Selenay's Ramblings

I had a day off on Monday, so I spent the day baking and brought some of the cookies into work yesterday to test on my co-workers. They're happy guinea pigs when I'm trying out new recipes - these were from a recipe in the Smitten Kitchen book, and they turned out well, although I'll probably take a minute off the cooking time for the next batch to get them perfect.

It got me thinking, because today we started organising our first food day of the year, and the thought of cooking for my co-workers filled me with terror.

I'm a good baker.

I'm not a good cook.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not the world's worst cook. I can cook well enough to feed myself and my diet is tasty and varied, so I'm able to resist the lure of take out a lot of the time. It's just that I don't cook well enough to feed other people. Give me a new recipe, and the odds of me messing it up are still very high. My confidence with cooking meat is spectacularly low, so most of what I make isn't suitable for people who are huge meat lovers (i.e. everyone I work with). And my flavourings are suited to my palate, which usually doesn't match most other people.

Baking, though? I can usually get good results with a new recipe. Stuff I've practised a lot always goes well. I learned to bake bread last year, and most of my bread is now home-made and very good, if I say so myself. I'm confident at producing cakes, cookies, pastries, breads, and anything else covered under 'baking', enough that I'm willing to bring the results into work and let people try things, even new recipes.

Cooking and baking are two different skill-sets, I feel. I've heard it described as baking is chemistry, and cooking is art. It's surprisingly true: getting the right results in baking is all about how ingredients react together. That means going off-piste on a recipe is only doable if you know how baking works - you can't get casual with ingredient amounts in baking because the proportions make such a huge difference in the end result. But if you follow the recipe carefully, the odds are pretty good that you'll get a good result.

Cooking is easier to fudge and mess around with. It's more artistic in the way the food is constructed and depends a lot on the cook's personal taste and flare.

I think that's why baking is where I feel happy. It suits my brain, which always functioned better in science than in art. I can follow a recipe and apply my knowledge of the science behind baking. Cooking doesn't use the same skills and instincts, so I fall down on it. Every time.

Anyone else a good cook and terrible baker, or a good baker and a terrible cook? I can't be the only one!

After a long, delayed, unpleasant flight yesterday enhanced by being unable to debark the plane for twenty minutes after we landed, I'm home.

I love my bed and my shower so, so much.

Mum and I managed to stay awake long enough to buy some food, pick up pizza and eat some before giving in and going to bed last night.

That's why I was awake at 5am this morning. Ugh. There is not enough coffee in the world to deal with today.

Obviously that's why I spent the afternoon making jubilee cupcakes for work tomorrow. I'm trying to live up to the stereotype :-D It's sort of expected.

( Picture! )

I'd been planning to play with the new stats page and possibly upload something to AO3 this afternoon, but sadly it's a mess of 502's. I'm still quite amused by the fact that the Avengers is killing AO3, but it might be nice if it wasn't happening when I need to use it...

Another busy week has passed me by. Argh on busy weeks.

Today I'm attempting for a quiet day. Groceries were achieved early this morning and I made a batch of fruit buns. I'm counting that as my exercise for the day - kneading dough is very hard work! Now I'm waiting for the first 6 Nations match to, er, appear on my computer and then I plan to watch rugby while eating delicious hot, buttered fruit buns.

The buns may need re-heating at the rate my rugby is appearing. Grr.

Then I plan to watch the second match later with sushi. Tomorrow there is more rugby and I'm contemplating another attempt at homemade baked potato crisps. I've got to get it right eventually, right?

This week I was reminded of Xena in a conversation on a message board. It's on Netflix so I've been varying my Buffy re-watch (Bad Girls!) with a bit of Xena. Um, why isn't it as bad as I remember?

While I wait for my rugby, I think that I'll see how much Game of Thrones I can read. Down to the last 100 pages and it's all getting pretty exciting.

I think LJ doesn't have my pretty Yuletide icon. Woe.

However, I have nominated for yuletide. It's a tough decision. This year, due to the fact that I'm always the only person who signs up or shows interest, I've not nominated Holby City. It seems silly to waste a precious nomination slot on something where I'm the only person who nominates.

I can't remember how many requests we get to put in, but the three things that I've nominated are things that I'd definitely be happy to write in and where I'm familiar with the entire canon with the books at hand in my collection.

Now I just need to spend a couple of days working out what prompts I'll want. Pressure!

I love Yuletide :-)

In other news, I made granola today. Previously Mum has been the granola maker, but today I had a good and it looks delicious. Also, I made chocolate cheesecake and will be sampling it later. My kitchen skills are apparently growing :-)

To I have to go to work tomorrow? Why do I keep going back there? I want to sleeeeeeeep!

There has been an overly-large chicken breast in my freezer since around two days before my mum went home in September. She was very good and packaged up the big pack of chicken that we bought in individual portions AND LABELLED THEM (so much unlabelled and undated mystery meat got thrown out of my freezer after her previous visit), but failed to take into account the amount of chicken one person could eat. It was a huge chicken breast. Enormous. Insane. So large that I couldn't think of anything to do with it.

It was skinless and there is a limit to how much grilled skinless chicken (oh, so bland, even with spice rubs) I can eat. This thing definitely exceeded it.

The best thing about chicken tikka masala is dipping the naan in the sauce. Turning this thing into a curry would have created too much curry to stomach naan or even much rice. Er, no.

There was far too much to make a casserole for one and re-heated chicken casserole has no appeal.

In short, I needed an interesting recipe for this chicken that had few additions (stomach ache from overeating is never worth it). And, er, to make sure that anyone portioning up chicken for me in the future knows to cut up ridiculously large chicken breasts into smaller portions.

Last week I finally found it: Chicken Strips for All. Sounded tasty (I love dippable things), surprisingly healthy and an interesting way to eat a stupidly large pile of chicken. The good news is that it was just as good as it sounded. I even found panko breadcrumbs, although I need to buy a cooling rack to dedicate to cooking and cut some of the strips smaller because the bottoms were slightly soggy. The dip, though, concealed all deficiencies wonderfully. It's definitely one to do again and I may even buy some chicken just so that I can make this. Smaller quantities would be good, though: I served this with a bit of spinach and that was more than enough. Serving with a salad or more veggies would have led to an evening of pain and misery, I suspect, and with such a healthy meat part it seems a shame not to carry on the healthy theme with a good protein to veggie ratio. Also, epically huge chicken breasts take forever to defrost.

Tonight was going to be crab and shrimp cakes (another new recipe) but I have to do some things after work. So I've got some stew out of the freezer than can be quickly heated with veggies when I get home and the crab cakes will happen tomorrow instead.

Ooh, I just spotted that House is back tonight. Yay-ness :-D

I have just enjoyed a Thanksgiving weekend with my sister. It was pure accident. She booked her flights, told me the dates and I squeed as I realised that she'd unwittingly booked to be with me over the long weekend so I'd get the Monday off work to spend with her without worrying about vacation time. Hooray!

I picked her up from the airport after work on Thursday and dragged her along to my knitting group, where we ate pasta and chatted away happily. She's knitting a beautiful pair of mittens. Er, I got teased because my sister is as insane as me with the whole 'knitting primarily with skinny yarn' thing. Heh.

She spent Friday hanging out at the house, relaxing and resting from her time in Toronto while I went to work. Then we went out for sushi for supper, which was amazing, and she introduced me to grilled eel maki which I absolutely love. Wonder whether it's totally indulgent to get some sushi takeout this Friday on the way home from the grocery store?

Saturday started out bright and early with a trip to the farmer's market followed by a drive down to Mahone Bay. We did lots of walking, bought lots of yarn (love having a knitter sister) and ate some amazing Schezchaun (sp?) carrot soup from the Biscuit Eater Cafe and Bookshop. Possibly the best part of the rather wonderful soup were the cheese and herb biscuits which were hot and fresh and divine. Between the soup, the biscuits and the chocolate espresso shortcakes, we didn't need supper that night! We had to make a quick stop at the mall on the way home (bathroom break) and I spotted the Rowan Greatest Knits book in Chapters. Hmm. I'm in two minds, largely because while some of the older patterns are fun, the patterns I love are from Rowan 42 which I already have. So it requires thought and possibly a revisit before I decide on whether to add it to my wishlist.

Sunday was a slightly quieter day. I made French toast for breakfast and then we toddled up to the mall for a quick visit to Gap before going to the beach for a long walk. Bliss. We relaxed for the rest of the afternoon with our knitting and some TV before going out for seafood supper and then a visit with my aunt.

Monday was Thanksgiving and we spent the day relaxing, watching movies and knitting so that I could be on top of my game for cooking the big supper. This is the first time that I've done a major event meal and also the first time that I've done roast potatoes. Yes, it was the potatoes that had me panicked and declaring it as my Experimental Monday dish. Thankfully my recipe (trusty Comfort Food to the rescue again) was clear and concise, enabling me to produce tatties that were crispy and nicely browned on the outside and fluffy on the inside. No raw bits, no sogginess, and I'm very proud. My aunt supplied stuffing and I cooked salmon, due to my sister's non-meat-eating status. It all worked out perfectly, with all the food cooked at just the right time and lots of yummy noises at the table. Phew!

My sister goes home tonight and I'm going to miss her. We've had a lovely few days together and it's been so much fun to just hang out and knatter. We seem to get along better and have more in common as we get older, which is fabulous.

Knitting-wise, I finished my lovely purple shawl (I'm wearing it right now - the office is slightly chilly) and cast on for my Tubey sweater. The yarn that was coming surface mail and I wasn't expecting to see for months arrived on Friday - yippee! I'm most of the way across the back of the shrug section already (almost finished the second ball) so it's going swimmingly. I swatched and discovered that I had to go down a needle size so apart from the usual "OMG, will this fit?" worries I'm feeling cautiously optimistic. In fact, I'm even daring myself to have it ready in time for my Christmas trip to England. I'm insane, right?

After 3 months of fog, apparently summer has decided to appear. The temps are in the high twenties with humidex taking it to the low thirties at the shore (where my house is). The humidex even two kilometers inland is taking it to the high thirties.

Yes, this does feel a wee bit extreme.

Still, I'm feeling incredibly grateful to have my house where it is because it's noticably cooler here than it is in the city. Walking out of the office is like walking into a furnace and my aunt is suffering badly.

The forecaster is promising that things will cool down a bit by the weekend. I'm praying that this is so. The forecaster this morning also said that Hurricane Bill is heading our way, will hopefully veer off to sea before it hits us but will be bringing high winds and heavy rain for the beginning of the week. Better get everything tied down outside over the weekend, then.

The heat has slowed my knitting progress. Yes, even cotton isn't *that* nice when the temps in the house are high twenties. Fear not! I have nearly finished the shaping on the second sleeve of my sweater so I should bind that off today. Then I can start swatching for some socks and doing the seaming for the sweater. I just have to pick my times to knit and admit defeat when it all gets too warm.

The weekend was largely about "OMG, too hot!", Mum and I did go out on Saturday for various shopping chores, which was lovely while we were in the mall and horrible the moment we stepped out. We did have to make a detour to Chapters for books and drinks - strawberry banana smoothie turns out to be delish. I finally got myself a Chinese cookbook filled with lots of gorgeous repices of varying degrees of simplicity/difficulty and absolutely not a celebrity one filled with complicated recipes that I can't get ingredients for. So that's quite yayful. There's even a receipe for peking duck...

Last night I tried out a new recipe: oven-baked mushroom risotto. It turned out really well and is definitely going into the making-again list. Portobello mushrooms, bacon, parmesan cheese, tarragon...mmmmm....

Also over the weekend I grilled steaks on the BBQ and didn't burn them too badly. Woo! Mum is being quite complimentary about my culinary efforts.

Our new front-loading washing machine arrived on Friday and we've been stupidly excited about this. It's so easy! It's so automatic! It's got so many controls! It's so quick to put the washing on! Yeah, we're crazy.

This coming weekend I'm hoping to go away with my knitting crew, but this is dependant on the weather. If it's still miserably hot then we may cancel - lots of people plus 4 babies in one small cottage with 30+ temps would not be fun. We're playing it by ear.

Over this weekend I managed to get two books of my to be read pile. I was feeling really pleased until I realised that I hadn't catalogued the two Enid Blyton Adventure books that Mum found and brought me. Darn. They're gorgeous, though, lovely old hardcovers with original text and illustrations. I'm thinking that rather than trying to beat my unread pile down to a tiny number, I'm better off trying to read at least as many as come in. So two out, two in kind of deal rather than fifteen out, none in. It's the only way to stop beating myself up about my book habit!

Due to mother's current absence on a mother-daughter bonding trip with my sister in Italy, I am fending for myself this week. This means that I'm having to commit cookery.

I have three recipes that I can reliably cook, and I'm not sure that cooking sausages is allowed to be called a recipe.

So I have done the scary thing of trying new recipes. I'd like to point out that I used to be a fairly good cook, but lack of practice has made me wary of the concept. But I braved it all, bought ingredients and today attempted crispy duck in a honey and spice glaze.

The amazing part?

It was actually rather good. The duck was properly crispy on the skin and tender inside. And the glaze tasted really, really yummy. Served with carrots and pan-fried spinach, for balance and health.

If I'm still alive tomorrow, we can call this one a success ::is proud::