What I Cooked Last Night

Or just stay home. *United Nations

Extract: In 1965 we took our running very seriously. Tubby Atkinson, Beau Kearney and Tex Tyrrell would compete in the sprints or middle distance at Melbourne University oval and acquit themselves well before waiting for their next commitment late on the program, the 4x100 yards or 4x220 yards relay. Not being ones to miss an opportunity, the three would jog over to Naughton's hotel in Royal Parade for three quick pots in the meantime before returning to run the relays with a responsible Steve Vosti. New track for '68. St Bernard's has been transferred from the Beaurepaire track at Melbourne University to the Poplar Road track in Royal Park. Although we were not altogether happy with this switch we will have to bear with it for the time being. The change was necessitated by the formation of new clubs, expansion of old clubs and the plan to marshal clubs into geographic regions. Available from Keilor St Bernard's Athletic Club .

Boil a peeled sweet potato and two carrots until soft. Meanwhile, saute two large chopped onions in some peanut oil in a frying pan, adding a scored clove of garlic after a few minutes. When the onions are golden brown and soft, reserve a few tablespoons of the cooked onion. Process the rest with the sweet potato and carrot together with a cup of the cooking liquid, or stock, along with a raw hot chilli pepper and two cardomom pods. Adjust stock as required. Before serving, reheat, adding half a cup of full-cream milk and salt and pepper. Top with remaining fried onions and yogurt.

Snakes. Kangaroos. Bureaucrats.

Cut six slices of prosciutto into small squares the size of a Christmas stamp, and fry them in a large non-stick lidded pan for half a minute in some oil. Chop a kilogram of pumpkin into one-inch cubes, and two onions finely. Add these to the pan. Sauté on the lowest heat, lifting the lid to stir every now and then with a wooden spoon, until the pumpkin starts to soften. Chop a bunch of spinach and add to the pan along with a drained can of corn. Stir again, then place the lid back on the pan. Continue to cook very gently. Add salt and pepper. Serve as a main with torn basil and Greek-style yogurt, or as a warm salad with tahini, toasted pine nuts and a squeeze of lemon. Eat before midnight when it will turn back into plain boiled pumpkin.

Mussels in garlic and white wine. This just about cooks itself, so you don't need to miss a ball of the cricket. Take a kilogram of Portarlington mussels. Chop an onion and four or five garlic cloves finely. Warm these through in some olive oil in a large pot. Before the garlic starts to change colour, add a cup of white wine. Bring almost to the boil and quickly add the mussels. Grind some black pepper over the pot, and add a finely chopped chili or two. Then scatter some chopped parsley and a few chopped spring onions. Salt to taste. The mussels will clatter around in the pan as they open in the boiling fluid. I give them about two minutes. Place mussels in large bowls, pouring cooking liquid over the mussels, ensuring you scoop up the garlic and chili that tends to settle at the bottom of the pot. Serve outdoors on a hot evening, with the sun sailing away to the west and day-night cricket on the big screen. Cold beer or white wine. Serve with thick Turkish bread ...

Australia's Mark Steyn is Terry McCrann : Their (energy engineering pioneers) efforts and inventions enabled the use, directly or indirectly, of hydrocarbon-based energy so fundamental to ending the Hobbesian "nasty, brutish" and short-lived experience of literally everyone who had ever lived, well into the 20th century; and still, many of the 7 billion alive today who do not have good access to hydrocarbon-based energy. ... even if one doesn't care for the two billion or so in that category — let them breathe deadly burnt dung particles or literally pedal for power, as pompous pampered Western greenies vicariously propose — a CEO of a company like BHPB should take at least some pride in its contribution to the long and difficult march of civilisation.

But first, the recipe. Poached salmon and greens. You don't need to mess around with Tasmanian Atlantic salmon too much. Fish doesn't get much better than salmon and it is economic, holding its density and shape while staying tender; where basa, for example, seems to melt away to nothing. I placed four salmon fillets in a bowl with a few shakes of soy, a teaspoon of powdered ginger and a chopped garlic clove and put it in the fridge for a few hours. I poached the fish gently in a non-stick pan with a lid, adding a little water. Meanwhile, I wok-tossed two bunches of choy sum, a dozen chopped spring onions and a handful of trimmed snowpeas in some peanut oil and a few drops of sesame oil until they were sweating lurid green and still snapping; not to the wilt stage. Then I cooked some fresh udon noodles, drained them, added them to the wok, and folded them through with a dash of oyster sauce. Noodles and greens on serving plates; fish fillets on top. * Kitchen Ha...

AFL umpires' coach Hayden Kennedy, talking to the Herald Sun about a world tour of 25 elite umps he led to 'pick the brains of the best officials from soccer, rugby, tennis and cricket'. According to Kennedy, " ... one EPL ref said he makes about 200 decisions a game and runs 12km over 90 minutes. We'd do that in the first 15 minutes of a game."

I was walking the children home from school on Tuesday. It was a sunny afternoon, and we had crossed the Upfield railway line and were passing the old TAFE building where the pathway is overgrown by ancient oleanders. A figure approached from the other direction and disappeared behind us. I caught a glimpse of him. He had some kind of a hat or cap, a grey straggly beard, a hook nose, and a haunted look. It's amazing what you can catch at one glance. "Hey," said Thomas. "Wasn't that the old guy in the paper?" "What old guy?" I asked. "The one with the cap and the grey beard." That didn't tell me anything more than I had seen, but I knew staright away who he meant. "I know who you mean," I said. "Now let me see." We turned the corner heading north. A plane came low overhead, heading for Essendon airport. "Didn't they cremate him straight away? I believe they did. They used to let people see t...

Black Flat? Let's ask someone who lives there and has taken that original title as their strangely appropriate business name: Black Flat Coffee Brewers was named after "Black Flat", the original name of Glen Waverley before it was renamed in 1921. Originally developed as orchards and farming lands, Black Flat ... was in reference to the dark, rich soil and flat ground. Being precisely descriptive, the original name makes Glen Waverley - a name doubly adopted from a Sir Walter Scott novel via Edinburgh - seem a little pretentious. Perhaps that is why the suburb within a few decades became synonymous with the somewhat pretentious 'Sherry Belt', a sardonic Barry Humphries reference to 1960s stay-at-home upper middle class wives who, bored, took to entertaining their guests with sherry parties.

The book is to be ready by the end of 2019. I have plenty of time but I like to get onto things. Story from the archive: Our route outwards lay through Caulfield till the Waverley Road is reached, thence a straight run to Black Flat, when a sharp turn to the left brought us into the aptly-named Mountain View Hotel, which is about fourteen miles from the GPO. After dining sumptuously and well we inspected a couple of mines, which are to some day make Black Flat famous, to which one is inclined to say – Heaven Forbid! – if it is to ruin the present rustic beauty of the surroundings. Returning, we took a cross road to Tally Ho, thence through Burwood to the Riversdale Road, and through Richmond to town. The road after leaving Caulfield was wet and sloppy and in a state of being repaired, which in these latitudes seems tantamount to a state of disrepair. But the cyclist who never expects to meet with bad roads on a trip should confine his attention to croquet. The story was published i...

I'm turning yellowed papers in an upstairs boardroom. The yellowed papers are 1910 originals and the quality of reporting is very good. Yet the writers do not call themselves journalists. They are 'correspondents'. There are no typos and no mangled language. There are words - good words - that have since fallen into disuse. And this is a sporting newspaper, the Australian Cyclist. Someone had stared a cycling club in the 1890s. Electric power and the car were yet to arrive, a long-gone power-stationless green dream. Solar power dried the washing. You hung it on a line strung up in the back yard. Then a crash followed a speculative boom and a third of Melbourne's breadwinners were thrown out of work. There was no welfare payment. When things got back to late-nineteenth-century normal, people bought bicycles. The safety cycle had replaced the dangerous penny farthing, on which you could die standing still, simply by falling off. The safety cycle let you put your feet o...

Doris Southbridge ... was surprised. "But I really shouldn't be ... . We're on the east coast and there's all those states in the middle, which haven't changed in hundreds of years."

On Friday morning before the Melbourne Cup weekend, there had been furious jockeying between the creative staff to win the Cup Eve Monday off as a holiday. Creative director Jason had a kind of reverse-Solomon moment in preventing inter-staff jealousy by awarding the bonus Monday to himself (as he had in the past three years). Meanwhile, everyone had been called into the boardroom for drawing of the annual Melbourne Cup sweep, which Yasmiijn de Reverien was to draw. Jason has recently appointed her as his new personal assistant, a job title he changed to 'creative co-ordinator' to deflect any suggestion of inferiority, servitude, misogyny, sexism etc. Yasmiijn's employment was greeted with scepticism from the rest of the creative department; and raised eyebrows from management, but Jason insisted he be allowed to staff his own department without interference. Yasmiijn has flame red hair and is wearing a silky thing that looks like it was woven by butterflies. It is prob...

Warning: offensive language, sexist stereotypes, threatened violence and more. Section 18C would not survive a morning in a robust advertising agency. In a place like this, a 'trigger warning' is when you walk through the front door. The following story is true. Some names have been changed. IT IS THE FRIDAY BEFORE THE MELBOURNE CUP. ACROSS THE CITY, THOUSANDS OF EMPLOYEES GALLOP TO THE MANAGING DIRECTOR'S OFFICE (OR IN THIS CASE, THE CREATIVE DIRECTOR'S PENTHOUSE-LIKE SPACE COMPLETE WITH LEATHER SOFAS AND TWO BRETT WHITELEYS) TO ASK FOR THE MONDAY OFF, MAKING IT A FOUR-DAY WEEKEND. JASON IS THE CREATIVE DIRECTOR AT BLAKE, BROWNING, BURNS. WITH HIM IN HIS PALATIAL OFFICE ARE ART DIRECTOR ART (YES, ART. ART IS SHORT FOR ARTHUR. IF YOU ARE YOUNGER THAN FORTY YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW THIS BECAUSE THERE HAVE BEEN NO ARTHURS BORN IN THE LAST THIRTY YEARS, EXCEPT THIS PARTICULAR ART, WHO IS 26) AND JAKE, A WRITER. JASON: I'm not coming in Monday, so you guys will have to ...

A cold wind blasted up from the south and the sky was steel grey. I was walking through a patchwork of emerald green paddocks where I once walked as a child with my parents, picking mushrooms. The mushrooms still pop up occasionally but these days the fields are given over to another purpose. I walked along a fence line and saw a horse standing in the cold air in the middle of the paddock. I came closer. The horse seemed to be on a slight lean. It was old. Its eye was on me. It picked up its hooves and ambled over. I walked slowly along, outside the fence. The horse followed me a little way, and then its attention was drawn by another horse in the corner of the field. I came to a gate. On it a sign read: Fields of Omagh. Suddenly I heard a thunderclap. It sounded like 30,000 people screaming, willing a horse past a finishing post on a tight, curved racecourse track. Then silence. Another paddock. Another old horse. Another sign: Might and Power. The noise and vision this time was...

From a news report: But others called the academy’s decision misguided and questioned whether songwriting, however brilliant, rises to the level of literature. And can you believe they're still smarting from the time he picked up an electric guitar?

I was researching a long-defunct 1960s cricket team called the Northern Cricketers. The Northern Cricketers were a social side who played on Sundays at Holbrook Reserve, West Brunswick. The ground was at the westernmost point of the suburb, perched on a horseshoe bend of the Moonee Ponds Creek, so that a good stroke over cover would land in that part of Moonee Ponds immediately south of Moonee Valley Racecourse. Just a short way south of the ground is the Essendon Hockey Club and Ormond Park, home of the Moonee Valley FC, once known as the Fog, as anyone familiar with that low-lying area would know, especially on those cold autumn evenings at the start of footy season. OK, the place is dripping with sporting history. I didn't know if Holbrook Reserve still existed. So I investigated. A glance at the map showed that it looked to be almost obliterated by the Tullamarine freeway, which was built in the early 1970s. However, the ground survived, and I found it. The freeway is its...

Late morning. I was on the phone to yet another 1800 number listening to yet another 'menu'. If you want to give money, press one: you're first. To increase your monthly direct-debit donation, press two: we'll be with you in a millisecond. To hear a heart-warming story about a dog who would have died except for someone's $50 donation, press three. If you have no heart, hang up now. It was the twenty-fifth 'charity' I'd called that day. They call themselves charities, but they are collection agency call centres for non-government organisations. * She averages a dozen request-for-money letters a week. I help her collect them from the letterbox, because she can barely reach it nowadays. She is in her late eighties and elderly widows are gold for the charity sector. Hence the torrent of mail. The fronts of the envelopes have faces with big, sad eyes and short headlines which telegraph the next death sentence that could be delayed or stayed via a q...

Hawthorn has won four of the last eight grand finals, including the last three, for a total of thirteen. Footscray has won one grand final, which no-one under 70 remembers. It's impossible to think of Footscray (or the Western Bulldogs as they are now known) as having ever been a more successful club than Hawthorn. However, the situation was very different early in the 1960s according to one writer: ... they must be classed as the most successful of the three babes of the League - Footscray, Hawthorn and North Melbourne - since they entered the League in 1925. ... their record is nowhere near as dismal as North and Hawthorn's - and St Kilda for that matter, even though they've been in the League much longer. Lou Richards made the claim in his book Boots and All published in 1963 on the strength of Footscray's 1954 flag and its near-miss in its 1961 grand final loss to Hawthorn, the latter team's first premiership. But Richards saw Hawthorn's flag as somethi...

It's one of the health fads of the moment. I keep hearing it everywhere. Curcumin. For relief of inflammation. No-one knows if it works or not, of course, just like no-one knows if fish oil works. You spend your money on hope, like betting with Sportsbet. "If your team loses by less than ten points after leading at half time - CASHBACK!!!!!" Except there's no cash back with supplements and they're a lot dearer than a twenty-buck bet. Turmeric - the source of curcumin - is a lot cheaper and tastier, as in the following curry I made last night: Potato, spinch and eggplant curry - with tumeric. Dice four large potatoes and fry them in oil in a deep frypan in batches until done. Remove. Cube four eggplants and fry these in the same pan, adding more oil if necessary. Remove. Chop two large onions and fry until golden, adding more oil if necessary. Into the frying onions, stir a cubic inch (guess) of finely chopped ginger (a cousin of turmeric), a heaped te...

Home made gnocchi is big in restaurants, but not many people except for Italians seem to make it at home. It's no big deal; just mashed potato bound with flour or eggs. Any number of people will try and complicate it by saying you need potatoes of a certain age or waxiness. I've tried all the theories and no matter what you do the resulting gnocchi are always good. Here's an example , with another link within that post using sweet potato. Last night I made a similar batch, drained them, rolled them in some finely chopped parsley and crumbled some blue cheese over the gnocchi in serving bowls. Then I browned them under the griller and served them, scattering parmesan over the top.

Previously published here .

ADVERTISING AGENCY BLAKE, BROWNING, BURNS HAS BROUGHT IN ADMAN CLYDE P. ULSTER TO LAND A PRESTIGIOUS RETAIL CLIENT. AMIDST A GALA PRESENTATION IN THE BOARDROOM CATERED BY VETERAN TEALADY JUNE, CLYDE SHOCKS THE ASSEMBLED STAFF BY ANNOUNCING RETAIL PAWNBROKER CRIME CONVERTERS AS THE NEW CLIENT. CLYDE HAS INVITED THE ENTIRE STAFF TO ATTEND A MEETING AT THE CLIENT'S FRANKSTON HQ THE FOLLOWING WEEK. THE ONLY STAFF MEMBER UNABLE TO ATTEND IS JUNE, WHO APPEARS TO BE THE MOST PRODUCTIVE MEMBER OF THE AGENCY. A COLD, BLEAK MELBOURNE MORNING IN LATE WINTER DAWNS. AMONG THE THOUSANDS OF TRADIE UTES PROCEEDING SOUTH ON THE NEPEAN HIGHWAY IS A CONVOY OF EUROPEAN LUXO-BARGES; SLEEK SILVER AND BLACK MACHINES DESIGNED TO DO 250 K/MH BUT CRUELLY DESTINED NEVER TO BREAK 110. HOWEVER, THIS PARTICULAR MORNING THEY ARE SULKILY CRAWLING ALONG AT 40K/MH DUE TO ROADWORKS ON EASTLINK AND AN ACCIDENT AT SOUTH ROAD. DECLAN: Fucking traffic. And why do we always get clients who have their headquarters in ...

IN PART ONE, ADVERTISING AGENCY BLAKE BROWNING BURNS HAS BROUGHT IN RETAIL ADVERTISING EXPERT CLYDE P. ULSTER TO LAND A PRESTIGE RETAIL CLIENT. CLYDE HAS BRIEFED THE AGENCY ON THE HISTORY OF RETAIL ADVERTISING AND THE STAFF ARE AGOG, EXPECTING AN ANNOUNCEMENT ANY DAY. LOUDSPEAKER: Attention please, would everyone proceed to the boardroom immediately for an important agency announcement from Wayne. Wayne is flying interstate shortly so would you please move to the boardroom swiftly for this meeting. Thanks. TEN MINUTES LATER, STAFF ARE STILL WANDERING LIKE LOST SHEEP INTO THE BOARDROOM. FINALLY, EVERYONE IS THERE AND WAYNE (AGENCY MD) ENTERS, ACCOMPANIED BY CLYDE. P. ULSTER, WHO LOOKS EXTRA PLEASED WITH HIMSELF. WAYNE (DOES SARCASM WITH A STRAIGHT FACE): Thanks everyone for being so prompt. I love the way you all jump to attention when the need arises. I have a great announcement to make today. Clyde here (LOOKS AT CLYDE) has worked his arse off for several months on a very impo...

CLYDE P. ULSTER WAS A SANDY-HAIRED FAT MAN WHO HAD A RED FACE AND WORE A SUIT THAT WAS TOO BIG, BECAUSE HE THOUGHT IT WOULD MAKE HIM LOOK SMALLER. IT DIDN'T. CLYDE P. ULSTER LOOKED LIKE AN ELEPHANT IN A COLLAPSED CIRCUS TENT. MR ULSTER STARTED WORKING AT ADVERTISING AGENCY BLAKE BROWNING BURNS ONE WINTER. HE APPEARED LIKE SO MANY CONSULTANTS DO - HE TURNED UP EVERY NOW AND THEN UNANNOUNCED; AND BEFORE WE KNEW IT, HE PART OF THE PLACE, BORING US TO DEATH AT FRIDAY NIGHT DRINKS AND LAUGHING TOO LOUD AT THE MD'S JOKES. CLYDE DROVE A TWENTY-YEAR-OLD NAVY BLUE MERCEDES 400SEL WHICH WAS COVERED IN DUST AND HAD A BACK SEAT FULL OF JUNK UP TO THE WINDOW SILLS. THE JUNK INCLUDED PLASTIC-BOUND INCH-THICK PRINT-OUTS OF POWERPOINT PRESENTATIONS, YELLOWING AND DOG-EARED. THAT MEANT CLYDE P. ULSTER HAD EITHER EXACTLY THE WRONG ATTITUDE ABOUT POWERPOINT PRESENTATIONS, OR EXACTLY THE RIGHT ONE. I COULDN'T FIGURE OUT WHICH. THE REST OF THE JUNK INCLUDED RETAIL BUSINESS TENDER DOCUMENTS ...

Yeah, I had to read it twice as well. Some headlines do that to you. Pasta with walnuts and broccoli. Something to do with flavour or texture or both. Nuts go with members of the brassica family and if you underscore that pairing with something warm and bland and homely, like traditional home-made pasta, and bind it with a compatible fat - cream or cheese or both - you have the makings of a great dish. Hence the following: Cook the pasta. Rigatoni is my fallback when discrete components appear in the sauce, but for this I used farfalle, usually incorrectly translated as bowties for the obvious reason, but when you know it means butterflies, you will never again look upon a pack of them in a shop as an item of men's clothing. Meanwhile, cook a finely chopped onion and a clove of garlic in some olive oil in a shallow non-stick pan. Then add half a cup of white wine, the same amount of cream, and a shower of walnuts. Stir and reduce. When the pasta is almost cooked, throw ...

WAYNE, A JADED ADVERTISING AGENCY MD, IS ON A LONG DISTANCE FLIGHT WITH AGENCY ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE, TRENT, WHOSE OVER-EARNEST RAMBLINGS ABOUT THE UPCOMING BUSINESS PITCH ARE KEEPING WAYNE AWAKE DESPITE HAVING RELIEVED THE PLANE OF ITS SINGLE MALT WHISKY STOCKS. TRENT WANTS TO REVIEW THE PITCH (TO INTERNATIONAL EQUESTRIONAGE, A BETTING 'INTELLIGENCE' COMPANY) DESPITE IT BEING THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT. SUDDENLY THE PLANE HITS TURBULENCE. TRENT HITS THE ROOF AND THEN BECOMES AS MAUDLIN AS A DRUNK IN A EUGENE O'NEILL PLAY. TRENT: You need a holiday Wayne. Why don't you take this weekend off? WAYNE: What's a weekend? TRENT (DOESN'T GET SARCASM): It's the days in between Friday and Monday when other people relax, have long leisurely breakfasts, go and play golf, and play with their children. WAYNE (DOWNING THE LATEST SCOTCH AND GETTING TEARY AND MOROSE): Oh. I must have one soon then. I've got children, you know. (PAUSE) I wonder what their names a...

Rated R: adult themes, strong language, threats of violence, extreme sexism, etc. etc. In other words, a perfectly normal conversation between mature adults in the pre-'You Can't Say That!' era. ON AN AEROPLANE SOMEWHERE. IT IS LATE AT NIGHT, POSSIBLY EVEN EARLY IN THE MORNING. THE BLACKNESS OUT THE WINDOW GIVES NO CLUE. WAYNE AND TRENT - OF ADVERTISING AGENCY BLAKE, BROWNING, BURNS - ARE IN ADJOINING SEATS FLYING TO A FAR DISTANT LOCATION WHERE THEY ARE TO PRESENT A NEW BUSINESS PITCH TO A MAJOR CORPORATION WHICH PRODUCES HIGHLY SECRET SOFTWARE USED BY INTERNATIONAL GAMBLING INTELLIGENCE PROVIDERS FOR THE HORSERACING INDUSTRY. WAYNE, 41, IS AGENCY MANAGING DIRECTOR AND HAS SEEN IT ALL. HE KNOWS THE TRICKS AND CAN PICK BULLSHIT AT A HUNDRED YARDS. HE HAS BEEN AROUND LONG ENOUGH TO KNOW THAT THE ENTIRE ADVERTISING INDUSTRY IS A GAME PEOPLE INDULGE THEMSELVES IN TO PREVENT BOREDOM. WAYNE IS SEMICOMATOSE AFTER SEVERAL EXTREMELY ENJOYABLE SINGLE MALTS. TRENT, 28, IS A T...

An agency I once worked with had plenty of money to spend on lunches. Well, they all did; but this one had more than most. It had a lot of government business, and when bureaucrats throw money at advertising campaigns, they don't count it first. Counting money is for the private sector. Governments don't spend their own money; they spend yours, so why stint? They can always get their hands on more. Anyway, the agency wanted to reward its clients for being loyal. The CEO decided to take its $5 million-plus clients to dinner, and give each an expensive Swiss watch. He'd written the presentation card himself, omitting to run it past the copywriter: 'We'd like to thank you for being a client by giving you this timeless watch.'

Here's what I do in mine. (Note: the AdAge article is almost ten years old; I came across it again by accident when trawling through some old writings. The advertising agency blog is no longer online - I am adapting it into a book. And yes, I still have the same sandwich and three sugars in my coffee.)

The answer is both, if you serve the following for dinner. It satisfies both soup- and pasta-lovers. Tortellini soup. First, make some vegetable stock (or use your preferred stock). In a large pot containing about 1500ml of water, bring to the boil a large chopped carrot, a large chopped onion, a stick of chopped celery, a chopped leek, some parsley sprigs, a peeled and scored garlic clove, a bay leaf, a little dried rosemary, a teaspoon of cracked pepper and half a teaspoon of salt. Once on the boil, turn down and simmer for an hour. Strain the stock, return to pot and add half a kilogram of ricotta tortellini, a cupful of finely shredded silver beet, a cup of peas and a tablespoon of preferably home-made pesto (basil, walnuts, parmesan, garlic, olive oil). Simmer another twenty minutes. Serve with shards of parmesan cheese broken from the block.

St Kilda Road was once home to Melbourne's advertising industry. Some of the agency dinosaurs, such as McCanns, remain there, like fossils in a rock. As well as being Melbourne's most beautiful boulevard, St Kilda Road also boasts the slowest trams, monstrous metal boxes that clatter slowly down the middle of the road powered by steel rods reaching up to overhead electric wires. I've often wondered why tramloads of passengers don't get electrocuted every time it rains. In the early 1990s, I was working for one of the dinosaur agencies. One day the agency had a visitor, a US agency boss from New York by the name of Stanley. Stanley was on the acquisition trail. He wanted to buy the agency. If only he knew. But that's another story. Stanley had been scheduled to visit three agencies in one morning, and he arrived at my agency at nine a.m., when our MD led him on a tour of the place. A few account executives were in their offices, beavering away at their core fun...

Boil a peeled and chopped sweet potato until soft. Mash it, and place it in a mound on a bread board to cool. Make a crater in the top of the mound and crack an egg into it. Work in half a cup of flour, a tablespoon of polenta and a finely diced clove of garlic. Press and knead the mixture lightly, adding more flour if necessary until it holds together. Roll the mixture into cylinders, and slice the cylinders into half inch-thick discs. Place these on a floured board until ready to cook. Drop the discs into salted, oiled boiling water. Once they rise to the top let them bubble about for thirty seconds then quickly lift out with a slotted spoon. Drain thoroughly before placing them into serving bowls. Serve with Napoli sauce, or home made pesto and shaved parmesan.

"You can't umpire this sport and not make errors," Hayden Kennedy says. "It's an impossibility. You've just got to limit the damage." Well, we'll see on Friday. I'll be throwing the ball up for the grade sixers in their interschool match. Until now I've been running the boundary and you see plenty of infringements the central umpire doesn't, because he's usually behind the pack of twenty 10-year-olds jumping on each other. It might be easier in the middle. I ran kilometres on the boundary on Sunday morning because the northerly sweeping down Greenvale oval No. 4 kept blowing the ball into the paddock behind. Spectator attempts to boot the ball back to the middle usually got blown straight back again. Clean bump and pick-up Bounce Drop punt (Pictures are from a previous game at Keilor Park second oval complete with tractor ruts.)

Soon, the world will run out of passwords . Don't say I didn't warn you four years ago.

Tim Blair beat me to George Hamilton IV by a few hours, but I beat him to Jimmy Elledge . By three years.

People keep throwing bird's eye chilis at me. When we stayed a couple of nights at the Kingswood Motel in Tocumwal a month or so ago, the owner pointed out her herb garden near the pool and barbecue area and invited me to sample the chilis. That night I did. It was a hot evening and we ate outside as the sun went down. I grilled steaks and made a potato salad. I flattened the chilis on the grill to char them and then smeared them over the grilled steaks. Then I ate a couple whole. I saw stars. Then, back home, a neighbour gave me a whole bag of bird's eyes from her front garden. That was a few weeks ago. I've got through about half. The reason, of course, is that the chili plants are very popular right now as an ornamental planting in pots and garden beds. And they are prolific. You can't eat enough of the chilis to keep up. You have to give them away, like grapefruit. The trick with chili is to combine it with other flavours. You can't hide the heat, but yo...

From today's paper : SHOPPERS baulking at the cost of beef are scrambling for eggs and stretching supplies. Customers have been confronted with depleted egg sections at some supermarkets. A notice advised eggs were in short supply "due to unexpected events in the industry". "People searching for cheaper alternative proteins are recognising the value of eggs," Egg Farmers Aus­tralia spokesman John Coward said. "A kilo of eggs is as low as $4. A kilo of popular steak is $20-$35. They can replace a beef dinner with a frittata." When it comes to "unexpected egg events", a frittata sounds a bit of a letdown compared to, for example, a 400g porterhouse, chargrilled to perfection, still pink in the middle and drowning in pepper sauce. The following is a much more robust alternative to the ubiquitous - and somewhat pretentious - frittata, if steak is off and eggs are on. Egg and bacon pie. Grease a glass or enamel pie dish and line it with a s...

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 .

In a large pot, cook pasta. When almost done, place a dozen florets of broccoli and a dozen green beans into the same pot. Simmer three minutes. Add a dozen snow peas. Wait a minute, then drain the lot. Meanwhile, heat some garlic in olive oil in another pan. Add a splash of white wine, some cracked black pepper, a dozen sliced button mushrooms and an avocado sliced into segments. Cook until mushrooms are almost soft, then add half a cup of cream, or more to taste. Reduce. Arrange pasta and green vegetables in bowls, pour over mushroom, avocado and cream sauce.

Consulting firm Deloitte explains its 'diversity' policy : The approach to innovation leverages diversity and inclusion of people regardless of gender, age, sexual orientation, ethnicity, faith or disability. So far so good. One of everything, like the child in the lolly shop. But consultants Deloitte should have consulted their mates over at PwC : PwC senior executive Mark Allaby stood down from the board of the Australian Christian Lobby this month because his ACL work was in conflict with the values of the corporation for which he worked. A firm of business consultants decides its values trump those of a religious organisation? Now I've heard everything. Diversity-ridden PwC rationalises the decision: "When it comes to employee participation on external boards, if a conflict arises between an employee's board role and the best interests of PwC, we would request that the employee step down from that board," a PwC spokesman said of the matter. The spokesman ...

Somewhere in this tangled web, someone asked which music albums had, to quote, 'stayed with you'. Now, I think the expression 'stayed with you' was intended to mean 'stayed in your consciousness'; in other words, your all-time favourites. But the figurative interpretation meant you could bend the list to please your peers. They can't physically look into your record cabinet. So I decided to take the expression literally. I once owned hundreds of LP records, but over the years they dwindled in number. Of the remaining, some I will never throw out; others are rubbish and I should have binned them years ago. Here are ten albums that have stayed with me: literally. 1. Running Down the Road by Arlo Guthrie. Famous for being the son of Woodie and his cult 23-minute hit 'Alice's Restaurant', Arlo Guthrie's 1969 release ticked all the boxes for post-flower-power motorcycle-riding hippies. The record belonged to my sister, and I kept it for s...