pathology_doc

Take:

1. Turkey steaks - amount to suit
2. Lemongrass, lime and ginger spice powder (liberally shaken)
3. Lime juice (a few squirts, judge by eye)
4. Lemon juice (likewise)
5. Soy sauce to cover the meat
6. 2 cups fried rice (thank God for rice cookers!)
7. 1 can of assorted Asian vegetables

Chop #1 up into bite sized bits and marinade as desired in a mix of #2 through #5.
Drain and retain marinade.
Stir fry the meat, add the can of vegies, warm it all nicely and then stir through the rice and add marinade.

Serve hot.

See title of post.

1) Ling fillets take longer to cook than the bream did (they were larger, and very thick up one end). Up to 15 minutes.

2) Brussels sprouts can be used in place of the broccoli (because Woolworths were undersupplied last night). According to my aunt, so can spinach; but I'm not sure here whether she means leaves or chopped (I suspect chopped).

3) Biscuits again last night. This time I got it right, and didn't nuke the little buggers.

OTT: I may have a new laptop soon!

So I tried my aunt's peas-and-broccoli recipe. Also something I'd done a while back for potatoes, and my first-ever attempt at baked fish.

Peas and Broccoli
I won't repeat the recipe, which I put up a few posts ago. Because it was just me, and because this was an experiment, I used a head of broccoli (start fresh) and 250g of peas (start frozen). Mistake; I should have put all the peas in. Also, probably 25 mins (30 at most) was enough for the quantities I used. I used brown onions instead of red, but I'm not sure it made a difference for me; I should also have used garlic cloves instead of dried-up chopped garlic. Never mind; we live and learn. It turned actually to taste as expected, so double the amount for about 30-35 minutes should have done it and given me more than the paltry leftovers I've got. Brave ones may choose to add chili in oil.

Potatoes
I used three relatively small ones and should have chosen a larger variety.
Peel, halve, and cut parallel ridges down the length of the halves (about 30-50% the thickness of the halves).
Melt butter (I used the microwave) and add rosemary and very finely grated parmesan cheese (e.g. of the sort that comes prepackaged for pasta at home). Spread (with a pastry brush) and/or pour this mixture over the potatoes. In the oven at 200 Celsius. YMMV as to cooking times; say, about 30 mins for neophytes and adjust for experience.

Fish
I used a fillet of bream, wrapped in aluminium foil and baked for just under ten minutes. Eight might have been better; it was a bit flakey but still nice. I seasoned it with lemon pepper, ginger (McCormick's spice powder!) and hot chili, plus lemon and lime juice first to wet it.

As it was, once the oven was warm, the potatoes and the pea/broccoli thing were ready to go in together and come out together. I left space for the fish on the baking tray and threw it in at the T minus 10 minutes mark.

Meanwhile, the slow death of the chocolate cake continues. It rained buckets this evening, and I was very glad I'd brought my umbrella.

So at the beginning of this week (this working week, because Monday night I'd just got home from Adelaide and I was SO not motivated), I cooked "chocolate caramel muffins" (allegedly - the flavour seemed mostly chocolate) in my usual inimitable way (i.e. out of a packet on the supermarket shelf!).
( cooking analysis and a pasta recipe )

Bottles and jars and packets are my cooking friends. I don't care about the source of the ingredients, nor much more about the process - the end result is what matters.

So I got back from Pathology Update and really didn't care much for shopping (have been sanding prior to application of varnish). I didn't want to eat out (though I suppose I could have justified it to myself), and I didn't want to face just pasta with bottled sauce.

To the rescue: Bacon which I had originally bought for my breakfast (before remembering that I would be spending the next two weekends away from home), and a jar of stuffed cocktail olives.

Into the sauce they went! Along with chili powder and Italian herbs. A vast improvement.

You will need: One 1.2m x 29cm plank, one 900x19mm dowelling rod, some right angle brackets and long screws. Drill and screwdriver, saw and clamps.

Cut a 290x290mm square from one end (I really need some sort of guide; the cut was a bit crooked) and use that as a base. Mark off halfway, preposition two brackets and fix the base to the remainder of the plank at right angles. Add two more brackets (space them by eye; the exact measurements are not important). Mount the dowelling at the other end as a T with long wood screws (about 50mm will do) - I had difficulty tapping the screws and had to go to drill bits of increasing size before I could get them in easily; 4mm ultimately did the trick. I put two screws in 50mm from the centreline and two more a further 60mm out again.
( Cut for picture size )
Simple, isn't it?

Trousers, underwear and socks hang on the left; shirt, singlet and tie hang on the right; and all is in readiness for getting dressed speedily the next morning without rifling through cupboards and drawers in a panic.

And now I am making banana muffins. Twenty minutes to dessert, and my reward for a job well done. Yum!

ETA: I got the muffins right this time. Fifteen minutes, and they're delightfully moist and fluffy! The only problem now, of course, is not eating them all!

My no-bake cheesecake worked. As I feared it wouldn't. And it worked even better when I bought some passionfruit pulp and spread it on top (should have mixed it in with the filling, but didn't have it before I started).

So now I have one excellent, edible cheesecake that I would like to give to the people at work tomorrow. Question: What do I do about the fact that I had (in my mind) to have a piece so as to be sure I wasn't poisoning them all? Or if I get there early enough and finish cutting it and rearrange the pieces on the plate, do the Mysterious Gremlins take the blame for the missing wedge?

Thursday night, I was the victim of an irrepressible urge which burst upon me and said "THOU SHALT COOK!"

And so, having not used an oven in probably four years (and not with regularity in many more), I embarked upon a bakeware shopping spree at the local supermarket. Oh, and some packet cakes and muffins, jars of pasta bake sauces, meat, penne pasta and such.

So far today, I have turned out a very nice pasta bake, the first half-dozen muffins are in the oven (they had no trays of twelve left, so I settled for a tray for six large ones), and I'm melting the butter for a "no-bake cheesecake".

It is turning into quite a productive day.

ETA: Or at least it was, until I dropped onto my bed for a nap and woke three hours later!

Also: Overdid the muffins a bit - but I was distracted by another bit of cooking at the time (note to self with tongue in cheek: only women can truly multitask). I'm not sure whether to share them with friends after warning, or accept that the whole bunch is flawed and should be destroyed in the least wasteful way possible. ;-)

I suspect that (a) I had the oven up a little too hot in the first place (bound to happen with first-time users who are unfamiliar with the particular oven's quirks) and/or (b) I should have slightly underdone the recommended cooking time - or stuck to its lesser time recommendation - then left them in there for bursts of a couple of minutes more (lessons in how to handle a strange oven, perhaps?). Does anyone else out there find this situation familiar?

(c) At the recommended time and temperature, these muffins in a 12-small-pot dish would have been neatly crisped. I suspect my oven runs hot.

You know, it's times like this I understand what makes people like carlanime, sleveen and lately tharain tear their hair out in frustration.

When I was sitting my exams, life was high pressure, Pathology was Everything - it was God's Omniscient Eye staring down at me from the heavens and demanding I yield all time to It - and Original Fic writing ideas flowed freely onto the printed page in those few scanty scraps of time I allowed myself between tortu floggi study sessions. I could write three thousand words of fic in a day, quite happily albeit having to cut nearly two thousand of those as superflous crap on re-reading a few months later.

Now? With all the time in the world to work on it? My Baby, My Pet Project, the Labour of Love over which I have toiled since I was barely into my teens (possibly not even then)... is suffering an acute case of writer's block!

AAAAAAARRRGH!!!! Published novelists? Prolific extended series ficcers? I FEEL YOUR PAIN AT LAST!!!!!!!!

On the other hand, the soothing, rhythmic sounds of the washing machine are keeping me company in the background, granting me clean sheets to go with clean PJs when all is done. And I am getting some compensation for my waste of writing time today in that I have an extended weekend in which to write, with the opportunity to maybe head out of town and find greener pastures (although I did write a letter, which I'll post when the post office is next open, so that's half an excuse).

Unfortunately the very spot at which I would most like to plant myself has a power point that does awful things to my laptop's mouse pointer. I should buy a surge arrestor, SRSLY, but I've already got one of those and don't want to double up. Unless some tech-head among you tells me that an expensive compact surge arrestor that fits neatly in my laptop bag is better than some clunky thing I buy at the discount store (which I suspect it is).

On the gripping hand, today I befriended the manager of the local Gloria Jeans' coffee store, who tells me he is about to install a WiFi wireless hotspot for laptops. I also encouraged him to install some powerpoints while he's getting the work done, so that power-hungry laptops can stay longer and their owners can be tempted to drink more coffee.

In other time-wasting news, I reviewed Wikipedia's list of arcade games this evening, looking back with fond memory on those upright and sit-down consoles which ate so many 20 cent coins in my childhood from about 1978. But nothing, NOTHING AT ALL, beats the primitive arcade games of the mid-late seventies. Electromechanical arcade games, where art thou?

( Would you trust a recipe from this man? If so, click. )