What I cooked last night.

Maybe read James Joyce before agreeing with that. Italy has joined up with France, Spain and Portugal to stop ‘health warnings’ on bottled wine following Irish legislation requiring such patently stupid health bureaucrat-driven interventions.  “It’s totally wrong to compare the excessive consumption of northern countries to the moderate and knowledgeable consumption of quality and lower alcohol-content drinks that in Italy are emblematic of a leisurely way of life,” (said head of Italian agricultural lobby group Coldiretti Ettore Prandini). Coldiretti is also combatting nanny-state notices on such food items as cheese and salami. Some Irish share the scepticism. Agreed Cormac Healy of Drinks Ireland: “… an example of zealotry …”. Yes, perhaps ironic coming from an Irish lobby group; nevertheless a life lived confronted by warnings on everything may be more deleterious to long-term health than that ‘leisurely way of life’ untroubled by health bureaucrats and politicians lurking in e...

What makes it rustic? asked someone when I pretentiously named the dish I had just cooked. Unrefined and straightforward, yet warm and inviting, rustic (cuisine) is typically based on old-fashioned preparation techniques, ingredient availability, and specific cultural/culinary influences, I should have replied; but not wanting to sound like an AI chatbot, I just muttered something about using what was in the fridge. There had been half a roast chicken and a tub of peas, thanks to the chicken shop where Tom now works after school. Run by an enterprising husband and wife originally from Iran, the shop is not one of those dreadful franchises, so Tom has neither to wear a red uniform nor serve at a drive-through window, and the owners overwhelm him with generous take-outs at the end of shifts, and he comes home redolent of charcoal and spices and carrying bagfuls of delicious chicken roasted and stuffed with some unique blend of breadcrumbs that carries a faint rumour of exotic Persian sp...

She had lived in Australia for sixty years, she told me. Her father, one of two brothers, of Cypriot origin, had migrated here from Egypt. The brother had moved around the same time to London. So her cousins had grown up on the other side of the world. One day in the early 1970s, one of them had visited her house, which was in a suburb near the airport; a house in which she still lived. The cousin had been in Australia for a series of concerts and had visited his antipodean cousins before flying back to London. He had been emotional during his visit and had cried one night. She had asked him why, and he had said that he had never seen such a happy family, and that for all he owned, it was the one thing he had never had. The lady must have been in her early eighties. I had never met her before. She had come into the jewellery shop where I was now working part-time, and we had struck up a conversation for some reason. People name-drop: you can always tell. But her eyes had the faraway lo...

Last time I posted a 'product of the month' was in 2009 - and that product no longer exists due to package artwork that is no longer acceptable to First World sensibilities. A good start in rectifying the fourteen-year hiatus is Barry's tea, a premium tea with magnificent flavour that doesn't turn into tannin-dominated mud after extended brewing like many. Barry's offers far better economy compared to its main premium supermarket competitor, at around 15 cents per teabag in its Gold Blend 80-pack, compared to over 50 cents per teabag in T2's 60-pack at $32.

Brod Smith and I worked as copywriters in an advertising agency in Tooronga in the 1990s. He lived in Preston - or was it Reservoir? - I in Brunswick. He had founded the 1970s band The Dingoes. * Cup Eve, 1973. St Teresa’s hall. The Dingoes followed by Madder Lake. The volume unheard of, keeping awake the denizens of an Essendon previously undisturbed by insanely loud 1970s music. * Brod Smith died early this week. His music  didn’t .

Because according to the Financial Times here’s what Charlie Munger, vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway thinks of them: (Many … are little more than) “fortune tellers or astrologers who are dragging money out of their clients’ accounts, which [is] not being earned by any useful service”.