumn, an old favourite I learned from my mother before she gave up on all the old standbys. Oxtail stew with garlic mash. Using a quality knife, meaning a knife made just about anywhere except China, chop six celery stalks, two onions and two carrots...

In 1966, you were generally Holden or Falcon, hating the other with a passion equal to the Smith Street divide between Fitzroy and Collingwood. Every October, Bathurst fanned the tribal flames. My brother and I were Holden because Dad got a new one every year for his job. He was a travelling salesman for John Dynon & Sons restaurant and hotel supplies. I used to go with him on school holidays and saw the inside of more restaurants by the age of ten than Simon Plant and John Lethlean put together. My brother and I always looked forward to the new model and became connoisseurs of evolving automotive design, including the Volkswagen Beetle, which in the previous year had sold more cars in Australia than ever before. Volkswagens were everywhere. An uncle (not the farm uncle) bought a navy blue one and drove it like a Lotus Esprit around the Dandenong Ranges with us in it. I'd never been more frightened. But not everyone had a Holden or a Falcon, or even a Beetle. The family n...

Merle Haggard .