Life
One of my unwritten New Year goals was to try different receipes. Yesterday I cooked Stuffed Tenderloin of Pork; a lengthy receipe but well worth the time spent. It's from the first cookbook I bought The Cookery Year , thumbed so often that it's falling apart.
The stuffing has a bread-crumb base, dried fruit, orange zest, parsley and tarragon with a smidgeon of garlic. There's also an apricot sauce subtly flavoured with spices more commonly found in Indian receipes. I was dubious but it turned out to be a stunning combination with the stuffed pork! It looked colourful too :)
Writing
I began the final lesson of Holly Lisle's How to Revise Your Novel for my short story - details on my writing blog. A pleasing feeling to be on the home straight and yet I also feel bemused that the end is in sight as I've been working on it for so long.
My plan is to finish typing-in by this time next week.
As the end approaches, my internal editor, quiet for so long, has kicked into action and gives me no peace.
"Trash. Utter trash. It's no good. Just press the delete key, and don't even think about letting anyone read it," and similar comments are frequent occurrences.
Maybe that's why I took to the kitchen yesterday afternoon and made that wonderful meal? Never has prevarication been so pleasant :)
Showing posts with label cooking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cooking. Show all posts
Sunday, 15 January 2012
Sunday, 27 November 2011
Sunday Summary
Life
Our old oven is on its way out, so we spent some time this week looking for a replacement. The variety of ovens available is bewilderingly large, and we found ourselves beguiled by the high-end space-age ovens. They can even be turned on while you're still at work by sending an email to the oven! As the price is sky-high we reluctantly abandoned these awesome machines; but there's still a lot to choose from. It will be after Christmas before we get an oven so I hope the old one keeps going - or we might be outside barbequing the turkey on Christmas Day :)
Emily Casey and her post about cooking a new reicipe (eggs benedict) inspired me to make something different, so I tried panna cotta. I first had this desert a couple of years ago while on holiday. It was gloriously creamy, with a subtle flavour of vanilla, served with raspberries.
My first effort was a disaster. Too much gelatin set the cream so solid it could have bounced off the floor! The second try gave a soft just-set cream, and the raspberry sauce was a tangy foil for the richness of the pannacotta. It really cheered me up :)
Writing
I'm half-way through Lesson 19 and feel excited by the way this lesson increases awareness of words. What a difference changing a single word can make to the meaning of a sentence or phrase. It's slow going but satisfying, and exciting.
Mystery in Morocco, my first and still seriously flawed novel, has been in my thoughts again. Yay! I spent a couple of hours working through and identifying what the problems were. Amazingly I've solved two serious plot problems. Even more amazingly, I achieved this by making only small changes to the plot! There are still some serious problems to work on but I feel encouraged by finding solutions which won't require major rewriting.
Our old oven is on its way out, so we spent some time this week looking for a replacement. The variety of ovens available is bewilderingly large, and we found ourselves beguiled by the high-end space-age ovens. They can even be turned on while you're still at work by sending an email to the oven! As the price is sky-high we reluctantly abandoned these awesome machines; but there's still a lot to choose from. It will be after Christmas before we get an oven so I hope the old one keeps going - or we might be outside barbequing the turkey on Christmas Day :)
Emily Casey and her post about cooking a new reicipe (eggs benedict) inspired me to make something different, so I tried panna cotta. I first had this desert a couple of years ago while on holiday. It was gloriously creamy, with a subtle flavour of vanilla, served with raspberries.
My first effort was a disaster. Too much gelatin set the cream so solid it could have bounced off the floor! The second try gave a soft just-set cream, and the raspberry sauce was a tangy foil for the richness of the pannacotta. It really cheered me up :)
Writing
I'm half-way through Lesson 19 and feel excited by the way this lesson increases awareness of words. What a difference changing a single word can make to the meaning of a sentence or phrase. It's slow going but satisfying, and exciting.
Mystery in Morocco, my first and still seriously flawed novel, has been in my thoughts again. Yay! I spent a couple of hours working through and identifying what the problems were. Amazingly I've solved two serious plot problems. Even more amazingly, I achieved this by making only small changes to the plot! There are still some serious problems to work on but I feel encouraged by finding solutions which won't require major rewriting.
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