PLEASeNT SURPIRSE

Today´s pleasent surprise, just when I thought I was out of feta cheese for the normal breakfast sandwiches I found a brand new one that I have forgot in the fridge for a long time. Didn´t even bother to check the "best before" date. I would have eaten it even if it was 100 years old, so happy was at the surprise.

WORK-LUNCH ACCORDING TO PACKAGING

 Well, this is what happened one week day while I prepared this lunch- "box" and I got caught in the process by my boyfriend, that thought it was a little crazy and said it would fit to the cooking blog. You can judge if that´s true or not. To me it is just a normal day when you are tired of knowing exactly what you are going to eat, even though, I never do, I still want to have it a little bit more surprising. So here is what happened:

I do have many different boxes, I mean different sizes that I put my lunch in and as you know I follow the rules of well packed box. Which is very surprising to what you can fit in and as an outcome you always get a different lunch. Here I decided to even take a totaly new container.

I took this folio out and then I went away (why I don´t always complete the whole process of what I started with depends on this other strategy I have - mainly that if you do one thing, and suddenly you have a way to the other room, or to the table even, you can at the same time clean some stuff there and without even noticing, you have sqeezed in two very upleasent jobs at once).

So, here is the container.

Then I came back and forgot what container I have prepared and took out a normal ingredient - a salad for a mixture.

  And then - ah, that can´t fit. I forgot what exactly I wanted to put in that new container. It is a little annoying to have to come up with new solution and also, you need to put the salad back in the fridge, which gives you more time spent in the kitchen. Ah, annoying. Anyway, everyone does mistakes.

 So, back to the new solution for lunch for that container.

Filling in the same ingredients I was going to have in the mixture but in proper amounts for this contianer. - avokado, salmon, salad and ofcoure last but not least - feta cheese. You may be wondering - "but did you take the salad out of the fridge again? That will give you even more time spent in the kitchen!!!" You are right. And the answer is - no I didn´t take the whole bag of salad out. I opened the fridge to put back the rest of the avocado and while there, took out some leaves of salad without taking out the whole bag. And then - Some  normal spices and....

close....

and .... tadaaa. New, surprising lunch

If you are doing this recepie, may be you should avoid going to the other room or clean something extra, that can cost you more time in the kitchen.
 But you can learn from my mistakes and avoid that.

Enjoy!

RAOUL´S RECEPIE

Ok, I did say I don´t follow other people recepies mainly because they tend to be too long. People who say cooking is relaxing are crazy. I don´t understand them. But there is also Raoul, at work, he explains it so well, that if not else, it does feel relaxing listening to how he cooks, which is a rare thing for me. And he told me this recepie that was PERFECT for me. I just can´t fail with this one and it follows all my principles for time saving in the kitchen.
He explained it like that:
Take two aubergines and two onions, put them in the oven, wait for an hour, take them out, mixed them up, add some persley, lime juice, olive oil, salt. Done! Eat that with meat.
EASY!

So here is how it went:

Take 2 aubergines and 2 onions.

 Put them in the oven...oh, wait, he didn´t say whether the onion should be peeled. I am pretty sure the eggplants shouldn´t be, but what about the onion?!

 After a while of thinking, peelig the onion, following the 50/50 gut feeling. Peeling directly in the plastick bag so it goes faster to collect and transport to the garbage - means, less cleaning time and time spent in the kitchen.

 So, 2 eggplants, 2 onions - in the oven.

 Can´t recall Raoul mentioning a temperature. Usually I use only the 300 mark and force the things to get prepared faster, but people are always skepticle to this approach, so I go with 50/50 approach and randomly choose a temperature of 260 degrees. - not that far away from 300 and not going on a snail speed at "normal-peoples-recepies" 100 or 50 degrees.

 Done, in the oven.

 Now here is a lot of waiting involved. During that time I do my stuff on the PC and hear small explosions from the kitchen. Raoul didn´t mention anything about that, but I guess, it is normal for those ingredients. So continue working, and chatting with a friend online, who was also present when the recepie was delievered by Raoul. I proudly announced that I am doing it and suddenly remembered that I forgot to take the time, so now I don´t know how long they have been in the oven. Well, she helped me estimate that it has gone approximately 40 minutes. Ok, 20 minutes to go and I see no difference and no sign of the eggplant and onion being ready. I am thinking, I will increase the the temperature. The friend advice me not to. She claims I will see when the eggplants are ready. How? I am thinking. Well they look like an old woman, she said. I go back, look and think, well how old? The surely don´t look old to me. After she sends a couple of reference images of how they are suppose to look like, I see the difference. Yes, something is wrong, mine doesn´t look even close. Meanwhile I hear more explosions and I tell her about it. Then she asks me if I have cut the eggplants before putting them in the oven. No, I haven´t. That was not in any of the steps of this recepie. Well, you must cut them she says, that´s why they are exploding. Ha! I had no idea. So, in with a knife in the oven and cutting them here in there. Ok, now they start shrinking. I see the old woman look is there.

 I gave them additional 20 minutes, just to be safe. The pot got somewhat burned, but I am used to it.

 I opened them, and for my surprise, the 2 eggplants seem differently prepared. What? Do I need to put it back again and wait even more?! Well, I didn´t.
I ignored it, and just went on to the second step - mixing them up.

 Put everything in a pot. I guess I expected to be able to mixed them up with a fork. The ingredients were not as soft as I expected after 1.20 hours of grilling. I guess Raoul meant mixing with a mixing device, although he didn´t mentioned it.

 So, putting the mixture in another pot.

 Adding garlic and lime juice.

 Mixing.

 Ok, is it ready? Feels like it misses color. Oh yeah, persley.

 Persley in, and spices

 Mixing. Oh no. Found whole onion pieces in there. That´s not good. I already washed the mixing stick, not getting it dirty again. I just digged around the mesh and transported the whole piece to the trashbin.

 Some of them unsuccesfully fell on the floor. Annoying. Extra step in the cooking process.

Ok, now it is done. Hm, it doesn´t look good. May be I should add something to it. What can I add. I did add olive oil. I am thinking - feta cheese. But then I am thinking, what has the same color as feta cheese and may make the mixture thicker. Ah, yoghurt.

 Aha, yoghurt.

 Adding yoghurt, mesuring depends on the amount of space it is left in this pot, because I am not transporting it to yet another pot.

 Mixing. Ok, there is a differentce. That is encouraging. What if I add more. After all there is more extra space in the pot.

 I add some more.

 Mixing. Still extra space. Shall I add some more? I am thinking. It is kind of risky at that stage. I don´t want to mess this up as I have spent now 2 hours making it. Ok, I will leave it at that.

 Tadaaa! Done. I made it. Oh, I did add some more stuff - walnuts...and more spices...can´t remember which.

 Served with meat (or ready-grilled chicken from the store) and salad, or salad-to-be with feta cheese as a savior of every dish. It was alright. It did take too long time though. Next time I will add tomatos and other veggis to this mixture.

If you want to make this "simple" recepie, watch out for the hidden steps that was not on the main list. You can use my step by step guide to avoid them.

Enjoy!

Cooking dinner

That´s how I do it.
Take the broccoli. Don´t need to chop it, its going to be fine anyway. You will be doing some chopping during the eating process anyway, so why not leave all the chopping until then.
Boil it in as high temperature as possible, it is going to be done faster.

Open the smoked salmon package, put the salmon on the plate, some yoghurt, put some pesto on the yoghurt and add the broccoli. Done!

I had to wait some though, for the broccoli to cook, so as you notice I have an iPad and wine to prevent the boredom while waiting.

You can do it too.
Enjoy!

How things look like when I don´t cook

 So, this is how food looks like when I don´t cook (meaning, my boyfriend cooks...it is not a take out, so you can´t find these somewhere out there, if you are now thinking about it), which is most of the time. Basically it is prepared totaly against my principals of using as little pots and dishes as possible due to cleaning time, and as little contradicturay ingredients, that need to be prepared separatly.

 Dish nr 1

Dish nr 2

Those are ofcourse prepared at two different occasions. You may be wondering how I manage to wait while all those get done. Usually they are done by the time I come home, or I just sit and drink wine and surf on my iPad which is a good way of waiting.

If you want to know the recepies for these, well you can´t have them, because I don´t know them.
It is as boring to listen to a recepie as it is to cook it if it is a long one. But the one with the lots of pots and dishes is easy - you chopp everything and put it all in different pots, and do not think about how much dishes you need to wash ...(or put in the dishwasher)

Enjoy!

P.S. By the way, if you think we eat at 10 o´clock because of what the watch is showing, you are wrong. This watch is just a prop, it does not show the time.

MIXTURE NEVER TO REPEAT

It has been a while sinse I updated. But that is because I haven´t been cooking much either. A Christmas break from the big cooking, simply. But here is new year with brand new recepies. I was tired of all other mixtures so I decided to combine things I actually hate in combination and see what happeneds. I have seen recepies that I would read and think - no way this would taste good, and somehow they manage to pull it off. So, you get the principle. Here we go:
Carrots are annoying to prepare. They take so much time to cut. I decided to use my old cutting equipment. I chopped them in small pieces and mixed. Nothing happened. Eventually I took them out and had to use grater to shred them.

Supper annoying and the table needed a lot of cleaning afterwords. It looked like that:

Then I though, lets add some cottage cheese to it. It is kind of new but yet, feels safe and not to wild.

I also like to bite whatever I am using once. So, taste some cottage cheese. mmm, nice.

What else. I found some ginger from 2011 that has left unopened. I never planned what I would use it for when I bought it, but it is time to use it for something. So, good time to that now when making a brand new recepie:

The worst thing I know is putting fruits in whatever salad, pizza and all kinds of main course dishes. Very good though if I try to make a mixture with ingredients that I hate mixing. So, some apples:

 I need to bite it first.

I chopped some almonds. It was hard to chop them with a knife. Some could just be slightly sculpted like that. Then my patience ran over. It could look as if I meant it...kind of artisticle.

I found a lime in the fridge from New Year. Great, new ingredient:

Ok, I never put honey in salads. That´s why...here comes honey:

Now mixing and adding some olive oil. Don´t know why:

I was wondering whether I should add feta cheese to it. It seemed pretty solid mixture. But it never hurts to add some. Just to be on the safe side that it will compensate any bad taste.

 I needed some coloring. So added some parsley. Looks niiiice:

 Ok, let´s add some red dots. Chili could do it.

And that was it! Done.

The first bite tasted horroble. But then you get used to it and by the end you even like it. Some ingredient was one too many...or those ingredients just don´t go well in a mixture. Who cares, this mixture took too long anyway, I will not make it again.


If you try to make it. Enjoy!