What I Cooked Last Night

What do real estate agents know that we don't? Some time ago, Mornington Peninsula agent Briggs Shaw took an each-way bet by making one of its offices both a property agency AND a cafe . Now, prominent Point Nepean Road agency Paul Basso Real Estate has rebranded - and is now calling itself Fruit .

Tracy is on holidays from the special developmental school at which she teaches. We're at the beach for a week and my mother-in-law is with us. The boys' Scottish accents are coming along nicely and they are being fattened up on shortbread. Nice work, Grandma. On Saturday her team won the Grand Final. Not really 'her' team, but the team her late husband - the boys' Grandpa - followed. So a sentimental moment. "We are Geelong, the greatest team of all ..." to the tune of Toreador.

No-one seems to know, but I prefer one. Spelling aside, there is a forest of it in the new garden bed we cut into the front lawn last year to save money; or rather, divert money from buying vegetables to watering the garden bed. (Latest water bill: water usage $25; utility charges $160. And they want us to save water?) Don't grow carrots. Their yield is not worth the investment in garden space. They are cheap anyway. Cos lettuce: brilliant. We had a constant supply of leaves for Caesar salad through autumn and early winter. Rocket: far too much. Plant rocket in between ornamentals. It's a waste of vegetable garden space. Which brings me to silverbeet. I grew up on silverbeet, the earthy-tasting green otherwise known as Swiss Chard and probably sixty-three other names. Silverbeet always entered the house riding rampant, like a triumphant knight's fleur-de-lys, on top of the box of vegetables my father walked in with after his Tuesday visits to the Victoria market in th...

Thomas bit the head off a broccoli floret and threw the stalk full force across the table at William. So he eats his vegetables but he throws his food. What do you do? You can't reward and punish simultaneously. The dilemmas you face. The fact is, he likes broccoli so much he eats it raw. It is growing in the garden. You pick a floret and he will eat it right there. It was half past six on an early spring evening, an evening that was still glistening with rain. That was the rain we needed. The forecast had been cloudy and the first drops had fallen around ten in the morning when I had been driving along Bell Street and down the ramp onto the freeway where Moonee Valley falls away and you feel like you're landing at Essendon Airport. The drops only made a red mud of the windscreen dirt that had blown in earlier in the week on the dreadful winds, but by lunchtime the rain had set in properly. My rain gauge (the wheelbarrow) was full by morning. * Thomas's next move...

Welcome back to At My Table 's Neil who writes of a waiter, when asked for the name of a particular variety of French mustard, returns from checking the name on the jar to announce, "It's called moutarde!" Reminds me of the Coles checkout girl who, when scanning a parsnip for my pot of winter vegetable soup a few months ago, enthused: "Wow! A white carrot! How long have they been around?"

Reader Johanna asked me how I got my pasta strands not to stick together. I replied: with difficulty. The stock answers to the question are (a) use a larger pot and more water, (b) salt the water well, (c) add oil to the water, and (d) do all of the above. I've had pasta strands stick together in all of these cases. Furthermore, the solutions are not always practical; for example, we don't salt the water when cooking pasta for the children. I suspect other factors are at play. Pasta quality is one, obviously. Water quality might be another. Water hardness inhibits soap suds; perhaps it also inhibits the action of boiling water 'sealing' each strand of pasta. I don't know. I'm no scientist. I'm just wondering. My solution is to stir the boiling water gently while adding the strands one at a time so that they float off around the pot like logs setting off down a river. Laborious if you are feeding fifty people. Or even five. But you get used to it. ...

It's the little things that get you. Like when you reach for something you absolutely must have at that particular second, and it isn't there. Because if it isn't there, it could be anywhere; which means whatever you are doing in the kitchen will be ruined by the time you make enquiries of the rest of the household as to the whereabouts of the missing item: your best knife, the corkscrew, the only colander in the house, an oven mitt, the kitchen sink plug. Whatever. All of these things have a number of potential alternative uses in a household that comprises inventive or enterprising people. Take my favourite small dish, for example. It was just the right size to hold olives or a pat of butter for the table. Emblazoned with the University of Melbourne crest and the words Melbourne University Union House Cafeteria in black, the white porcelain bowl also made an excellent talking point. (And no, I didn't steal it.) One day, a long time ago now, I had taken a stick ...

Was that the fastest winter ever? Well, yes: actually, it was. I've had this conversation before, so skip to the recipe below if I'm boring you. Time seems to disappear into oblivion faster as the years go by, because each is a smaller amount of time relative to one's entire lifetime. Prove that , someone said to me once. Time is just perception , I replied. It exists only for sentient beings. Several sentient seconds went by, and then: Prove that as well, followed by, also: billions of years of Earth's existence before human life appeared says you are wrong. A rock doesn't know how old it is, I replied, quickly. The great thing about not being a scientist is you never have to prove anything. Fettucine with ricotta and tomatoes. Cook some fettucine until just done. Drain. Toss through a little olive oil. Break up some fresh ricotta (you can buy it still warm from Elli's Deli in Sydney Road although the horde of elderly Greek ladies waitin...

Australian Gourmet Traveller chief food writer Pat Nourse explains the loneliness of the long-distance restaurant reviewer : " ... you need to eat out on a Tuesday night in winter when you'd really rather just go home." Nourse's angst is understandable. Naturally, food reviewing is a higher art than other criticism: "It's not like reviewing a film where you can take a cheap shot and make a small dent in a Hollywood budget. It's someone's livelihood." Someone's livelihood??? Ask your threadbare independent film-maker friends what they think of that comment. However, the loneliness and angst pay off: There are only a handful of full-time reviewing jobs in the Australian media and the competition is fierce. ... It certainly takes skill to write about food, like this on Sepia from the current issue of GT: "The more classical salad of roast squab is a lovely dish, the very pink pieces of the bird arranged among tendrils of green over litt...

It was an ordinary postwar timber house in a street running north out of Bell Street. Shadowed on its northern side by a double-storey McMansion, it had one main bedroom, with another small one off the rear verandah, sleep-out style. Great for a teenager, but you wouldn't want your small children out there, beyond the firewall of the main backdoor deadlock. The auctioneer shouted all the usual prefacing remarks. How close the house was to cafes and restaurants (currently the most quoted benefit in recommending spending half a million dollars on a house), shopping, transport hubs and schools. He didn't mention Bell Street being a Nick Riewoldt miskick away. You'd figure that out soon enough. Screech, crash! Bidding died at $581,000, was put on life support with a few $500 bids; made a major recovery with a jump-bid from $582,500 to $590,000 and finally cracked an even $600,000 when several parties walked away amid gasps from the crowd. Then the rolled-up auction sheet ...

It was a good night to get into the water. By 5 o'clock the pool was almost deserted. It had been a bleak afternoon. Now the sky was a bruise and a storm threatened. The outdoor pool at Brunswick is not cold enough to give you a heart attack when you jump in, but not hot enough to choke you with evaporating chlorine, like at some indoor swimming places. If it wasn't for the lack of scenery, water-running is a fine alternative to running in the park or on the road. Certainly gets the pulse going. It's a good alternative to actual swimming, for that matter. * Outside the pool's walls, a few metres down Dawson Street, is the art deco part of the town hall built in 1926. It is Brunswick Library now, but in the late 1960s and early '70s it was still a hall. My older brother's speech nights were held here; tedious affairs that went close to midnight and featured dramatic and musical items; groups of combed and ironed boys standing on tiered dais singing Weste...

It's four kilograms with the lot. If you ask the Cavendish Cafe to hold hold the onion, bacon, tomato, lettuce, beetroot, pineapple, egg, tomato sauce or whatever else they put in it, you could probably get it down to around the three kilogram mark; but that's still a monster. You turn right at Hamilton to get to Cavendish. It is beautiful country. The Grampians rise away to the east; Horsham is further north. They don't get a lot of through traffic. A giant burger gimmick is as a good a way as any to generate some publicity. Times are tough.

It was after nine. Dinner had been another winter favourite, a plate of spaghetti laced with sliced avocado, grilled red capsicum, chicken breast pieces braised in white wine and garlic, snow peas and home-made pesto; all tossed through nicely with a little cream and a lot of cracked pepper and showered with shaved parmesan. So back to the comfortable chair. One of a pair I bought with a matching three-seater lounge (1930s self-patterned green flock, polished cherrywood timber framework) for $200 in an antique shop in the hollow of Buckley Street in 1978, and had completely rebuilt and reupholstered in 1995 - after the first round of children - for $1800 at John’s Upholstery in Glenlyon Road. (John is Melbourne’s best upholsterer. Moreover, you will pay one-third to one-half of the price you'll pay in the inner east antique-and-afghan-rug belt of Armadale and Malvern.) I finished the glass of red and switched on 3MBS. It was the Tuesday night new music program called Contemp...

Episode One: Monday. Baked spring lamb. This is a simplified version of the Italian spring classic Abbacchio alla Romana which traditionally comprises all manner of things including anchovies, but all you really need are good herbs to let the superlative flavour of Australian spring lamb shine through. This is easy to assemble with no complex preparation, it cooks fast and it tastes delicious. Take a kilogram of spring lamb pieces - six centimetre cubes - and rub into them one chopped fresh red chilli, a teaspoonful of chopped rosemary, a tablespoonful of chopped parsley and two crushed sage leaves. Place the herbed meat in a heavy baking dish. Now scatter over the meat one chopped onion, two very ripe chopped tomatoes, and three crushed cloves of garlic. Pour over two tablespoonsful of olive oil and a cup of white wine. Season lamb generously with salt and black pepper. Add a little water, just enough to raise the fluid level; about half way up the lamb pieces. Sprinkle over ...