Epic Fail

I had a sick day today, but decided that I'd make lunch for my hubby since he was busy getting ready for a job interview. We agreed on soup and a grilled cheese sandwich. Easy enough, made it a hundred times! No problem!

Hahahahahahaha

I started by opening up the can of soup. I was having trouble with the can opener, and kept having to stop and start, it was very frustrating. All of a sudden POP the handle flew off with cogs and pieces flying everywhere! Soup a no-go.

Let's try the sandwich instead. I made it all nicely, cheese, pepper, garlic, herbs...smelled beautiful. Heated up the frying pan, plopped it in and it sizzled away. Good start.

I left it the normal amount of time, went to flip it on over and found that it had stuck to the pan, despite being properly buttered up on the outside. After managing to pick it up I discovered that the entire piece of bread on that side had utterly disintegrated. Gone! Well it can be more like cheese on toast, no problem! I did pause to spray some oil down to try and prevent the same problem.

No such luck.

It stuck again and utterly fell to pieces. Inedible. There was no sandwich to eat! Into the bin it went.

My poor husband had to make his own lunch, much to my embarrassment!

The can opener has now been fixed, and I'll just keep on practicing with the grilled cheese sandwiches!

Hello!

This post is dedicated to my Grandma, who rang me today because she was thinking of me and this blog. So I just wanted to give her a shout out and say HELLO GRANDMA! xxxx

First Ever Attempt At Sunday Dinner!

I haven't blogged in quite a long time (!) but I honestly haven't had anything worth blogging about. Cooking for my family means not being especially inventive - they're mostly as fussy as me!

But today I had a new challenge!

My Dad isn't very well at the moment, and he's the one who takes care of the more "complicated" cooking, such as Sunday dinner. So on Friday he took out some slow roast beef with the intention of making it this weekend. We forgot on Saturday, and Sunday he just wasn't feeling up for it, and volunteered me for the job! Panic overload!!

I've never made a roast dinner before, for some reason I view it as this really complicated, scary task that I've always wanted to attempt, but not had the nerve. And now I was doing it unsupervised. O...M...G. (or in my Dad's case - O.M.B. lol)

After pysching myself up for the task, I went to give it a go. If I messed it up, well it'd be a learning curve, right?

I came across a slight problem when I found I couldn't get the sticker off with the instructions on. Why do they put the instructions UNDER the sticker?! How does that help?! I did finally get the wrapping off, leaving the sticker intact and read it from the inside.

The instructions said "cook the roast in wine or stock". Um...Daaaad? I was told that what I actually needed to do was put the beef in the roasting tin, and put a thin layer of cooking oil over it. So I sprayed the Flora Light cooking spray into the pan, put the meat in and sprayed that too. I find the spray oil easier to use, and it ends up more even.

But for taste purposes I decided "Let's put a little Virgin Oil on there too". Pulled out a bottle from the cupboard, and poured a little on. Hmm...didn't quite smell right...let's look at the bottle...

"Rice Vinegar"

Oh CR*P!!

My family hates vinegar, what is some doing in the cupboard looking like oil?! Argh!!

I then poured a little ACTUAL oil on, as well as some ground black pepper, garlic granules and mixed herbs. Hopefully it'll drown out the taste....!

I wasn't too worried because Dad had said he didn't want any. I think so highly of my Dad's cooking that it means a lot to me what he thinks of mine.

Then he announced that he would have some after all.

Double cr*p!

Well, it was done now. I just wouldn't tell them until they'd all tasted it (and maybe not even then) and just see how it goes.

Into the oven on 170degrees Celcius, covered in tin foil, for 2 hours.

Every time I went into the kitchen (which was quite often) I could smell the slight tang of vinegar. I was pretty worried now!

After the 2 hours were up I took it out, took the tin foil off and put some roast potatoes in with the meat. Back in for another 40 minutes.

A few minutes before it was all done Dad told me the meat was meant to sit for 10 minutes (you tell me when there's 3 minutes to go?!), so I went and took the meat out quick, put the roast potatoes back in, along with a yorkshire pudding each (Aunt Bessies - 4 minute yorkie puds! Love it!).

Dad came in to cut up the meat, and as he started to carve it, announced it very tender "So it's either done just right, or it's undercooked". A slice came off and it was the moment of truth...

"Cooked to perfection!"

Big praise from my Dad, who is normally quite withdrawn with his compliments. Very happy :)

It all got served up - the roast potatoes did fall apart when I tried to take them out of the roasting tin, but never mind!

Everyone came and got their plates and now it really WAS the moment of truth...

It was roundly pronounced ....

"Very nice!"

Woohoooo!!!

It was fall off the fork tender, didn't taste of vinegar (lol), and was generally absolutely loooovely (if I do say so myself). Even the mushed looking roasties were yummy tasting, if not yummy looking :)

So I am very happy to say that my first ever AND unsupervised Sunday Dinner was a SUCCESS!!

I'm feeling so confident in my roast dinner abilities that I've offered to host Thanksgiving Dinner for my family and my Hubby in our new house!

But my family can host Christmas Dinner lol

Seems fair to me :)

Sadly no photos today, was too busy eating!!

Hope to be blogging again soon - from our sweet little house! :)

I haven't forgotten you!

I've not forgotten you, my lovely readers, I just have nothing to blog about!

I'm back in the UK, where I recognise the food and am used to the appliances!! My husband is still in America sadly :(

I have still been practising my cooking by cooking for my family which while eating things I know, I'm learning how to cook for several (there's 6 of us!). My Dad is also teaching me new things to cook each week, in theory anyway :) So far he's shown me how to make scones and stew. On the list is pizza, soup and rhubarb crumble :) But he's away all week, then photographing all weekend so it's a slow progress. I could teach myself these things I suppose, but I think the assistance of my 2 year old sister and 8 year old brother might make it a little difficult!!

So when I have things of interest to write about, this will be my first stop. But until then...well just don't hold your breath!!

Loves!

Road Trip!

I'm pretty sure my readers, if I have any, are all people I know, so you all know that I eloped! This elopement meant we had a 6 and a half hour car journey (a lifetime to me!). I had a lot of fun packing up snacks for our road trip, totally over doing it and therefore having snacks for while we were away too.

I packed crisps ("chips"), loooots of crisps, fruit, drinks, some other stuff I'm sure...

And then I noticed that I had left over baking stuff that I hadn't used yet, and my husband (oh I love writing that!)'s sister wouldn't use them. What better snacks for a journey than baked goods?! The main things I had to use up was pre-made pastry and chocolate chips. So I decided on Jam Buns and Chocolate Chip Cookies. Both had gone fairly successfully the time before, and were pretty simple so they seemed like the perfect things to bake on my last couple of days.

First I made the cookies; these didn't turn out as well as my last ones. I think I left them in the oven too long, but I find it hard to tell when they're done, so I just left them til I was sure :P They were preeeetty crunchy! I think I only ate one, but my husband will eat anything and he took care of them over the week we were away. So I learnt from this...don't cook them so long!

The jam buns I made the next day, we had to go to the store and get some jam ("jelly") first. We got seedless strawberry again, that shop didn't have any "mixed fruit" jams. These went MUCH better than my last ones, I have no idea what I did differently, but I thought they were a lot tastier. I put quite a lot of bun mix on top, a fair spoons-worth of jam inside (nearly used up the whole jar! But it was only a small jar), and they were looovely :) I didn't quite seal the edges properly or something, so some jam escaped and sometimes fell apart while eating. Could be the pastry was too thin or something, I have noooo idea! We ate them up pretty quick, I had about 3 just in the car!! I ate the last one while we were away, then a little later that day my husband said "I'm going to have the last...you ate it!! You had the last jam bun!!" He wasn't pleased :P But I decided that I made them, so it was my right to finish them :P

One Should Never Cook While Drowsy!

Today I was making breakfast for myself and my boyfriend. His went off without a hitch. I used two seperate pans, one to fry up some sausage patties, and one to cook his pancakes, since I don't like pancakes tasting of sausages! Even with this so "complicated" way of doing it, his turned out pretty nicely.

Mine on the other hand...!! I plopped the pancake mix into the pan and let it cook. Then I noticed that it wasn't very flat, so I had the "genius" idea of squishing it more flat. Normally works just fine. But I wasn't quite awake. So I squished down, hard, on the uncooked, sticky side. This then led to some of the pancake being stuck like glue onto my spatula. When I finally unstuck it it had fallen into three pieces. So now I have 3 small, not quite round pancakes!!

But I did find it pretty funny, so I'm learning to take these things well :P

Operation Beautiful

Now this is something I'd heard of before, on sites like www.givesmehope.com, but I'd never seen it in action, until a few days ago.

Operation Beautiful (http://operationbeautiful.com/) is to try and change the way women view themselves, to make them realise that they ARE beautiful. And all you do is put little post-it notes around; in bathroom stalls, on mirrors, in books...anywhere people will see them! All they have to say is "Smile, you're beautiful", or something more if you so wish.

My boyfriend lives in a small town, and we drive 20 minutes to do our grocery shopping. I was stunned to find on the bathroom mirror of the supermarket a note saying "Smile! You're beautiful!". And I did :)

I'd heard of this before so my surprise wasn't that someone would do that, just that word of it had reached all the way here! And even though I knew of Operation Beautiful, it still made my whole day :)

So I want you to reach out, post these anonymous little notes, and help women see their true beauty :)

Fried Eggs

Fried eggs are the bane of my existence. They seem so simple, but I find it SO hard to do! It's the whole "flipping" it thing (they're flipping difficult!!). I feel so daft because I can't manage such a simple little thing, it's very frustrating.

My boyfriend finally took pity on me and showed me (at mid-day, showing me in the morning never goes well!) how to do it. I think it'll take a LOT of practice, but I might finally get it?! I don't know.

I just always seem to break it or not get the spatula underneath properly. ARGH!

So this is the newest thing I've been fighting with, everything else has been fairly normal stuff that I'm used to making. Not been doing much baking, my boyfriend is unemployed and I prefer to attempt new things unsupervised - if I mess up I can slip it into the bin and no-one will ever know LOL

I might get some more jam and make some more jam buns though :) Or maybe make some cookies. I'm in the mood for a tasty treat :) Jam buns sound yummiest, but I have to get more jam first.

Cooking for more than 2!

Yesterday my boyfriend was out at work with a friend of his, and sent me an email saying he'd invited his friend over for dinner and a film. I did have a mini-panic over cooking for someone OTHER than my boyfriend, but I got over it quickly enough :P

My boyfriend requested pork chops, chips ("fries") and salad, though I did technically make potato wedges lol

I managed, as usual, to over-cater, as I was trying to use up the last of the lettuce, so they got two pretty full plates. The potato wedges (potatoes chopped up into thick slices with the skin still on) had on them "extra spicey" spice (I don't know what else to call it, it just says "extra spicey" on the pot), garlic, salt and pepper. I made chips for myself (I don't like the potato skin) which just had salt and garlic. The pork chops had Hickory Smoke on them which made the whole house smell soooo good. The salad had lettuce, tomato and cucumber, with whatever dressing they put on themselves.

The pork chops took a little longer to cook than I thought, the wedges were done and the chops still pink in the middle! So I just chopped them up into pieces and they cooked pretty quick then.

My boyfriend's sister said it "looked like something out of a magazine" (the salad did look quite pretty I must admit!), the men were touched that I actually served it all up too (what kind of host would make them serve their own food!) and they totally cleaned their plates! No mean feat, trust me! Both seperately said that it was very tasty, which given their empty plates I think might have been sincere :)

Yay me! :P