I started my day early again with a boot camp class at 6am. Whenever I have these early classes I usually go back to sleep when I get home. Today, I fought hard against my sleepiness and made a breakfast pita, and then watched The Romantics with a nice cup of hot water. Right away, I knew I was going to love this movie no matter how good or bad the direction, writing, or acting was going to be. The look and the wardrobe already had me sold. I wanted to wear everything everyone wore and I wanted my future home to be decorated with everything seen in the movie. I'm not going to review this movie because my reviews are usually yes I enjoyed it, no I didn't enjoy it. Besides, I was too distracted by the aesthetics. IMDB tells me that the book, as always, is much better than the movie. It's got a Big Chill vibe to it, but at the same time, it's nothing close. I took a nap an hour after the movie.

I'm still a Katie Holmes fan (last man standing?), and if are you too, you should see this.

Earlier this year, Aaron and I went to our friends', Mike and Krista, place for dinner. Mike served up a fantastic Indian themed meal. I'm not huge on Indian food because I've had some bad experiences. Well, I've never had bad experiences with any of my friends' mom's cooking, but I've had bad experiences with eating out. So when I normally get Indian food, I get the white washed butter chicken. Anyway, Mike's dinner inspired me to give it a go and I thought if I can control what goes into the pot, then maybe there's less chance of chaos. The result: delicious! I still have to say, Mike's curry was much better because 1: His recipe came from Vij's and mine came from Jamie Oliver who described his recipe as "a bastardized British dish". And 2: Mike is a better cook than me. I'll continue to try to perfect my curry paste!

Some ingredients for my vindaloo paste posing with my lovely bamboo cutting board (from Aaron) and my incredibly precise knife (from Jordan). You can't tell here, but I can cut slivers of onion slices with that knife.
Our dinner from last night. The big success of the night
were the bhajis (shredded carrots, onion, and ginger with cilantro all deep fried).

We had some leftover curry so I took it home for lunch today. I layered the curry with some freshly cooked rice and fried onions in my rice pot and baked it for 20 minutes. I enjoyed today's leftovers more than last night's fresh pot. It may have been because yesterday's curry was a bit too watery and the extra rice from today probably took away some of the moisture. Also... I love rice.


Update
I almost forgot about yesterday's lunch. I prepped some pasta I made Tuesday night. I mixed the dough with cooked and blended spinach, and rolled out the sheets with the Kitchen-Aid machine. The pasta was hand cut so I could get the ho fun-like thickness. I had to preserve my energy for that night's dinner, so I stuck with a simple canned plum tomatoes recipe.
Fresh basil with leftover snapper.

I enjoy making pizza from scratch. From the dough to the sauce, but not the cheese. That's too much work for something that doesn't always make me feel great. As much as I love kneeding my own dough (brings me back to pottery class), I was happy to be introduced to personal pita pizzas (thanks, Amanda and Jesse!) I was still able to get the satisfaction of building my own pizza with the toppings. Since I already threw out the "from scratch" theme with the dough, I went ahead and used Newman's Own Marinara pasta sauce and mixed in some chili powder and garlic.

Toppings: red onions, broccoli, jalapeno peppers, diced tomatoes, spinach and snapper.
Another friend, Darryl, gave me a great tip for making vegetable stock. Most people make it whenever they're trying to clear their fridge of old vegetables, but Darryl added that his stock consisted of discarded veggie peels and stems. Him and Meg would throw their peels and such in a bag, and at the end of the week they would throw the collected peels and any old vegetables into a pot and then boil down the water to make a cup or two of stock. Some add salt to give it more flavour, but I leave that out because one of the main draws to homemade for me is to avoid all the sodium in the store bought boxes. No, I'm not trying to be better than people who buy boxed stock... I'm doing it to offset the fact that I'll be eating bags and bags of extremely salted corn nuts in the near future.
Freezing almost three and a half cups of stock

Yesterday I made my first pasta without a tomato sauce base. I was uncertain balsamic vinegar would taste good with pasta and when I measured it out, its dark colour intimidated me more. It was another Jamie recipe, so I had to trust it would turn out okay. It turned out way better than I expected. I wish I could brag about my cooking skills, but it would have been a bigger surprise had I screwed up this two step meal.



The lunch menu for today was set for pea soup (Jamie). I always forget to check for all my ingredients before I start chopping and cooking. I was so sure about there being peas in the freezer because we're never low or without it. Today we were without. I had to improvise and went with corn instead. It tasted fine, but when my stomach is set on eating something, it doesn't like to settle for anything else- no matter how great the replacement dish.

Behind the soup is a snapshot of Char and me. This meal was sort of dedicated to Char.
I'll never forget the time she projectile vomit corn soup. Chunkeh.

First day, first meal off Wild Rose.

7 am at Kam Do for breakfast.
I had the $6.95 Good Morning Special. One iced lemon tea + two sunny side up eggs + one slice of ham + spaghetti with BBQ pork in soup.

I made sure not to order breakfast sausages. You see, breakfast sausages at Chinese cafes are just hot dog wieners. The tiny Schneiders kind. I always remember the story of my Gong Gong being extremely peeved when he received the hot dogs instead of the traditional breakfast sausages. I don't mind them, but I had to stand by my Double G and chose to go with the ham and eggs instead. The ham was a warmed up slice from one of those Schneiders packages. I'm not sure why I expected anything else.

My mom didn't care about food, she just wanted her coffee with CREAM.

I love eating and I love cooking, but I'm only good at one of those. Correction, I'm great at it. Ever have one of those All You Can Eat dinners where you and your friends are sitting around the table, looking at all the excess food that was ordered? Even after hiding pieces in tea pots and napkins there's still too much on the table to not get charged extra. Well, I'm one of those people who will take a deep breath, pull my sweater over the waist of my jeans, undo the belt and button, and keep chewing and shoving food down until there is enough to not be charged. I've puked on two occasions. That may be seen as a defeat, but I was a champion during those moments I helped clear the table.

Cooking on the other hand... well, like I said, I love it! I can make food that is okay enough for me, but never good enough to serve, even though I still do (poor friends and family). My biggest problem is that I have no patience. I feel like food should be ready NOW. I'm slowly learning. I'm getting better at letting things marinate longer so the flavours can really come out instead of drizzling and sprinkling more and more sauces, juices and spices because I can't taste the flavours right away.

I'm a big admirer of Jamie's Food Revolution. We won't see McDonald's going away anytime soon, but I think it's important that kids (and parents!) understand that strawberry milk doesn't give you the same nutritional value as milk. French fries shouldn't be counted as part of your suitable veggie intake. It sounds simple, but you'd be surprised to hear what some schools are serving the students. Let's make one thing clear though, I'm guilty of eating crap. I told you, I love food. I love my Panago pizza, take out calamari, shawarma plates and cheap hot wings, so I can't preach to any one. I'm just saying, Jamie Oliver knows what he's talking about and he has influenced me to eat less of those old favourites and to look for healthier options that could eventually become my new favourites (if I cook it right).

Today, I took Jamie Oliver's gnocchi recipe. This is my last day, second to last meal, of Wild Rose so I did have to modify it. No flour, which meant there was less hold, but I liked the slight mushiness! And no parmesan. Even without those two it was pretty darn good. I could only imagine how much better it would be with cheese.



(Pardon the jumpy layout and formatting. I should have decided on a template before I started but I really wanted to get started. This was a canned layout, so expect it to change again.)

I discovered a drink nine days late. I've been "suffering" with water. I was so desperate for flavour that I gave unsweetened soy milk a try, but it tasted like crap. Yesterday, my uncle introduced us to red granadillas. The first scoop was sour, but each bite after got sweeter and sweeter. I've wanted to make a fruit drink for a while, but all we had were apples and I don't know about mixing apples and soy milk. I also had a hunch the granadilla and soy milk would be a good pair because the soy would counter the sourness of the fruit. And oh it did.

Magic Bullet doing its job again.

Today's lunch. As much as I wanted to make white rice, I stuck to The List and went with brown.