Yeah, this is a weird one even for me, but I felt compelled to have something here on a Sunday to fulfil my self-imposed contractual obligations. In hindsight, I probably could have gone with a nice self-questionnaire, which would have been much more entertaining and much less concerning.

But it’s 9.32pm and I’m tired.

I just spent like 30 minute punching out the dribble below and I don’t want that time to have gone to waste. I could have used that time pleasurably numbing my mind by unconsciously scrolling through social media on my phone, but I put my semi-operational brain to task.

And below is what I achieved when I told myself to “just write something, for heaven’s sake – ANYTHING”. I’m so sorry:

Alright so yesterday I went to make myself breakfast and grabbed a few eggs out of the fridge.

I went to put them in a saucepan for a cheeky soft boiler on toast. I was a little on the… delicate side after too much red wine and a few Tim Tams the night before and was in desperate need for some runny yolk, an excessive amount of butter and perfectly browned toast – golden, but none of that charcoal business that makes your breakfast taste like it was dropped in an the ashes of a campfire. I remember my dad once made a joke about how me and my sisters liked our toast “milky white” to one of my friend’s dads, as if it was a mark of maturity and toughness to eat burnt toast. I mean, I didn’t set out to go into a massive spiel about toxic masculinity, but if you’re being socialised to think that eating burnt bread is what makes you a man and enjoying toast without charcoal is for little girls, that’s pretty fucking toxic. Like, it’s bread, mate. It’s fucking bread. If the criteria for masculinity is so stringent that it dictates your toaster setting, we’ve got some serious problems.

Anyway, enough about the ridiculous hoops boys have to jump through to prove they’re worthy of being attached to their penises, back to the breakfast sitch.

I was weakened with hunger and regret. I needed food.

Something made me shake my eggs and one of them had an extremely off-putting feel to it. There was something in there, and it wasn’t just a bright yellow yolk. It sounded solid, but also squishy.

I made my housemates shake it and we squealed and squirmed like the stereotypical hysterical women that we are.

My curiosity and love of all things disgusting made me want to see what was inside, but my churning tummy held me back.

I decided that I was in too fragile of a state to crack open the egg, so I put it aside for when I was feeling up to it.

But then this morning rocked around and I was in an even worse state – even more red wine, even more Tim Tams and the additional affliction that was the kind of headache you can only get from screaming Celine Dion and Mariah Carey lyrics. It was a bad time.

Once again, I picked up the egg. And once again, I decided I was in no state to deal with the horror contained within that thin, beige shell.

So I put it back on the windowsill, leaving it for later.

Well, now it’s later. I’m still not in a good way. My stomach is being extremely bratty about this whole don’t-drink-alcohol-or-eat-sugar-and-refined-carbs thing. It still feels like I’ve just drunk warm milk and eaten a spoonful of chilli flakes.

So I haven’t cracked the egg. But now I don’t know what to do about it.

I can’t just chuck it in the bin – because it will inevitably crack. And the only thing worse than a half-formed chicken foetus is the smell of a half-formed chicken foetus that’s been sitting at room temperature among food scraps and rubbish. I could throw it off my balcony and out of my life, but I feel the potential for karmic forces to be unleased by what could very well be the offspring of an all-powerful chicken god isn’t worth the risk. And I could leave it on the balcony and hope a crow comes to pick at the horrific contents of the egg, but there’s a chance no birds will clean up my mess completely and I’ll have to clean it up myself two days later – which would be worse because the goo would have dried hard from the sun.

The only choice I’ve got is to take it down to my apartment’s rubbish room, but I’m already wearing my pony pyjama pants and jumper (which, incidentally, were bought separately but make for a bitchin’ bedtime ensemble). I’ve showered. I’ve been in my warm, cosy bedroom for hours. I don’t want to go down to the grubby rubbish room now.

So the egg remains in a cup on the windowsill.

I just really hope that neither of my housemates comes home after a Sunday sesh and decides to make themselves egg and soldiers.

I’ve just come back from a weekend away and, as seems to be a trend for Sunday evenings, it appears that I am not particularly fit to be putting together anything of substance.

And, because I felt like drawing a picture of my raspberry jam toast and wanted to brag about the amount of cheese I’d consumed over the past few days, I decided to document my weekend by way of a food diary.

I feel as though recounting my weekend in this format is both brutally honest but also leaves plenty to the imagination. You have a few straightforward facts from which you can draw your own conclusions, using your own creativity to fill in the gaps. It’s almost like a mental exercise, if you think about it.

I’ve also done it this way because I personally love reading the mundane but thorough details about people’s lives. I find it so engrossing. I mean, there could be a deeply-moving, well-researched article about a topic I’m passionate about in a magazine, but I’ll still get most excited about the various lists some complete stranger makes. I want to know what they spend their money on. I want to read their grocery lists. I want to know how they spend their days – from their morning wee to the final scroll of Instagram before they go to sleep at night. I’m nosy and I assume everyone else in the world thinks like me, so I’m putting out what I would like to read.

So please, enjoy this gastric record of my weekend, for no other reason than casual curiosity. Please note, however, that the times may not be entirely accurate – particularly the ones that are jarringly specific to the minute, instead of being rounded up to multiples of five.

Friday

5.45am: I started the day off right, with bran, oats, walnuts and strawberries with a dollop of yoghurt, and a drizzle of honey. I also had a heart cup of tea, which was oesophagus-scoldingly hot and lightened ever so slightly by a dash of atheistically important milk.

8.45am: Two small chunks of a brownie leftover from someone important’s catered meeting, left in the staff kitchen overnight. I needed something do to distract me from the fact that I’d just left my suitcase – including my laptop – on a bus. Stale shame brownie was better than thinking about someone going through my knickers on the side of a street somewhere.

2.13pm: A single Werther’s Original found on the floor under the desk of the person who sits next to me at work. I’d just spent my lunch hour chasing around my suitcase, so I didn’t have time to eat. I gratefully accepted this carpet lolly, which doubled as my lunch and a celebration of my reunion with the items I’d stupidly left on public transport.

5.27pm: A dinner of an old, old Crunch bar and a packet of plain chippies, hastily bought from the train station vending machines before my ride to Newcastle left.

8.45pm: A second dinner of grazing plate including strawberries, crackers, capsicum dip and a selection of Aldi’s finest cheeses – one called “Mary Valley” that was suspiciously similar to Mercy Valley. I also contributed my leftover chippie crumbs and the crumbled Crunch bar that survived the train journey.

Saturday

9.13am: A cup of tea and two boiled eggs on toast, with fried tomatoes and a few chunks from an avocado I’d brought with me to Newcastle because it was ready to be eaten and would have been a brown pile of yucko by the time I got home. I carried that avocado in my handbag all day on Friday – on the bus to work, on the frantic trip to the bus depot to pick up my lost suitcase, on the frantic trip to get to the train station… Thankfully, it was only slightly bruised.

10am: A foolishly large-sized lukewarm chai latte that I didn’t really need, but wanted to buy so I could pretend I was a coffee drinker like my gracious hosts.

1.20pm: A few drizzles of gourmet infused oils, along with the free, sample-sized hunks of bread provided to soak said oil up.

2.20pm: An assortment of pre-selected presented on unnecessary but nonetheless impressive tower, as well as a brie and cheddar cheeseboard because our party of three was feeling pretty bloody extra after several free wine tastings.

7.23pm: Two sloppy handfuls of san choi bao, which I am too tipsy and too from-regional-Queensland to pronounce properly. A few messy spoonfuls of chicken cashew stir fry and plum beef, eaten between further failed attempts at pronouncing the mincey, leafy entrée.

8.02pm: Almost all of the caramel macadamia fudge I’d bought “for us all to share”.

9pm: The remaining cheeses from the night previous, along with candied fennel seeds which, because they’re said to aid digestion, I hoped would magically undo all the damaged I’d done that day.

Sunday

10am: Two boiled eggs on toast with spinach, mushrooms and a generous dash of “oi, sit dowwwwn” aimed in the direction of the dog who stood just a little too close to the table. The was washed down with two “bucket-sized” mugs of tea.

12.12pm: Numerous glasses of table water gulped down in a fear that my hangover had simply been delayed.

12.34pm: A glass of mulled wine, because I wasn’t driving.

12.42pm: A cauliflower dhal with chicken, because I like vegetarian dishes but I prefer said vegetarian dishes to not actually be vegetarian.

1.56pm: A packet of peanut M&Ms bought as an emergency supply of food in case I became desperate that I promised myself I wouldn’t open until well after my train left the station at about 1.43pm.

6pm: A few spoonfuls of yoghurt, eaten with the fridge door still open.

6.13pm: A stiff cup of tea.

7.30pm: A spoonful of my housemate’s dhal, which she insisted I try.

7.35pm: A few more spoonfuls of my housemate’s dhal, which I “sampled” out of her unattended saucepan as she ate her dinner in the other room.

7.40pm: A few artichoke hearts that I’d transferred into an empty kilo bucket of hummus filled with the leftover oil from two jars of Danish fetta – because the juice the artichokes came in wasn’t really my fave and I had all this leftover oil I didn’t want to waste. I realise that eating drippy, oily artichokes straight out of a bucket might scream “sloppy singleton with no prospects” but I feel my outfit of strawberry slippers, Aristocatpyjama pants and Frozennightie might have already projected my current state.

7.45pm: A cup of tea and two pieces of toast with an obscene amount of butter and raspberry jam. I remind myself that it’s rye bread and not Wonder White, therefore making it a sound dinner choice for a Sunday evening.

There are two ways to look at this recipe.

One is that it’s a fast, healthy recipe perfectly suited to a busy Instagram influencer. It’s quick, it’s portion-controlled and it borders on the clean eating movement. It’s essentially like taking porridge and frying it, eliminating nasties such as “four” and “salt”. You could even get around the whole butter issue by advocating to your horde of followers that natural butter is devoid of all those chemicals they put in other spreads. It’s, like, holistic, and stuff. Plus, you could also use this to frame yourself as a grounded, ethical eater who supports local dairy farmers (which you should always aim to do anyway, guys).

Or, you could look at this as a recipe for a singleton who is looking to fill the hole in their heart with food but trying to eat healthily enough so their body doesn’t become too pudgy to be a commodity in the singles market. You could also suggest that this person is trying to cut costs by getting the bulk of their fruit in the form of overripe office freebies.

The good thing about this is that you can frame yourself as someone from the former or the latter categories through the simple selection of legwear – tight, sucky-innie leggings for the influencer or stained, slighty-faded trackpants you bought back in uni.

You have the power to decide.

Also, I’d like to point out that “panc” is short for “pancake” and pronounced like “wank”. It’s imperative that you use this term when referencing this recipe in conversations with your most powerful, influential acquaintances.

Step 1: Toy with the idea of cooking up a big savoury breakfast with fried kale and tomatoes and all that jazz.

Step 2: Listen for the voice in your head that tells to embrace life. You just went to the gym/took out the rubbish/managed to drag yourself out of bed instead of wallowing in your own musk under the covers like a cozy jaffle (the mattress is one piece of bread, you and your bodily gasses trapped under your blanket are the filling, and your doona is the other piece of bread). The voice is telling that you deserve something sweet.

Step 3: Decide you don’t want any damn vegetables.

Step 4: Take out and assemble your food processor, first placing the components on the kitchen counter dramatically, as if they’re pieces of a bomb and you’re in a spy movie and you’re in the montage close to the end where you gather the strength to finally take down the baddies in spectacular fashion.

Step 5: Grind half a cup of rolled oats into a flour – it will never really get to the point of being a fine powder, but more of a meal.

Step 6: Crack in an egg – Mum always tells me to first crack it into a cup to make sure you’re not dealing with a stillborn chicken, so you may want to do that. If you don’t mind having the mince of a half-formed chick in your pancakes, crack straight into the food processor.

Step 7: Take one medium-sized over-ripe banana that you snagged from the staffroom fruit bowl and left sitting at your desk for days before finally transporting it home. Peel and chuck into the processor.

Step 8: Grind that jazz into a delightful, beige goo.

Step 9: Depending on how thick it is, add about two tablespoons full of milk and pulse again. The idea is to get the mixture into a runny state – thick, but runny. Aim for the consistency of a chunky smoothie. Add more milk as needed.

Step 10: Add a sprinkling of baking powder to the mix, to fluff these fellas up. If you want to stay true to the original recipe, just shake a bit in from the container – otherwise about a teaspoon will probably do.

Step 11: Once you’re happy with the viscosity of your panc mix, it’s time to add the flave. Depending on what your soul needs, this might be a good squeeze of honey, cinnamon and mixed spice. I haven’t reached this emotional point yet, but you could very well add a dollop of Nutella, some choc chips or, if you’re in a really weird, dark place, some chunks of pork crackling. Go with what you speaks to you.

Step 12: Give everything one final pulse, just to make sure everyone within a 10m radius is awake.

Step 13: Discover that the dishwasher is not full enough to be switched on, but too full to take a frying pan. Whether you’ve had a long, hard week or you’ve just been flouncing around doing the absolute bare minimum, you’re probably too good to be spending your Saturday morning washing up. Decide to use the sandwich press instead, because at least you can just wipe it out and then immediately piss off outta the kitchen afterwards.

Step 14: When the sandwich press is hot, slather on a bit of butter to fry the batter in. The volume of this slather is entirely up to you, but I advocate for generosity in this department.

Step 15: Pour a puddle of the mixture on to the hotplate, enough to make one medium-to-large panc.

Step 16: Wait until the edges harden up, then wait a little longer. These babies aren’t particularly structurally sound. I’d recommend closing the press so the upper hotplate hovers about a centimetre above the panc to speed things up.

Step 17: Flip carefully, using a butter knife along with your spatula if you need to. It’s better to be safe than burdened with a broken pancake/heart.

Step 18: Repeat the process until you have no mixture left, making sure to add ample butter before each fresh pour.

Step 19: If you’re feeling a little extra, cut two strawberries into slices about half-a-centimetre thick, chucking them on the hotplate when you make your final pour. Let them sizzle until their innards turn to the gooey mush you imagine your heart looks like when you see something cute.

Step 20: Chuck all this on to a plate, artfully arranging them (as pictured above) if you have the stamina, or simply plonking them on if you can’t be fucked with presentation. If you’re in the can’t-be-fucked club, I do recommend piling them on duck egg blue plate (as pictured above).

Step 21: Wipe the sandwich press clean with a damp cloth while it’s still warm so you don’t have to do any cleaning after breakfast.

Step 22: Enjoy your decadent breakfast for one in an empty living room, perhaps indulging in some supermarket catalogue reading material while you eat in silence.

Look, I’m not going to lie to you.

I’ve been a bit of a stain this weekend, again only being able to achieve things after the Late-Afternoon Sunday Fear woke me from my nap, jolted me into putting on some laundry and guilted me into making my lunches for the week.

It wasn’t a total loss of a weekend – I’d been to a weights class at the gym, did my groceries and went on a long walk with a friend. And I managed to send off a column… but I ended up writing about going to the hardware store, for heaven’s sake.

Yes, I have been struggling for the past few days.

This is, yet again, due to my preference for going hard of a Friday night rather than a Saturday night.

It’s the reason my last column (which will be up on Wednesday) was a half-strength depresso. It’s the reason I have worn bright pink trackpants and a horsey jumper for most of the weekend. And, even though I have had two full days to recover, I suspect it’s the reason why I’m only just starting to write this post at like 9.40pm. And with that, I’m going to give you my second alcoholic drink recipe. It’s in line with the red-wine-based bevo I’ve described beforeand the sickly-sweet Bottle of Green that has probs slipped into my copy before in that it’s nauseatingly and unapologetically crass.

I called it the Fan Tam Slam, more out of impulse, I assume, than anything else. I don’t believe much thought was put into its name, much less the actual composition of the beverage. If I were in commercial copywriting, I’d describe the drink’s “creation” as being born from inspiration; an elixir that captures the spontaneity of the human spirit and the magic of the unplanned. However, I can’t really recall the exact details surrounding its creation, which I feel explains a lot.

Fan Tan Slam

This is a particularly potent cocktail, which is best served when there is literally nothing else to drink.

Step 1: Locate a leftover bottle of spirits that someone didn’t want to destroy their life with. If it’s already been opened and has been sitting for a while, all the better. In the first iteration of this cocktail, said spirit was vodka. But, really, if you’re resorting to this recipe, anything will do.

Step 2: Locate some sickly-sweet, extremely sugary soft drink that someone no longer wanted and put in a public space in the hope someone would get rid of it for them. In the most recent case, this soft drink was orange flavoured. And I don’t mean “orange” as in the type of citrus fruit, I mean “orange” as in a generic orange-coloured variety of fruitish things, flavour. It was a syrupy mish mash of vaguely fruity flavours, not unlike a medicine which makes empty promises to sick kids that it “tastes like yum” or something. Again, given your state and desperation, the exact flavour combination is not important.

Step 3: Locate vessels that can contain liquids, preferably clean but not exclusively so. Using a mix of used wine glasses, tumblers and coffee mugs adds to the charm.

Step 4: Slosh a generous, unmeasured glug of the unwanted sprit into the glass, stopping when someone cries out in protest over the amount.

Step 5: Giving the best impersonation of a swanky bar tender your diminished motor skills will allow, top up the glass with the soft drink.

Step 6: Present with a flourish, calling the drink a “Fan Tan Slam”, vaguely explaining your high school nickname was Fannie and, if it feels right, launching into a rant about how an “ie” is much more pleasant and feminine than a “y”.

Step 7: Repeat as required.

Step 8: Wake up the next morning with your stomach feeling like an ashtray.

Step 9: Remain a piece of sluggish, winging human garbage for two days, being sure to complain about how terrible you feel to as many people as possible.

I’ve finally seen the truth about Brussels sprouts.

And that truth is that I’ve been cooking sprouts wrong my entire life.

Now, it would probably be more accurate to say that I’ve been cooking sprouts wrong for the past five years, because I came quite late to the sprout game. To my knowledge, I was never fed sprouts as a child. My only awareness of the mini-cabbages was through American movies, in which kids bloody hated the things. Every depiction of them was negative, if not traumatic. There were never neutral positions on sprouts. They were the common enemy of children around the world. I learned to hate them before I’d even seen one on my plate, let alone put one in my mouth.

And I didn’t set out to get all preachy about anything other than vegetables here, but probably a lesson in this: sprouts got a terrible wrap in the media I consumed, which directly influenced my opinion on them.

It wasn’t until Mum started making baconny cabbage that things changed. I’d been wary of cabbage for a long time too, but the addition of bacon took away all my misgivings. It was a fried, bacon-flavoured slop that opened up my world.  Cabbage was my gateway vegetable to sprouts because I reasoned that, if I liked cabbage, I’d like it in miniature form.

And I did.

I started wilting sprouts with butter and oil and bacon, and I really, really enjoyed it. I would chuck the four ingredients in a small egg-boiling-sized saucepan and simmer down until they went slightly mushy. Sure, it took its time. And yes, it was tricky trying to balance cooking the sprouts all the way through with not wanting to burn the outers. And sometimes I didn’t get that balance right.

But I was hooked.

I lamented about how long I spent avoiding these cute little cabbages; all that time I’d wasted. But I made up for it. It was a regular feature on my dinner table/the couch cushion I rested on my lap so I could eat while watching TV.

I was smug. I’d seen the light. I’d realised the errors of my past and had overcome them.

But then I saw this new way of cooking them and it changed everything.

I came across it in a free Coles magazine, which always fills me with delight and lofty culinary aspirations. I picture the Mediterranean feasts I could make or the themed dinner parties I could host. I get wild ideas about rhubarb. I look at pears differently. And sometimes I do legitimately believe I’m going to cook a Coles-inspired banquet for my charming and sophisticated adult friends who wear tasteful jumpers.

I mean, that’s yet to happen, but it’s fun pretending.

Because reading the magazines isn’t so much about the recipes, but the enjoyment of perfectly-plated food. I spread reading them out for weeks as I pore over the artful way the made-with-Coles-ingredients dishes are laid out on the crockery my inner-housewife wets her metaphorical pants over. It’s almost pornographic for me. I mean, it combines two of my greatest loves – food and magazines that tell me how to live my life.

And, as someone who had very limited layout restrictions to stick to back in her newspaper days, I must say that I do get a little kick out of the composition of the pages. Sometimes I joke about being a terrible journo – my spelling is appalling, I hate bothering people and I tend to tell long-winded, had-to-follow and anti-climatic stories in conversations – but I do love me a good page layout. And I find the smell of newsprint extremely alluring. I would absolutely buy a newsprint-scented candle.

But anyway, I digress.

I came across the sprouts method and it legitimately changed my life, which is what I told – at unnecessary length – the poor person who sits at the desk beside me at work the next day. I also told my sisters. And my inner sanctum of fierce female friends (calling your group “fierce female friends” makes you all sound like highly-successful but incredible likeable trailblazers – like the cast of Big Little Lies or Oceans Eight). I told everyone about it.

It was a religious experience and I was compelled to spread the word. I wanted people to see the light. I wanted them to open their hearts and let this miracle into their lives.

So here it is, the celestial wisdom of sprouts: a combination of water and butter.

I know, but bear with me.

First, halve your sprouts and whack them into a lidded frypan flat-faced down. Completely cover the bottom of the frypan, because you’re going to want as many of these babies as possible. Then you add like a third of a cup of water, maybe a touch more if you’re dealing with some thicc mummas.

Then add butter. I think the recipe called for about three tablespoons of butter, but I believe in being liberal with dairy-based fats. Life is there to be lived and, damn it, butter is solidified life, so take a big spoonful of it. If you’re doing this yourself – and I strongly advise that you do – dollop the butter in the gaps between the sprouts until your heart feels full and your zest for life returns.

Now, I realise that this butter and water combo may sound extremely odd to you, because I also had my doubts. I was a sceptic, but now I’m a convert. You just have to have a little faith.

Close the lid on your little sprouts, bringing the pan up to a medium heat. After maybe five or ten minutes, the water will have evaporated. By this time, the water will have softened the sprouts, cooking them all the way through. And then it’s the butter’s time to shine. Rather than settling for soggy sprouts, let them brown up in the goo of the gods. After a few more minutes, your sprouts will be cooked completely but will have an outer crispness that hugs your soul.

Enjoy with a big hunk of steak, on a sanga with brown bread and freshly-cooked chicken breast or out of a novelty-sized mug.