Thoughts

So I didn't cook anything all that new this week that was themed. I did, on the other hand, cook a 10hr bolognese sauce and today I did a beef pot roast in my new slow cooker :-) So I think all that counts.

I've got a photo every day for this week so far apart from today, but I still have time to do that. If you want to see, pop over to my Tumblr!


http://jennyk365.tumblr.com/

Recipes #47 and #48 are: Corn and Polenta Pancakes, and salsa.

I got them from Vegetairan Cooking: A Commonsense Guide. I wasn't able to follow the recipe perfectly as I couldn't find all the ingredients last night, so the polenta was a great big hulking block (which I now need to use up - thankfully it's a reasonable substitute for mashed potato) and I used cannellini beans instead of fava beans for the salsa, because I couldn't find fava beans.

I think I may have made the mixture a bit too runny because, instead of four thick pancakes, I ended up with about 8 thinner ones. None the less, both recipes were delicious :-)

At this point, I'm on track to finish in the last week of december as long as I do one recipe per week from now on. Woo!

Recipe #45 was hash browns! I didn't follow the recipe exactly. I found that I needed 2 eggs and an extra tablespoon of flour, otherwise they just didn't hold together. So their consistency and appearance improved as I made more of them :-p 

They were quite tasty :-)

Hopefully that will change as soon as this exam's over and I have a bit more brain space to work with. But I promise there's more to this than just me going on about what a brilliant cook I am :-)

Recipe #43 is "Rustic Greek Pie", which I found in a vegetarian cook book. It involves spinach, grated haloumi, crumbed feta, egg, and cream. It was very tasty! I need to do more stuff like this. There is one thing I want to try doing differently, and that's using puff pastry insted of shortcrust. The shortcrust worked well, but I think it could be better.

Phil and I bought Christmas decorations tonight! =D I'm finally properly excited about Christmas again. I hated it for several years while I worked at arse Kmart, still hated it in my first year out teaching, and hated it reasonably less last year. Now, I'm finally glad to be having one :-)

We don't have a tree yet. We'll be getting that at some point in the near future and putting it up in December. I'm also planning to buy modelling clay to make decorations of my own!

It's all very fun :-)

Recipe #41 is Lentil and Kidney Bean Chilli, which ikona_rakasha recommended :-)

It is DELICIOUS. I had it as nachos, though I didn't do any baking. We just scooped the chilli onto the corn chips, put grated cheese over it, and then added sour cream.

This is going into the favourites box. I might try adding red wine next time - that could work :-)

The Domestic Part:

We got a washing machine this morning! XD It does stuff! We got a Fisher Paykel front loader and did some washing in it today. It feels so much more like a home now! The last furniture we're waiting on is the coffee table and the TV stand. They should arrive within the next fortnight, and that will be awesome.

I also managed to finally get some more tidying of the study done, and we now have space for my husband's piano against the wall. There's a bit more to go, unfortunately. We're in that "bits and pieces" stage which basically means whe have a whole bunch of miscellaneous stuff in boxes and and on surfaces which don't really have anywhere specific to go. This means lots of sorting, which I hate.

We're also still very much deciding on where things belong. A few things ahve been moved from their oritinal space to somewhere else by now, including the bookshelves, drinking glasses, kitchen appliances, and various tools. Hopefully this won't happen too much over the next while and things will have definite homes to live in.

The Recipe Part:

I'm trying to catch up on cooking, so recipe #39 is home-made tomato sauce. Anyone who's been to a barbecue with me knows I do not like tomato sauce. My problem with most of the ones you get at the supermarket is that they're just too sweet. So, I decided it's high time I made my own!

I looked around online to get the general gist of how to make them, and from there I made it my own, so here it is.

Ingredients

1 brown onion
1tsp salt (or to taste)
1tbs oil
2 cans of chopped tomatoes
2 tbs tomato paste
3 cloves garlic
3tsp paprika

Method

Chop the onion and cook it in a saucepan until it's soft.
Add the garlic and the salt and cook it for a few minutes, then add the tomato.
Cook that, stirring occasionally, for about 10mins.
Use a potato masher to crush it up a bit, add the paprika, and then cook for a few minutes more.
Take the pot off the flame and put it on a heat-proof mat. Allow it to cool a bit and then blend the mixture until it's smooth.
When it's cool enough, serve!



Ta-dah! :-) So there it is: Low in sugar, preservative-free, and really yummy.

I imagine you'd need to keep it refrigerated and use it up fairly quickly. This makes about 500mL, so you won't be running short.


The Career Part

I've started looking for jobs for next year. It's not that I particularly want to leave my current school, but I would be stupid to just assume that they'll have a position for me next year. I also do have good reasons for wanting to go elsewhere, such as the fact that I long to be in a school where the parents give a damn and where expulsion is a real threat.

I've applied to a campus of my old high school. It's 10-15mins away by bicycle and I'm seriously hoping that it's 3rd time lucky. The first time I applied was fresh out of uni and I didn't even get an interview. The second time was at the end of my first year teaching and I got a 2nd round interview (so, top 5 candidates sort of thing). I'm really hoping that this will be third time lucky. You have NO idea how badly I want this!

Wish me luck!

Recipe #37 was beef burgers. I know I've done burgers before, but they've been either vegetarian burgers or kangaroo burgers.

I didn't follow the recipe exactly in that I used 500g of mince, a small onion, and two eggs.

Next time I'd add a bit more salt than I did and I would use less tabasco. It was actually really nice and not too spicy, but I still think it was a little bit more than I'd normally prefer.

And yes, they were yummy! My modifications also made well more than 6 burgers.Those things were HUGE!

Recipe #34 is a lentil bolognese which I found in my recipe book titled "Vegetarian: A collection of over 100 essential recipes". 
It involved: lentils (duh), mushrooms, celery, carrot, capsicum, garlic, red wine, paprika (to replace the sugar the recipe called for), basil, thyme, and pepper.

I didn't realise we were out of onion and I think that this would have improved it a great deal. I also didn't have a courgette, so that was omitted.

I took some pictures of it but I'm really struggling with my husband's camera. I really need to find my own one because this one's pictures just keep coming out blurry whenever I'm under low light. It's just not very good at focusing.

It turned out pretty good and I think I'll make it again, if only to try the things which I think will improve it!

Recipe #33 happened without my meaning it to. I was at my mother-in-law's place, helping her set up for a dinner thing. She was going to start the evening with nibbles and a dip, as you do. I tried the dip and it was fizzy. Dips should not be fizzy. So we made an impromptu dip out of things she already had in the fridge!

Cathy's Avocado Dip:

1 Avocado
150g ricotta cheese
Squeeze of lemon juice
Salt
Pepper

Mash it all up, and the end result is something extremely yummy!

I'm still planning to do another recipe tomorrow (the one I'd actually planned), so I'm still a little bit ahead. I'm ok with this! :-)

This morning I made Recipe #31 (to get me through week 3 of term), which was hollandaise sauce! I found it here.

It was surprisingly easy to make, though I wouldn't like to have to do it without assistance (easier to keep whisking when someone else is adding ingredients for you). I don't have a "double boiler", so I put some water into a pan and then a thick ceramic bowl into that:



I didn't do poached eggs with this one (after failing that a number of times, I have temporarily put it in the "too hard" basket), but my lovely husband fried some and we had it with toast :-)



It was quite yummy! My husband even thought it was ok, and he doesn't normally like hollandaise sauce, so I'm hapy with that endorsement :-)