What I Cooked Last Night

Well, actually, no. I don't recall it ever being that hot on Good Friday. What I do recall is the silence, something even more apparent in recent times when the city never takes a day of rest. I drove to Essendon for an early lunch at the house of a thousand tins, and while the roads were not completely empty, they seemed to be missing that kind of pressing traffic that is always on a mission, tearing off to a supermarket or some other kind of store. On crossing the valley, I usually run into a long, impatient and unyielding northwards line of traffic bound for DFO at Essendon airport. But on Friday everything was closed. I understand why they legislated for seven day trading all those years ago. But a silent suburb beats a herd of black BMWs racing to be first in the single lane entrance to the shopping mall any day. Now it’s once a year instead of one and a half days a week. Enjoy it. Shortly after three in the sultry, silent afternoon. No breeze blew through the open arched d...

It was well after eight on a Saturday night. My mother-in-law was here for dinner so I wanted something fast but impressive, easy but interesting, simple but appetising. So I went to the kebab shop. No, I didn’t. I might have wanted to, but instead I sliced a large chicken breast fillet into one-centimetre cubes, placed these in a pan with a close-fitting lid over half a tablespoon of olive oil and a sliced garlic clove, sloshed in half a glass of white wine and the cubed flesh of an avocado and set the pan on a low heat to poach the chicken and warm the avocado through. Then I drank the other half of the glass of wine. Fresh angel hair pasta, six little bunches from Donnini’s, was already cooking in a large pan in salted, oiled water. When the pasta was a minute away from done, I threw in ten asparagus spears I had sliced in three pieces each, and a good handful of snow peas. I shook the poaching pan and, with tongs, turned over a few cubes of reluctant chicken. It shouldn’t sti...

My mother-in-law says they cannot smile yet. It looks like a smile. She is a week old in the picture. Retrospective: William , in his second day; and Thomas at three days.

My mother-in-law was here for dinner. She had read the boys about a hundred books, and they were in bed if not asleep, and I made her a gin and tonic with a slice of lemon from the tree. I roasted a red pepper. This was going to be good. It ought to be at $10 a kilogram. Vegetable prices are snaking upwards again, along with water, mortgage rates, council rates, fuel, kindergarten fees, electricity and gas, the latter two receiving a further upward boost thanks to Kevin Rudd’s mining tax that he stole from the thesis of two American academics. All those actors’ bright ideas at the 2008 thinkfest and he steals one from two academics in America. The odds are shortening about Kevin Rudd being jettisoned before the election, and we have a Prime Minister named Julia. I peeled the pepper and set it aside, and put a finely chopped onion and a scored clove of garlic into a large warm pan in which a knob of butter was curling around as it melted, like a daydreaming figure skater. I let the ...

Just before midday on a hot Saturday. I took the Ring Road west and exited onto Tullamarine Freeway a confusing hundred metres after bad signage and the city turn-off. One mistake and you’re back in town. Heat haze shimmered in the distance and on the horizon Melbourne International Airport shimmered with it. The airport sits on the edge of a basalt plain, a parched flatland of leaning eucalypts and vague beauty spoiled by the kind of endless concrete warehouses and distribution centres that swarm around every airfield in the world. I drove up the ramp to departures and pulled up outside the terminal and Tracy and the boys got out. I told her I’d meet them in the food court behind the international terminal and pulled away from the kerb, down the ramp and into the car park. I pointed the car into my favourite spot near the Thrifty rent-a-car depot, where there is always an empty space and it’s a short walk to the terminal. Then I followed the walkway to the terminal below the hotel t...