What I Cooked Last Night

There was a flyer in the letterbox from a semi-government body. It wanted me to "imagine if you could stream videos, download music and play games over the web at lightning fast speeds" and promised that it would "change how we access information, use communications and enjoy our entertainment". I imagined, and then I went out into the street to play football with the boys. On the same day, another semi-government body sent me a flyer offering me a "new online way to reduce your energy usage". It said I could "go online" (currently the most-used expression in marketing) and "track how much energy I was using", "see how the temperature can impact your energy usage", and "build a personal energy saving action plan". Today is just about Melbourne's coldest June day in history. The government is sending me a letter telling me the temperature affects energy use. There was a photograph in the paper the other day ...

On a cold winter night (even for others than a traveller) nothing beats onions fried until golden and then spooned lovingly over creamy potato mashed with garlic and olive oil. The aroma fills the house and seems to isolate it from the outside world. The rare fillet seared with a peppercorn and cream sauce is good too. I like it when items on the plate fight each other for star billing. Look out, more rain coming. The Merri Creek might break its banks again, like it did a fortnight ago. I couldn't walk further north than Queens Parade or be washed away. No, not the one in Clifton Hill; this one . The creek was under water where it winds around to the east. Quick. Pour another glass of red.

The Australian's Wish magazine rents out its expensive pages to world famous brands in return for advertorial articles. It pays to get these right. The latest print edition commences a story on one of Italy's oldest prestige eyewear manufacturer thus: For its latest collection, the Italian eyewear brand Persil has gone for a vintage look ... I'd be asking for my money back if I were Mr Persol.

Gently fry a chopped onion and a clove of garlic in olive oil. Before the onion browns, add a leek chopped into quartered rings, a chopped stick of celery and a few chopped sprigs of parsley. Sweat the aromatics for a few minutes. Meanwhile, in another heavy pan, brown two seasoned shanks well in olive oil. Add them to the pot, cover with stock and add a bay leaf and some chopped dried rosemary. Bring to boil. Turn down heat and simmer an hour. Peel and chop four potatoes into quarters or eighths. Add these to the pot along with a cup of barley. Adjust fluid. Simmer another hour. Stir occasionally. To serve, place each shank over a mountain range of whipped potato. Spoon leek and barley sauce over; add stewed potatoes for the potato lover. That's all of us here. For a side dish, saute whole button mushrooms in the pan in which you browned the shanks. Delicious. Red wine please, but none of that strawberry coloured pinot nonsense. Try a McLaren Vale shiraz. Or a Victorian ca...

Yes, I'm just trying to make things difficult. Make stock? Are you joking? I haven't got time to peel a potato, and you want me to make stock. Ridiculous. People are busy these days, in case you haven't noticed. Just look at any television screen. Half filled with people tweeting at broadcasts. You can't chop a carrot while you're tweeting and staring at a television screen. Ridiculous. Yes, ridiculous. But not the stock-making. It's easy. You just dump a bunch of aromatic vegetables in a pot and boil the hell out of them. I made this during the week and it made the best soup I've ever eaten. Tortellini soup. Vegetable stock In a large pot, sweat one large chopped carrot, one large chopped onion and one stick of chopped celery in a tablespoon of olive oil. Stir for a few minutes. Add one chopped leek, one whole onion studded with two cloves, some parsley sprigs, and a peeled and scored garlic clove, a bay leaf, a little dried rosemary, a spray of cra...

Okay, let's try it out . If you're going to die of arsenic poisoning, it might as well be after a nice dinner. Take several pieces of bone-in chicken, and make cuts in the skin with a very sharp knife. Make a marinade: blend half a cup of chopped basil leaves, five garlic cloves, an inch of peeled ginger, two tablespoons of peanut oil, a tablespoon of lemon juice and a little salt. After blending, fold through half a cup of plain full-fat yogurt. Place the chicken pieces in the marinade ensuring it fills the cut sections. Refrigerate for up to a day. Bake, or barbecue, turning once. The result is sensational. Serve on saffron-infused basmati rice with hot lime pickle to garnish and fenugreek roti on the side. Drink: cold beer. Or elderberry wine if you're a murderous spinster with lodgers in the house. * MORTIMER: Aunt Martha, men just don't go into window seats and die. ABBY: No, Mortimer, he died first. MORTIMER: But how? ABBY: Oh, Mortimer, don...

You might be safer eating the wrapper. Or is this just one of those beaten-up food scares the press loves so much? Arsenic in chicken is also afoot , so expect a raft of plays in which elderly spinsters dish up braised chicken on rice to their lodgers instead of pouring laced elderberry wine ...

The thing about the toaster is that it was the fourth electric cooking machine in five months to go through this household. I already had the regular pop-up toaster, and a Ronson toaster oven for toasted sandwiches (which despite never having been featured in this weblog, have been a popular and ongoing delicacy in this household - possibly the pinnacle of the culinary art). Then I came into possession of two more toaster ovens. This happened when I was trying to stop my mother becoming one of those elderly hoarders whose houses often go up in flames. Newspapers up to the ceiling, books filling every room of the house, makeshift wardrobes made from sheets strung over room corners hiding ceiling-high piles of cast-off clothes; that kind of thing. When I was growing up, my mother’s hallway used to be light and airy and a circular window of frosted glass in the front door used to let in the morning sun, now it is dark and gloomy because the circle window is shrouded and, at the far e...

1969: " ... (I don't advise hard physical training until your late teens because) every young boy in his normal playing activity goes and goes until he drops, and the added physical build-up is not needed. ... I know that I used to swing so long after school that I always used to get into trouble for being late home for my evening meal, and in the football season I went down to the local park and kicked a football around until after dark." - Neil Roberts, in Football the Australian Way , edited by John Craven, Lansdowne Press, 1969 2013: Children as young as eight years are suffering from severe back pain and headaches caused due to over-indulgence in iPads and smart phones. The iGeneration kids now are not only suffering from neck and back pains but also from tendinopathy in wrists and thumbs. The worst affected are children between the age group of 12-16 who are experiencing back injuries typically seen in people over 30, Balwyn Sports & Physiotherapy Centre di...

That was yesterday. Today's reading was stew recipes and the sports results. Onions are cheap at the moment. Beef and onion stew over mashed potato sounds good. We still have wild pumpkins to spare (wild meaning they grew from seeds cast out in the compost and turned onto the vegetable garden) so roasted pumpkin cubes with garlic and cummin seeds to accompany. Coffee with old running friends (old meaning long-time, not aged) at Potter Centre today in the sun, then a long walk home with Alexandra in the stroller. What a life. Well, both of us.

This morning, after toasting almost an entire loaf of white sliced bread and buttering and slicing them into one-inch 'soldiers', to accompany the children's lightly poached eggs, I gently upended the toaster (Tiffany, a Kmart housebrand) over the sink to remove the crumbs. (It also has a crumb tray, but the upending it gets more crumbs out than you find in the tray.) A week's worth of crumbs fell out. Three tiny screws, one tiny plastic bracket and two washers made of heatproof gasket material also fell out. Should I plug the toaster in and switch it on and see if it still works? The question crossed my mind fleetingly, like a nerve telling your brain to remove your hand from boiling water. I threw it in the rubbish. After all, it cost only as much a three full-priced loaves of Flinders sourdough. I'm off to Kmart. Or perhaps I should try one of those cut-price ones at Harris Scarfe. * Incidentally, poached eggs with toast batons is possibly the best...

Keith Richards : "I don't have an iPod. ... I still use CDs or records actually. Sometimes cassettes. It has much better sound; a much better sound than digital." Luddite.

Extract: English literature and expression were lazy, wonderful journeys into other times and places with Mr Johns; along with Mr Forster, Mr Lawrence and Mr Eugene O'Neill. Each of these literary sojourns was brought to a sudden end by the thrumming electric bell and echoing crash of locker doors in the corridor outside as students swapped books for the next period. Wednesday sport still provided mid-week relief from the classroom. Until later, when we were thrown headlong into the workforce's unbroken week, we little realised the benefit of this. Some of us found that getting out for a run on Wednesday afternoons was the perfect way to clear our heads of jargon and the scaremongering futurology of Alvin Toffler. Alternating between running and boundary umpiring, I'd be on a bus for cross-country at Bundoora or Mentone one week; the next I'd be taking a sly peep under my arm before trying to fling a football directly into ruckman Simon Madden's arms. I needn...

Late in the evening, an almost empty larder turns up a can each of red kidney beans and diced tomatoes. Not a lot you can do with that. Let's see. Spice can fix anything. * Heat the kidney beans and diced tomatoes gently in a pot. Add a teaspoon of paprika, half that each of cummin powder, salt and chili flakes - or a little less of chili powder. Cook and reduce a little. Take an avocado - I had one in the refrigerator where it possibly should not be stored - slice and add to bean mixture to heat through. In another pot, cook some polenta. When done, place polenta in a bowl, add bean stew, top with sour cream, grated cheddar and splash on some chili sauce. I used Tabasco Habanero. The stuff is delicious. You can drip it on just about anything. Tick, tock, midnight. Must go shopping tomorrow. The cupboard is bare. * The end of eastern summer time has this household's body clock in confusion. The children are waking at 4.30 a.m. for breakfast and demanding lunch at ni...