I poached an egg for my breakfast this morning… in the microwave! I’ve never done that before. A bit of quick Googling was all it took. I put a bit of water in a cappucino mug (something smaller would’ve been better), then gently cracked my egg into it. I used a skewer to poke the yolk a few times so it wouldn’t explode. (It doesn’t leak out though, and the resulting yolk was still nicely runny). Then I covered it with cling film and nuked it at 60% power for forty-five seconds, and then continued checking it in fifteen second intervals. Ninety seconds seemed to be about perfect. Yum!
Category: Cooking
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More Chili
Saturday morning the Snook and I joined his mom, sister, and nephew on a visit to the Rozelle Markets. We bought Trivial Pursuit and Pictionary for the amazing sum of $5, and I found a copy of The Magic Pudding. Our real haul, however, came afterwards when we stopped at Herbie’s Spices. The Snook’s been wanting to hit this shop for ages. We got chipotle powder, saffron, dukkah, fenugreek… heaps of good stuff. And today he used the chipotle to make me Ron’s Blue Stater’s Texas Chili. YUM! He actually used the beer brewing pot, he made so much chili. Our freezer is now full of it. The best part is that we worked out that it’s only, like, two Points per ladleful! Now if only I had some light sour cream…
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Truffle Shuffle
I was reminiscing to the Snook about the truffle mash we had the other night at Tabou when he said, “Why don’t we put a truffle stuffing in the turducken?” And then I turned into Homer Simpson and drooled all down my shirt. Thus at lunchtime today we found ourselves at the David Jones Food Hall eyeing these fresh Italian truffles. “Does that really say THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS a kilo?” It did. So we turned and headed to the “gourmet foods” section, where a nice customer service lady pointed us to preserved truffles, truffle oil, and truffle salsa (from Tetsuya’s!). We went with $30 worth of preserved truffle. The things we do for our guests…
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Halloween Treat: Buck Eye Balls
I wasn’t sure whether I should post this and ruin the surprise for any guests at our party, but the reactions I’ve gotten from the few people I’ve showed them to have persuaded me to do otherwise. The people of the world need to have this recipe for their own Halloween parties. Thus I present to you my greatest creation ever: “Buck Eye Balls.”Most of us who grew up in the Midwest remember buckeyes, the peanut butter-and-chocolate balls that our Moms would make on special occasions. They popped in to my head recently while planning the menu for our Third Annual “Bringin’ Halloween to the Aussies” Party. But how to make them suitably ghoulish? It hit me like a flash: make them look like human eyeballs. It took three experimental batches before I got everything just right, but the results are before you. Here’s what you do:
To make the peanut butter mixture, you need 1 part butter, 2 parts peanut butter, and 3 parts powdered sugar. The mixture should look fairly “dry;” add more powdered sugar if yours is too gooey. (This is the part I kept messing up.) Add a couple drops of red food colouring at a time until it’s a nice disgusting red. (If you add it after you’ve mixed the other ingredients, you get a mottled “hamburger” type look. It may appear smoother if you add it before putting in the powdered sugar.) Use your hands to form the mixture into 1-inch balls. If they don’t roll easily you can try putting the mix in the fridge for a while, but my advice is to add more sugar. (In worst case scenarios, you may need to try a different and less oily peanut butter. The smooth stuff I used in my first batch just stayed gooey the whole time.) Put the balls in the fridge for a while just to firm them up a little more before dipping. A lot of the recipes on the Internet tell you to use paraffin with your chocolate, but I just bought white chocolate “cooking compound” that already had it included. Much simpler. Put a handful of the white chocolate pieces in a bowl and microwave it on low, stirring often, until you get a nice smooth consistency. Now get your peanut butter balls out. Stick a toothpick into the top of each one. (This is your handle for dipping.) The idea is to leave a circle on top for the iris of the eye. It’s a good idea to scrape the bottoms off on the edge of the bowl as you pull each one out, otherwise you get a lip where it pools on the plate. Set each one on wax paper to cool and set up. Once they’re hard, pull out the toothpick and press a dark chocolate chip (point down) into the hole. To make the veins, I used a toothpick dipped in red food colouring like a pen to draw them on. (Note: These can get pretty smeary so leave plenty of time for them to dry before eating.) And that’s it! Needless to say, they taste delicious. Now I just need to knock out about fifty of these next weekend…
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Sprinkles
Any of you Americans seen Halloween sprinkles in the shops? I’m looking for cookie and cupcake decorations for the party and they’re impossible to find over here. That Canadian place will ship internationally but $35 seems a bit steep. Can any of you do an emergency run for me? I can reimburse you the cash via PayPal or knit you something if you want…
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Peruvian Potatoes
Wow, thanks Peru!
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DietBlog
I officially lost one kilo during Week 2, bringing my total loss to three. And I got another gold star! I totally wasn’t angling for that one, either. Emily just asked if anybody had done anything new that week, and I mentioned that I’d played squash for the first time. (I had my boss Albert, who plays a lot, give me a lesson yesterday. More on that in a minute.) So she gave me another star. Yay! Things are progressing nicely. The Snook and I made an extremely yummy (yet very low point value) Shepherd’s Pie tonight using kangaroo mince. I’ve also noticed that my EXTREME HUNGRINESS seems to have dialed back a bit, and I don’t need to eat as much at lunch to ward off mid-afternoon STARVATION. Several people have told me that I’m looking skinnier (most notably when Amy complimented my actual ass on Saturday) but it’s easy to write them off as just being nice, you know? But the scales don’t lie, baby!
Oh, and as for squash… I thought it would be pretty easy to pick up, given that I played tennis all through high school and I did a rotation of racquetball during college PE. Unfortunately, it took me a really long time to realize that a squash ball doesn’t, you know, BOUNCE. Albert would hit one off the front wall and it would bounce once, and I’d be waiting in the position I’d expect to hit a tennis ball from. And then the ball would bounce again three feet in front of me. It was like playing with the deadest tennis ball in the world. It took me a good fifteen minutes to mentally adjust and get into a position where I wasn’t lunging for every shot. The other big change is that in squash, all raquet speed is generated from the wrist, whereas in tennis you mostly use your arm. But you don’t have time to use your arm in squash, so I had to un-learn four years of tennis swing. We didn’t actually get around to playing a game; I was having enough difficulty just returning the ball reliably. I was getting a hell of a workout though. I think we’re going to make this a weekly event…
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Points Lists
I don’t want to be all “100% DietBlog!”, but this is a useful list of WW points values for generic foods. The author’s got a couple other lists for restaurants too.
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There’s only one way to eat a brace of coneys…
Happy Easter! We celebrated in true blasphemous fashion by eating The Easter Bunny. Seriously. I had been hesitant – “Will it have a face?” I asked – but in the end the smells won me over. It was really good. (Big thanks to Rodd’s grandma for getting us a La Creuset casserole.) It actually reminded me a lot of chicken, but in a good way. We also had lots of taters (precious), and salad and veg and bread and everything good. And now I need to sleep for 24 hours to process all these carbs.
Oh, and I tried the egg mold Jigglers again, and they didn’t work again. They always break in half. I suck.
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BreadBlog
The Snook made our third batch this morning: Coffee and Walnut bread. YUM. He again set the machine last night to have the bread ready for breakfast. This time it worked perfectly! I wonder if the caking problem we had last time was because it was a prepackaged mix and this one was from scratch. All I know is, waking up to the smell of fresh-baked bread only to discover that the Snook has left a buttered slice and a glass of milk beside the bed for me makes for the Best. Morning. Ever.
