The guerilla garden continues apace with one rude surprise. The bamboo has been chopped down and left aside to mulch as much material as possible before I call in the council to remove the woodier stalks. The rude shock is that beneath the thin ground cover of rotting bamboo leaf and years of accumulated trash,… Continue reading Guerilla Gardening: How to compost a whole cow
Category: Melbourne
The most useless kitchen item that I own
Ed from over at Tomatom has started an interesting thread on the least useful kitchen items that one owns. I tend to veer away from any single-use item – I wrote about this in Cambodia as a rare victory over acquisitiveness. Buying kitchen gear does not make you a better cook. Spend your hard-earned cash… Continue reading The most useless kitchen item that I own
Travel Writing 101: Date the embassy “chick”
Amazon.com Widgets Welcome to hell, Lonely Planet. “They didn’t pay me enough to go (to) Columbia (sic),” “I wrote the book in San Francisco. I got the information from a chick I was dating – an intern in the Colombian Consulate. “They don’t pay enough for what they expect the authors to do.” Thomas Kohnstamm,… Continue reading Travel Writing 101: Date the embassy “chick”
F-Shed at Queen Victoria Market, Melbourne
At 8:30am this morning, in the moment before the sun rose above the cloud cover
The outing of Camy Shanghai Dumpling House’s secret
When salmonella went feral a few years ago at a favorite Turkish restaurant, hospitalising a wardful of unlucky diners, I felt the urge to eat there out of solidarity with the owners but sadly, the health inspectors had put paid to my plans. The joy of returning to a previous favourite restaurant is built entirely… Continue reading The outing of Camy Shanghai Dumpling House’s secret
Melbourne street life: Corner of Bourke and Elizabeth St
7:00am in front of the GPO, Melbourne, Australia
I can’t believe it’s not Chợ Bến Thành
There is nothing like a high degree of architectural verisimilitude to brighten up my day, be it a Big Banana, Giant Merino or in this case, a fake Ben Thanh Market building in the middle of Melbourne. This model of Saigon’s Ben Thanh Market is so accurate that the clocks are all set to the… Continue reading I can’t believe it’s not Chợ Bến Thành
Sausage Fancier
Once you’ve seen how sausages are made, you’ll want to eat nothing but sausages. This was my first impression of home sausage making; my second was that making sausages is possibly my true calling and that my university loan debts could have been better spent on a meat mincer and practicing the barbecuing arts rather… Continue reading Sausage Fancier