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Notes from a bemused canuck

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Tag: cooking

A weekend update on the pet situation

Posted on March 28, 2011 By admin

So, first off, Tolstoy is starting to feel better after being a very sick boy. He went downhill very quickly two weeks ago and, after several tests and a week’s stay at the vet, they diagnosed pancreatitis. He also had a bout of E.Coli and some anemia. Fun stuff. The good news is that symptomatic treatment has been effective and, after having had cage rest for the past two weeks, he seems to be perking up. The bad news, as it were, is that in the course of diagnosing the pancreatitis, the vets discovered that he’s had a herniated diaphragm as a result of being hit by a car two years ago. Part of his liver and spleen have herniated into his chest and that’s compromised his lung capacity and constricted his heart. All of which can be rather, well, fatal and needs immediate attention.

It’s a weird situation. He was fine, and could very well stay fine for years, until he’s not. Then he’s dead. To avoid this, he’s going under the knife tomorrow. The vets wanted to make sure that he’s gotten over his previous malaise before they operated. He’s a lot better now, but he’s still not out of the woods yet. Because the hernia’s been around for so long, there is the possibility of nasty complications. He’s in good hands, and we’ll find out how things went tomorrow. Poor little guy. He’s not even 5 and will have had two major surgeries and a minor one. Yay, insurance…

On a more positive note, we went to visit Annie this weekend. Bean’s very excited about the prospects of getting his dog. Everybody at nursery knows the name of *his* dog :)

 

She’s really good about not pulling on the leads, so when we went for a walk, we were only loosely holding on to the middle of the lead while Bean was trotting along behind Annie. It was a case of not being sure who was walking who :)

We had very nice visit of Cambria Farm, which is run by a lovely lady called Jane Wilton-Clark. She runs a rare-breed pig farm that produces some truly excellent pig products. We bought some sausages and patties and had some for lunch when we came back. YUMMAY! Definitively have again, and driving back there with Annie will give us an excuse to go visit and buy some more :)

Speaking of food, I made a lasagna and a roast chicken, neither of which I’d done in a very long time – both of which were very good and therefore must re-enter the rotation of weekend dishes. Note to self.

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[Recipe] Roasted rabbit stew

Posted on March 9, 2010 By admin

1 rabbit, jointed in 6 portions
6 sausages, cut in chunks
6 rashers smoked bacon, cubed
6 large roma tomatoes, cut in segments
4 onions, sliced
3 bay leaves
1 rosemary sprig
500ml white wine
salt, pepper
olive oil

0. Preheat oven to 180C.
1. Brown the rabbit pieces in olive oil on high heat in an oven-proof pot. Remove and set aside.
2. Reduce heat. Brown bacon, sausages and onions in some more olive oil until well caramelised.
3. Deglaze with wine. Add rabbit pieces, tomato segments and herbs. Season with salt and pepper.
4. Roast in oven for 1 hour.
5. Remove rabbit pieces and set aside. Return pot to oven for another 20 minutes to further stew the vegetables.
6. Check stew seasoning. Place rabbit pieces on top of stew and return pot to oven for 10 minutes to re-heat.

I used honey and wholegrain mustard sausages we get from the Giggly Pig people at the market and a nice Riesling for the wine. All in all, a very good first try and the recipe.

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A weekend in food

Posted on February 15, 2010 By admin 1 Comment on A weekend in food

So, from my last few posts, you’ll have noticed that I was a bit busy in the kitchen last weekend. I made won ton soup for Saturday lunch, chawanmushi and dobinmushi for Saturday dinner and we went completely mad for sunday dinner (and our Valentine’s day feast) by making a 3 course meal of baked Camembert fondue starter, t-bone steak with mushroom sauce and baked potato entrée and a dark chocolate tart for pudding. Calories be damned, we needed it.

The food was good but the health was bad. I had a horrible throat for most of last week and now it’s moved upwards to my ears. I think I have some sort of ear infection because my left ear was completely blocked yesterday and every time I coughed or hiccuped, it felt like I had a rusty nail shoved in my lughole. Yay, fun times!

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Week in review

Posted on July 12, 2009 By admin

Not a lot to report for this past week. Work’s been up and down. I’ve been working on cleaning up code written up during a recent student project. The code does some very nice things in truly god-awful ways. I shouldn’t be too harsh about it, as it was from a student who’d never programmed in Java before. Still, it gives me nightmares and for the first time in a very long time, I feel stupid because I’m having a hell of a time trying to wrap my brain around what it does and how it does it. It really doesn’t help my morale when a coworker just looked at the spaghetti mess and said “oh yes, it does this here and that there. it’s quite simple, actually”. Bastard :)

On the home front, the BenBen has mastered the art of sitting up unsupported and his first tooth has broken through. More are hot on its heels. The clever beast managed to barf on me this morning and, as I put him down to clean him and myself up, he kicked my tea cup off the coffee table. Triple-score points!!! Otherwise, he’s generally in a good mood these days and he’s discovering new foods at a good pace. The ladies at the nursery are impressed in his ecclectic tastes. It’s not every baby that likes asparagus and olives, apparently.

Some lads from work came and helped me move the old sofa into the office. It took two tries and a bit of swearing, but we managed to get it to its final resting place with a minimum of pain or injury to either myself or the house. It smelled of cat wee so we nuked it with the odor remover and washed all the covers. The office is starting to look nice and usable now. I borrowed some homeplugs from a guy at work and I can now connect the SunRay console to the house network. I haven’t tested it out yet but it’ll hopefully mean that I can work from home on the days that I need to stay at home. I have to say that I’m impressed with the technology. I’d never heard of it before but they allow you to create a home network using the electrical wiring in your house. Very clever. I’ve ordered my own set and they should be in next week.

Katy and I have been on a Sopranos marathon. We’re starting season 3 now. Brings back memories of watching it Michel and tearing large chunks of the floor in that apartment in Montreal (hee hee hee, screw you Mister Silver!!!) We went to the Saffron Screen to watch Star Trek. I really, really liked that movie and it’s one of the few Star Trek movies I’d consider buying on DVD. Beckie, our babysitter, had an easy night last night but I think that she’s going to be a life saver in the months and years to come.

On the cooking front, we managed to have only one BBQ this week but that’s because the weather was mostly crappy. I made beef koftas. They were nice. I took the beastie for a walk to town to pick up stuff from the market. The fruit and veg stall is going to be beneficial to our budget, but the butcher and the bread stall might hurt our wallet so it might be a mixed blessing. I made spahetti with a creamy bacon and seafood sauce. Very, very nice. We’re going to have to buy more of that seafood mix from Aldi.

I poached some chicken breasts in some apple juice and some herbs for the beastie. I whizzed some up with some mixed root veg (swede, parsnip, sweet potato, carrots) and some leek. It’ll complement his lunches of pasta with meet sauce and chicken with veg and cous cous. It seems that I’m cooking more for the beastie than I am for us :)

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Meat + flame = GOOD!

Posted on June 3, 2009 By admin

BBQ Chicken Salad

With the weather being so nice recently, the BBQ has had a good dusting off and has seen more usage in the last week than in the last year :) I think that having it so close to the back patio door will be a good thing. We had Bratwurst, veggie kebabs and steak last Sunday and we had BBQ chicken salad last night. If the weather holds out for tonight, it’s going to be burgers :)

Oh, and as a side note, makes a really good BBQ sauce :)

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Moroccan food on the menu last weekend

Posted on April 21, 2008January 29, 2020 By admin

Last weekend, Katy and I were watching an episode of the Hairy Bikers on the Beeb and they had really, really! good looking recipes that we said we just had to try. So we did.

We made medfouna and lamb kefta tagine (though without the tagine bit).

In a word, NUMMAY!

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Getting there!

Posted on December 20, 2006 By admin

So far, this week, I've made a batch of homemade salsa, some porc pies (though I'm less than pleased with those results, but meh. They taste ok even if they look rough), another batch of scotch eggs (which turned out great!) and a ham.

While I was doing that, I finished wrapping up all the prezzies, dropped off the xmas cards at the office and generally kept everything clean and tidy. Katy, who has seen me cook, can testify that that last one is a feat :) I also managed to not kill the cat and that, given his general pain-in-the-assish behaviour recently, is also a feat.

It's getting down to the wire, but I can maybe hopefully begin to think that I'll make it :) We're going into town tonight to get some more smoked brisket from Bottisham and picking up the last of the ingredients we'll need over the holidays.

On my way to campus yesterday, I saw something that I'd never seen before. Freezing fog. Campus looked really eerie, but pretty. It was really funky to see all the spiderwebs that are normally hidden from sight covered in a layer of frost.

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Move over Deliah Smith!

Posted on August 13, 2006 By admin 5 Comments on Move over Deliah Smith!

Today, I cooked! It was good.

Let us first start off with scotch eggs, something that Katy has been telling me about for over a year. It's hard boiled egg, surrounded by sausage meat, breaded with seasoned breadcrumbs and then deep fried. Bad for you? yes. Good tasting? Hell yeah!

Then we have sausage rolls, which is sausage meat in puff pastry and then oven-baked:

And finally, we have beignets, which are evil deep-fried yeast doughnuts, inspired by what I had at Cafe du Monde in New Orleans. Deep fried and covered in icing sugar while they're still warm:

 

We're going to be hitting the gym big time tomorrow to get rid of all that fat, but having said that, we did fry the stuff in sunflower oil (which is not that bad) and the food didn't feel all that oily (meaning that though it probably was, it didn't feel like a “window to weight gain”). Still, this will remain holiday and special occasion food.

But damn, it was nice!


In other food news, we went to Chilford Hall to confirm the reception menu. The lady in charge of the venue was really nice and we were able to accomodate all the wild and wonderful dietary restrictions that are in place for the guests and I.

Finally, in the penultimate food news for today, Katy and I went to the River Farm Smokery in Bottisham today. It's the place that is interested in making smoked meat for me. We bought smoked chicken breast (which we had on thick-cut bread with a honey and mustard) and smoked duck breast (which I'm keeping for tomorrow).

That is all, going to digest now :)

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[Recipe] Bagels!!!

Posted on February 5, 2006 By admin

I found a recipe for a little taste of home. I was dubious about the results for a while there, but dayum, they taste wonderlicious!

Yield: 9 bagels

INGREDIENTS

3 cups flour
2 tablespoons white sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 cup warm water
1 packet active dry yeast

3 quarts boiling water
3 tablespoons white sugar (to boil)
1 tablespoon cornmeal
1 egg white

DIRECTIONS

Combine flour, yeast, sugar, salt and water into a firm dough. Let it raise in warm area for 30 minutes. Once dough has raised, bring 3 quarts of water to boil in a large pot. Stir in 3 tablespoons sugar.

Cut dough into 9 equal pieces and roll each piece into a small ball. Flatten balls. Poke a hole in the middle with your thumb. Twirl the dough on your finger to enlarge the hole and to even out the dough around the hole. Cover bagels with a clean cloth and let rest for 10 minutes.

Sprinkle ungreased baking sheet with cornmeal. Carefully transfer bagels to boiling water. Boil for 1 minute, turning half-way through. Drain briefly on clean towel. Arrange boiled bagels on baking sheet. Glaze tops with egg white, and sprinkle with poppy seeds or another topping of your choice.

Bake in preheated 350°F oven for 20 – 25 minutes until well browned. Cool on wire rack.

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[Recipe] Meat curry from Auntie Mina

Posted on January 1, 2006 By admin

Recipe for lamb, chicken or prawn curries

Ingredients:
Oil
2 sticks of cinnamon
4 cloves
2 teaspoons of cumin seeds
4 big chopped onions
2 teaspoons of red chilli powder
4-5 teaspoons of cumin and coriander powder
3/4 – teaspoon of turmeric powder
Salt to taste
1 small tin of chopped tomatoes
2 teaspoons of tomato puree
Green chillies and ginger chopped to taste
1 teaspoon of garam masala
Lemon juice if desired

• Heat enough oil to cover bottom of pan
• Add cinnamon, cloves and cumin seeds and cover pan
• When these are popped in oil
• Add chopped onions and cook thoroughly, stirring frequently till oil bubbles out.
• Make paste with chopped tomatoes, tomato puree, green chillies, ginger, red chilli powder, turmeric, cumin and coriander powder, garam masala and salt to taste, add a little water if necessary.
• Add above paste to onion mixture and again cook thoroughly, stirring frequently till oil bubbles out.
• Add meat, chicken, or fish to the above mixture and stir and cook till meat, chicken or fish is tender
• Add some lemon juice if desired and lots of freshly chopped coriander leaves

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