Mish Mash

We ran out of shower gel and I had to resort to using a bar of soap someone bought me from their travels to France. It wasn’t really any hardship because it was posh French soap, quite luxurious in fact.

And the scent really got me. The scent of soap. It brought me back to the old days before the arrival of all those fancy shower gels and liquid soaps, back to the days before we installed a shower even and had to run our shower water into the bath and use a plastic scoop to pour water over ourselves. When I closed my eyes for a moment it was like I was 10 and back in the bathroom with the tiny blue tiles all over again.

Di asked me in comments if I bought any jams and chutneys from the farm shop I visited and yes, I did. I bought a three fruit marmalade, some cheese, oatcakes, a treacle tart (which you’ve already seen) and a lemon drizzle cake. It’s just too bad that none of it was very good, which was a disappointment. Even the cake wasn’t good; it was dry, maybe it was stale because the cake from the farm kitchen was nice. Oh well. I guess I just have high standards when it comes to food. And you know I’m spoilt when it comes to jam so the marmalade really didn’t excite my tastebuds at all. But the jar looked cute with that bit of gingham on top. Fooled by pretty packaging yet again!

GM and I went out for dinner after work tonight to a Mexican restaurant near work. It was kind of like a headache-inducing nightmare inside with some really non-authentic, garish decor that passes as Mexican to people who don’t know better. The music was irritating and the service was surly. It smelt a bit inside too, kind of like breath, and the man sitting on the table next to me kept shaking his leg and subsequently shaking the long bench we were all sat on.

Despite my semi-strong misgivings, when the food came I felt a lot better because even though I suspected that it wasn’t really the way the Mexicans would have done it, it was still tasty nonetheless. The nachos we’d ordered to share was huge and they didn’t skimp on the toppings. I ordered a starter as my main because I was quite full and didn’t want to go home all bloated on the train but even that was quite substantial. Both GM and I had tacos and their tacos were of the “assemble yourself” variety, kind of like eating at home, where they gave us a few taco shells and a pot of our meats (beef or chicken) together with some salad, guacamole and sour cream on the side. Still it all tasted good!

Next to our table on the other side were two attractive ladies with two kids. One of them had an American accent and she was the prettier one. She was obviously used to American style service because she wasn’t afraid to question and to make demands. Obviously she didn’t get much more than some blank looks and “Yah chilli” when she asked, “Is the chilli made of beef or pork? I’m allergic to pork”. She ended up ordering some chicken tacos. When her tacos arrived she took one look at it and immediately summoned the waitress and demanded, “Where’s my food?” The waitress told her “That’s chicken tacos” and she replied, “Yes, but where is my chicken?!” whilst waving an empty taco shell at the waitress. The waitress then had to tell her that the chicken was in the pot on her plate. I actually laughed out loud. To give the girl credit when she was told that the chicken was in the pot she said, “Oh that’s chicken?  You do everything different here.  I apologise, I’m Mexican and I’m not used to the way things are here”.  Which I thought was very nice of her.  But she was really funny.  Later on I heard her say to her friend, “Are you kidding me?!  No salsa?!”  I think there was salsa only it was masquerading as the salad on the side.  Well what do you expect from a place that has an orange signboard with a cactus painted on it??

Foodie Thoughts

I was watching a well-known English chef, Rick Stein’s food programme just now.  He was in Vietnam and loving it; I could see the excitement in his eyes and the very real respect and love he has for food of different cultures.  While I was watching him discussing Vietnamese food with a fellow chef I thought, “Why can’t I make friends with some people who love food like this?”

The only other person I know personally who loves food to the degree that I do is Diana.  I know plenty of other people who like to eat (that’d be you Joanne) but Diana and I don’t just like to eat, we need to know more about our food, actively seeking out new and different flavours and foods.  There’s just so much more out there that I haven’t tried and I am excited to taste it all some day.  The mere thought of the promise of great foods to come uplifts me.  As Diana says, stars and rainbows shoot out of our heads and our normally little eyes grow big, round and shiny in contentment and happiness when we have good food.

I want friends who love food as much as me.  Friends who’d think nothing of roaming London seeking out the next thrilling morsel.  Alas, my friends like to eat but they’re lazy eaters in that they’re not that open to experimentation and they never like to work hard for their food.  I mean, I’m not always in the mood to traipse many miles to some far flung restaurant just for the one acclaimed dish, in fact, I’m hardly ever in the mood to do that especially after a long week at work, but I am not opposed to the idea and will make a point to do it one day.  I don’t know many people who could say the same however, and that is what I am getting at.  I miss not having someone on the same wavelength as me to share my enthusiasm.

So that’s my thought of the day.

On a separate note, I have the day off tomorrow!  Yay!!!  Unfortunately I have the boiler guy coming round to do an annual servicing but I think I can live with that for a day of peace away from the office.

Food Diary

Lunch – Boiled broccoli with bbq chicken slices

Snack – One banana

Snack – One satsuma

Dinner – One brie, cranberry and roasted ham baguette.  I have been look for a brie and cranberry sandwich to no avail but GM saw this baguette during his lunchtime today so he bought it for me!  It’s definitely the best of the brie baguettes out there but they could have done with less brie and much more rocket.

Mini Dinner – Little bowl Indomee.  GM had Indomee tonight.  I had a bit of it and it was like my tastebuds died and went to heaven.  I love Indomee.

Snack – One Picnic chocolate bar.  Sickening.  Serves me right for eating cheap chocolate against my better judgement.

Snack – One satsuma

Drinks – Peppermint tea, English tea, water

Exercise – None!

Haha Fangirl

Source: http://bit.ly/1a3plq

I’m definitely not a Harry Potter fan.  I’m not keen on the books, think the author’s writing is pretty poor with many borrowed elements from other far better writers and I’ve not managed to watch any of the movies from start to finish yet.  I absolutely cannot understand the whole HP mania.

But this clip.  This clip is GOLD.  I think I might even want to watch HP now.  Hahaha!

Food Diary

Lunch - Broccoli with chicken slices

Snack – One banana

Dinner – 4 slices pizza plus potato wedges

Dessert – The last slice of my blueberry buttermilk cake

Drinks – Peppermint tea, English tea, water

Exercise – None

EDIT:  I had to come back and link this……… soooooooo cute!

Green Oranges

In one of her comments on one of my posts, Heri asked what a satsuma was.

A satsuma is a small orange, kind of like a small ponkan.  We get quite a lot of different types of oranges here: tangerines, clementines, mandarins and satsumas, to name a few off the top of my head.  My favourites are the tangerines and satsumas cos they have soft skins which are easy to peel and soft, sweet smelling, juicy segments within.  And they don’t stink too heavily of orange neither; I hate the strong, harsh smell of orange left on my fingers after eating one of those big sunkist oranges.

I think my love of small peelable citrus fruit must stem from those billions of green oranges we used to eat back home when we were kids.  Aah, more nostalgia.  I must be mellowing, I’m getting very nostalgic these days.

I had a good day today despite having to get up at the crack of dawn to get in to work extra early.  Hopefully the rest of this week will continue in the same vein!

Food Diary

Lunch – Boiled broccoli with hot and spicy chicken slices.  My vegetable for this week is broccoli.  You’d have noticed that previously I went through spinach and runner bean phases, well this week I am feeling like broccoli.  It won’t last long though because I hate preparing broccoli, I can’t stand all those bits that fall everywhere when you cut it.

Snack – One banana

Dinner – A bit of leftover thai green curry with a bread roll.  Bread rolls with jam.

Dessert – Two slices of my blueberry cake

Drinks – Peppermint tea, English tea, water

Exercise – None!

Baked Goods Sunday

Actually I didn’t bake that much today.  We ate loads of baked goods though.

I’ve come to realise that I really really like baking.  The way I feel for baking is different from how I feel about cooking in that if I screw up my cooking I get really frustrated and grumpy and kind of resent doing all that preparation work to produce a piece of crap at the end of it whereas if my baking goes wrong I just feel a bit disappointed but curious as to why it didn’t come out right.  More often than not I’ll seek advice as to what I’m doing wrong and attempt the recipe again.  Cooking is more of a stressful activity for me whereas I bake for fun!  Perhaps after Di wins Australian Masterchef she can open a restaurant where she does all the dishes and I’ll chip in with desserts!  Hahaha.

Don’t those vine tomatoes look gorgeous?  I was surprised to find them at our regular supermarket because the tomatoes there are normally anaemic to the point of greenness and aren’t very sweet.  For really good tomatoes I have to go to a really cheap supermarket which has a fantastic fresh fruits and vegetables section.  That’s all I ever buy from there, nice fruits and veg and nothing else because all their brands aren’t what we’re used to and I’m a creature of habit.  Haha.  Oh actually I also get salami and potato salad from there.  They have lovely potato salad.

I bought some ready made puff pastry sheets recently and had to use them up before they went off so for breakfast today I made balsamic vinegar pancetta (Italian cured meat) and vine tomato puff pastry slices.

They turned out very tasty.  I prepared them with tomato puree and some chopped garlic on the base and they turned out perfect.  Puff pastry sheets are fantastic!  They’re so convenient and easy to use.

After our puff pastry slices GM and I had dessert.  The bread rolls were bought pre-prepared – all I had to do was bung them in the oven for 10 minutes and they came out brown, crispy and hot.  Another fantastic item!  I’m never buying pre-baked baguettes again; why have cold baguette when you can do this in 10 minutes and have hot rolls?  I love these rolls.

But the real star of the pic isn’t the bread rolls….. it’s that jam next to it.  GM’s uncle came over recently remember?  Before he came over he asked me what I wanted from Paris and I said I wanted some jam, specifically those made by Christine Ferber whose jams are world renowned.  I had to limit myself to three jars since I didn’t want to impose too much on his luggage allowance but now I wish I’d asked him to buy more.

Because this jam is everything I’ve heard and more.

Out of the three jars I chose to open the Confiture Ispahan which Christine Ferber makes for Pierre Herme, a really famous French pastry chef.  The Confiture Ispahan is lychee, rose and raspberry flavoured and previously even though I knew Pierre Herme’s signature macaron was the Ispahan I’d had no desire to try it since I dislike raspberries and don’t much care for rose.  However, most of the foodie blog writers I read seem to love it so I thought “Okay, let’s see if it’s really that good” and got GM’s uncle to buy me the jam (since it would have been quite hard for him to not sit on the macaron coming over on the train haha).

Well the jam.  I don’t even know how I can do it justice with my words.  I don’t think I can.  It was exquisite.  Not gloopy and over gelatinous like your bog-standard jam but smooth and light.  I could have almost drunk it like a soup.  And the flavours: I never knew lychee, rose and raspberry would go together so well.  On first taste the lychee was strongest but later on the raspberry came through with a subtle hint of rose.  It was so beautiful I nearly sank to my knees in thanks.  Well okay that’s a bit much but you get the picture.  Haha.  It was certainly moreish; each swallowed mouthful left me with such a delicate hint of fine, fruity fragrance that it made me feel like I needed to have another, just to seek out the different notes again.  But invariably I’d swallow the next mouthful too quickly to really do the jam justice and would need to have another.  And another.  And another.

You know a food is good when after eating it the first thing I think is, “Jo and Di need to try this”.  And this is exactly what I thought this afternoon.  Unfortunately, I can’t bring food into Australia!

Later on in the evening I decided to bake a cake.  Just for fun.  Remember the strawberry cake I made recently?  This is the blueberry version.

This cake turned out even better than the strawberry one but my fruit sank to the bottom again.  I will be making this again soon to try out a new method I’ve learnt to prevent fruit from sinking.

From tomorrow onwards I will be back on my healthy eating plan.  I’ve made some exciting plans recently and need to shape up!

Food Diary

Brunch – Pancetta and vine tomato puff pastry slice

Dessert – One wholemeal bread roll and one mutigrain bread roll with butter and that gorgeous jam……

Dinner – Thai green curry with rice.  I made another curry because this is GM’s and my favourite dish of the moment.  Today’s was vegetarian though.  Very good but spicier than the ones I’d made previously!

Dessert – Two slices of my very gorgeous blueberry cake.  We ate it warm this time and it was really really good.  I love this cake.

Drinks – English tea, water

Exercise – None!