My second annual holiday party!

Since I had over thirty people who RSVPed for my party this year, I panicked and ended up making what I thought was too much food. I shouldn't have worried, all that was left was a couple slices of one of the pissalidières.

Savory items:

• Two tortilla españolas, one traditional and one with artichoke hearts
• Two pissalidières
• Deviled eggs, one traditional batch and one with tomato paste, smoked paprika, and harissa (both with homemade mayonnaise, naturally)
• More cheese straws than I care to even think about (what's pictured is about 1/8th of what I ended up making)
• Puff pastry pesto pinwheels

Sweet items:

• Turtle bark
• Mint chocolate chip bark
• Jam thumbprint cookies 
• Chocolate thumbprint cookies, but filled with leftover caramel from the turtle bark instead of nutella
• Brownies

And to wash it all down, pomegranate champagne punch! Please note the totally awesome ice balls I made studded with pomegranate seeds. It disappeared like water.

And it's over.

Thanksgiving was a hit, the food was great, and I'm the only person who broke a wine glass (and I did it today while cleaning).

I have some pictures, but I was so busy having fun and hanging out with all of my lovely guests that I failed a little bit on the picture taking. One of my friends took quite a few, so hopefully she will send them my way and I can post them a bit later.

For now, some photos of the pre-party table and the aftermath.

ADHD

I totally got distracted by decorating.

I pulled together a whole dining room table, a citrus centerpiece, a flower arrangement, cleaned my silver and wine glasses... but PIES! Those I haven't even started yet. I'm in for a long day tomorrow, and if I don't get some of it done tonight this will be amusing (alarming?).

I think that is part of the fun of cooking for a big group, seeing if you can actually get it done with no disasters, forgotten items, or 2nd degree burns. Good thing we have a lot of wine!

Tuesday before Thanksgiving... time to start cooking!

So, I accidentally on purpose invited a ton of people over for Thanksgiving. I love making big meals, especially when I'm allowed to use as much butter and cream as I feel like using.

The menu, carefully selected by the host with the most (me), is compiled and in pieces in the fridge.

We're having:

Turkey (obvious? it's 21 - yes, 21 pounds)
Gravy
Cornbread and sausage stuffing - it's more of a dressing, really
Green beans with toasted almonds and garlic
mashed potatoes
sweet potatoes with marshmallows (husband's request, I'm not a fan of the marshmallows)
Cunningham Family Cranberry Fruit Compote (recipe to follow)
Apple Pie (the same as my lattice top pie, which was a hit!)
Pumpkin pie

And one of my lovely guests is bringing a sweet potato risotto.

On to the good stuff... the actual cooking!

Today I am going to make the cranberry compote, cornbread, and my pie crusts. Tomorrow is a pie day (I need to make extra for my husband's coworkers who are stranded at the office on Thursday), and Thursday is the mega-cooking fiesta of turkey, potatoes, green beans, etc. I'm extremely thankful to have two ovens!

As soon as I get it together, I'll post progress photos!

I hear it's good for the soul, too.

M procrastinates by making some of the most beautiful pies I've ever seen (the last pie I made, while tasty, was hideous in comparison)... I procrastinate by making soups and stews. It would be bad for me to have lots of baked goods under my roof, though. So soup it is!

I don't know from where I got this recipe - at this point, I've tinkered with it so much I'm sure it doesn't bear any resemblance to the original. I do, however, believe firmly that chicken noodle soup MUST be made with homemade noodles. It really is not hard to make your own noodles, so there are no excuses for using store-bought ones. I like mine thicker and with some bite.

This soup is simple to make, and doesn't rely on "cheats" like poultry seasoning or bouillon - just the pure good flavor of your ingredients. I like to think it is relatively healthy too, since the only fat comes from the chicken itself.

Chicken noodle soup with homemade egg noodles

For the egg noodles:

• 1 egg + 1 egg yolk
• 1 cup flour
• salt, to taste

For the soup:

• 2.5 to 3 pounds chicken parts (I use a combination of legs, thighs, and bone-in breasts)
• 1 container mirepoix from Trader Joe's (I have sung the praises of this mirepoix before. Sometimes, a girl is too lazy to chop up her own veggies and just wants soup NOW, not NOW + however long it takes to chop vegetables)
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 bay leaves
• 12 cups water
• salt, to taste

Pour the flour into a bowl, and make a well in the center. Dump the egg + egg yolk into the well, then mix the flour and egg together with your hands until you form a ball. Season with a little salt. You may need some ice water to help it all bind together. Once you've formed a ball, knead it (in the bowl if it is large enough, on a floured surface if not) for several minutes until smooth. Reform into a ball and wrap in some plastic wrap, then set it aside on your counter while you start on the liquid part of the soup.

Add the half of the mirepoix and all of the chicken parts, garlic, bay leaves, and water to a large pot. Heat over low-medium heat until the soup comes to just under a boil. You don't want it to actually boil, but rather for it to just barely simmer. Partially cover and cook for 45 to 60 minutes. Your kitchen will smell positively lovely during this process.

Remove the chicken parts from the pot, drain, and remove the chicken meat from the bones in bite-size pieces. Be careful, the chicken will be hot! Strain the soup, discarding the mirepoix/garlic/bay leaves. I usually strain the soup once into a large bowl, then line my strainer with a paper towel and strain the soup back into the cooking pot. Add the other half of the mirepoix to the now beautifully clear broth, salt to taste, and heat until boiling.

While you're waiting for the soup to boil, make your egg noodles. On a floured surface, roll the dough out to your desired thickness. I usually like my noodles just under 1/8-inch thick (they will puff up when you cook them). Slice into whatever width/length you want as well - I usually cut them anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2-inch in width and 2 to 3 inches in length.

When the soup has come to a boil, add the noodles and cook for approximately 5 minutes (the exact amount of time will depend on how thick your noodles are). Add the chicken back in and cook until the chicken is warm again. And hey, that's it! You're done! See how easy that was? Now you have no excuse when it comes to making chicken noodle soup from scratch, noodles and all.

Paper Pie

By paper pie, I mean another procrastination pie. Apples again, although this time I substituted the flour with corn starch and used Mutsu (Crispin) apples. This pie was exponentially better, and it is already gone. Good thing I live with boys!

Procrastination Pie (Apple)

So, I could have (SHOULD HAVE) written a paper or read articles today. Instead, I made a pie. It may be one of the prettier pies I've ever made, but I'm not 100% sure how much I'm digging the taste. I don't usually use Honey Crisp apples in pie, but they were the best apples at the farmer's market yesterday so I went with it. Not perfect, but pretty. I can handle that.

You really need to make your own pie crust for this... it is really easy. Stop being lazy.

I use a butter-only pie crust recipe, I don't like shortening at all. I think it leaves a filmy feeling in my mouth (shortening is also the reason most store bought cupcake icing is disgusting...).

I made 1.5 of a crust recipe for the bottom part because I am paranoid and bad at rolling things out in perfect circles, and then 1 for the top covering the apples.

I'm not sure which crust recipe I used this time, but it was great (helpful, right?). I only wish I had better butter in the house. I like to let the dough chill in the fridge for about an hour before rolling it out.

I adapted the apple recipe from Martha Stewart:

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
8 large Honey Crisp Apples, peeled, cored and cut into 1ish inch cubes
3/4 cup sugar, plus additional for pie top
juice of 1 lemon
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
Pinch ground cloves
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 large egg, beaten

- Preheat to 350
- Press pie crust into pie plate (I am now obsessed with my Emile Henry Pie Plate)
- Combine apples, sugar, lemon juice, spices (add MORE - mine was too bland! perhaps too many apples...)
- Toss everything and make a huge mess all over the kitchen, amuse the dogs
- plop some butter on to the apples (not a ton, just chunk some on there)
- cover your pie with the other piece of dough, obsess over the edges and make it pretty
- Paint on your scrambled egg, sprinkle sugar on top (IMPORTANT to add some sugar especially if you use my crust recipe)
- Bake for around 1 hour, the crust will be brown and apples bubbling

Yum.

Okay, so I think that I had too many apples and perhaps not enough seasoning. I'm not sure. Martha's recipe said 12 apples, I used 10 originally (so what gives?) but they would not all fit into my pie. I used leftover apples and stuffed them into pie crust and baked them as little pockets. Fattown, USA.

It's fall!

And fall means apples and pumpkins! Despite having picked eighteen (yes, eighteen) pounds of apples last week (what can I say, it's like I enter a fugue state where I NEED MORE APPLES LOOK THERE ARE MORE APPLES ON THE NEXT TREE AND THE TREE AFTER THAT AND.... yes), I actually have only been eating my apples, not making pies or cute little apple pie cookies.

But (as if the picture above wasn't a clue), I did get off my lazy behind and made bourbon pumpkin bread for a pumpkin carving party. I found that the recipe only made two loaves of bread, not three as the recipe claimed (maybe my loaf pans are larger than the ones used in the recipe). And I added some chopped pecans because I like a little bit of texture with my pumpkin breads.

It's like pumpkin pie in quick bread form. Delicious!

Chocolate Espresso Bundt Cake with Dark Chocolate Cinnamon Glaze

I've been slacking. Captain Obvious.

I did a little bit of baking this summer (sour cream coffee cake with fresh raspberries, some loaves of banana bread, oatmeal cookies) but I haven't tried anything new for a while.

I've had this cake originally from Sweetapolita on my "to do" list, and I finally got around to making it. My only regret is not doing it sooner, it was extremely simple (one bowl for the cake, one for the glaze) and turned out lovely. I didn't even have any bundt pan issues.

Also - taking pictures of a chocolate cake is hard!

Just in case you needed some help...

What do you love?

CAKE. CAKE is the answer.

It is always the answer.

Strawberries!

I know, again with the not posting. I have no excuses, except for ... it's summer! And when it's summer, I do things like, oh, pick ten pounds of strawberries. That's right. Ten pounds.

You may be asking, what does one do with ten pounds of strawberries? Aside from eating as many as possible without getting sick...

Strawberry mojitos!

Strawberry summer cake!

I also macerated sliced strawberries in balsamic vinegar and sugar, and served atop a pound cake with fresh whipped cream, and I made a strawberry consommé for a lovely summer drink, strawberry and ginger bubbles. 

And I ate strawberries. Lots of them. 

Kale can be tasty too!

So, one of the reasons I haven't been posting as much is that I've been pretty much gone for the last two weeks for work... and before that, I think I was just going out a lot. My liver really loves me. And after eating at some absolutely delicious places on my travels (some highlights were Au Pied de Cochon and Schwartz's in Montreal and omg-too-many-restaurants-to-even-think-about in New Orleans) (okay, a few in NOLA were Cochon and The Green Goddess) (note how most of those restaurants featured meat), my body was really hating me. The thought of meat made my stomach protest - and that is rare. So when I got back, I went on a largely kale, spinach, and quinoa diet until I felt vaguely healthy again.

One of my favorite things - and one of the easiest - was kale chips. Recipes abound all over the blogosphere. And yes, they are absolutely delightful - quick and simple, and perfect for noshing on while preparing dinner (or, more usually, crashing on the couch in front of the tv). They barely taste like they're good for you at all - and that's the best kind of healthy there is.

As I mentioned above, you can find tons of recipes on the internets. But, in case you're interested, here's the routine I have down. I buy a big bunch of kale at the market, and can make these all week long. (Kale keeps well in the fridge!)

Preheat the oven to 420 degrees Fahrenheit (I have an electric oven. It sucks, but it's what I have.) Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Take about five or six leaves of kale, rinse them well, de-stem them, and cut into large pieces. (Curly kale, which the only kind I can find in the markets here, has a thick stem down the center that doesn't cook at the same pace as the rest of the leaves, so it's better to remove them.) Toss with some olive oil, spread out onto a baking sheet, and sprinkle lightly with salt (a little goes a long way!). Pop in the oven, and bake until done. I haven't really timed it, but you do need to watch the kale closely because it'll go from its original state to brighter green and slightly limp, to crispy, and then to burnt very quickly. (I usually have just enough time to wash the dishes from my lunch, put on pajamas, and find something on tv to watch... so... 8 minutes or so? It will depend on how quickly your oven heats.) Burnt kale tastes gross. Crispy kale tastes great!

There are other recipes on the internet that gussy up the kale chips more with cheese and other spices, but I'm pretty happy with this recipe because it takes so little work. Maybe someday I'll crumble them up and use them to flavor popcorn - but usually they're gone in the blink of an eye.

I'm growing some dinosaur kale on my balcony (which I prefer to the curly kale, actually).Watch out, dinosaur kale! You're up next for chip-making!

Oatmeal cranberry chocolate cookies

No, you're not seeing things. Inspired by M's oatmeal cookie post below, and craving some soft chocolate-y cookies, I decided to make some myself. I followed her recipe pretty much verbatim below, with the only differences being that I used craisins instead of dried cherries and used a mix of both white and dark chocolate. Heed her warning - make sure you chill the dough before baking your cookies. It is also imperative that you take the cookies out while they're still soft if you want them to maintain their chewy happiness. 

(But why don't mine look as pretty? Sigh....)

Oatmeal Cherry Dark Chocolate Cookies

Yesterday (at around 4pm) my husband called and asked me to make cookies for our close friend who is heading out on deployment. I can't resist baking cookies, so I said sure - what kind?

That's when the request came in for cherries and dark chocolate in oatmeal. I'm not sure what I think about these, but I made them yesterday and I believe they are already gone.

Personally, I think they are a bit too sweet (or something?) but I'll post anyway.



Super Thick & Chewy Oatmeal Cherry Chocolate Cookies

1 cup butter
1 1/3 cup light brown sugar, packed
2 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 cups rolled oats (I used Bob's Red Mill Extra Thick Organic)
1 cup chopped dried cherries
1 cup dark chocolate pieces (I used Ghiradelli 60% Cocoa Chocolate Chips)

Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

Cream together: butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla

Combine flour, baking soda, cinnamon & salt, then combine with the wet ingredients.

Stir in oats, cherries & chocolate...

THEN - refrigerate for about 30-40 minutes. Do not skip this step because you are out of time, do not feel like it , or are impatient. Your cookies will be terrible.

Bake on parchment lined baking sheets for 10-12 minutes, they should look a little raw on top when you take them out. How do you fix that problem? Leave them on the baking sheet for 5 minutes after they are removed from the oven before cooling.

____

I prefer making these cookies with craisins or raisins and something TART. However, it was fun to try something else, especially for a good friend who's heading to sea for 6 months!

Slack-tastic

So, I've been busily eating my way through random restaurants because I am overworked and lazy at the same time.

That is, until yesterday. I started some random diet (don't kill me Jen) where I have been eating raspberries, almonds, spinach, eggs, and yogurt. Yes, that is all. This part of the diet only lasts for 5 days, and the food is pretty delicious. Plus, an added bonus? I'm down a few pounds and I just started.

I am not afraid to admit that I need instant gratification...

I will post pictures of my concoctions soon, pinky swear!

Cooking for work.

Okay, I don't have quite any good excuses for not posting aside from sheer laziness. I suppose it's also because I haven't any done any especially inspired cooking of late - now that the semester has started again, I've resorted to what I think of as "functional" cooking - that is, something I can make over the weekend that I can keep as leftovers for lunch all week long. I know this seems rather boring, but unless I want to walk a whole whopping half of a mile (and that's only one way), there are only pitiful dining hall options. In the snow and cold (although could it be true? Is spring on the horizon???), that is most definitely NOT an option.

The trick, then, is to find something that I'm willing to eat all week that's also substantial enough so I don't resort to going to aforementioned crappy dining hall to get french fries, or find excuses to make that trek for real food.

This is one of those recipes. I nearly made it a second week in a row, I liked it that much. As a bonus, it's super-easy to put together - some chopping, some minimal stirring, and you're pretty much done!

Chinese no clay pot chicken with soy and ginger

From The Kitchn

•  1/4 cup soy sauce
• 1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
• 2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
• 2 teaspoons cornstarch
• 2 boneless chicken breasts (about 1 pound), cut into 1/2-inch cubes (I used boneless skinless thighs, because I like dark meat better)
• 3 scallions, roughly chopped
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 1-inch piece fresh ginger, roughly grated
• 2 ounces smoked sausage, such as Chinese lap cheong sausage or good Italian salami, cut into 1/4-inch cubes (I used the lap cheong sausage. I don't think salami would be right in this recipe at all. This may mean a trek to the local Asian supermarket - or Costco. Seriously, some Costcos sell lap cheong sausage)
• 10 ounces fresh shiitake mushrooms, caps thinly sliced (While normally I'd say any mushrooms would do, I really liked this with the shiitakes and don't think you should substitute them in this case - although, beware the uncooked shiitake!)
• 1 tablespoon canola or peanut oil
• 2 cups Chinese long grain rice (I used brown basmati rice)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 4 cups chicken stock

**Note: even though I used low sodium soy sauce and low sodium chicken stock, I found that this recipe was nonetheless on the slightly saltier side, and I'm one who likes her sodium. Next time, I think I'd omit the 1 teaspoon salt.

Heat your oven to 350F. Mix the soy sauce, sugar, sesame oil, and cornstarch in a medium-sized bowl. Stir in the chicken, scallions, garlic, and ginger, toss, and marinate while you chop and cook the mushrooms.

Place an oven-safe pan over medium heat on the stove. When hot, add the sausage, turn the heat down, and let the sausage slowly release its fat. Add the mushrooms, turn the heat up, and let them cook until they're very nearly done. While the original recipe says to not stir them, I found that if I didn't the sausage threatened to burn, so I stirred them a little.

Add the oil to the pot, then the rice, and toast the rice lightly (about a minute or so). Add the salt (or not), chicken, and chicken stock. Stir to combine and bring to a boil.

Cover the pot with a lid or foil and bake it in the oven for 45 minutes You may need more or less time, and more or less liquid, depending on the type of rice you use, so I'd start checking on the status of the rice after 40 minutes. I think I needed to add another cup of water and 15 minutes to the cooking time. Once done, remove from oven and let stand for about 5 minutes with the lid on before mixing it all up and serving. You can garnish with some additional chopped scallions to make it all pretty, if you wish.

This was enough for me for dinner and for five healthy-sized lunch portions.

See? Sometimes I make sweets too.

However, I did give most of them away (see, again: lack of sweet tooth). Apparently, though, they were killer in a Bailey's brownie sundae.

Who eats anymore...?

Apparently Jen does, but my recent cooking expeditions have included:

- scrambling eggs
- shoving boxed/pre-rinsed spinach, fruit, and almonds into tupperware for lunch
- scrounging around the kitchen for dinner (think cereal - yay!)

Really. That's it.

Gotta love a busy semester - I'll try to whip something up soon that isn't so bland, or I will at least take pictures of my scrambled eggs and cereal.

Adventures in SE Asian cooking, part 2

This is the last of the Singapore posts, which is probably for the better as I'm sadly no longer there, but mired back on the cold cold East coast. Believe me when I say I'm figuring out how to get back to SE Asia stat (were it not for this whole... work thing, I may have chucked my passport and just stayed).

So. No banana blossom salad. What to do? Given that I'd already made the vinaigrette, well, I thought a green papaya salad may be nice, since it'd be essentially the same thing as the banana blossom salad sans the gross banana blossom part. (By this point, the making of the salad had been ceded fully over to me.) So off to the market I went.. and me and markets are a bad combination, because I like food and I like to buy food.

Two grocery bags later (remember, I went with the intent to buy green papayas. Yet somehow I ended up with tons of stuff) I was back in the apartment, cut open the greenest papaya I could find at the market... and FOILED AGAIN! Even though I tried to choose an unripe papaya, it had already started to ripen. What to do, what to do. I came up with a rather brilliant improvisation, if I do say so myself. Instead of a green papaya salad, I instead sliced up the ripe papaya and tossed the lime-sugar-fish sauce vinaigrette with some Japanese greens (for the vegetarian at the table, I omitted the fish sauce and used salt instead - not as tasty, but it worked). I laid the papaya out on the plate, mounded the Japanese greens in a pile atop the papaya and then garnished the dish with some starfruit (also an impulse buy at the market... see what I said about me and food shopping?). Some fried shallots and chopped peanuts were scattered atop.. et voilà, a rather attractive salad was born.

The rest of the meal was great also - deep fried tofu with bean sprouts in a chili sauce, vegetarian green curry, and a fresh upside-down pineapple cake (seriously, the only dessert I consumed the entire trip). Some champers and wine were had as well, and it was a lovely last meal to have abroad.

Adventures in SE Asian cooking, part 1

 

On my last day in Singapore, a friend and I went shopping at.. well, it'd be the equivalent of a farmers' market in the US, I suppose, except this one was year-round and had permanent stalls.. anyways, we went shopping because we were going to make dinner (as it turned out, for a bunch of guys, how distressingly retro - girls in the kitchen cooking [and drinking], boys in the living room talking business. YES THIS DID HAPPEN).

Pictured above is a banana blossom. A banana what, you ask? A banana blossom. Apparently it grows on the stem holding a cluster of bananas. No, I didn't know that they existed either, but apparently they're a big thing to eat in SE Asia. In the picture we've peeled back one of the leaves so you can see baby bananas to be (at least, that's what we guessed they were). So my friend decided that she wanted to make a banana blossom salad to start our dinner.

This is the recipe we intended to use. Go ahead and check it out. It seems rather simple, n'est-ce pas? I mean, chop up some banana blossoms, toss it with a simple lime-sugar vinaigrette, and presto, you have banana blossom salad. Nice and easy. Just like that. A Vietnamese recipe my mom makes often is very similar, except she uses napa cabbage instead of banana blossoms. It was going to be tasty.

What the recipe did NOT warn us about was that when slicing into the banana blossoms, they started oozing this sticky blackish sap. It was gross. It turned the water we were to toss the sliced blossoms into a vague inky color. (Forget julienning it on the mandolin, the sap got everywhere.) It was NOT removable with water alone. SOAP didn't even cut through the sap. (Eventually, we turned to vegetable oil, and that did the trick). Plus, the cut blossoms didn't emit the most pleasant of aromas, and when we tasted the blossoms, they sort of tasted like... well, chopped up banana peel, with the texture of that as well.

We couldn't serve this, we decided. Not even to a group of hungry guys who were just happy to get a homemade meal that they didn't have to prepare themselves. So out the banana blossoms went, and we had to figure out another starter (oooooh suspense, I'm going to write about it in a later post).

More spotted in Singapore...

Oooh, CAKE!!! Seen at PS.Cafe on Dempsey Hill, in Singapore. I mean, look at that dream on the right... huge marshmallows coated in chocolate atop a brownie base.

Here's a close-up of it:

Sorry about the reflective glare - I thought about asking if I could lift off the glass top to get a better picture of it, but then decided against it.

Oh, and a more complete dessert menu? Why, here it is:

Yet sadly, we still didn't partake of any dessert because after brunch, I was stuffed and wanted no more food. This is probably for the better, as I've turned into a little dumpling after eating my way through SE Asia.

Spotted in Singapore..

I was at Sun Lik Trading, a baking goods store, when I spied these darling half-and-half chocolate chips. I was really tempted to pick up a bag, but then I would probably want more when I ran out, and I haven't ever seen these in the US (even at Surfas, my favorite place in Los Angeles for all things food-related [yes, I do realize I don't live in LA anymore, bah]), and then I would be really bummed out. So I didn't end up buying any.

But I don't know if I can live without them...

(This is the closest I've gotten to something sweet that isn't fruit since I've been here. Sad, but true.)

A New Type of Breakfast

Yes, this bowl is empty.

I had every intention of taking a cute picture of my breakfast before eating it, but it is 11:45am and I was starving. Not to mention, this breakfast was delicious.

Jen knows I waffle back and forth on diets - I am either baking a buttery heart attack or I am denouncing everything that could possibly taste good to maintain my ability to wear cute jeans. This recipe (or bunch of junk thrown together in a bowl however you feel like it) is a small victory for me - tasty and healthy at the same time.

I got the idea off of some vegan blog - don't tune out - try it.

- quinoa (I used red and made it in my rice cooker overnight on a timer - heaven!)
- coconut milk (or dairy, whatever you like)
- cinnamon
- blackberries
- agave nectar (or sugar if you need a sweetner)

The original prompt added nuts of some sort, but I didn't have any so I left them out. It turns out being warm/nutty/sweet/spiced and pretty awesome for January.

It can't always be good.

I keep having to make real food for Tyson. It's starting to grate on my nerves since my vacation is almost over. Or, it should be over already but I am still jumping through hoops like a circus poodle before I can start my new position.

Perhaps my frustration with HR nonsense is reflected in my chicken? That would explain so much...

Anyway, I baked some random chicken today with garlic/rosemary/S&P and some stock. Not really delicious or interesting, and my garlic turned blue-green. I googled that issue and it's normal if your garlic is not quite ready to use (or something).

So what else did I make to accompany my neon garlic chicken mess? Brown rice and salad.

mmmm....

(barf)

Sorry I haven't been contributing...

But there has been some of this...

A fair amount of this..

And quite a bit of this...

Singapore's great.

So there's definitely been no cooking. In fact, we accidentally turned the stove on, and it blew a fuse in the apartment and all the electricity went out on New Year's Day. Oops!