Month: October 2011

Cooking legend

After posting the other day that I hardly use the stove anymore, I did use it yesterday for something that made me feel very clever…

Egg and Garlic Chive Pot-sticker Dumplings

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5 eggs
1 tablespoon vegetarian oyster sauce
bunch garlic chives
teaspoon cornflour plus more for preventing sticking

Crack eggs into a bowl and mix with oyster sauce. Cook in a frypan like scrambled eggs (they don’t need to be cooked through). Mix together with chopped chives and cornflour.

Put a teaspoon of mixture in a dumpling wrapper (the white ones, not the yellow ones), moisten edges and crimp together. Nobody really cares if it’s perfect!

When you run out of filling or wrappers, put them in a frypan with a splash of peanut oil and ¼ cup water. Crank up the heat and put a lid on. The dumplings will steam until the water evaporates, and then the bottoms will crisp up nicely.

I served mine with chinese red dumpling vinegar (I have no idea what this is really called), but that isn’t really necessary – they are entirely delicious without sauce!

Recipe adapted/stolen from http://www.mijorecipes.com/appetizers/crispy-chinese-dumplings/.

Ferdinand!

A couple of months ago, Mark and I attended a thermomix demo. I was curious about the machine, it chops, it stirs, and it cooks – and it costs about $2,000!

I went to find out more, and was very impressed. I wanted one, but couldn’t see a way of justifying the expense. Mark disagreed – he helped me to rationalise it, and a few weeks later we ordered one.

So Ferdinand took up residence here a few months ago, and we haven’t regretted the decision. Even considering the cost, it’s been worth it. I’ve given away the food processor, and only used the stove about twice since he came. I’ve made risottos, vegetarian sausage rolls, soups, casseroles, sorbet, ice cream (creme anglaise, frozen, then blended with strawberries), steamed veggies, polenta, fruit juices, pancakes with pear and strawberry sauce, pizza dough (the only thing that isn’t as good as my original recipe!), béchamel sauce, “chocolate” date balls (Inigo LOVES these – dates and cocoa with a bit of coconut, he thinks it’s chocolate), apricot iron booster balls, Moroccan tomato soup, home made preservative free veggie stock etc, etc.

It’s been great, and since a few friends are also interested in finding out more about the machine, I am having a demo on saturday – let me know if you’d like to come!

Inigo does maths

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Today, for the first time in over a year, Inigo and I hung out at home. We did some cooking, some painting, some splashing about in the wading pool, and had an impromptu maths lesson. He now understands plus, and equals, and wrapped his head around the cuisinaire rods. He gets that each rod represents a number, and how to work out which one.

And I feel like a mothering legend because I only got cranky once, and we mostly had a very fun day.

a crappy mood

66% for my research report. I’ll live through it, but it will make it very hard to get an HD for PSYC102. Do I need an HD? I rang Macquarie to talk about transferring (to avoid residential schools in Armidale next year), and I have to apply through UAC, which means a pile of paperwork, and a very impersonal and bureaucratic process. Which may get me absolutely nowhere.

Squish is going to preschool next year, and trying to work out which one has been difficult. Apparently all the good parents work this shit out years in advance, but I am a bit remedial in leaving it until October of the year before to start looking.

So if I switch to Macquarie, I’ll want him in a preschool that is closer to there, and if I stay at UNE it won’t matter. So I am tying myself in knots trying to make the best decision for my favourite kid, and 66% just makes me feel defeated.

Yes, yes, I know that 66% isn’t a great big stamp across my forehead that says “FAILURE”, but everything else is (relatively) easy for me, so this is forcing me to come to terms with the fact that I am going to have to really work hard to become competent at academic writing. It’s not something that comes easily to most people, so I shouldn’t feel like crap that my assignment came back covered in negative comments.

Ted and I took Squish to a new music class today. There were twin girls there. Thank FSM they weren’t boys. And that they were a little older than A&A should be now. Seeing twins is always a sharp pain, a glimpse is a shopping centre usually sends me in the opposite direction, but today I couldn’t run.

Sometimes, I can live through it. Just breathe, and pretend that I am coping, that life is ok. But there are other days, like today, when it’s just too hard.