Hello,
Yeah so last Monday I decided to go to Berlin and then on Tuesday I did. It was awesome. Really though. It was. If your university ever goes on a really long strike and you have some friends who are in Berlin and you’re not doing anything all week apart from that one class you forgot about I suggest you go. I came back on Sunday and almost died of boredom and no money. The highlight of today was finally finding baked beans in the supermarket and buying every remaining tin. Sigh.
So this is the fourth week of the strike. We had almost two weeks of class before the strike started and next week is mid semester break/ brake (??). Do professors even go on strike in Australia? I don’t remember it ever happening ever. The teachers used to go on strike in primary school for like half a day sometimes. Then they would come back and teach at like 11am the same day. Seems a bit half-hearted comparatively.
In cooking news, I bought some actual ingredients today so that’s going to be weird and boring. Unless I try and cook something really crazy and elaborate that I have barely any of the stuff for. But seriously, things are actually on top of each other in the fridge now. It’s like some kind of normal kitchen.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Apparently it's a cooking blog now
Soupe au Cresson de Fontaine
(which is french for the best effing watercress soup you ever tasted)
1. Find a recipe that you have at least half the ingredients for.
2. Use your maths skillz to calculate the amounts you have to use, lowest common denominator styles, so that you have enough of everything.
3. Estimate 8g of butter and put it in a saucepan until it has melted some.
4. Then put half a small onion (whatever kind you have) in and cook it in there until soft. [By the way you chopped the onion already. When you do this make sure the blood from where you sliced your finger open doesn’t get in the food. Doesn’t matter if the tears from when you rubbed your eyes while touching onion get in.]
5. Eat some peanuts.
6. Peel and dice a potato.
7. Panic slightly when you realise you don’t have any stock of any kind. Decide that stock just tastes like salty water, so estimate 200mL of water and add salt until it almost tastes like chicken stock. Mmmm.
8. When the onion is soft, but not brown unless it is a brown onion, put in the potato and “stock” and cook for a while. (If you’re listening to Triple J Hottest 100 Volume 6 it’s a good idea to put them in at the start of No Surprises by Radiohead for ease of time estimation later).
9. Meanwhile, you need to find about 16mL of cream. It’s up to you to choose between the ingredients on hand, but personally I’d go for semi-skimmed UHT milk, rather than coconut cream or pineapple flavoured yoghurt. All good options though.
10. While waiting you might as well drink some juice, but try and remember to wash the cup you made the stock in before you use it. Right about now, the funk soul brother.
11. At any time feel free to panic and add more water if things are looking scary. But you might have to use your hand if there is now juice in the cup.
12. Like a few minutes before the potato is cooked (or at the end of Drinking in LA for all you who don’t have the ability to time-travel) put the watercress in. Oh shit it’s meant to be chopped. Excuse me one moment.
13. Now, at the end of Cry (about 4 minutes and 8 seconds later, or when the watercress is cooked) I think it is time to use a food processor or some such. If your kitchen is ovenless, microwaveless, toasterless and kettleless I highly doubt you have a food processor. But not to worry, a great substitute is getting all the cutlery you have and just going crazy while making the food processor noise with your mouth. This should take you to the end of the CD.
14. Screw 16mL, just keep adding milk until it starts looking more like soup than mashed potato.
15. Serve immediately. After finishing blog entry.
No offense to anyone who actually bothers to cook things properly, but this was freakin delicious. I’m never eating anything else again.
(which is french for the best effing watercress soup you ever tasted)
1. Find a recipe that you have at least half the ingredients for.
2. Use your maths skillz to calculate the amounts you have to use, lowest common denominator styles, so that you have enough of everything.
3. Estimate 8g of butter and put it in a saucepan until it has melted some.
4. Then put half a small onion (whatever kind you have) in and cook it in there until soft. [By the way you chopped the onion already. When you do this make sure the blood from where you sliced your finger open doesn’t get in the food. Doesn’t matter if the tears from when you rubbed your eyes while touching onion get in.]
5. Eat some peanuts.
6. Peel and dice a potato.
7. Panic slightly when you realise you don’t have any stock of any kind. Decide that stock just tastes like salty water, so estimate 200mL of water and add salt until it almost tastes like chicken stock. Mmmm.
8. When the onion is soft, but not brown unless it is a brown onion, put in the potato and “stock” and cook for a while. (If you’re listening to Triple J Hottest 100 Volume 6 it’s a good idea to put them in at the start of No Surprises by Radiohead for ease of time estimation later).
9. Meanwhile, you need to find about 16mL of cream. It’s up to you to choose between the ingredients on hand, but personally I’d go for semi-skimmed UHT milk, rather than coconut cream or pineapple flavoured yoghurt. All good options though.
10. While waiting you might as well drink some juice, but try and remember to wash the cup you made the stock in before you use it. Right about now, the funk soul brother.
11. At any time feel free to panic and add more water if things are looking scary. But you might have to use your hand if there is now juice in the cup.
12. Like a few minutes before the potato is cooked (or at the end of Drinking in LA for all you who don’t have the ability to time-travel) put the watercress in. Oh shit it’s meant to be chopped. Excuse me one moment.
13. Now, at the end of Cry (about 4 minutes and 8 seconds later, or when the watercress is cooked) I think it is time to use a food processor or some such. If your kitchen is ovenless, microwaveless, toasterless and kettleless I highly doubt you have a food processor. But not to worry, a great substitute is getting all the cutlery you have and just going crazy while making the food processor noise with your mouth. This should take you to the end of the CD.
14. Screw 16mL, just keep adding milk until it starts looking more like soup than mashed potato.
15. Serve immediately. After finishing blog entry.
No offense to anyone who actually bothers to cook things properly, but this was freakin delicious. I’m never eating anything else again.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
How To Make Laksa On A Whim (when you have none of the ingredients, equipment or know-how)
It’s very complicated, so bear/bare with me
1. Find a recipe on the internet. Well done.
2. Boil some water in a saucepan on your horrible electric stove, using your frypan as a lid so that it takes less than half an hour
3. Put some vermicelli noodles in a bowl and tip some of the water on them to soften
4. Peel a potato using that wobbly sharpish knife you have
5. Put the potato in the pot, realise you didn’t boil enough water to cover it, panic, top it up with cold tap water, put the frypan back on top and leave the potato in there hoping it’ll sort itself out
6. When it finally starts boiling again take the frypan off so you can use it in a step that is coming up soon
7. Sadly you don’t have any laksa paste which will definitely be your downfall. Examine the spices on hand, and select the one marked “curry” rather than the one marked “piment fort”. Then decide you will probably use both anyway, since it’s going to be horrible regardless.
8. If the potato doesn’t seem to have done anything yet, turn the Spice Girls up to full volume
9. If the potato is still taking forever, start writing the recipe on your blog, then look for other ingredients you can put in later. It would be good to find some tofu, but sadly all the packets of it were stuck together in the only shop that sells it because they have still failed to clean up the spillage that occurred there or get some new stock. Speaking of which, I think you’re meant to use some kind of stock in this too, but if you don’t have any no matter.
10. Decide the noodles have been soaking for too long but you don’t know what to do about it
11. Get frankly a little bit pissed off at the potato, take it out, cut it in half, put it back in
12. Using the frypan as a wok, put some coconut milk and curry powder (and piment fort?) in
13. Realise this is coconut cream not milk, pretty sure there’s a difference. Add shit loads of both “spices” but it still just tastes like coconut and it is way to thick. Add some water in an attempt to fix this, then bring to the boil
14. Drain the noodles, accidentally tipping about a third of them in the sink
15. Stick your hand in the potato pot to see if it’s ready yet. Yelp in pain.
16. Meanwhile, get those ingredients you found earlier. Cut the snowpeas and cherry tomatoes in half for no apparent reason. Grab a handful of presliced mushrooms just so you have them ready
17. Remove the hair you just found in the wok
18. Use the water you boiled the potatoes in to make a cup of tea, being careful not to tip the actual potatoes into your mug
19. When the stuff in the wok has boiled, turn it down quite a lot and let it simmer until you finish the tea
20. Oh also, fish the potatoes out and cut them into smaller pieces, then shove them and all those other vegetables into the bowl with the noodles
21. Realise the bowl is too small and you don’t have another one. Solve this by eating some of the noodles and potato, and accidentally wiping laksa in your hair
22. When the laksa starts sticking to the sides of the frypan in a frightening manner, it’s probably a good time to tip it in the bowl
23. Voilà! Serve with those useless chopsticks you’ve been waiting for an excuse to use.
Gross Things I Have Eaten #5
Home made Laksa.
1. Find a recipe on the internet. Well done.
2. Boil some water in a saucepan on your horrible electric stove, using your frypan as a lid so that it takes less than half an hour
3. Put some vermicelli noodles in a bowl and tip some of the water on them to soften
4. Peel a potato using that wobbly sharpish knife you have
5. Put the potato in the pot, realise you didn’t boil enough water to cover it, panic, top it up with cold tap water, put the frypan back on top and leave the potato in there hoping it’ll sort itself out
6. When it finally starts boiling again take the frypan off so you can use it in a step that is coming up soon
7. Sadly you don’t have any laksa paste which will definitely be your downfall. Examine the spices on hand, and select the one marked “curry” rather than the one marked “piment fort”. Then decide you will probably use both anyway, since it’s going to be horrible regardless.
8. If the potato doesn’t seem to have done anything yet, turn the Spice Girls up to full volume
9. If the potato is still taking forever, start writing the recipe on your blog, then look for other ingredients you can put in later. It would be good to find some tofu, but sadly all the packets of it were stuck together in the only shop that sells it because they have still failed to clean up the spillage that occurred there or get some new stock. Speaking of which, I think you’re meant to use some kind of stock in this too, but if you don’t have any no matter.
10. Decide the noodles have been soaking for too long but you don’t know what to do about it
11. Get frankly a little bit pissed off at the potato, take it out, cut it in half, put it back in
12. Using the frypan as a wok, put some coconut milk and curry powder (and piment fort?) in
13. Realise this is coconut cream not milk, pretty sure there’s a difference. Add shit loads of both “spices” but it still just tastes like coconut and it is way to thick. Add some water in an attempt to fix this, then bring to the boil
14. Drain the noodles, accidentally tipping about a third of them in the sink
15. Stick your hand in the potato pot to see if it’s ready yet. Yelp in pain.
16. Meanwhile, get those ingredients you found earlier. Cut the snowpeas and cherry tomatoes in half for no apparent reason. Grab a handful of presliced mushrooms just so you have them ready
17. Remove the hair you just found in the wok
18. Use the water you boiled the potatoes in to make a cup of tea, being careful not to tip the actual potatoes into your mug
19. When the stuff in the wok has boiled, turn it down quite a lot and let it simmer until you finish the tea
20. Oh also, fish the potatoes out and cut them into smaller pieces, then shove them and all those other vegetables into the bowl with the noodles
21. Realise the bowl is too small and you don’t have another one. Solve this by eating some of the noodles and potato, and accidentally wiping laksa in your hair
22. When the laksa starts sticking to the sides of the frypan in a frightening manner, it’s probably a good time to tip it in the bowl
23. Voilà! Serve with those useless chopsticks you’ve been waiting for an excuse to use.
Gross Things I Have Eaten #5
Home made Laksa.
Monday, February 9, 2009
STRIKE!
When semester started I thought I should do a post explaining all my subjects and what French Uni is like. Then I decided I should wait until I had finalised which subjects I was doing, since I was turning up to various ones and still making up my mind.
It is now week 4 and I'm still not really sure what subjects I'm doing. Two of the ones that I am definitely doing I have only been to one lecture for. For one subject, I have never had a tute. Reason? I am in France, and therefore my university is on strike. It's an indefinite strike, so no one has any idea how long it will go for. Most teachers are striking, but not quite all of them so sometimes you have to show up to class just in case. But basically, my daily timetable seems to be as follows:
10am - Alarm goes off, press stop instead of snooze.
Early afternoon - Get up, discover I still havent bought any milk, eat some biscuits or yoghurt
Later afternoon - Maybe go into town and watch a movie, maybe go to a friend's place and watch a movie, maybe stay home and go on facebook... probably eat more biscuits or crepes or a gigantic pizza depending on where I am
Evening - Eat some dinner, then go out and drink a lot of cheap french wine
1am - Catch the last tram home, then go on the internet all night
4am - Go to bed
It's pretty difficult lifestyle, I dont know how much longer I can keep it up.
It is now week 4 and I'm still not really sure what subjects I'm doing. Two of the ones that I am definitely doing I have only been to one lecture for. For one subject, I have never had a tute. Reason? I am in France, and therefore my university is on strike. It's an indefinite strike, so no one has any idea how long it will go for. Most teachers are striking, but not quite all of them so sometimes you have to show up to class just in case. But basically, my daily timetable seems to be as follows:
10am - Alarm goes off, press stop instead of snooze.
Early afternoon - Get up, discover I still havent bought any milk, eat some biscuits or yoghurt
Later afternoon - Maybe go into town and watch a movie, maybe go to a friend's place and watch a movie, maybe stay home and go on facebook... probably eat more biscuits or crepes or a gigantic pizza depending on where I am
Evening - Eat some dinner, then go out and drink a lot of cheap french wine
1am - Catch the last tram home, then go on the internet all night
4am - Go to bed
It's pretty difficult lifestyle, I dont know how much longer I can keep it up.
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