there's nowhere good to have breakfast at queen victoria market

QVM feels a little work-in-progress at the moment with ugly new buildings being put up to its south and the above kind of nonsense going on which I think is described on a sign as 'essential renewal'. The bummer is, there is really nowhere to have a good breakfast, by which I mean, not a fucking egg and bacon fryup. There is one cafe which I went to for donkey's years run by I think an Indian family (sorry if that's wrong) who did a very superior scrambled tofu. I'm not going to name or shame the new management but that cafe is now much more normy than it was (popular though) and it certainly doesn't cater to the likes of me, which I understand (though obviously don't approve) but looking around at all the empty shopfronts etc you have to think surely there is room enough for a whole lot of new places that could cater to people who didn't even necessarily want their shopping at QVM to be an experience, just somewhere to glean an interesting toasted bagel with idontknowwhat on it, I'm not a chef or an innovator. Someone should do it though. 

simple shedding

St Louis Post-Despatch 18 May 1902 p. 47

As mentioned a couple of days ago I was surprised to see that a year ago in Turku with that lavish spread I was apparently unproblematically consuming various kinds of cheese. Bread is less surprising because I was eating bread up to two months ago without too much issue, indeed, going to good bakers like Crumbs in Kensington or making my own bread without care. 

Oddly enough I now perceive cheese (as part of the dairy slavery cabal) as cruel and weird, and while intermittently I dabbled with fake cheese I feel now that that stuff (perhaps depending what it's made from - should I try them all out experimentally?) actually makes me feel unwell, probably it's too rich in something. Not only can I now do without cheese and even cheese substitutes, I feel a little nauseous when I think about cheese generally. Remember that Simpsons episode where the cheap mafia milk is rat milk? Well, to me rat milk or cow milk, I make no distinction. That said, I really like this stuff called 'Like Milk', which is apparently made from peas, and I am also fine with oat milk, though I was disappointed to read in Wikipedia that the Oatley company is kind of morally dodgy these days. 

Bread is different, though I do often recall my father detailing the yeast process to me in terms that the yeast thinks it's going to have a life but then it gets baked and dies, although really, I am pretty sure yeast doesn't have ambition. But while I can't entirely remember when I last had bread, I do know I don't really want any anymore (I also recall that in the last year or so, bread has often caused me pain). So I don't know that I'll be going back to that anytime soon.

I suppose the time is approaching when I absolutely cease engagement with a culinary aspect to my tourism, whether it be local or global, and perhaps also going out to a restaurant aside from a completely vegan-friendly restaurant is off the cards. I don't want to rarify myself out of existence with these kinds of things but it seems natural and normal so why not. 

silver sage

There is a cafe in Post Office Place, Glenroy called the Silver Sage. We occasionally ridiculed it from afar because of its strange name and seemingly archaic style, and like a lot of ridicule (from afar in particular) this came from ignorance. Part of the ignorance was, I have to say, invited by SS itself, because if you pass by there in the evening or any other time it's closed, you don't get a very good sense of the fare it offers; you get a sense of a transplanted cafe from Horsham (toasted sandwiches, instant coffee, coke spider, it screams without actually saying as much) with the bench of bad magazines at the front window, and the back wall of the cafe area masking a much older kitchen where god knows what happens. But this morning we went there and it is tops.

The food is not ostentatiously turkish, but that is in fact what it is - or at least that end of the mediterranean. The 'European breakfast', for instance, is (a) oddly labelled 'European', considering it contains olives, cucumber, tomato, fetta and turkish bread,* and (b) there's no b, I summed up the whole thing in (a). The coffee is excellent and the service friendly and remarkably (sorry Glenroy as a whole, all due respect) efficient. We both had European breakfasts, actually, and the olives in particular were grouse - I think perhaps home grown.

Delightfully, the east wall is adorned with artistic pictures of locations in Glenroy, including night shots of the station and the very remarkable library building.

I can't say more, because that's the sum of my Silver Sage experience, but I will say, highly recommended *****.

* Hey I know these are European, they're so European they're European with Wegener on drums, but they're a particular kind of European aren't they, you know what I mean.

the gallery of memories - 3

This morning when I went to give the dogs their bacon and eggs I saw Charlie had allowed her head to poke out from under the tent flap of their house. This was much funnier in real life than it is now in today's harsh and businesslike e-nvironment.