EXCHANGE INTERFACE

Just to get my head straight and things in order.

( stuff and ingredients )

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Played hockey yesterday - good game, although the umpiring was flat-out terrible. Look, the odds in a game of equally matched players is that there'll be about 50% of the calls going your way. That's the statistics.

The calls were NOT 50%. Not even close. It was...pretty ridiculous, I mean, and I can't count the number of times I was just telling players to "keep playing!" instead of standing there and complaining.

Unfortunately, the umpire's decision is final, and although you can maybe challenge it, some of them become little emperors of their fifedom with attendant ughness.

At any rate, we won: 3-1. They got the first goal, we got the next three.

But I was rather sore afterwards, and today is even more sore/pain/strain. I don't really want to go to tonight's permaculture meeting but I haven't been in ages and I promised to bring soup. Might make it short tonight; I just don't have the energy/space for much.

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Because of hockey, I had to miss a birthday party for an 80 year old friend from church. We were in a bible study when I first joined the church, and although we're very different generations, she's a sweetheart and a much-beloved member of the congregation.

I did message the organiser to find out if there were still people there when I left hockey, but she didn't respond for another hour. I should have just turned up, because there was probably at least half an hour more socialising when I messaged.

Anyway, went to church for the first time in a while, but felt like nobody much wanted to talk to me, and then felt actively excluded by a woman who I feel like has never really warmed to me. I did have some good conversations with a couple of people who I don't usually socialise with, but the active exclusion didn't feel particularly good.

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body things

I'm hoping a little that the aches/pains are because of the Mirena - my body adjusting. I guess I'll find out what it does in the coming week: my period is due, so I'm not sure if there'll still be bleeding or just 'discharge' which I'm still having a little, although less than the first week.

Saturday was a little bit crazy. Gardening in the morning (not-quite-local community garden), then a 60th birthday party in the afternoon, then Hockey Presentation Night ("preso night" bcos we're Aussies) in the evening.

I won my team's "Coach's Player" award!

( hockey things and other )

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Running a gardening course this weekend in the not-quite-local community garden: Spring Veggie Gardening.

It was supposed to be for educators teaching kids, where I was going to emphasise about variety and engaging kids with all the senses. It's been thrown open to the public, and several of the people from the community garden are probably going to tag along.

Gotta start making lists of what I'm going to be outlining, what I'm going to be planting out in the plot that they've given me, and what I need to take with me on Saturday morning (or even before then).

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IRON TABLETS DAMMIT.

I'm pretty terrible at following recipes. I'll take the elements of a recipe and approximate amounts, or turn it into a pie or a pastie, or use pasta instead of rice, or replace a herb in the recipe. That said, I have a fairly extensive pantry when it comes to little bits and pieces. The trick is - as always - using up what I have before it all goes off.

Also, I have a crazy number of cookbooks. Some inherited from my mum and stepdad, some...acquired by mysterious means of IDEK.

And this isn't even half of them!

Anyway, I'm going to make a monthly post with ideas, then refer back to it. There will be far more recipes in the post than I plan to make, but hopefully that'll make it easier for me to find recipes I like the idea of in the months either side of the specific month.

Finally, an interesting thing that I've discovered: Australian cookbooks are not big on corn. As in, corn is rarely an ingredient, although it's a commonly-referenced accompaniment to, for instance, BBQs. I imagine that it's much much bigger in, say, the US...

So it seems. For another week.

More money: yay!

More boredom: boo!

Although, I guess, given it'll be testing and fixing time, it'll probably be long hours and crazy demands, and realising just how badly I designed things the first time... *shudders*

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Bible Study is having a potluck dinner this week. Which was prompted by a photo of some mapo tofu I made, which one of the women gushed over. Except that she's not going to be at bible study this week! And the other people in the bible study are doing heavier dishes - fondue, etc.

Mapo Tofu is really a comfortable food, for eating with steamed rice and freshly cooked simple vegetables (broccoli in salt and garlic, steamed bok-choi in oyster sauce). It's not something you have with fondue!

So I'll make a Vietnamese rice noodle salad, with roast pork crackling on the side.
- buy the roast pork crackling to go on top
- lettuces, carrots, spring onions, coriander (add-in), rice noodles
- chilli sauce, fish sauce, rice wine vinegar (add brown sugar as necessary), ginger, maybe garlic?
MUST REMEMBER TO CHECK FOR GLUTEN FREE (I mean, you don't expect it in fish sauce or rice wine vinegar, but who even knows these days)

And that will be a nice, light contrast to the creamy heaviness of the cheese fondue (and the chocolate fondue that will follow).

The bible study leaders were all "but it's okay, just make the tofu anyway!" But I can't.

Look, if B1 ever finishes her studies and we get the space cleared up, then I will 100% put on a Chinese feast for my peoples: stewed pork, ong tsoi, rice, noodle salad, steamed fish, mapo tofu, steamed broccoli - the whole hog. But I can't serve mapo tofu with fondue. It's just...wrong.

theladyscribe: You always have such interesting photos of meals you're eating in (I'm assuming) cool restaurants, but I'm curious about what you cook at home! Any go-to meals? Or dishes you only cook for special occasions?

Cooking at home tends pretty simple, actually. Steak with a bit of seasoning, vegies on the side. I love salads, but I'm so lazy at making them, and these days I'm spoiled by my garden; I want tomatoes that taste of something, not of nothing! In summer, though, coleslaw (cabbage, fennel, carrot, onion, red wine vinegar, mayo) is amazing and delicious and wonderful.

Breakfast is usually an egg; on a weekend, I might add smoked salmon or something else. Sometimes it's a full fry-up - eggs, bacon, mushrooms (cooked slowly), but that's pretty rare (I usually save the big breakfasts for eating out, which I do more often than I should).

I tend to cook a meat - like a haunch of beef or chicken - and then eat it several nights in a row (or sometimes over the course of a week), as much as I'm feeling like eating.

I'm going to have to be a lot more careful about what I eat in the coming months - my cholesterol is ridiculously high, and my family has a history of heart disease so I need to be careful.

5 basic meals
- bolognaise
- roast chicken (beer can chicken - always good)
- garlic and anchovy pasta
- mustard beef (roast beef)
- soy sauce chicken (usually chicken drumsticks/wings, in soy sauce)

celebration meals
It's hard to describe 'celebration' meals for me - they tend to be things that my mother/stepfather cook for family dinner kind of things.

- hainan chicken
- stewed pork belly in red bean tofu sauce
- lion's head meatballs (pork meatballs with wombok quartered and steamed in garlic sauce)
- eight treasure duck (stewed whole duck stuffed with eight other foods)
- pavlova (this is my specialty for Christmas)

For Chinese New Year (coming right up), there's usually a dish called 'tzai' (in the Cantonese), which is full of funguses and tofu and thin rice noodles, and is completely vegetarian to bring in the new year. There's also New Year cake (sticky gelatinous rock-sugar-flavoured deliciousness) and in my family deep-fried, sesame-rolled, red-bean buns which I know as 'tzin-dui'.

Not sure what's happening for CNY this year.

My family does cooking really well, which is also why I'm a big foodie; I had good food from an early age, and while my twentysomething tastebuds could take McDonalds, my fortysomething tastebuds revolt. If I'm going to have a burger, it's going to be the full-fry deal from a milk bar.

I made baklava on Tuesday night and I fell down the stairs on the way home on Wednesday afternoon. And I've written about 4000 words this week, which is better than 0, but still not as much as I want.

The baklava is amazing - pomegranate baklava - and although a little tricksy with the filo (fillo/phyllo) pastry, the filling and honey-sugar syrup is easy.

(Except for the part where it overboils and then you have this crazy sugary gloop to clean up...)

Anyway: BAKLAVA (home-made)

( pomegranate baklava )

It's kind of amazingly delicious.

And having made it once, I'm going to make it again this week, while we still have pomegranates in the shops.

I think it's safe to say that the Eight Treasure Duck was a success.

It needed to cook longer (for more flavour) and mum thought it needed more soy sauce, but on the whole, it was delicious, the stuffing was just right, and the duck meat was nicely done.

( pics are probably rather big )

It took all afternoon to prepare and cook, but the result was a hit. I wouldn't do it for anything less than a significant celebration, though, and probably not unless other people were also cooking things. My mum did the stewed pork and my stepbrother cooked the vegies (which I bought and prepared).

And it was a verrry nice dinner!