What I Cooked Last Night

This Volvo is so old it was built before the Berlin Wall came down. Yet it appears to be brand new. I found it on a used car lot in Alphington. The Volvo, a 740GL model first registered in March 1990, is a time warp. If you are sitting in the back, the glasshouse is so large it is like riding in one of those trans-national railway observation cars. The car handles like a train too. Designed by Volvo legend Jan Wilsgaard , the 740 was poorly regarded by critics at the time of its release: In 1983, Autocar 's Gordon Murray said, "To me it's obscene ... goes right against the grain of what everybody else is trying to do. To me it looks like a European version of a North American car." Murray still didn't like the model in 1990 : Ordinary passenger cars are getting bigger and heavier, and that's an awful trend. If everyone drove around in Volvo (700 series) there'd be no room on the road for you and me! It's ridiculous making these massive cars for pe...

Eight of them came down, hard as rocks, from a friend's farm outside Euroa. They don't all come from Queensland; they grow well just across the Great Divide. Put them in a paper bag with a banana, he said. Ripens them. Ripens the banana, too. Made banana cake when they went soft. Been eating avocadoes for ten days. They came up beautifully. Four days in a paper bag with a banana will do that to you. Creamy and cold, with a perfect interior of pale green, like a 1930s tiled bathroom. I made pasta with avocado, variations of which I have posted many times; the clichéd but delicious guacamole; one, halved and baked, even became a rerun of the 1970s classic avocado vinaigrette. Then there were sandwiches of wholegrain bread with cold sliced chicken and avocado, tomato and cheddar cheese, possibly the best sandwich ever invented. (Toast these in winter and never go back to ham-and-cheese again.) But the best dish with the Euroa avocado consignment was a scotch fillet stea...

Synopsis: Kitchen Hand is visited regularly by a neighbour's badly-named cat whose health is in decline. Another neighbour, who works in animal welfare, intervenes. Now read on. More months passed. Fluffball had fattened up again, but he still limped, and he had lumps around his neck. He used to fight with Lion, a cat who lived in the yard of another neighbour, unrelated to this story. One day, the animal welfare neighbour, whose name is Z., knocked on the door. Z. had a plan. The broad plan was to steal Fluffball. Yes, take him. Kidnap him. Z. would take him to a refuge. But we had to catch him first. He would not voluntarily get into a car and be driven away. He didn't even really like being picked up. He just liked head-butting me. The finer detail of the plan was that Z. would borrow a cage from a shelter. (You can get them from the council, but that takes six months and delivery is about as inconspicuous as riding a pink elephant down Bourke Street.) But she couldn...

The price of a cup of coffee at Coburg’s original and best café, Coffee and Kitchen, has risen for the first time in four years. It is now $2.50. That is not a typo. Coffee and Kitchen caters for the old Coburg crowd; the elderly Greeks and Italians who moved into the suburb in the 1950s and '60s as young factory fodder and are now in their twilight years. The two newspapers most read here are Il Globo and Neos Kosmos ; and, unlike most cafes, the most popular drink served is the short black, leaving the ubiquitous café latte a distant second. Gradually supplanting the old guard of customers at Coffee and Kitchen is a new generation of Coburg families whose children love the milkshakes or kick balls around in the mall while their parents sit outdoors under big market umbrellas in hot weather. But Coffee and Kitchen is still not quite hip enough for the hipsters - ironically, because it is exactly the kind of place foodie experience-seekers travel the world to find: an unpreten...

Another animal story, but this one is highly confidential as it includes cruelty, identity theft, actual theft, kidnapping, lies, trickery, and deception. Tell no-one you have read this. One day two summers ago, a cat walked in my front gate, proceeded up the long driveway, turned left at the pathway that leads to the front door and sat down on the front porch. I watched this happen through the front window and was strangely moved by the cat's nonchalant self-possession. It looked like it had been here before. But I was sure it hadn't. I invited it inside. You don't usually invite cats, you just let them in. But this one had such a debonair personality I felt a more formal approach was appropriate. The cat accepted my invitation and marched in regally, walked to the kitchen and sat down expectantly at the refrigerator. This was a cat that knew what it wanted. I fed it. The cat was a complete male, confident and fat and sleek with soft, small fold-over ears and shifty ...

Greyhounds have quirks, if not outright eccentricities. You have to wonder where they come from; the eccentricities, I mean. Perhaps it is because they have been living with humans for centuries. It is the only dog breed mentioned in the Bible, but that may have been a mis-translation. Our last visitor, Lou , (who gives them these names?) was here during the hot weather. Dogs like to play with their water, so you have to put around multiple sources. If they tip out their water on a 40 degree day they're in big trouble. I used a large plastic basin and two-litre yogurt buckets with handles as backups. Lou would gently nose the handle up to the pick-up position, take it delicately in his jaws, and carry the bucket to another part of the garden, where he would set it down again. Without spilling a drop. He did this all the time. He was self-taught. I have the evidence. I should upload it to YouTube, but the last thing the world wants is another pet video. Like most things, it wo...

Barbecue on a hot night. 1. Roll pieces of salmon through a marinade of soy, ginger and garlic. Wrap in foil adding some of the marinade. Place on grill. Barbecue until the package steams. Serve with coiled glass noodles with sesame oil and stir-fried Chinese broccoli. 2. Lamb chops marinated in olive oil into which you have snipped a handful of fresh rosemary. Serve with cubed potatoes boiled until very soft and then tumbled with chopped spring onion, parsley and a splash of vinegar. 3. Fat pork and sage sausages with a side of red cabbage with apple juice: Fry a couple of chopped medium size onions in oil. Shred one half of a medium red cabbage, add it to the pan and stir gently to coat in oil. Turn the heat down and add a dash of red wine vinegar, a cup of apple juice and a pinch of salt and pepper. Vary the fluid according to the size of the cabbage. Cook 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, reducing a little. When done, top with sour cream and serve alongside the pork and sa...

Happy Christmas or, if you're afraid to offend someone , happy holidays/festive season/new year/Hogmanay/yuletide etc etc. And a peaceful new year. I think that's acceptable.

From today's Herald Sun: While their meat doughnuts completely reimagined this humble snack - paprika sugar-rolled fluffy dough balls with a savoury meat centre - (and which a pork version thereof is also the must-order snack at the very fun Two Wrongs in South Yarra) the "milk and cookies" to finish at Dexter in Preston is a rudely clever, stupidly tasty full stop to a meal. Second prize goes to the same review: This "cheese" course, where a glossy-sheened smoked croissant is served with a round of what appears to be camembert that's actually cauliflower, oozing like ripe cheese, is wildly smart and inventive.

"Please prove you are not a robot."

When you have children, you eventually end up in Healesville, one way or another. One way is the Maroondah Highway. If you tell someone you took the children to Healesville at the weekend, they will ask you two questions: 'How was the traffic?' and, as an afterthought, 'How were the wombats/koalas/numbats?' The answer is always 'appalling', meaning the Maroondah Highway, not the animals; but on a Sunday in December it is even worse, given that half of Melbourne drives to the hills for Christmas picnics, obeying navigators (the GPS ones, not your wife) that push everyone onto the same road when several alternatives are available for old-school Melway-readers. The road is a traffic light-ridden nightmare. Endless minutes crawl by while you wait for green after minutes of red followed by random directional arrows. The motorcade then draws on at snail's pace towards Ringwood past about five branches of Fantastic Furniture, six Barbeques Galore, nineteen McDona...

I don't like restaurants. I don't like the cost, I don't like the noise, I don't like being a prisoner to some idiot waiter, I don't like other people's at-table habits, and I don't like sitting in a place that feels like a nineteenth century workhouse dining room. I'd rather eat at the GMH canteen, or Coles cafeteria; where the dress standard is higher, the customers are more respectful to those around them, the food doesn't cost a fortune, and the serves are bigger. The other week my wife had to go to a work dinner at one of those barn-like renovated pubs where the noise level is like an airport and a glass of wine costs $8.95. Her meal was a pork chop that cost $34 because it had some freekeh and a five-cent-coin-sized mound of smoked onion puree next to it, and you had to pay extra for something called a 'side' which, translated, means the rest of your meal. I ate at home alone that night. We had had corned beef earlier in the week, and...

From the weekend vacant position ads, a job at one of Australia's leading schools, PLC: Director of Innovation The Director of Innovation will develop and execute the vision to re-conceptualise library; space, staff and services, to create an Innovation Centre at PLC. The position plays a strategic and transformational role by providing opportunities for creativity and entrepreneurship through developing innovative and inviting spaces and a range of experiences that delight and engage students and staff as well as offering community building experiences with the wider PLC community. Just read that last sentence again. It is a masterpiece of the genre; an over-long piece of jargon-riddled bureaucrat-speak devoid of any real meaning. Who do they want? An architect? A painter? A set designer? A performance artist? Who knows. Probably they don't, either. On it goes: The incumbent (sic – but they mean the appointee) will ensure the delivery of information learning and literary serv...

IN PART ONE , CREATIVE DIRECTOR JUSTIN IS PRESENTING A BEER CAMPAIGN TO BREWERY CLIENT EUGENE IONESCO (SIC). PLEASANTRIES OUT OF THE WAY, EUGENE ASKS FOR A COFFEE BEFORE GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS. NOW READ ON. JUNE, THE LAST REMAINING TEA LADY IN THE ADVERTISING INDUSTRY, CRASHES THROUGH THE DOOR WITH A TROLLEY LOAD OF COFFEE CUPS. SHE SAYS NOTHING BUT PLONKS A LOADED TRAY ON THE BOARDROOM TABLE AND WADDLES OUT AGAIN, SLAMMING THE DOOR. EUGENE: I see June's in her usual high spirits today. JUSTIN: Every time there's a pitch on she gets more stressed than anyone else in the entire agency because it throws her routine out. A presentation with sixty million dollars in the balance, and June's grumpy about ten extra cups to wash up. Plus, I figure she's lost us several new accounts just by spilling coffee on the MD or being rude to the head of marketing. EUGENE: Yes, well as clients we do factor in the quality of service at a potential agency. That's only natural....