3 posts tagged “cooking”

So my work emails are down. Apparently for several days. And of course they blocked hotmail and yahoo etc etc at work. Gaaah! Ignoring the fact that I have to get a whole pile of work done, and that will be very tricky without email, I am doing these posters for an election campaign for someone in The City and am now unable to email them! Grrrrrr.

Also, now I'm bored. Technically there is a whole bunch of stuff I could be doing without using my email, but not being able to use my email is like a psychological block. I feel stuuuuck. There is so much crazyness going on at work right now, that I can't even bring myself to put it into words. Plus I miss Dude - his desk is all empty and his tea cup is just sitting there. People were clearly upset by his leaving at today's staff meeting... it seems unlikely, but maybe it will actually bring about some change.

Not a whole lot to report... the weekend was fun. BodyBalance and then lunch with a friend on Saturday, and then shopping for new undies (huzzah!) and new workout trackies. On Saturday night I went to MotherHen's house and met her whole, crazy, giant family who are hilarious and fabulous. Played pictionary and ate the choccie cake I made... with 70% cocoa organic chocolate. Ahhh-mazing! It was a good night actually although it did make me miss my friends and family a bit.

Sunday I spent the whole morning in bed watching the BBC's adaptation of Daniel Deronda, then went for a lovely walk on the deserted beach where I watched this hawk coasting on the thermal whatsits for like 5 minutes without flapping his wings. Then went home, got back into bed to watch more DVDs and work on the posters for a while, and then made orange and poppy seed biscuits for today's staff meeting, which went down a treat. My housemate was hilariously hungover and spent the whole day on the couch eating Maccas and chocolate cupcakes (made with leftover mixture from choc cake). We did, however, move the couch which her parents brought up into the loungeroom and the futon bed into the spare room. So we are officially open for visitors! 

No pesto making (too lazy to do anything which would involve having to wash the food processor, especially after the amount of effort involved in the chocolate cake) and no gardening (lazy triumphs again). The weeds are reaching crisis point; they have taken over the lawn, but I just can't be bothered. This weekend for sure. *cough cough*

So last week's meeting went okay... not brilliant, but okay. There was no yelling at me, which was a pleasant change! I did the 5 hour drive all by myself both ways; I wanted to know that I would be okay to do it if I have to do one of these trips alone for any reason. It certainly helps having people to chat to, especially since the radio / CD player is broken, and I was damn tired by the end of it, but it is really a pretty easy drive. There has been some rain lately, so there are less goats on the road which makes things much easier - don't have to play dodge 'em quite so much.

Strangely today at work I am listening to my Christmas playlist. Which would be strange enough if the playlist itself wasn't so strange - it goes from Carols from Kings, to bits of a CD called Brightest Morning, to Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe, to the Muppets Christmas Carol. What can I say... it makes me happy.

In other news, I have a new housemate! She's gonna get back to me, but I'm pretty sure she's in. Don't know a whole lot about her, but she is nice and friendly and earns money. That is all I need at the moment. This will be a huge financial relief. I got a raise from work, however our HR bitch, being useless, was somehow unable to make it so that the raise, which was effective 27 March 2008, went into my pay packet. Similarly, my leave loading was mysteriously missing. These sort of errors cannot be blamed on us being underfunded - it is sheer incompetence and it drives me nuts. I really needed the extra $200 from my leave loading this fortnight. Oh well, you can only work with what is. I;m also looking forward to having someone around the house a bit. She sounds like she works pretty hard too, so I'm sure we won't be in each other's pockets, but it would be nice to have someone to say hello to at night.

Got very bored this weekend, so I did heaps of cooking. Saturday night I cooked lamb with homemade tzatziki and dressing, which was pretty tasty. Too much garlic in the tzatziki though... but otherwise good and nice and healthy. Last night I cooked steak and then made roast pumpkin and chickpea salad with sundried tomato dressing to go along with it. No greens, which was a bit naughty of me, but overall pretty scrummy. Both dinner recipes were from my low GI diet book, which makes me feel somewhat virtuous.

Marry me jason

Yesterday I also made cupcakes to bring into work, it being grumpy Monday n all. I took some photos with my phone, but unfortunately the phone will not behave and upload them to the puter. Anyway, they are carrot (no walnut, lots of cinnamon and ginger) with coconut icing (icing sugar + coconut cream) topped with caramelised carrot. I have been assured by my colleagues that they are very tasty. Not sure that I love the caramelised carrot - I think next time I might sprinkle cinnamon sugar on top instead, although the carrot does look nice. Hmmm... Anyway that recipe came from a cookbook my lovely friend gave me as a going away present - it is the "5 best" cookbook put out by delicious magazine, which is my favourite cooking magazine.

On Saturday night I went to the movies alone, again. If I'd thought it through, I probably wouldn't have gone on "date night", but I certainly wasn't the only single loser in there. I saw Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which was damn funny. All actors involved were strong, and the ending was cute. It ain't rocket science, but it hit the spot. Anyway, if you don't mind full front nudity, go and see it. It is totally worth it for the vampire puppets.

Last weekend, my supervisor (hereafter called MotherHen, because as of next week she will have quite the little brood of young chicks / lawyers to look after) came over to my house and we made cupcakes for the G-town office, who have all been so lovely at helping us poor shlubs in legal get organised. Generally I prefer more uniformity in my cupcake decorating; these are much more random than I would usually decorate because I am a boring, organised person and I like to have a theme, but MotherHen insisted that we 'go all out'. My favourites are the ones with little butterflies...

I am thinking about making something called 'blondies' tomorrow. I've only ever heard of brownies; I know from living in Vancouver that brownies (and I guess also blondies) are much more popular in North America than they are in Oz, so maybe it isn't surprising that I haven't come across them before. Anyway, I scored a recipe for them from Simply Recipes, however if anyone has any tips or alternate recipes please let me know!

In other news, I made a kick-ass lasagna on Friday night. I'd pre-made the mince / bolognese during the week in my usual 'cooking enough to feed myself spag bol for a week' phase. For a change I put the bechamel sauce in the bottom of the dish before the pasta, as this was something I'd read in another food blog (I'm becoming a bit addicted to them lately) and it did make a difference in terms of the pasta sticking to the bottom. I also diverted from my usual recipe when it came to the bechamel sauce and the cheesy top. Normally I only use a straight white sauce, but this time I mixed in half a handful of low fat cheddar and a bit of salt. This was great because the cheese and salt was only just enough to flavour the bechamel sauce, but it was so much better than putting salt on top of the lasagna when you serve it I got a yummy level of saltyness throughout the dish, not just on top.

The top crust was the best ever! Normally I only use low fat cheddar, but this time I combined low fat cheddar, mozzarella and parmesan, and it was soooo good. Undoubtedly that upped the fat content of the meal, but the satisfaction level was sooo worth it. Lately I have been trying to focus on eating food that makes me feel good - that is, healthy but also happy, not just one or the other. I tend to swing between eating healthy and then comfort eating when I get stressed or PMS-y, so I want to bring my focus back to cooking and enjoying rather than just eating to fill a need. I need to stick to a low GI diet wherever possible, but I'm sure that within that I can add some interest!