We all went to the Markets tonight and were buying meat from the butcher.
Little Miss M saw the chevapchichis (I have no idea how to spell that) and said “Look at the salami fish fingers!”
They’re so cute when they’re three.
Archive for the 'Food' Category
We had some Arnott’s assorted biscuits at work today. The girl I work with had her first teddy bear biscuit. Ever.
She took it from the tin and said “ooh, these look a bit dodge…” and I said “what, have you never had one before?”
And it’s not that she had been avoiding them all these years, she had just never heard of them.
How do you grow up in this country without ever having heard of teddy bear biscuits?
So why aren’t there hot cross buns in the supermarkets yet?
How disappointing.
I went to Haigh’s this arvo to buy some more Caramel Chocs (C loves them, so instead of flowers, I get her luxury chocoates). There was not a soul in the store and three people behind the counter. I brought my purchase to the counter and the girl expertly wrapped them in the pretty silver bag and handed them to me, then we exchanged cash and change and I was good to go.
I hung on momentarily… waiting.
But she did not conclude the transaction by offering me a sample of their Maltichocs or Peanut Brittle. I was offered no Haigh’s liquorice bullet or freckle. Not even a chocolate frog’s leg.
And when you buy Haigh’s, isn’t that the little extra touch you look forward to? It’s part of their branding.
There’s a health food eatery not too far from where I work. It’s not one of those places that has buckets of oats and barley out the front, it’s a place to go for lunch where they have heaps of home-made stuff, but really nicely cooked. I suppose not all of it’s “good for you”… the massive chocolate crackles spring to mind, but they’re going for the whole your-mum-could-have-made-this-so-it-must-be-good angle.
Anyway, not that I’m plugging it (as I’ve rarely eaten there; it’s a little pricey) but it’s called My Goodness. So whenever I walk past there, I always fancy a pint of stout.
One of the downsides to being a once-growing lad, is the assumption by all and sundry that just because you are a man with a healthy appetite, you’ll eat anything.
I guess I’m not completely innocent as far as creating this assumption goes. I do remember sitting in the high school cafeteria one day at recess, inhaling my usual bag of chicken twisties, then looking up to see Simone Young looking at me in astonishment. Her mouth was open in shock. Mine was open because I was literally pouring a bag of cornstarch snacks down my gullet. I was frightfully embarrassed and have tried to tone it down ever since.
It can’t all be me.
Over the past year I’ve been having regular fitness tests. When I started, I was graded as being older than I really am. Once I got right into the regular exercise, I got right down to being a 20-year-old again. But I’ve kind of slipped back and am now in my mid-to-late 20s. My cholesterol is at the high end of normal. Still okay but nearly not. And for the last six months I’ve been 4 - 5 kilos heavier than I’ve ever been (except for the summer of ‘96 but that’s another story).
Sometimes when the kids won’t eat, C says “Daddy will eat it”. Or if we’re out having pizza and there’s one slice left, someone will say “Here, Drew. Have another slice”. Or if we’re having elevenses at work and there’s a leftover cupcake, someone invariably says “Oh, you’ll eat another one, won’t you Drew?” And, sure, I will—because they’re just so tasty, but I don’t like the fact that it’s expected I will.
I used to produce a show at a local radio station every weekend. On Saturdays we had a half-hour break from 8 to 8.30 am. I would walk down the road and get a pie for breakfast, as the bakery would have just opened and they were fresh and fantastic (memories of that summer of ‘96 flooding back but this was only one day a week). The presenter called me Fatty Finn despite the fact I was a good 10 kilos lighter than him.
So I don’t really want to be regarded as some kind of human waste disposal. Every time someone suggests I finish something which, to all intents and purposes has already been finished, I feel like George Costanza taking that éclair out of the bin and putting it down his throat as I once did with that bag of twisties.
I’ve just read all that back and I’m not exactly painting myself in the best light. Maybe I am just a repository for leftovers.
I think I’ll start wheeling myself out to the kerbside on Tuesday nights.
I’d like to take this opportunity to say Happy Bastille Day to any Frenchies or Frenchie-loving non-Frenchies out there.
Not being a Frenchie, my earliest and fondest memories of Bastille Day are from French classes in high school, where Miss Woodman would bring in French onion soup, or some chocolate and a loaf of bread. We’d dutifully whack a few chunks of Cadbury Dairy Milk into a slice of white sandwich loaf and hey presto: pain au chocolat. I remember thinking ‘Chocolate in bread? Man, those French are weird’. Of course when I went to the real France and had a real pain au chocolat, the penny (or the centime, as it were) dropped and I realised how inferior my high-school education was to actually being in France. I began to question whether Miss W had actually been to France, or whether she’d just translated pain au chocolat a bit too literally. Though when I went to Belgium and tried that chocolate spread they put on everything, it struck me that milk chocolate on bread wasn’t that bad after all.
I just noticed while at lunch today that the Corner Bistrot in Bank St has “temporarily closed” and will be reopening somewhere else (hopefully on a corner, which will avoid a lot of confused looks from would-be patrons). I’ve been booked to eat there a couple of times but have never actually made it along, which is a bummer because it looked so cosy and, y’know, French. Also, Café 54 closed down ages ago. C took me there for my birthday a few years back. The food smelled and tasted great but the location kinda stunk. I went to 66 a while back too, and that was fantastic but it was before the new owners took over so I can’t really comment either way on what that’s like now. The only other French restaurant in town I’ve been to is La Guillotine, which is très authentique if a little pricey.
Feel free to insert your own snail or frog-on-crutches jokes in the comments.
I was just down at the printers for a press check and it went pretty quickly so at 11.20 I was back at the front of the building, ten minutes before my car was due to pick me up. And I was a bit peckish, so I scanned the area and saw a milk bar (sorry, I’m in SA so I’m supposed to call it a deli) down the road a bit and thought something to eat would be a great way to fill in the time (not to mention my tummy).
Adelaide is a two-pie town. There’s Vili’s or there’s Balfours. And of the two, I rather prefer the former on account of the fact that I manage to bite on a rather large chunk of gristle whenever I have eaten the latter. So if there’s a choice, it’s Vili’s for me.
The shop had Vili’s advertising all over it. There was a big mural that said ‘Vili’s pies and pasties’; there was a menu board out the front that listed the varieties of Vili’s pies and pasties you could buy; the windows had those stick-on frames done in Vili’s advertising, even the plastic strips in the doorway had a big Vili’s slogan and the words ‘Couldn’t you go a Vili’s?’
I got inside and walked up to the pie warmer which had Vili’s branding at the top and the bottom of the glass. A guy served me, asked me what I would like and I said “I’ll have a pie with sauce, please,” to which he replied… “Is a Balfours OK?”
Now, see if you can pick from the following list what my response was:
- No. Not OK. In fact, you can take your cartilage & shit pastry puffs and feed them to your pet pig, or some other shit-loving animal, cos there’s no way I’m putting that offal-filled lucky dip of horse guts anywhere near my mouth;
- Uh, no… I asked for a pie;
- No thanks, I’ve already thrown up one meal this week; or
- Ah [pause]… yeah, fine
He put it in a Vili’s bag, I paid him and I left.
I ate in on the way back to the printers. My car wasn’t there yet. I looked at my phone. It was 11.23.
The pie was fine, thank you. (They’re even cutting back on the gristle now… this was mostly gravy.)
