What I Cooked Last Night

It was a difficult growing summer but I read somewhere - one of your blogs, I forget which one - that it had been a good year for basil. It sure was. We put ours in late, a dear little row of seedlings along the sideway, where it gets good sun in the middle of the day but doesn't get scorched in the afternoon. The seedlings shot up and we kept the snails of bay and now they're about two feet tall. The row of basil is bookended by the jasmine creepers I put in last year when we moved in. The jasmine has thrived and now it's festooning all the way along the fence. William's double sash bedroom windows open on to the sideway and every now and the curtain moves and in comes jasmine, and now basil, on the soft breeze. Now, where's my list of things to do with pesto? Click, click, click ... here . May I add to that smearing a generous amount on top of anything barbecued? By the way, we were out of pine nuts so walnuts were used instead.

... for your helpful suggestions and interesting comments and anecdotes following my quandary over the engagement party fundraiser request. I have worked for many charity clients over the years but I had never until now been stumped for an idea. I must be getting stale. So thank you. Your suggestions helped and I managed to convey to the party, without offending her, that there is no right way of holding your hand out.

A work associate came to me and asked a favour, the kind of favour that is like asking a doctor you know socially for a gratuitous opinion about a condition. The lady is getting engaged and is sending out invitations. She wants to receive money instead of actual gifts; and the favour was that she wanted me to write this for her in a way that 'didn't sound tacky'. Five minutes of online research confirmed what I already knew: there is no way you can ask for money instead of gifts. You just can't. But some people think a writer can re-write bad etiquette into something that is acceptable, via some verbal sleight of hand. I'm at a loss, which is rare for me. What do I do? Ignore her? Tell her she can't do it? Or write some tacky nonsense about a wishing well or a money tree and to hell with it? Sometimes I wish I were a nuclear scientist. I bet they don't get asked favours.

1977: Pieroni , upstairs in Little Bourke Street. Pre-dated the South Yarra Pieroni by a decade or so. Climb the narrow staircase and eat spaghetti bolognese for $2.20. Minestrone, 90 cents. Bread, free. Guy Grossi worked here. The occasion : I worked around the corner in Elizabeth Street's London Stores building and I ate here frequently. Other favourites were the Cambrooke Cafe, the White Hen Cafe, the upstairs bistro at the Royal Parade Hotel, Centrepoint Tavern, the London Tavern and downstairs at the Hub Hotel. No, I never went hungry. I worked hard. 1978: I'm no food snob but whoever burnt down The Swagman deserves three Age Chef's Hats. The smorgasbord was about the size of a tennis court and by the time several hundred queueing 'diners' bussed in from Cranbourne or Altona Meadows or Boronia or even Fitzroy North had pawed over it, it looked more like Jackson Pollock's Blue Poles . Cigarette stub in your portion of lasagne, anyone? The occasion : a Chris...

It was 36 degrees. I was sitting on the 27th floor gazing out the window in the general direction of Southbank and wondering whether I'd do any work or have a cup of tea. I've only been gazing out windows for most of my life. The tea part of the wondering was winning when I noticed the smoke . I knew straight away. Online. Nothing yet. Then within minutes, reports of an incident. Then specifics. Three people lost. It must be said the tunnel's safety system may have saved lives. I had to go to Eaglemont at lunchtime. Melbourne was pretty much in a state of gridlock. There was some kind of other incident on the Monash Freeway and cross town traffic was trying to loop the city. Also, Richard Stubbs on the radio was warning of an approaching dust storm. The dust storm didn't make it to town. I think it got stuck in traffic. I couldn't get back into the city. I had to drive across the top, dump the car at Coburg Station and get the train back to town. Guess what? The boo...

1966: Pellegrini's, Bourke Street . The occasion: Lunch with my father, who was a catering industry salesman, and Leo. I was nine. Ate: spaghetti saltati. 1968: David Wang chinese restaurant, Little Bourke Street . The occasion: my brother's birthday. The whole family went. Arrived in: Yellow Cabs HR Holden taxi with the chrome grab bar across the back of the front bench seat for passengers to hold, and smash their teeth on in a crash. Ate: the $2.50 per head banquet. Historical note: the cafe was part of the long-gone David Wang department store. 1969: McClure's, St Kilda Road . (McClure was the Four'n Twenty pies McClure .) Tartan carpet. Enclosed booths with banquettes and telephones via which diners ordered their meals. Real waiters subsequently materialised some time later with your telephoned order. Chicken a la King. Chateaubriand. Oysters Mornay. If you had a problem you had to call them up again. It was like room service without the room. Drink : Yalumba...

The old shed has no windows. At certain times of the day, a shaft of sunlight pierces the gaps in the weathered timber and lights up the interior like a laser sword in a science fiction movie. Right now, a sword of sunlight was pointing to a corner, shining on some old screenings and dirt. It was Saturday, mid-afternoon. I'd been clearing the shed for next week's hard rubbish collection and had already removed a huge metal and timber structure that occupied an entire corner in the shed. The structure was made from an old gas heating unit and had a hinged metal lid over a metal tub with a floor of timber slats. There were two holes in one end, as if to provide ingress and egress for something. The timber slats were littered with old lead fishing weights. I figured that the thing was some kind of rudimentary smoke house. It weighed a ton. Somehow I got it onto the front lawn. Then I went back into the shed. The shaft of sun shining on the old screenings and dirt had crept along a...

That poll was fun and worked for a couple of days but this morning, this blog would only load down to the headline of that post, the poll had completely disappeared and the sidebars would not load at all. I tried loading the site on another computer, a Mac. Same result. Then I checked another blog which had posted a blogpoll and it had exactly the same problem. So I removed the poll and all is fine again. By the way, more than half of respondents could not bring themselves to name their favourite meal. My sentiments exactly. After all, the best meal is the next one.

According to a comprehensive tracking study undertaken by a vast panel of leading academics, comprising me and someone I asked, five out of ten people don't know what they'll be cooking for dinner when they reach the kitchen. But five out of ten people don't need to panic. They no longer even need to flip through old copies of Cuisine , Bon Appetit or Super Food Ideas . All they need to do is open the fridge door and google what they see + recipe. Magically, up comes six million ideas! I'm only half joking. Sometimes I'm too tired to think about cooking, so I just assemble instead. Assembling dinner is fun. It's like shopping at Ikea, without the crowds and the ball pool, plus you don't need an allen key. Here's what I assembled last night (without the use of google) from the contents of the fridge and the kitchen cupboard: Couscous with sardines and pinenuts. From the fridge: cherry tomatoes, turkish olives, tahini, butter. From the cupboard: Canned sa...

Terry Oglesby of Possumblog fame invites readers to take part in his weekly three-question Axis of Weevil Thursday Three . Here are his questions and my answers: 1) If you had only one hour to show a visitor something interesting in your hometown, where would you go? We would take a tram ride down Lygon Street through the city and across the Princes Bridge (far classier than the Sydney Harbour Coathanger) and down magnificent St Kilda Road past the Arts Centre (much better than the Sydney Opera Barn) and the Shrine of Remembrance and ending up in Acland Street. There we go, one hour exactly. And just in time for lunch. 2) If you then had to find that friend a great place for a quick bite to eat, where would you go? Well, we're in Acland Street , so there's food everywhere you look. But you said quick bite, so let's go to Scheherezade for some chicken soup or latkes or coffee and butter cake. 3) Now that you’ve entertained and fed your friend, it’s time to send him ...

Look out, Milan. It's the return of the little red dress . Australian researchers are making dresses from fermented fabric, using bacteria to grow slimy dresses from wine and beer. Laboratory technician Gary Cass says the University of Western Australia's Micro'be' project combines science and art. "We're looking to provoke some discussion about future fashions, about the possibility of other material we can use instead of our normal cottons and silks," he said. So now you really can pour yourself into a dress. Mr Cass, who also writes science fiction, ... I saw that coming.

There is always one day when you know. It’s not about the temperature, it just kind of feels different, like you’ve moved on. * Near midday, we walked down the hill and along the street towards the beach. At first you can’t see the water but you can see ships passing by, as if they were sliding down Point Nepean Road along with the cars. The Blairgowrie café was the usual jumble of dogs and people and prams and waitpeople running in and out with plates up and down their arms. We sat outside, as always. There was a new steel in the wind, a coldness I haven’t felt for months. Yesterday the bay was all twinkling blue in the sunshine. Today the water was grey and had little white caps. We kept our jackets on and ate. Tracy ordered the open salmon sandwich which came out about a foot high and had a blizzard of capers and an avalanche of house-made mayonnaise on top. I had the house salad which was big enough to feed a hutch of rabbits for a week, if only they could get their noses into the ...

I never met a vegetable I didn't like. I'm no vegetarian but I believe vegetables and their preparation are under-represented in the national culinary consciousness. Maybe it's the name. What sounds more appetising: 'Fancy some vegetable?' or 'Fancy some rare barbecued sirloin?' I rest my case. When I met Tracy, she was borderline vegetarian or maybe she just wasn't sure. She's Libran. They can never make up their minds. (I don't think she even said 'Yes' or 'No' when I proposed. She accepted the ring, though, so I took it as 'Yes' and went off and organised the wedding.) Anyway, when we first went out - those heady, carefree days of sitting around starry-eyed in cafes eating hummingbird cake and drinking endless caffe lattes - Tracy was always making hunza pies and lentil burgers and pumpkin soup and Thai beef salads without the beef. So I naturally tried to impress, responding with some of my meat-free specialities, in...