Food & Drinks

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The big kitty – post 450

10 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

You remember the old myth that when you move house you should put butter on the cat’s paws? Here’s a tip – this can lead to experiences you were not exactly expecting. My jaw is on the ground right now, I do not joke.

The Big Kitty LOVES butter or margarine to the point that if you take the container out of the fridge she can hear it from anywhere in the house, and she appears like magic.

You cannot leave bread buttered around here. If you turn away, when you turn back she’ll be licking the butter off the bread. You need eyes in the back of your head, ya’all.

So the other day I made myself a tasty sandwich snack and I mistakenly left the margarine container out on the counter. While I was in here reading blogs and doing stuff, I heard some funny noises out there in the kitchen. I just figured those kitties were chasing each other around. As they do.

When I eventually made my way into the kitchen, I found the big kitty had knocked the margarine container onto the ground, at which point the lid came off. What happened next I cannot be sure as I wasn’t there and no video camera was recording, but there was margarine *everywhere*. On the floor, on the cupboards, on the dishwasher, and there were these buttery kitty paw prints that went from room to room. And, the big kitty was wearing what can only be described as butter socks. Only they went way up past her knees. More like butter stockings, really.

I cleaned up the mess (do not ask how long this took) and threw the margarine out. When The Other Half got home he was looking for the butter and came in to ask me for it, at which point, I lied. Because I was busy! I was in the middle of stuff and I didn’t want to get into the whole sordid buttery tale. And I knew she’d be in trouble. So I said I didn’t know where it was and he should use cream cheese instead. He turned the fridge upside down looking for the butter and I came out just as he was replacing the last items in there.. at which point I broke down laughing and had to tell the truth.

Now, today, he asked me to make him a cake. Now that big kitty is really in for trouble. It said grease and flour the cake tin, which I did.. I left it on one counter while I got on with making the cake. I turned around to find that big kitty attacking that cake tin with gusto and her little pink tongue.. it’s so cute, there’s little tongue marks all over the place..

I’ll be in trouble too, because instead of making his cake I couldn’t resist coming in here to blog about it.. ;)

We get our car tomorrow.. ;)

cooking, kitties, what not to do

Challenge complete!

1 Comment Posted on by Snoskred

A couple of days ago I challenged Sephy to cook a recipe, and it is already done, click here to read his post about it.. He’s fast as well as a great cook. ;) So, if you have a quick and easy recipe that you would like either Sephy (and/or myself) to cook and post about, feel free to set a challenge on your blog and then comment and let us know. Just be aware that I don’t really eat red meat, but Sephy does.

When I make that recipe I like to buy chicken tenderloins which you can really just throw into the marinade but if you’re a picky eater like me I tend to cut the very tops off them. It doesn’t go to waste, I fry any cut offs up for the kitties. Also, a lime tip – put your limes in the microwave on a piece of paper towel for 30 seconds – it makes them juicier. Or something. I really can’t recall precisely why I do that or where I got the tip from.

The West Wing at lunchtime has long been a habit of mine, good to see it’s contagious even across oceans. ;)

challenges, cooking

Challenge for Sephy.

1 Comment Posted on by Snoskred

My good friend Sephy just reached 200 posts today. Congratulations! I know it hasn’t been easy for you but it is worth the hard work in the end.

What many people don’t know about Sephy is that he is quite a good cook. Some time ago I was looking for a Jamie Oliver recipe. He managed to find it and cooked it and then blogged about it here.

So here’s a recipe for you to cook and blog about. It’s one of my favourites. I’ve made it twice in the last week. What you choose to have with it is up to you – because it is getting cold here I’ve been making potato dishes to go with it, but in summer I would eat this with lots of fruit cut up nicely, or an avocado/greek style salad. It’s getting warm where Sephy is so those might be options. ;)

I usually mix the marinade together in a mixing bowl, mix it well with a fork and then add the chicken to that, cover and put in the fridge for 20 minutes. But you can try the bag thing if you like. You may need slightly more oil, I usually put 1/4 of a cup and keep a little bit of that aside for the frypan.

INGREDIENTS

* 4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
* 3 teaspoons crushed garlic
* 3 teaspoons ground ginger
* 1 tablespoon olive oil
* 4 limes, juiced

DIRECTIONS

1. Pound the chicken to 1/2 inch thickness. In a large resealable plastic bag combine the garlic, ginger, oil and lime juice. Seal bag and shake until blended. Open bag and add chicken. Seal bag and marinate in refrigerator for no more than 20 minutes.
2. Remove chicken from bag and grill or broil, basting with marinade, until cooked through and juices run clear. Dispose of any remaining marinade.

Do you accept the challenge Sephy? ;) If yes, when he blogs the recipe I’ll link to it so we can all enjoy it.

If you like this recipe – it is very simple – you can try using other citrus juices instead of limes. Orange is nice, lemon can be good too, I’ve tried them both. Lime sets off the ginger perfectly but limes aren’t cheap here right now.. I paid $3 for just one lime earlier this week. I’m getting a lime tree. Speaking of trees, my lemons are finally ripe! ;)

lemontree

cooking, food, recipes

Scary Shark.

Leave a comment Posted on by Snoskred

Last night when we went to the usual Saturday night Chinese, there was a big group of people out on the boat ramp which can be seen from the restaurant. We weren’t really sure what was going on, until they started using this winch which holds up a big fish you’ve caught. They’d caught a Mako shark, about three metres long. It was huge!

So this is bad for many reasons, the worst of which is it reinforces my fear of sea water to go swimming in. I blame my parents for allowing me to see Jaws at an early age. And I felt sorry for the shark, because he/she probably was just out there minding its own business when it got hooked by these people. A 40 minute struggle (the other half went out to find out more about what happened) followed by two large hooks into the side of the fish because they couldn’t get it into the boat. It wasn’t humanely killed. I’m not sure how you humanely kill a shark. I guess you don’t.

But I think since swimming in the sea I have gained a new respect for fish. They’re not the stupid little creatures people make them out to be. I find it more difficult to eat them now.

The Chinese owner went out and talked them into giving him the shark fins, he gave them a couple of bags full of Chinese food in return.

animals, country life, food

Heaven.

Leave a comment Posted on by Snoskred

I never thought this would be a post I would be posting, but I must share the joy.

Lean Cuisine has always made excellent quality meals. I’m a huge fan of them. Not because I give a shit about the lean part of things, but because they use good quality inrgedients and never, ever, fatty crappy meat. In most of the products which involve chicken, they use actual chicken breast and not some conglomerate of chicken.

But a few weeks ago my life was changed forever, as I spotted a new Lean Cuisine product on the shelves. Not only are the serving sizes larger but the *taste*. I cannot describe it other than to say it is fantastic.

On many Australian supermarket shelves, there is an new item which can only be described as heaven. You must hunt this down if you live in Australia. Seriously. I do not joke. You may find it difficult as every time I go to the supermarket people have got there before me and they’re all gone. ;( But yesterday I got my hands on two of them, and damnit I intend to get more!

heaven

Please note the bowl you are seeing the food in is enormous.

Also recommended – the chicken with cracked pepper and pasta, the thai red curry, the indian butter chicken, in fact anything in this new steamed range I have loved. From the old range I love the honey mustard chicken, the vegetable canneloni, and I know there is more but they’re not coming to me.

AND THEY ARE ON SPECIAL AT COLES UNTIL SUNDAY THE 22ND FOR $4.99 WHICH IS $1.50 OFF GET THEE TO COLES AND STOCK UP!

(of course I can’t promise this will be the case at all Coles all over Australia but I would hope so!)

food

The Soup Nazi

Leave a comment Posted on by Snoskred

There’s a new soup available on the refrigerated shelves of my supermarket, people. I bought one a couple of weeks ago and it sat in the fridge while I ate all the other meals – it was there just as something for me to try when I ran out of other stuff. And last night was the fateful day that I ran out of other things to eat, and decided to give this soup a try.

Oh. My. God.

I was stunned by soup. I’m not kidding. It is literally that good. I was so stunned that I went back to the supermarket today and bought more – and also got several different flavours.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Seinfeld episode re the soup nazi, here you have it.

Those of you in Aus, keep an eye out for it. It’s at Coles here, and worth trying. I had the Pumpkin yesterday and today the Leek and Kumara (sweet potato).

food, shopping, Soup

Strawberry Madness

Leave a comment Posted on by Snoskred

Well it’s not Christmas without strawberries in my opinion, so I was looking everywhere for the darned things. All the local grocery stores had them but I would not buy them – they were all yukky and some were even *mouldy!* Eew!

So I said to my Mother the night before that we should go to the Organic Grocery in a town about a 20 minute drive away (coincidentally where my PO box is and where the best pies on the planet are) and she said ok, be ready at midday. Well my sleep patterns were as usual all messed up, and I got into bed about 7am which gave me about 4 hours sleep before I had to get up, and even though I was really tired, I got up with the assistance of Lukas Rossi singing to me.

So I got dressed, walked down the street to the parents house, nobody there. Not even a mouse. So I turned on the TV and waited, and they showed up about an hour later, and then Mum was all “I didn’t say we’d go, I didn’t say midday” and she didn’t want to go but I talked her into it, so she decided we would try another place here in town before we went driving “all that way” (16kms) to the other town!

This from a woman who used to whinge about driving from one side of Tamworth to the other, when Tamworth is half the size of this place. It’s to be expected.

We ended up at this place in town we’d never been to before and I am soooo thankful because not only did they have great, non-mouldy strawberries (which I have a desire to go and eat the whole punnet right now but resist I must) but their other fruit and veg was incredible. I even got cherries, all perfectly the same ripeness. YAY!

Now I just have to make sure she’ll keep going back there, because I am soooo tired of crappy fruit and veg from supermarkets..

Aussie Culture, country life, family, food

As much as I love cows..

Leave a comment Posted on by Snoskred

there comes a point at which you have to wonder, do they love us back? How many sour milks does it take to turn a once great relationship to thanks but no, I’ll take a bottle of water instead?

So I’m at that point now. I’ve bought one too many 600ml flavoured milk drinks that have turned out to be no good. As much as I love drinking it, from now on the only milk I’m drinking is milk in my coffee, or flavoured milk I make myself.

coffee.1

While on the subject of drinks, I have a coffee machine which if you went out to buy a new one today it would be at least $1000 or more. It’s worth every cent when you love your coffee. This machine is great – you press one button and it grinds the coffee, makes the coffee into the little round ground up coffee nugget, pours the water through the ground up coffee nugget and then dumps the ground up coffee nugget into a little bin at the side of the machine. Then you press another button and it gets the steam ready to froth the milk. That bit we do manually but you can get attachments to the machine to do it for you as well, depends how lazy you are.

We’ve had the machine for almost two years now, since Christmas 04. I would hate to think how many coffees it has actually made but not one day has gone by where we have not made one each. This machine has paid for itself roughly 6 times since we bought it, in coffees we have not had to buy.

coffee, country life, cows

W00t!

1 Comment Posted on by Snoskred

Rock star : Supernova the band is coming to Australia! In March next year. And the ticketing website which is selling the tickets is currently not working so I can’t even find out how much it is or even put a link here to it. grrr. Apparently Toby Rand and Juke Kartel will be the support act which is fantastic news. I definately want to go. ;)

Today we went shopping, we did not go to see the movie I wanted to see because my other half is a pain in the ass about movies, he’s a right snob about what he will and won’t go to see. But he’s happy to watch those silly anime cartoons for hours on end! I’ll probably end up going to see it on my own :(

Then we cooked dinner for my parents, a yummy Jamie Oliver recipe. Except I just use normal mushrooms, remove the thyme and add bacon. I also use half a cup of wine and half a cup of water otherwise the wine can be a little bit much. I’ve tried a few of his recipes and they always work out well.

I have an admission to make to you all. I am somewhat of a germophobe. Not to the point where it’s keeping me from going anywhere, but at times I think I can see there from here.

The two biggest issues I have are food preparation and door handles. I don’t like touching door handles and (this is hard to say) if it is somewhere really germy I sometimes open them with my jacket sleeve instead of my hand. Especially if I’ve just washed them in a public bathroom.

With food prep I absolutely hate tea towels and and refuse to have them in my kitchen at all – paper towel is your friend, I find. I don’t like using sponges and try to avoid them where I can and certainly would never use one to wipe a bench top. I also tend to wash my hands a lot in between handling different foods. It’s probably excessive but we all have to find a way to live with our little insanities, right?

But to a germophobe, my mother’s kitchen is an absolute nightmare. Tea towels! Sponges used all over the place! Dishes not perfectly clean even though she has a brilliant dishwasher, she throws the dishes in there with chunks of food still on them (ugh! I can’t watch her do this, I have to walk away) and no matter how good a dishwasher is there’s only so much it can do.

When I openly show how this situation makes me feel, it makes her mad. She’s like “Well, you managed to grow up in a house where the kitchen was this way” – what she is forgetting is that often when she had “cleaned” the kitchen I would sneak in there when she wasn’t looking and do it again to my level of clean-ness. And as soon as I moved out of home, I was insanely strict about the kitchen must be clean before *and* after you cook in it.

Today she had to go to the dentist and she wasn’t feeling well, when we dropped in before we went shopping she was having a nap. This was a great excuse for me to come back here with all the shopping, cut everything up on my clean chopping boards and do things my way, and then put it all into little tupperware containers, and take it over there mostly done. What a great idea, I never thought of it before but I will be doing that again.

Here’s an example of an argument we always have – about mushrooms.

Mum sees me rinsing the mushrooms off in the sink

Mum – “Why do you need to rinse them, they’ve been washed already at the supermarket”

Me – “You see all these little black spots of dirt? You know what that is? They grow these things in manure, you know, that’s what that is, and I really would rather not eat shit if I can help it”

Mum – “I don’t know why you have to be so picky about everything”

Me – “I’m not picky about everything. I’m picky about this. “

Mum – “I never did this when you were growing up. You ate them like that all the time”

Or the other night –

My other half was about to cut up onions for hamburgers –
Me – “Stop, that knife is filthy!”

Mum – “I just used it to cut the skin off the onion, it’s only onion on there”

Me – “No it’s not, it is something dried on from the dishwasher”

(the other half walks to the sink and starts cleaning the knife)

Mum – “You’re being ridiculous”

Me – “I’m not being ridiculous, I just want to have things cut up with a clean knife, that’s not too much to ask”

(the other half returns and it is still there)

Me – “That’s not clean, it’s still there!”

(the other half starts scraping it off with a knife”

Mum – “, That knife is perfectly clean”

Dad – “I don’t think it is, he’s trying to scrape it clean with another knife and it’s still not coming off”

Mum – “Just use another one”

The other half got it clean and washed it again but in the meantime she’s handed him another filthy one! I quietly say to him – use the one you just cleaned.

She thinks I’m too fussy about it but then again, I have to live with *her* insanities so she should live with mine! What’s her insanity?

When shopping and you make a purchase, you must take that purchase out to the car before entering another shop. And of course she’s parked in the furthest park from the supermarket, so you have to walk a kilometre anytime you buy something.

I do not complain about this. I just recognise that she has an issue with that, and deal with it. It’s annoying, don’t get me wrong! I mean the bag has the receipt in it, and even if the other shop does not sell that product, there’s no talking her out of this. It just is.

cooking, family, germophobe