Those of you who read this journal on a regular basis may have noticed that I am rather fond of cooking. And of course I am.
What I am less fond of, I must confess, is the boring days when you just need to get something on the table. And I am even less fond of those big planning days when you are tired at the end of a long week and have another long week ahead and somehow among all of it you need to come up with moderately healthy meals – three of them per day, no less! – and you just know that if you don’t start planning now it will be all takeaway, all the way, by Wednesday.
So I’ve been doing boring cooking today. Not boring in flavour, just boring in terms of originality. We had the ubiquitous vegetarian bean and pepper tacos late last night after choir, and the filling has been stuffed into baked potatoes for lunch tomorrow. I’ve made another huge fruit crumble – this time with apricots, apples and raspberries – for breakfast purposes, and choc-chip oatmeal cookies to go with our lunches. I made a gigantic lamb, chorizo and chickpea stew this evening, which we had with a Warragul Greens Macaroni Cheese tonight (and those hours I spent washing the dratted things and picking all the leaves off the stems are hours I will never get back), and which will provide us with dinner on Tuesday night, too. Possibly with homemade bread, but possibly not. The macaroni cheese also has a lunchbox in its future.
The only exciting thing I’ve made today was a random chocolate and raspberry mudcake for tomorrow’s work festivities (it’s a big party week at work this week – we have to celebrate rugby, Halloween, and Cup Day), for which I am in the process of recording the recipe, but of course I can’t finish writing it down until I know it worked out (says she, waiting impatiently for it to cool so that she can play Ganache Roulette and then finish decorating it).
And speaking of things that I really must write down, it turns out that you can make really delicious, fresh-tasting lasagne by sautéeing up a lot of leeks, carrots and asparagus (of course) in a little butter, and then alternating it with layers of fresh pasta sheets and béchamel sauce (preferably with gruyère grated into it). Absolutely gorgeous. Andrew thought the vegetables could have been cut smaller, but I rather liked their crunchiness.
And that’s all there is to report from Casa Cate this evening. I’m going to go check on that cake now. Wish me luck – I really want to go to bed now!
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