Right, so I know that Wednesdays are usually for reposting Clifton Courier rants, but today I’ve decided to do something a little different.

And by that I mean, “last week the glob of sweet potato mash that is my brain was unable to conjure a column so I had to re-jig a recipe blog post just to send something to print”.

And because a repost of a repost of a recipe would be poor form even for me, I’ve had to come up with something fresh for you today.

However, the old think box is a little bit yeah nah at the moment.

I’m running on the smell of an oily rag, and that rag bloody stinks.

So, in this clinically yeah nah state of mine, the best I’ve been able to come up with is a description of my dinner tonight – which perhaps might better communicate the funk I’m apparently in.

I started out my meal with four fig and black olive crackers I bought yesterday, smeared with raspberry jam and thick slabs of Mersey Valley cheese. The plan was to eat these slowly as I pretended to be a modern career woman, going through her emails and preparing an impressively high tax return estimate. In reality, I scoffed the bickies down in about 47 seconds and apparently owe  the Australian tax department at least $12.

I then realised I needed to prep myself some lunch for tomorrow, and ate myself another jam and cheese cracker while I sautéed some ambitious greens.

So, all up, I had five crackers, about a tablespoon of jam and like 5cm of cheese.

I then decided I would keep my biscuity dinner theme going, rolling it on to dessert. There was only one choice – the last two choc-backed Digestive bickies that had been taunting me from the pantry for days. These came into my life two weekends ago, and have been tormenting me ever since.  I mean, I know the name “digestive” makes these bickies sound like the kind of fodder designed to open old fogies’ bowels, but they’re probably my favourite biscuit. They have that rough, bran-y vibe that appeals to the cereal girl inside of me and the chocolaty goodness that answers perhaps the most difficult of calls to ignore. 

But, while I would have liked to have neatly ended my biscuit dinner on the high that was a few wheaty treaties, I felt the pang of guilt in my gut which, incidentally, feels just like the feeling you get when you eat too much cheese. And so, since I was frying some up for lunch anyway, I had a bit of kale to round things out. It was coated in oil so it was actually quite tasty, but I am disappointed I didn’t find a way to incorporate a bickie or a cracker into the mix. I’ll try harder next time.

So today I completed a 14km in a fun run.

Now, that might make me sound like quite a put-together person who spends their Sundays being active, enjoying the outdoors and sculpting their killer rig.

And I suppose I could leave it at that, humble bragging about my athletic achievements and coming off as a reasonably impressive grown up person.

But while I did go for a lengthy jog this morning, I also spent the afternoon sinking beers and being a general stain of a human being. To clarify, I was drunk by about midday, I drank beer though a mini luge that was my racing bib and got lost trying to make the short journey home.

As such, I found myself in the very familiar position of being unable to compose a smart, funny Sunday blog post.

So I did what any girl would do: I turned to my female friends on Snapchat. I put out the call to my nearest and dearest uterus-possessing friends for questions which I could answer in another one of my classic “pretend to be a celeb in a magazine” sessions.

I mean, that’s all I’m capable of at the moment and I do really enjoy grilling myself about trivial matters while imagining who I would look in glamour shots. And as I get older and less supple, I find my chances of appearing in a tell-all Cosmo spread are becoming slimmer and slimmer. I think my only hope is to appear on a reality TV dating show, but I don’t have the rig for it. So this blog is really the only place where I can indulge my self–obsession and delusions of importance.

And if I’m going to so pathetic as to pretend to be in a glossy magazine interview,  it is fitting for me to do so while wearing a pesto-splashed pony jumper while half cut in bed.

So, if you’re still reading, please enjoy my answers to the questions I begged my friends for. Feel free to play along and answer the questions yourself; it’s such fun.

What’s your opinion on deep-fried vegetables? Look, there are many things that shouldn’t be deep-fried. Video cassettes and human hair feature on that list; vegetables do not. I’ve just spent a bit of time trying to work out what veggies shouldn’t be deep-fried and I’m drawing blanks. I mean, I don’t know who a deep-fried beetroot would turn out, but I would be open to putting one in my mouth.

You can only eat three foods for the rest of your life – what are they? This is tough, because I know that restricting your diet means depriving yourself of nutrients and minerals. I’m well aware that a balanced diet is necessary for a healthy, thriving bod.

But, if I had a guarantee it wouldn’t give me scurvy or make me the size of a townhouse, I would say: hot chip sandwiches, steak and raw pie crust.

Of course, that selection is purely reflective of my yearnings today; it may be different tomorrow.

What’s your opinion on re-wearing bras? A sniff-test policy is the most effective approach for this.

How do you feel about puppies in prams? Look, I may cop some abuse for this, but I don’t really see the need for pram puppies. The whole idea kind of makes me cringe. But, interestingly, I’m perfectly amenable to wheelbarrow puppies.

Perhaps this says more about my attitude towards motherhood than puppies.

Could you consume a 1kg long cream doughnut? Um. Yes. Obviously. I’m not a moron.

Pancakes or crepes and why? Another controversial opinion, but I’m going with crepes. I mean, I love banana oat pancakes, but the standard pancake is just not my mate.

Pancakes – and by this I mean the pikelet-like flour clouds that go around these days – are just too heavy for me. After one-and-a-half plain pancakes, I feel as though I may as well have sat in a darkened pantry feeding myself flour straight out of the bag in the same manner Winnie the Pooh eats honey.

Crepes aren’t just lighter, but they often come with a filling more substantial than maple-syrup-flavoured nectar. Crepes don’t try to hog the limelight like pancakes do – they let their fillings shine.

Best occasion to whip out a scented candle? Any occasion is the best occasion to whip out a scented candle.

Were you offered a promotion? Go home and light a scented candle. Didn’t get that raise? Go home and light a scented candle. Did a glob of your spit land on someone’s face while talking to them? Go home and light a scented candle. Did you buy a scented candle? Go home and light a scented candle.

How would you feel if all carrots got a carrot disease and your could never eat another carrot again? Sad. Deeply and all-consumingly sad.

What is the worst ice cream flavour imaginable? Two-day music festival knickers.

What are your darkest desires? To be mysterious enough to have dark desires.

What is your favourite drunk food? Nuggets.

Who do you want to be when you grow up? A modern-day Bonnie Hunt character. I feel like she always plays the perfect balance of wholesome and sass. I mean, she’d obviously need a few updates – such as a less 90s haircut and a more pronounced career – but the essence is there.

Are we already grown up? Um. That’s rude.

Is you being drunk on a Sunday night content enough for a column? Yeah, probs not.

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.

Originally published in The Clifton Courier, June 13, 2018

I’m posting this on the 6.20am bus on Thursday morning, so please forgive the lack of italicised commentary. As much as I love the idea of adding extra info like I’m in the bonus featurettes in the box set DVD of my life, reading and writing on the bus makes me queasy. And as much as I’d love to have an excuse to head back home on this dreary, rainy day, I’d prefer not to have to deal with the fallout of vomiting on the upholstery or, even worse, another passenger. I probably should have public vomit insurance, but, as far I know, that doesn’t exist yet.

And, with that, please enjoy the latest of my ongoing first world complaints.

There are plenty of pros and cons about my glasses.

The biggest pro, obviously, is that their dark, circular rims communicate to the world that I enjoy a good Wes Anderson movie, I know the lyrics to more Modest Mouse songs than just Float On and that I probably shop at op shops (in case the bold, high-waisted plants I’m probably wearing wasn’t a dead giveaway). They act as mini-windshields when you’re in an open-aired vehicle, meaning you can keep your eyes open without the fast-moving air stinging them. They give you a sense of protection to ease your irrational fear that a magpie is going to go right for your peepers.

And, I suppose, they do help me to see.

However, with all these positives, there are also negatives.

For one thing, they perfectly illustrate just how much of a greasy person I am. I wipe my glasses constantly because I’m forever smudging my lenses with my grubby little mitts. I can’t pinpoint the cause of this, but perhaps it has something to do with my “more is more” philosophy when it comes to butter.

Opening an oven door instantly transforms my glasses into fog simulation goggles. It’s annoying and, actually, quite dangerous when you consider I’m carting around piping hot (and expertly-prepared) food with low visibility.

And then you have the issues with rain. The droplets on the lenses obviously impact visibility, but the splashed glass effect also looks quite funny to other people. This means that you want to run dramatically through a rainstorm as you deal with your emotional issue of the day (or, just as legitimately, an emotional issue you just invented because you didn’t have anything bothering you at that particular point in time you but still wanted to make use of the moody weather) and turn up unexpectedly at someone’s doorstep, the theatrical effect is lost. No matter how many times you listened to How To Save a Life by The Fray, your I’m-broken-but-adorable act will be undone by the comedy of your water-speckled glasses.

I discovered a new glasses complaint over the weekend. Unless I’m extremely tired, I don’t hop into the shower with my glasses on. I’m short sighted, so I can definitely manage to navigate the metre square enclosed by tiles, glass and an invisible sound barrier that keeps my renditions of Celine Dion’s classics from leaking into the rest of the house. However, after years of staring at a computer screen for much of my day, the details get a little foggy at my feet. I mean, I can still make out that I have all ten toes (and, thanks to an overzealous dancer at the office Christmas party, nine-and-a-half toenails) but there is a thin filter of obscurity down that low. So when I’m showering, I never realise how dirty my shower is.

I don’t notice the sludge, comprised of soap scum, my dead skin cells and miscellaneous sauce spillages to form a blackened splattering on my tiles. I don’t know that my shower represents every colour on the grime rainbow – from pimple pus yellow all the way through to dried dam scum greenish-black.

I only realised this when I randomly decided to clean my bathroom over the weekend. I thought I only needed to freshen things up, because I’m not really that dirty of a person. I don’t spray fake tan or use mud masks or anything, so I thought a little once over was all that was required. And this was somewhat true – because everything at eyelevel was mostly clean.

But when I knelt down by my shower, fully bespectacled, I was horrified by what came clearly into view. I’m used to asking myself “why are you like this?” but this was a completely different tone. This wasn’t a half-disappointed, half-amused exclamation, it was a confronting blend of disgust and concern.

I was in that shower scrubbing for the good part of an hour.

And here’s the conundrum: my poor vision meant my shower was becoming a bacterial breeding ground unchecked but, on the other hand, I was happily oblivious to the fact that I was bathing in mould, probably building up one heck of an immune system. Ignorance is bliss, no?

Didn’t my poor vision protect me from the grimy reality I was living?

Does it matter that my shower was so dirty if I never noticed?

The answer to that question is: yes, obviously. That’s how you get tinea, you filthy, filthy human being.

I pledged to never let it get that bad again, and I meant it. But then, I didn’t even notice how sparkling clean my shower was when I next used it.

Well, it’s the second weekend in a row that I’ve spent my day of rest recovering from reckless consumption of rosé.

It’s an ugly kind of hangover that feels leaves you with the faint stinging sensation of regret that festers in the pit of your stomach like an old nectarine rotting in the bottom of a fruit crisper. It’s a rancid, squishy feeling that is all kinds of unsettling. Aside from the overwhelming need to lie down, gives you the feeling as if you’ve wasted your day, derailed your life and set yourself on course for ruin. Looking at the world through rosé coloured glasses is the most unflattering of filters, casting the harshest of lights on reality and covering everything in a murky film that would stain a dishcloth.

Now, given my constant state of being and the fact that I’m about to put a new fridge on my credit card (a call out for a fridge sponsor on Instagram was rudely ignored and I can no longer exist with an insulated wardrobe as a refrigerator), it usually doesn’t take a couple of litres of pink wine to give me this feeling. I can get there all on my own. If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s extracting the depressing details out of a situation of ruminate on, swilling them around my brain like the clumps of warm dairy swirling around at the bottom of my teacup.

But I’m trying to be more positive. And by that I mean, I’m not actually going to be positive, but will attempt to be less negative.  And by that I mean that I am at least aiming to keep my negativity down to a nice, mild level– just enough to be amusing but not too much to be concerning.

You see, I just watched two episodes of Simply Nigella, which was exactly what I needed while nursing a sore head and lugging around a cinder-block-heavy heart weighted by the news of the great Anthony Bourdain’s death. Her voice is like a hug. Something in the way she does things tells you you’re not a piece of shit in a way that you actually believe it. Somehow, watching her crush up Cornflakes with her hands or peeling ginger with a spoon reminds me to be a little kinder to myself.

So I’m looking back at my day with a softer gaze.

Yes, I may have had chocolate cake and two-and-a-half teaspoons of Big Mac sauce for lunch. I may have caused irreparable damage to the lino in the kitchen trying to get a look at our broken fridge. And I frivolously spent forty still-one-week-until-pay-day dollars on an unhealthy amount of Mexican takeaway for dinner. But sometimes these things happen.

Sometimes, you do need that second Tim Tam after 10pm. Some mornings, you’re going to wake up with mascara smeared on your pillow. And some afternoons you’re just really not up to going to that rock climbing gym you said you’d go to.

There’s always tomorrow… especially when that tomorrow is a public holiday, which you can use to put your life back together.

On Friday night I invented a new recipe.

Well, it’s not exactly a new recipe. People have been baking eggs in tomatoey goo for centuries. And I’m hardly the first person to think, “I know! A bit of bacon will really make this”.

But no matter how common this recipe is, I still feel slightly accomplished for having put it together at the last minute. Not only did it save me money, but it meant I was able to get rid of the stuff in the fridge I’d hoped my housemates would have eaten while I was away during the week. The added bonus? I was able to turn a pathetic Friday night in into a blog post, therefore justifying my sad existence for literary purposes. I am no longer a loser; I am an artiste.

And with that, I give you my recipe for Friday Night Eggs.

Step one:spend one hour trying to work out what take-away to order, umming and ahhing over the expensive vegan options that would make you feel like a health goddess and the honkin’ fried chicken your heart wants.

Step two: Come within millimetres of ordering a vegetarian pizza (adding chicken and extra sauce) before deciding you need to reign in your spending and resolve to have eggs on toast like a responsible person.

Step three:put saucepan of water on stove, lowering in one egg, losing grip of another, cracking it and placing it gently back in the carton. Put another non-cracked egg into the water.

Step four: decide you’re worth more than boiled eggs on toast with butter (geez, someone has tickets on themselves!) and turn to the limited supply of food you have stored in the panty and the third of a shelf you’ve been allotted in the share house fridge.

Step five: Take one can of crushed tomatoes, which you once bought from the local corner store to make up the $10 necessary to pay for your milk via Eftpos. Smile, because your impulse “I’ll need that one day” buy paid off.

Step six:turn off that saucepan, baby, because you’re having baked eggs!

Step seven:open can, dip a fing, taste the tomato mush and decide there needs to be more flavour to your sad, solo Friday night dish.

Step eight:with a limp flick of the wrist, slop the crushed tomato into a circular cake tin, which you selected because it was the only viable option in the pantry. While the tomato is slush is going into the tin, lament over how many suitable novelty baking dishes you have stashed at your parents’ house. Think longingly about the baking dish with a duck as a lid and cruse, once again, that you live in a share house in Sydney and not a cute bachelorette pad in Queensland surrounded by all your humorous cookware.

Step nine:crack one egg into the mush, before realising you need to bulk up the mixture for there to be enough of a well to keep the egg in one clump.

Step ten:open the fridge, removing all remaining items you have on your shelf.

Step eleven:roughly slice and dice half an obscenely large onion while telling yourself the slapdash job is an example of the “homely” look.

Step twelve:slice two pieces of shortcut bacon into strips, not because you’re responsible about potion control when it comes to fatty meats, but because that’s all you have.

Step thirteen:consider the black pudding you bought when you’d just returned from Ireland, in need of sustenance, being too jet lagged to make proper decisions and homesick for the isle of your ancestors.

Step fourteen:sniff said meaty tube, noting that it seemed a little odd.

Step fifteen:decide that the blood-based sausage would make for an interesting quirk in the recipe, opting to add a few slices cut large enough to be easily picked off in the event of yuckiness.

Step sixteen:sprinkle in some oregano from a housemate’s shelf, justifying your use of it because you bought the house a bag of novelty Toblerones from the duty free shop.

Step seventeen:crack in the egg that was already cracked, therefore finding a us for the tainted egg. Be sure to congratulate yourself for your resourcefulness.

Step eighteen:grate on a good sprinkling of Perfect Italiano Romano Cheese, which you selected because it was what you had in the fridge, which made it to your shopping basket because it had the “great for risottos” on the label. Feel fancy because one of your housemates has a grater looks kind of like a spatula, and that’s the kind of thing Nigella would use.

Step nineteen:crack black pepper over the top, because you’re gourmet as heck.

Step twenty: place cake tine into the oven at a temperature you’re not entirely sure of, going for the fan forced-and-grill option to get a nice crust to the cheese.

Step twenty-one:grate some of that fance cheese with the fance grater over a slice of bread, setting aside to place in the oven at the last minute for dipping. Ensure you have enough bread left for an alternative dinner of toast and jam in case the dish turns out to be crap.

Step twenty-two:using the water from your abandoned boiled eggs mix, rinse out the tin of tomatoes, because you’re not a wild animal who puts dirty tins in the recycling bin.

Step twenty-three:put on some fluffy socks and wait. Wait to live. Wait to die. Wait for ran absolution, that would never come… or write up your actions before you forget them/to leave the paramedics a detailed description of what you’ve taken in case things go horrendously wrong

Step twenty-four:pull out the cake tin after like nine minutes, declare to no one that it “looks like vomit” and replace it on the middle shelf.

Step twenty-five:decide to watch one episode of Grand Designsor an English crime drama while tucking into your spontaneous meal.

Step twenty-six:After about 20 minutes, check on the eggy goo and decide it’s go time for the bread, placing it on the top shelf.

Step twenty-seven:prepare yourself.

Step twenty-eight:plonk the cake tine on a wooden chopping board, whack the bread on the side and start feeding your face while wondering when red-headed Collin from Love, Actually replaced the chap from Murder in Paradise, eating the goopy mess straight from the cake tin like the uncultured swine that you are.  

As an aside, I did eat all the pieces of black pudding from the tin, leaving only a bit of yolk uneaten as it felt like a bit too much. I’ll conclude by saying that the dish certainly filled the void in my stomach – I ate one-and-bit eggs, two bits of bacon, half a large onion, a whole tin of crushed tomatoes and a piece of bread. The void in my heart wasn’t entirely plugged, but it was a dish warm enough, cheap enough and semi-healthy enough to not make me hate myself, so that’s alright by me.

I’d give it a 6/10, but I don’t know if my 10 is the same as a cooking competition judge’s 10.

One word of warning – later that night I had what I can only describe as a black pudding nightmare. I swear I kept waking up and smelling black pudding, like some kind of meaty sleep paralysis attack. It’s this odd phenomena that prompts me to suggest that whichever poor, misguided soul who attempts this recipe uses a black pudding that’s less than weeks old.