I haven’t written anything here for a while. When I do write something it’s meaningless posts. I’m not stopping to write but for a while I have decided to only use Instagram. I would be excited if you would join me there! My account is cecilia.helin.39. Take care!
Tag: Cooking
Tomato sauce
I have a first world problem that is a big first world problem. When you get tomato sauce on your clothes and can’t get it off. I can’t remember how many clothes I’ve had to throw away because of tomato sauce stains. Today I had almost eaten all my dinner involving tomato sauce without getting any on my top. And then…….pasta covered in sauce landed on my top. Is it just me? I never learn. I should cover myself in kitchen paper whenever I eat.
Very big
“-This yoghurt is too big for me. You have to eat half!”
This is the smallest yoghurt I’ve ever bought! It’s tasty though.
Potato flour
I use potato flour to “thicken” liquid. For example I make fruit cream by adding potato flour mixed with water to fruit juice. I have also made gluten free cupcakes with potato flour instead of wheat flour. It’s great if you’re gluten intolerant. But don’t use it when you’re making oven baked pancakes!
I love oven baked pancakes. It’s the fastest way to make pancakes and it’s delicious! I don’t have a recipe for it because I make it “my way” and I know how the batter should look and it usually turn out fine. I could give you a recipe based on how much I think I use of all the ingredients.
2 portions.
4 eggs
5 dl milk
4 dl flour
Mix it all together.
Since the batter has no butter in it I put lots of it in the tray in which I bake the pancake.
Flour is something I don’t use often. When I was supposed to make oven baked pancake I found it had expired a long time ago. I had begun to mix milk and eggs and thought I would use potato flour instead. Like I wrote I had made cupcakes with it and that worked well.
You should have seen the potato flour pancake! Or you should have eaten it. It looked like rubber and it was like eating rubber! The taste was that of a pancake but that was it. I forced myself to eat because that was dinner and I was hungry. I chewed a lot! I chewed and chewed and chewed and I ate it all. I don’t know how.
Dinner mistake
I rememeber a couple of years ago. Or rather lots of years ago. My mom and a friend of hers used to visit each other and had dinner together. When my mom had her friend over she made the “dinner” (the main course) and I often made the dessert. Then I enjoyed baking and making desserts.
I especially remember two separate dinners. The first one was when my mom made lasagna. The one thing you don’t want when you’re hosting a dinner party is that you don’t have enough food. We were three people attending this dinner. My mom was making a lasagna enough for six people. When I saw the size of the lasagna I said it’s not enough for all of us. Especially my mom’s friend and me can eat a lot. I talked my mom into making the double amount of lasagna. She made lasagna for twelve people when there was only three of us! My mom was hard to convince to make this massive amount of food. She was right it was too much food. We only ate one portion each and then there were nine portions we had to throw away. We didn’t have place in either the fridge or the freezer and had nowhere to store the left over lasagna. Let’s just say there were lasagna left and right in the kitchen.
The second dinner I especially remember was when I was making waffles for dessert. We were gonna have waffles with whipped cream and jam. Good! Everything went fine with the batter. We had an old waffle maker but didn’t think anything about it. Then…………….. came the moment when I was about to make the waffles. I put lots of butter in the waffle maker to make the waffles not stick to it. Not only did the first waffle stick to the maker. I couldn’t get it out of it. I tried everything but it was stuck! After a while it felt like the waffle maker was gonna explode because the “waffle” in it made it dangerously hot. The smoke coming from it was hilarious. The fire alarm went off and the smoke filled the whole house. Everything became blurry because of the thick smoke filling every room. My eyes hurt from it. That was the only waffle we sort of made. It was black and rock hard. We gave it to my mom’s friend but I don’t know if she ate it. Me and my mom ate whipped cream and jam.
Two successful and wonderful dinners!
Kiwi frenzy
I have told you about my obsessions with kiwi fruits. It’s because they don’t cost a lot. Even if I have many at home I can’t not buy new ones when I am at the grocery store. You get 10 kiwi’s for 3,5 euros which means they cost nothing. You never know when the price will go up. That’s why I am buying 10 every time I shop for groceries. I know it’s absurd. That made me think about what media’s approach to it would be.
“A woman was found with hundreds of kiwis in her home. Most of them were rotten but she said she couldn’t put them in the trash. ‘I have a bond to all my kiwis’ she said meaning that it would be like throwing out a family member. She also said she had named the kiwis and talked to them. When she was asked how it had gotten this crazy she said it wasn’t crazy. ‘They cost 3,5 for 10 kiwis. I have bought 10 kiwis two times a week for months.’ Do you eat any of them? She replied ‘How can I eat my family members? Michael or David? No I can’t.’
We looked around the woman’s apartment and found every room filled with kiwis. They had even formed gangs. Each room had one gang. They held to themselves apart from when a kiwi from another room entered their territory. Then they crushed it. We also found a room that was empty apart from a couple of kiwis aimlessly wandering around. They weren’t part of any gang and had to fend for themselves. In that room the lemons had had enough of all the kiwis. We saw a kiwi and a lemon fighting. The lemon shouted ‘leave this room alone. This room belongs to lemons’.
The social services had to take the woman away. She was naked covered in crushed kiwi fruits. She resisted crying ‘who is going to take care of my kiwis?’ The last thing we heard her say before she was placed in the social service’s car was ’10 for 3,5 euros’ over and over again.”
I am not there now but who knows what the future holds? Just kidding. I buy lots of kiwis however I eat them all.
Tomato pasta
I have a confession to make. I love pasta. I crave it often. Sometimes I just eat pasta with butter but that’s not very healthy. I also love pasta because it’s easy to make delicious dinners with it. I think both dried and fresh pasta taste good. I often go for the fresh version though because it cooks faster.
You know I get stressed whenever I make a complicated dinner. With that I mean when the dinner has too many ingredients or cooking techniques. Not to mention when it involves all the pots and pans you have. I know many thinks that those things isn’t a problem and I envy you. I would love to be like you. Reading recipes and happily cook whatever it is. I almost never follow recipes when it comes to cooking. Only because I feel like it always have too many things to do in them.
This dinner is the fastest and easiest you have ever experienced. Fresh tortellini in a tomato sauce. I do the whole thing in one pan. Because I used fresh tortellini I didn’t have to cook them before mixing them with the tomato sauce. I let them boil in the tomato sauce.
I began with frying a red onion in butter. Not too long, just to get it a little soft. Then I added crushed tomatoes. I also added pepper, salt and oregano. I let it simmer for a while before putting milk and whipping cream in it. I turned up the heat to get the sauce to boil. When it boiled I added the “raw” tortellini. I used one tortellini with spinach and ricotta cheese and one with sundried tomatoes. I noticed that the spinach tortellini was gluten free which I didn’t know when I bought it. I let the tortellini boil for a couple of minutes in the tomato sauce. That was all it took to make a delicious dinner!
I have this stress scale when I cook. Number 1 is me feel little or no stress while cooking. 5 is when I feel I will faint from stress. This was a 1 on the stress scale.
Try it.
Food list
I have this list I call “no thank you food”. This list contains all the foods I don’t eat because I find them disgusting or that I have some other reason that makes me avoid them. I know many eat all food that’s out there but not me.
*Salmon.
Salmon is something I find disgusting. I know many love it and it’s healthy to eat but I can’t even take the smell of it. For me it tastes……… I don’t know how to explain it but it has a “strong” taste that you can’t make go away what ever you do. You can pour lots of sauce on it but that doesn’t help. I don’t know how many dinners I have been invited to where salmon was served. I have had to force myself to eat the salmon. I try to eat it as fast as I can and then eat the potatoes or what ever the salmon is served with to get the salmon taste out of my mouth. I have tried salmon cooked in many different ways however it tastes disgusting anyway.
*Chicken.
Everyone out there that eat chicken often, don’t read this. I don’t want you to stop eating it. It’s a healthy meat to eat and I want you to keep eating it. The reason I don’t eat it is that my mom told me she watched some tv show where a man sat by a machine and kept cutting off the beaks of chickens. I think he did it because the chickens shouldn’t be able to pick on each other. My mom said the man violently picked up a chicken, cut the beak off. Then he threw the bleeding chicken to the side without any emotions. The thought of those bleeding chickens has made it impossible for me to eat chicken.
*Beer.
Not food but I had to add it to the list because I can’t drink it. I almost throw up when I drink it. The taste I find disgusting. I don’t think alcohol is tasty but beer is what I find the least tasty of all alcohol beverages.
*Carrot cake.
This also makes me feel sick when I eat it. It’s the cinnamon taste mixed with carrots that makes me avoid it. When I think about it, it’s the frosting that I think is what makes it impossible for me to eat it. I have a hard time eating cream cheese. Even though you mix the cream cheese with other things I can’t eat it. The cinnamon cake mixed with the cheese I find disgusting.
*Dessert cheese.
I don’t think those are the words for it but I mean cheese you get on a “cheese tray”. Gorgonzola and Brie cheese för example is something I can’t eat. They taste and smell like feet. When a cheese tray is served I eat the crackers and grapes and nothing else. A long time ago my mom made beef in a Gorgonzola sauce. I came home and the whole apartment smelled like sweaty feet. Not to mention the taste of feet and the salty taste.
I know many like these foods and I don’t in any way think it’s wrong to like them. It’s me that can’t take the taste.
Fancy dinner
I made a very fancy dinner today. Pasta and ketchup. I didn’t stop there! I also added more luxury with some spices and butter. Don’t say I don’t know how to make good food!
It’s not a healthy meal I know! But sometimes I am tired and uninspired. I think this meal beats eating cake or candy.
You probably have or will eat a healthier meal today.
Trying
I tried. Let me tell you I tried! I tried to make a plate of food look good. Everyone who has read my posts about food know how “good” I am at making the food look tasty. It always begins fine but then it goes down hill. This “making it look good” was no different from every time I do this.
First thing’s first. I decided to make a real home cooked meal (except the potatoes that I bought frozen). I decided to make burgers and potatoes. To make it less stressful I was going to cook the whole thing in the oven. I made my burgers beginning with mixing bread crumbs and milk. I let it rest for a while.
I used half a red onion. I added minced beef, the onion, an egg and spices in the milk and bread mix.
I mixed it well and I put the hambugers in a oven form (that was the word I found for it). I made four, two for this dinner and the other two I put in the fridge to cook the next day. I put too much butter in the bottom of the oven form (I had to pour some out after a while). I placed a bakning paper on the oven tray and put the potatoes on it.
I cooked it at 250 C for 30 minutes. After 20 minutes I added milk and whipping cream to the burgers to make a sauce.
Then it was time to put the food on the plate. The potatoes and hamburger went nicely but then I had to destroy it with a big splash of lingonberry jam. I find lingonberry jam delicious but I could have waited to put it on until I had taken the picture. It was tasty and to me it doesn’t look that bad but to everyone else it must look not that tasty.
I rate all my cooking after a “stress scale”. How stressful the cooking was. This was a 2 because I made it in the oven.
Kajsa's and Cecilia's world 