Cooking

Well Father Christmas brought me a new laptop, a MacBook no less. I have been playing a bit (have only used a PC before) and managed to load a few photos of my cooking efforts on Christmas Eve. When I was still living at home I used to spend most of Christmas Eve up to my elbows in flour and sausage-meat making sausage rolls and mince pies. One year I somehow got the amount of fat wrong in the rough puff and it all poured out and over the edge of the baking tray to the bottom of the oven. We didn't realise until the next day when my mum tried to light the gas oven to put the turkey on and there was a thick layer of lard coating the floor of the oven and blocking up the jets at the back!! It took a while to scrape it all out!

I work on a smaller scale these days and here are this year's efforts, before and after cooking.

Birthday & subs

So last Saturday was my birthday, yay! Here are my prezzies.......

The book "The Silver Spoon" is brilliant. I've used it everyday since Sunday, mainly making sauces so far but I did make Turkey Stew with Mustard on Tuesday. Tonight I'm going to make bolognese sauce and already I can see it is going to be different to what I usually do to make it. There are no tinned tomatoes or garlic for a start! Interesting!

We went to see Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince on Saturday afternoon, which was okay. You couldn't go and see it as a stand alone film though becasue it didn't really end anywhere, I think you need to have seen all the other films or read the books.

Then we went to Nando's for dinner. Never been before. Again it was okay, the chicken burger was very nice but it was a bit fast food-ish for a sit down meal really.

I also had a cheque from my mum which I put towards my new subscription to Yarn Forward magazine. I have every issue right from the start so I thought I may as well subscribe again and save myself the price of two issues a year. My first issue and free gift arrived yesterday.

The free hat pattern is quite nice actually so that will go on my Ravelry queue!

After Colin met Eddie Izzard on Tuesday, he booked us tickets to go and see him in Liverpool in November!

The Silver Spoon by Phaidon Press


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
So far, I love this book. I have only attempted some of the sauces from the first section so far but I know that this book is going to get used so much more than all the "celebrity chef" cookbooks I have. This one is a real cookbook and as far as I can tell, covers almost anything you would wish to know about Italian cookery.

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