Christmas noms

This is a post about what I cooked for Christmas.

It started with a great deal of planning menuwise. First thing to get cooked was beef stock, as a base for the soup. It sat in the fridge for a couple days.

Then, the turkey. Oh, the turkey. It was removed from the fridge, had the remaining feather shafts plucked out (a good half hour or so of icky ewww), and then was put into a brine. A simple brine, of french sel de mer, about half a cup, to about 4L of water, a full head of peeled garlic cloves, and a few peppercorns.


 
Awesome. So far. Then there was the cutting up of many onions, and the placing of onions into the slow cooker to caramelize. It was about half a kilogram of onions all up. The caramelising went slowly. Oh so very slowly. Perhaps 2 hours all up, if I recall correctly.

Once the onions were nicely browned up, the stock, bay leaves, thyme, peppercorns, and salt were added to the mix, and stirred a bit before being left to their own devices overnight.

Om nom nom. Waking to the smell of that cooking was FABULOUS. Dare I say, even, GLORIOUS. And horribly tempting to have that for breakfast instead of well, breakfast.

I popped the first bottle of bubbles (Verve yellow label) about 11am or so, when I also pulled the turkey out of the brine and rinsed it off. That started off the day's cooking; I plucked most of the remaining feathers off while waiting for it to get to room temperature. Note for next year: gloves and needlenose pliers.

I put the neck in some water with an onion, bay leaf, peppercorns, and carrot to make the stock for the gravy. The veges got peeled and chopped, and doused with goose fat. The turkey got an onion put in it, some more garlic, and rubbed with more goose fat.

There was a bit of a rush as I got a few timings wrong, but eventually the turkey got cooked to perfection, as did the brussels sprouts with chestnuts and bacon, along with the roast potato, and turkey gravy. It made a wonderful looking plate, I have to say.







Delicious, wot? Of course, the last thing to happen was the Christmas pudding, and the cleanup. I hate cleaning up.

Sorry about the funky picture spacing, I don't have the patience to tidy it up right now. Why blogger can't just do a nice grid I don't know. Oh well. That's a whole other rant, I guess.

Still, Christmas dinner was lovely and awesome, and well received. And we're still eating the leftover turkey. It was also 100% dairy free, and gluten free except for the Christmas pudding (because I couldn't find a nice gluten free one before Christmas, and I couldn't be bothered with DIY).

I have much more confidence in doing a turkey next year (possibly for things other than just Christmas) - I will probably use a saltier brine, and maybe a more complicated one. Maybe. Or maybe not!

I hope your Christmas foodage was as awesome as mine was.

Feats II.

November 9th:

• Didn't sleep because of owwie neck and shoulder. Sigh.
• Had AM dose.
• Was told I was appreciated for all the stuff I make happen around here. That made me happy. I sometimes feel the magic house fairy is invisible.
• Started thinking about and writing down my life/fitness goals for the next six week cycle.
• Worked on my ToDo list
• Started my bucket list
• Wrote more about tasks and management or lack thereof of same.
• Tried to call mum and dad on skype.
• Spent time on Facebook.
• Cleaned up my inbox a bit.
• Did my veg box order for next week.
• Had painkillers.
• Reported a website error to my veg box company.
• Filled in a survey for Ocado, in hopes of winning 100 quid grocery money.
• Found inspiration for my six week goal cycle. 
• Wrote more, nearly fell asleep sitting up.
• Ate food, had a cup of tea, and read Animal Farm.
• Told Ocado that their automail was spamming me about a non existent delivery. Got an autoresponder email back. Nice.
• Browsed Ikea's website for lighting to put near my plants.
• Got sidetracked into looking up lightbulbs on amazon.co.uk. This would be more useful if I knew what kind of lightbulbs were in the sockets in my house.
• Tried to reach a lightbulb.
• Started my Ocado shop for next week.
• Wrote meal plan for up to next Tuesday. Well, some of it.
• Re-investigated slowcookers, and definitely decided on the Cusinart PSC650U. 
• Bought the slowcooker, it should arrive Monday. Before midday.
• Looked at about a billion slowcooker recipes.
• Took my laundry in.
• Emptied out the drip catch cup for the third time today.
• Randomly found a recipe for Vegan butter for baking.
• And then I found a recipe for Gluten Free Brioche. No prizes for guessing what I want to experiment with at some point. 
• Wrote up my goals properly. Ish, anyway.
• Had some dinner.
• Had a hot bath.

Today was one of those days where I feel like I did bugger all and just moped at my desk and was generally a bit of a washout. It's a pretty active kind of bugger all now that I'm looking at it, though.

Generic Update Post

I've been disappeared for about the last ... oh, two or three months.

The Olympics happened. I went to the Women's Epee, and I have photographs, which I will publish ... at some point. Once I get a better grip on the whole RAW thing.

I missed going to the Paralympics dressage because I was unable to wake up on the day. I was angry as hell about that.

I've been cooking roasts a lot lately. And tuna bake. And also making stock, which the at-home version is soooo much better than the storebought. And cheaper, even when I buy bones.

I haven't been doing much, or really any, photography. I just ... haven't had the will for it. I'm hoping to change that, starting with photographing my plants ... well, probably not daily, in all honesty, but at least sometimes. Maybe if I get really tricksy, I'll do a stop motion. Once I figure out how. And setup. And that kind of thing.

I've been trying to figure out how to continue my wine studies. I can't really swing the 2000 GBP and 18 days twice a year - which is what I'd need to attend the required residency schools. I can't swing the 8000 GBP (and I'm not sure about the hour or so travel every day) to complete the degree here, either. The Master of Wine requires I already have the degree and industry experience, so that's right out.

.... actually, my woes there will end up being a post in themselves. I'll do that later. Suffice to say, I am frustrated and angry and depressed over the whole thing.

Said frustration has transferred itself to doing any study at all. So I haven't been doing that, either. 

Fitness? I laugh at it. I was doing okay in September, but that came crashing to a halt. I need to re-establish a regular routine, but as always, logistics get in the way.

General health? Well, I haven't had a cold or gotten sick. I have had severe issues with sleeping - the anxiety over study, general existential angst, etc, has been giving me a bit of insomnia. And I was off my medication for a week because I was too exhausted and tired and sleepy to go down the road to get more.

So what have I actually been doing? Playing world of warcraft, reading a lot. Also, researching the wine thing takes a lot of time. Doing chores. There's another post in here about how I'm not doing anything coherent because I don't have anything to aim at, but again, I'll leave that set of angst for later.

What am I planning on doing? Making plants stay alive, figuring out if it is at all possible for me to continue study, getting less unfit, reducing my ongoing overheads task list. Which I need to write and braindump.

So, how have you been?

Food for thought (and body).

I'm going to continue moving towards healthier/more paleo options. This requires planning and forethought, since this stuff, while it does grow on trees amongst other things, isn't typically found in packages on the supermarket shelves. Of course, I also have the dearly beloved to cater for - he does get breakfast and lunch at work however, so that makes it easier. I need to provide myself with breakfast and lunch each day, plus dinner for two 5 nights a week.

The next few dinners involve steak, lamb shanks, and lamb chops. And vegetables, of course. I have a turnip, some carrots, some potatoes, and a head of broccoli to use up. Fortunately, I get a new vege box on Tuesday, so I should just about have enough to go until then. With the healthier eating I've been doing, hopefully I'll be wasting less, and throwing less away in future weeks (damn vegetables and their short shelf life). Looking at the incoming box, I've got Charlotte new potatoes, Pak Choi, and red pepper coming, along with three mystery vegetables. There's almost always carrots in the box, so I can count on those. I think I might swap out the potatoes for something else, though - I still have quite a few new potatoes still on my bench, I much prefer ones of a size I can bake or mash.

I'll note here that whilst I am highly aware that eating this way - fresh, organic ingredients, nothing from a packet - is infinitely better for me in the long term, it is incredibly difficult for me to actually do. Especially on days like today, where making a cup of tea is a major expenditure of available energy. Still, I will persevere, and attempt to set up some kind of production-line cooking where I can do a bunch of prep on a good day, and assemble meals later in the week with a minimum of fuss. The tricky bit is getting up the energy to work out what to prep for which purposes, so I need two good days. I'll get there. Eventually.

This ramble, while informative, doesn't actually fit very well with the characteristics of a good plan: that is, measurable, timely deliverables. Most of the list are things I'm already doing haphazardly.

Therefore:

• Gluten no more frequently than twice in any four days.
• Grains other than gluten no more frequently than once any two days, averaged over a week.
• Refined sugar products (such as softdrink or biscuits) no more than twice every seven days.
• Honey in tea is allowable during illness, or very occasionally otherwise.
• Calories to be kept to around 1200 a day, plus an allowance for exercise on days of greater activity. Going over is preferable to going under, especially on low-activity days. I will track this every day.
• Aim for a daily macronutrient breakdown of approximately 100g of protein, 50-100g of carbohydrate, the remainder being healthy fats.
• Aim to drink at least 2L of water a day, plus more during periods of activity or high liver load.
• Potatoes are allowed for now.

Going with the 'If it isn't there, I won't eat it' theory, I had a look in my pantry and fridge to see what needed to get lost. There's not much to purge, honestly. There's some chocolate chip gluten and dairy free cookies which I'm going to feed to the dearly beloved. Some dairy free icecream in the freezer which has water, pecans, maple syrup, cashews, and coconut in it (arguably paleo). Some of my gravy mix isn't grain-free (or at least, I'm pretty sure some of it is from grains originally, just not wheat). The peanut oil isn't paleo, but is probably better than the random vegetable oil until I get some macadamia oil. Some frozen fingers with a glutenised crust. Kosher cocktail viennas which contain numbers. Soy sauce. Fresh gnocchi. Some pork sausages in the freezer. HP BBQ sauce. My self raising gluten free flour. A bunch of rice. Some gluten free pasta. Rolled oats. Oat cream. I ran out of mayo and have a paleo recipe for DIY.

That covers it, I think. It helps having lived a dairy free and low-gluten diet for a long time, although some of the substitutes are non-paleo.

Things I need to find paleo alternatives for:

• Kosher cocktail viennas and frozen fish fingers: these are my protein-heavy, only heating required lunches.
• Soy sauce: where the heck do I find coconut aminos in London?
• Gnocchi: needs to be fridge-stable for a couple of weeks, ideally. And fairly easy to make. It forms the substrate for our designated lazy meal - meat ragu or chicken with pesto.
• Oat cream: savoury replacement for cream. Coconut cream is too sweet for applications such as scrambled eggs.

On to the actual Plan(TM).

I need the following meals for myself alone: 5x breakfast, 5x lunch, 1x dinner.
For both my husband and myself: 2x breakfast, 2x lunch, 5x dinner.

Considerations:

• I need as many zero-effort breakfasts and lunches as possible; I often run low on energy.
• I need at least two dinners my husband feels confident in preparing, in case I have bad days.
•  We are travelling on Saturday 30th to Florence for a week, so any food remaining has to be shelf stable until we return, or freezable.
• Between my husband and I, we are picky eaters. No salad, no fruit, very little seafood, very little chilli or black pepper (and besides, thai tastes funny without coconut rice, and indian just isn't right without naan, raita and saffron rice).
• Energy is a prime consideration. This bears repeating. Frequently. In any given week, I may or may not be able to do an hour of prep.
• Dinners need to vary somewhat.
• Breakfasts the same every day is fine, although on bad days, if it isn't heat'n'eat, it won't happen. 
• Lunches are okay to switch between two or three different things, but may not get eaten so need to be freezable, have a long life in the fridge, or be a suitable breakfast substitute.

Breakfast for two or one: Fried eggs, unsmoked organic grass fed bacon or lean ham, rosti.
Weekday lunch: Savoury mince or stew.
Weekend lunch: ?
Saturday dinner: Leftover Roast Beef cottage pie.
Sunday dinner: Rump steak and mashed potatoes.
Monday dinner: Lamb shanks with carrots and turnips. Freeze bones for stock.
Tuesday dinner: Lamb chops with mashed potatoes. Freeze bones for stock.
Wednesday dinner: Meat ragu with gnocchi.
Thursday dinner: ?
Friday dinner: Roast chicken dinner with roasted vegetables.
Saturday dinner: Roast chicken leftovers - probably warmed through in pan with garlic and onion, served with vegan pesto over gnocchi. Bones frozen for stock.

After some thought, I will attempt to make myself a big batch of bolognase/savoury mince to have for lunches, and a second batch of stew. These both freeze well; however, I still need a carbohydrate substrate. Cauliflower mash keeps reasonably well, although the carbohydrate content isn't high. I might add a Nakd fruit and nut bar on days when I'm going to be working out to make sure I have sufficient carbohydrate stores to not fall over. Things may also change slightly when the vege box arrives on Tuesday.


So, I have a plan. Will it work? Well, maybe. I guess time will tell.

22, amongst other things, a new corset.

Taking self portraits is hard. Anyway, my new corset arrived today. With the help of the internet, I made a decent stab at lacing myself into it, and then I took several photographs, only one of which (after some pretty severe cropping) was halfway okay. You can see my bosom in all its pale glory to the right. I'll note that due to the limitations of self-lacing, especially my very amateur attempt, I've probably got at least another inch or two of compression left in the bust - which is why I have no cleavage in that shot.

This is my first corset from corsets-uk.com, and overall, I'm pleased thus far with the quality. The corset is firm without being overly tight, sits evenly, and the little finishing touches (modesty flap under the busk, matched colour flat lace in the back) are really rather nice. I forsee more corsets from this source in future. Especially at their prices! They have an australian site as well. Unusually for what's basically high-quality factory made gear, the fit is reasonable. On their website it does state that C cups and under should go for the fashion corsets (or underbust corsets), and bigger breasted ladies should go for the steel boned corsets. It's nice to be acknowledged. They have a pretty decent range of steampunk corsets (like my new one) as well as full on waist training corsets and a fairly wide selection of various colours and designs. Until I can afford a custom-designed corset, I think I'm fairly happy to keep shopping here. And I have a very long wishlist.

Related: I have really good posture today. Except I can still slouch sideways.

Now all I have to do is assemble a full outfit. I am ... not very good at this kind of thing. Actually, I kind of suck. So aside from a long black skirt that packs up small and doesn't crease much, some kind of small lacy scarf to prevent goosebumps on my chest, maybe a bolero for those London indoor temperatures, and a coat of some description for the outdoor London temperatures ... I'm completely stuck. Well, obviously I mean for specifics for any of these items. And also for where to start looking to shop for these things. In Brisbane, it would be easy: the Internet Or Bust. In London, I'm told I can probably find stuff fairly inexpensively in person. But where? That is, of course, a question I often ask myself. I can probably knit myself my wanted neckthing, but that requires a pattern, which requires more adept use of google than I currently possess. Oh well, a problem for another day, I guess. Unless any of you lovelies has a suggestion for a neck covering knitting pattern hat's lacy and kind of pointy?

In other news, I've assigned myself some daily goals for the next few weeks:

• Eat breakfast before midday, or within two hours of waking if getting up around or after midday.
• Stretch every day, at least one stretch.
• Read nonfiction for 15minutes every day. 

These shouldn't take up a lot of my time, should be easy enough to do wherever I happen to be, and if I can establish them as habits, will go a long way towards improving my day-to-day life.  Which is, you know, really important for my long term health and happiness.

In any case, I've just put a beef topside roast into the oven. It's covered in bacon, and will have sides of roasted turnips, roasted carrots, roasted broccoli, and boiled new potatoes. And gravy. I am really looking forward to this. I will attempt to remember to take a photograph or two once it's finished cooking. Mmm, delicious food.

After dinner, there will be clubbing! In the new corset! An excellent day all around.

Cooking: EggThing

Yesterday, between researching parkour, grumbling about couriers, trying new tea, and stretching, I cooked an Egg Thing. It involves eggs, veges, ham, and an oven.

It's two serves, so yesterday's lunch and today's breakfast. It's much tastier than my previous stab at a similar dish, I think because I reduced the amount of non-egg things in it. Still, it does have spinach, capsicum, onion and mushrooms in it, so I did make progress on reducing the amount of veges in my fridge :)

So I fried the onion, mushrooms, capsicum and garlic together.

Then I put the veges in a baking dish, and added in 6 beaten eggs, with a bit of oat cream, mixed herbs, salt, and pepper mixed in. And threw a couple handfuls of fresh spinach on top.

Threw it in the oven at about 170C for around 40 minutes, and it came out looking pretty awesome.


And then, there was noms.

Achievements 12 - catch up

I missed a few days, because I was feeling down. A summary:

• I caught a Red Bus for the first time EVER!
• Got myself some Vibram Fivefingers
• Caught a red bus for the second time
• Blogged about it
• did housework, cleaning, etc. 
• Made chicken soup to a new recipe
• Filled out my food diary consistently
• Figured out how to hit my minimum daily calories instead of going into massive deficits
• Did my mobility workouts
• Did most of my other workouts
• Took photographs
• Published my photographs (some of them, anyhow)
• Went on a geek date with the dearly beloved to the Science Museum
• Went to weekly gym seminar thingo - got weighed in, apparently I've successfully misplaced about a kilo.
• Tried runescape

Rightio, up to present day. Today, I:

• Unstacked/restacked dishwasher
• Tidied the place up - Wednesday is cleaner day. 
• Washed my hair.
• Filled out my food diary, I've been good with this.
• Signed up for spotify, so I have music to listen to while working out.
• Researched adult beginner gymnastics in London. I still need to do a lot of strength and flexibility work before I can actually go ahead with gymnastics-specific skills and training, but knowing where to go when I reach that point is a good thing.
• Did two mobility workouts, on shoulder flexibility. Man, do I have a long way to go. Still, it's a heck of a lot better than about 6 weeks ago, when I couldn't even get my shoulder into a neutral position at all.
• Took advantage of my hair being washed and out to take a couple of photographs.
• Did a quick blog post about said photographs.
• Made lunch. And breakfast.
• Defrosted meat for lunch well before midday (it takes ages to defrost here - 2+ days in the fridge, 5+hrs on the bench).
• Went to the gym and KICKED ASS (will post about that in a bit)
• Made dinner - baked veges with bangers on top! Easy 1 pot meal.

Cookbook: Egg Monster Adventure!

 Part of cleaning up my diet is severely limiting the amount of prepackaged foods I eat. This includes breakfast. I'm pretty slow to get going in the morning, so having something I can just reheat is awesome and required. Thus, courtesy of the awesome folks over at Nerdfitness, I have the thing known as Egg Monster. It's basically a frittata of sorts. But on to the recipe! And the Adventure!

Ingredients.
18 eggs
200g Pancetta
500g (lean) Beef Mince
170g carrots
140g portabello mushrooms
120g broccoli
200g flat beans
70g asparagus
A Leek.
130g mayonnaise
3g coconut oil
Herbs
Garlic
Pepper
Salt.

Makes 16 servings.
Rough nutritional info per serve: Energy 220kcal, Protein 18.3g, Carbohydrate 3.3g, Fat 19.5g.

Adventure! Recipe.
1. Turn the oven to 170C, and brown the mince in a frypan.
2. While the mince is doing its thing, chop the veges.
3. Set the mince aside, and sauté/steam/grill the veges and garlic, and cook the fat off the pancetta (separately). Drain the extra fat off, and put the pancetta on a couple layers of paper towelling to drain a bit more. When the veges are done, mix the meat and veges together.
4. Beat eggs, mayonnaise, salt, pepper, herbs together.
5. Grease a REALLY BIG pan with the coconut oil.
6. Put everything in the pan.
7. Put in oven for an hour.

The Adventure!
... That's not quite how it really happened. Here's the real (5 hour) story:

Arranged veges nicely, and took several photographs. Turned the oven on to 200C.



Tried to start chopping asparagus, found it was past a useful condition, and got the other bunch out of the fridge. Found flat beans in the process, and decided to add them too. Figured that since I now had different veg, I should take more pictures.


Took even more pictures.


Chopped carrots, leek and mushroom and ... took pictures.




Meanwhile, I cooked the pancetta. And took pictures.


Then I sautéed the carrot, leek and mushrooms and garlic and chopped the greens. And took pictures.


I steamed the greens in the microwave, and put the egg yolks and whites in separate bowls. And took pictures.






You may notice there are only 12 yolks. We'll get to that in a minute. I remembered that this thing was supposed to have mince in it, and put the mince on to brown. Well, actually I spent about half an hour breaking it up with a wooden spoon, then turned the heat on. And took pictures.




Beat the egg whites until slightly foofy, and beat the egg yolks with the mayonnaise, herbs, salt and pepper. Took more pictures.



I mixed my pancetta and mince together in the pan, then thought it would be a jolly good idea to actually have the veges and mince mixed all together. So I put them in a bowl and took pictures.





I greased up my glass roasting pan, and put the mince/vege mixture in. And took pictures.



And then remembered the greens. They went on top. Pretty, don't you think?




I remembered that this was going to rise. So I found my REALLY HUGE metal roasting pan, greased that up, and transferred the meat and veg to it. Oh well, so much for artistry.




I poured the egg mix over and ... oops. Not enough, eh?



So I quickly beat up another half dozen eggs, and added that. And took pictures.



Looks like enough, went to double-check the temperature the oven was supposed to be at ... oops. Mine's too high. Not to worry, I'll turn it down, open the door for a minute, and it'll be Just Fine(TM).Half an hour through cooking, turning the pan around, because my oven is like that.



Aaaaand ... RAWR! EGG MONSTER! Owait, not cooked all the way through yet, back into the oven with you.



During this adventure, I was also weighing everything and writing all the nutritional info down. A lot of maths, really. And then there were numbers. Actually, a whole spreadsheet. See? Numbers. Also, flowers.



Breakfast at 5pm, yay! Om nom nom.





Next time: Less mayo (so less fat), maybe more eggs. And different veges. Maybe less veges. Sooo many greens. And a capsicum. Okay, going now. The End.

self.fix()

Well, self.improve() anyway.

I'm fed up with being sick and tired and sorry for myself and weak and unfit and bored and depressed. I feel stale and old and useless, which is a bad way to feel.

So. I'm fixing my diet, going towards a Paleo diet (which is, incidentally, gluten and dairy free by default, hurrah). This means: fewer carbs, more protein, probably a lot of bulk meals stored in the freezer. I've stared this process by changing my weekly shop slightly, and soliciting some recipes that are simple to do in bulk and store well.

I'm fixing my exercise, or rather, initiating some. Tentatively, I'll start with something like this:
- 5min warmup on treadmill
- 10min of intervals on treadmill for distance
- One-arm dumbell rows, 3 sets of 10
- Air squats/travelling lunges
- Plank, hold for max time;
- Bicep curls (for grip strength);
- Tricep dips
- Stretching.
 In about an hour. I'll try and do that once this week, and twice next week, adding weights as I can.

I'm fixing my brain. I'm getting off the ground with my ardvino project from the software side, and listening to a backlog of podcasts. I'm reading books other than my comfortable reads, including nonfiction. This week, "Programming Language Pragmatics" by Michael L Scott. I'm writing blog posts.

I'm fixing my social life. I'm actually going out to my weekly meet (and staying sober), I'm reading my twitter feed, and I've reactivated some old accounts on various forums to try and get some engagement there.

I'd appreciate encouragement and support. I need it, I think.

Rediscovering the joy of cooking

It's no secret - anyone who knows me well enough knows that I love playing around in the kitchen. What many don't know is that I haven't had the energy or the will to cook for around two years now. For a hobby I loved to do daily, that's been pretty crushing.

Throw in going dairy free, and more recently gluten free, and I've been even less able to do this one of my favourite things.

When I have made food it's generally been as an obligation, or in one of the very, very rare flashes of feeling not-tired. It hasn't been a part of my daily life, and I have missed it horribly.

That's changed in the last two weeks. I have been able to think about cooking, and experiments, and carry them through. To theorise and test my theories. What can I say? I'm a geek in the kitchen, as much as I am anywhere else in life. I stand there and I think about the chemical processes going on, and how it would change if I did something else, or used a different ingredient, or a different process, or whatever.

Occasionally I get a surprise, as I did on Sunday when I made my breakfast quiches. Well, they were supposed to be quiches. They ended up being souffles instead. Apparently, mayonnaise is a very effective raising agent. I'm not quite sure why that is, but it certainly seems to be the case. Originally, it was supposed to be substituting for cream, to give them a better texture. It changed the texture, all right. Just in a bit of a different direction to what I was expecting. I've tacked the recipe on to the end of this post, suggestions for flavour combinations and tweaks would be great.

I want to start making my own mayonnaise for use in my quiches too. Anyone got a good recipe?

I still haven't debugged my mini meatloaf, which are my lunches during the week. Being dairy and gluten free, and also doing a lot of physical exercise, relying on cafes and food courts for lunch is expensive and risky. So, I DIY. I like a hot lunch, too. Thus: mini meatloaf. Anyway. They're lovely and moist and ... fall apart. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong there, really. Maybe less egg? More breadcrumbs? Oh well, I'll give it a try next time I make a batch.

Quite apart from the meds (which have had a vastly positive impact on my outlook and mood), I think that making more of my own food is making me feel healthier. I get bugger all preservatives in my diet now. Lots of fresh veg and good quality protein. Very little starts off looking like something not recognisably of plant or animal origin. On top of that, it's fun. And delicious! I say without shame that I am a very good cook. I can count the number of fail meals I've made in the last decade on one hand (I'm up to 4). I make food that is far, far better than what I can buy in a packet and is usually better than what I can buy in a cafe or restaurant. Part of that is, I think, that I have been doing it long enough - about 20 years - so that I have a good 'feel' for it. Part of it is the way my brain is twisted towards curiosity and experimentation, followed by analysis, theories, and theory testing. This is helped along by a very active sense of taste - I love food, food tastes awesome, and there is no faster way to give me an endorphin high than to feed me a wonderful meal.

In a slight change of subject, I'm considering adding to my list of hobbies doing formal reviews of gluten and dairy free products. Especially for baking, flour in particular, it is a right royal pain in the posterior to get together, mix, and keep on hand all the little bits and pieces needed. Also, packet products are a good place to start a new set of experiments - it tastes good, what's in it, can I make it better? Or simply have around as convenience foods. I guess I'd have to contact various companies to find distributors in my area, although I suspect I already know where most of them are within a 10km radius. It will improve my writing and food photography skills, as well as providing at the very least a self-reference for various products, and potentially a resource for others.

This post is probably long enough, so I'll leave it there. Please comment on anything that interests you, and let me know if there's anything I can improve in my writing or anything else.

As promised, the recipe:

Crustless Individual Quiches or Souffles.

Ingredients.
8 eggs
2-3 cups finely chopped veges (shallots, fresh asparagus, capsicum,
tomatoes, green beans, zucchini, mushrooms, caramelised onion, etc).
Saute hard veges first.
200g meat filling (bacon, salmon, chorizo, etc)
spices to taste (pepper, garlic, chilli)
herbs (basil, thyme, dill, rosemary, mixed herbs, etc)
2-3 tbspn whole egg mayonnaise (4-5 tbspn for souffle)

Method.
1. Preheat oven to ~180C.
2. Grease six-cup texas muffin tray.
3. Whisk together herbs, spices, eggs and mayonnaise in a 2L jug,
until smooth. ~30secs.
4. Mix together meat filling and veges.
5. Divide meat/vege mix into muffin tins.
6. Pour egg mix over meat/veges. Fill cups to nearly full.
7. Bake for around 30min, until golden brown on top.

Makes six texas muffin sized quiches or souffles.

Quinoa, keeenwah.

As part of my recent dairy-free kick, and wanting to expand my diet a bit so that I have more options, I picked up some quinoa recently.

A couple of things about quinoa:
- It's gluten-free
- It's a complete protein source, and very high in protein for a grain
- Well, actually, it's a seed, I think, not a grain
- Anyway, it keeps well after being cooked. A week or so in the fridge.
- It's low-GI, although I don't yet know if it's diabetic-friendly
- It comes in different colours: black, white and red; I have red
- It's as versatile as rice or couscous
- It's one of those trendy 'superfoods' which means it's a lot easier to get a hold of now than it was 2 years ago.

To cook it, it's basically the same as rice. Add 2 parts liquid to 1 part quinoa, set to gentle heat, cook for about half an hour, you're done. Easy as. Oh, except the important part: soak or rinse thoroughly (or, hell, both) before cooking. There's a coating that doesn't taste very nice that you want to get rid of. So the internet tells me, at any rate.

Anyway, so far I've done two things with it.

First thing was to make up a fairly plain 'savoury' style. 1 cup quinoa, 2 cups vege stock, a bay leaf, a shake of random spices (cumin, tumeric, chilli, pepper). I had some of this as a lunch, by itself. Man, was it filling. Tasty; the quinoa itself is very mildly flavoured, unlike, say, amaranth (ew). It is also a very textured food - chewy and interesting in the mouth, much more so than rice or couscous. About the closest would be perfectly al dente pasta, but made as it is of smaller pieces, it's not the same at all (which is not a bad thing). I'd say maybe 1/4 cup would have been enough for lunch food, easily.

Based on this experiment, flavoured appropriately, I think it would do well with just about anything that has a liquid component - thai and indian curries, italian sauces (especially tomato-based), stews, casseroles, tinned tuna, that sort of thing.

The second experiment I've conducted is using the cooked leftover quinoa to make a griddle cake, as a substrate for my bacon and eggs, instead of bread. I must say, the results are ... well, not so great. I should probably have looked up some sort of fritter or pancake recipe first, instead of just mixing with egg and spices and whacking it into the pan any old how and hoping. Don't get me wrong, here; it tastes great, the flavours mix well, but it's not holding together very well. Scooping it up with a fork wasn't what I had in mind. On the bright side, this is the perfect excuse to experiment more, and get it right. Hmm ... I wonder what it would taste like mixed in with scrambled eggs?

Other experiments on the horizon: using quinoa to give a bit more texture to meatballs and pies. Making a porridge or congee equivalent, both sweet and savoury. Some form of salad. I'm curious to see how it would work in biscuits, bread, and muffins.