My Darling One. My Love.

My Darling One. My Love.

Michael, here known as The Fussy Eater, passed away on Thursday 26 July 2007. It was sudden and totally unexpected. He was 40 years old.

He was my biggest fan, my most ardent supporter, and he loved me unconditionally. He was so giving, so kind, and so good to me. I don't know what I did to deserve having such a wonderful person's life intertwine with mine. We re-connected more than three years ago, and have been inseparable ever since. Until now.

I miss you so much. I hope you know how much I love you.

jasmine

A very special thank you to Alanna, Birdie, Elisa, Elise, Heather, Jeannie and Aaron, Jory, Kalyn, Ruth, Shuna, Susan and everyone else at BlogHer who in their own ways helped me this past weekend.

To my readers: I need some time, and I don't know how much. I hope you understand.

So what does a chocolate frog taste like?

Probably like a chocolate chicken ;)

I think I may be busy this weekend, or at least, very singularly focused...but right now, I'm off to bed.

cheers!
jasmine

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A feeble attempt at correcting my diet

I know full well that, as of late, what I've been eating isn't up to my normal...umm...standard.

I've spent far too much time as of late queuing at counters, twitching curtains for the delivery boy, and, well, in front of the microwave waiting for something overly sugared, salted and with far too many lines on the ingredient box to be passable enough to pass my lips.

No wonder I feel blechy.

If you've been following me for a while, you know that I'm in the last week of a course . It's a good course, but it has sapped most of my free (and not so free) time for the past few weeks. Apart from my socialising, my cooking time has been severely curtailed...hence all the takeaway, delivered and processed foods I've been eating.

I'm even eating cafeteria food.

Glah.

I'm waiting for my peer review on my final major project and today I found myself with *surprise* more than four minutes for supper. Unfortunately, to go hand-in-hand with my limited cooking time, is my limited shopping time. The fridge was very uninspiring...but moderately redeeming.

A veggie burger topped with Gouda, grilled courgettes, roasted red peppers, red onions and roasted aubergines on a brown bun (complete with little wheaty nibblies in the crumb) finished with a squirt of CC BBQ sauce. Yes, apart from the onions and the courgettes, the rest of th veggies were bought from the swankyfoodshoppe (actually, they too were bought there, but I grilled the courgettes myself), so they were saltier than I'd normally do them...and oilier..but that's okay...at least I can recognize them as veggies.

So, not absolutely redeeming...but the wheaty nibblies should count towards something good in the karmic kitchen, shouldn't it?

cheers!
jasmine

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BlogHer Conference '07: Reminder

Hello all

Just a quick little note that Blogher is just a week and a bit away. If you're still undecided about attending, here's a link to the speaker roster.

For all of you foodbloggers who will be in the area, there's a foodbloggy supper being planned. If you are planning on being around, please drop be a line and I'll see what I can do about getting info to you.

Okay...back to my final submission for this course...

edit: corrected info on the dinner

cheers!
jasmine

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Life's a bowl of...

Cherries.

This year I actually tried to document the little cherry tree as it went from flower to fruit.

I'd forgotten it was around until it was in full bloom. The blossoms only lasted a short while, until a giant windstorm left the street blanketed in white petals.

I'd assumed that the storm was so brutal that cherries wouldn't appear. It's not like we ever get a lot of cherries...that is, we don't seem to enjoy many of the little trees fruits. Between the squirrels, birds, chipmunks and the street urchins next door, at most we seem to get is a mediumish bowl of them.

Not this year. I think the street urchins' new tomcat, Taz, has done much to dissuade the creatures (four- and two-legged) from helping themselves. Quite an adorable little butterscotch boy (but then again, most ginger boycats are)...Anyway, the tree fruited beautifully and we've been nibbling on cherries for about two weeks. This week we collected two large carrier bags of mottled, blushing sweet lovelies.

A friend suggested I "do" something with them.

Personally, I think the best thing to "do" with them, is to rinse them and eat them.






cheers!
jasmine

tags: Cherries

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Daring Bakers: Bagels

How embarrassingly rude of me.

Last month I received a sweet little email from our favourite Cream Puff and a Lady Mistress of the Daring Bakers asking if I’d join the growing band of online bakers. Of course I said yes. Shortly thereafter I received my first challenge, organised by Quelia and Freya: Kosher bagels.

A few weeks ago, during one of the hottest days, I turned my little, blast funace of a kitchen into a bagel-making factory. Unfortunately, my work and class scheds are as full as if my little Beanie were let loose at a rotisserie chicken joint. So not wanting to be absent during my first, official DB challenge, I made them then. I mustn’t have been in my right mind to do it at that moment. It was so hot the dough doubled in size within 45 minutes…usually it takes something like 120 minutes for that to happen.

The recipe was easy enough. The only things I would do differently are divide the dough into 24-30 (instead of the 15 the recipe called for) and keep a very, very close eye on the second rising, perhaps not allowing a second rise for more than a minute or two. Many of my bagels turned out really poofy—because they grew a bit too much while waiting for their hot water bath and expanded while in the pot. I wasn’t incredibly adventuresome with gussying them up: plain, freshly cracked black pepper, poppy seeds and sunflower seeds.

Anyway, my horridly rude behaviour.

You see, we were supposed to have our posts up by this past Monday. Unfortunately all my real-life commitments left me without enough time to post the results.

I tried getting Beanie to post them, but he’s mad at me. You see, I’ve not been home for most of the week (work from 8-5, run home and change, head off to TFE’s to do schoolwork and work-work until about midnight or one am and then head home to collapse)—the cats were fed, not by me as the exbf came by to ensure their welfare (food and attention). All this busy-ness is also to blame for me only being able to eat two of the 16-20 bagels I made. The rest went decidedly fuzzy by the time I wandered into my kitchen 10-14 days after they were made. Yeah…I should have frozen them.

So when I mentioned him making the post for me, he turned around, hopped on the couch and sat pointedly ignoring me, with his back in my direction.

Sigh…

So here they are, my photos from my first DB adventure.






cheers!
jasmine

tags: Bagels Breads Daring Bakers

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