Is variety, the so called "spice of life", actually spicy enough that you don't need actual spices?

Or: How I learned that people without a functioning sense of smell probably shouldn't do cooking experiments on top of the fireplace.

We are nearly out of tomato sauce.

That might sound like a weird opening, but here's the thing: my body has an uncanny ability to crave whatever it is that we are running low on in the house. Want peanut butter on toast? No bread. Would give your left leg for a paddle pop? No ice-cream of an kind in any of the four freezers. If I'm having a hamburger (by which I mean a beef patty, and a bit of bread) I want tomato sauce with it. Ergo, tonight, midnight, I open the fridge, see a packet of mince, think "perfect, hamburger it is." Sure, the mince is one day after it's best before, but don't they play it safe with those things, surely you have a day or two extra, right?

Not only that, but it's winter (pretty much) now. The fire is lit. The fire, which gets super hot because it's 20 years old and all its insulating bricks have fallen out. The fire that, sometimes last year, I would cook a beef patty on, instead of having to wash a frypan.

Also, I decided to test that thing where, if you wrap a bottle of drink in some damp taper towel and put it in the freezer, it gets cold in 5 minutes. This will be an important part of the resolution to the story, even though it seems a bit random (ie. not as ominous as everything else Ive written so far) at this point in the story.

So I've decided to cook a burger on top of the fire. Normally I'd mix the mince with breadcrumbs and seasoning, but, well, I'm both hungry and lazy. And anyway, aren't Maccas burgers supposed to be all beef? If they don't need breadcrumbs, neither do I. So I squish the mince between some baking paper till it's flatish, carry it across the kitchen, and plop it onto the top of the fireplace.

It makes a satisfactory sizzling noise. There's a big bit of baking paper folded around it, but I've put the fold to the back so I can lift it up and have a look inside.

It appears to be browning in the correct fashion. But this is where the problem starts. Some beef juice is leaking out in the sizzling. This happens when I make stir-fry, but not when I cook myself a burger. Conclusion: the breadcrumbs are needed to soak up the juice so it doesn't leak everywhere. I get a spatula and try to hold up either side of the paper, so the juice will pool under the burger next to the crease and hopefully re-absorb into the burger.

I know very little about cooking. I now know more: I now know that this does not work.

When the underside appears to be sufficiently brown, I try to pick up the burger and flip it over, without letting the tiny, miniscule dribble of juice I expect to be leftover (ha!) come out the sides.

It doesn't work.

So now there's beef juice sizzling on the metal surface of the fireplace, and from the feel of it, there's still a fair bit of liquid in the baking paper. I carry it over to the sink, and drop down one corner. About 45 litres of liquid gushes out. My burger is half cooked. The baking paper is feeling a bit damp. I get another piece of baking paper, this time doing some foldy-origami type thing to the sides.

I take it back and cook the other side. The origami turns out to not be necessary: the fact that it's already managed to perform the scientific wonder of expelling 5 times as much liquid as it appeared to weigh (I too have done this, one morning when I was so hungover I peed for about 15 minutes) has left it quite dry now that it's time to cook the other side. And even more dry when I bring it over to the plate, and cut through it to make sure that it's cooked through.

I figure I should try clean the top of the still lit, still very hot fireplace, and fortunately, I have some frozen paper towel wrapped around a not-really-at-all-cold bottle of coke in the freezer. And it turns out that frozen paper towel does an alright job of cleaning the top of a hot fire, if by cleaning you mean wiping a few times in hope that it's making some sort of difference and also not getting burnt. I don't know if it's actually even slightly clean: I think the best way to tell will be to wait for someone to go "what's that smell?" since I, as ever, smell nothing. But the bottom of the now half sizzling, half frozen paper towel is a bit brown, as it would be had it cleaned up some well-cooked beef juice, so I figure, job well done.

Having given cleaning the top of the fire a, excuse the pun, red hot go, I go to the cupboard to get some sauce to have with my burger, and discover what you have known from the beginning; that all 4 bottles of sauce in the cupboard have just a tiny dreg in the bottom, which will only come out, accompanied by little fart noises, with a good deal of shaking and squeezing. There simply isn't enough sauce to cover the fact that my burger is a dried out, shriveled up blob of blandness, that may or may not have been fit for human consumption before I even got it out of the fridge.

I chop it up into little bits and put it in the dog's bowl, and eat my piece of bread, unsure how exactly I made it to the point where I am considered an actual grown up human being.

In conclusion, it's probably a better idea to just use regular herbs and spices, than to decide that cooking in a way you haven't done in about 8 months is going to be enough to make your dinner edible. Also, if you've been putting off writing a blog post for about 3 months because you know that it will be your 900th, and you want to make it worthwhile, maybe it's just better to do something so stupid that it deserves the spelling stoopid, and blog about that instead.

P.S. I just went to the kitchen and the dog appears to have eaten it. I guess it can't have been BAD bad, since his nose (I assume) would be able to tell the difference.

Saturday Night (do do do do do do do do)

What a crazy day. Enjoyable, but crazy.

Started off, I went into town to buy stuff. The $10 vouchers that Spotlight sends can be used once a day for the 4 days, and I like to get my money's worth. Today I bought a similar bundle to yesterdays, but in blues and greens instead of pinks and yellows and greens.

Again, about half of it is from stash. There's also a couple of cuts in here that are only 10cm, but because it's a random design, this is okay.

Work was especially fun for a Saturday night, for two reasons. Firstly, it's (now) April Fools Day, which means that I was free to leave clever traps for the co-workers who are working in the morning. I left a note on the service desk saying that a heap of people had called in sick, and the girl in the office left a similar one saying that the safe combo had been changed. We also left some hints as to how they could pass on the April fools joy - PA calls for staff members' number plates, food dye in the milk in the staff room, that sort of thing. Much fun.

Even funner, Kelsey had sorted out a scavenger hunt for her friends for tonight, and one of the things the groups had to do was come in and sing me a song. Naturally, hilarity ensued - Even though I had told the girls on checkout that tonight was going to get a bit weird, and let the duty manager and a couple of the nightfill guys what I was anticipating, we didn't tell all the nightfill people, nor the other customers. We were pretty quiet, till the singing broke out, and the walking-around-falling-down worried a few of the nightfill people at first, but it still made for one of the most enjoyable Saturday nights I've worked in a long time.

And then, after meeting up with them all to get a quick run down on which teams achieved what, I went to meet Casey and a few other friends for a few drinks and a firebucket.

Now I'm gunna put my clock back for the end of daylight savings (sad face) and snuggle up with my electric blanket.

Why nothing was sewn tonight...

While our parents are away enjoying the lovely Queensland weather, there has been three early20s girls living in this house, including a compulsive cook. Thus...

DISHES!!!

This is pretty much every glass (most are already in the sink here) plate, bowl, frypan, saucepan and mug in the house. In the middle is a bowl full of cutlery. And this on the week I'm going fast-food free.

The compulsive cook is also a compulsive nail biter, so she's not really fond of doing dishes (is anyone?) The deal was, I'd do them if she chopped some wood (I weigh 44kg, it's not my fault I cant do it) and lit the fire before I got home, and by the time I'd done all the necessary internetting, it was 1am. The perfect time to do the dishes. The perfect time to do anything, really.


Unfortunately, I got a bit low after the second load (first load, glasses, 2nd load, flat plates) so I stopped for some freshly grated parmesan.


And then, obviously, I had to wash the plate. Again.


And there was no delicious soft drink left in the fridge :( So I had some lettuce.


I like lettuce :)


In other news, I have changed my preferred super power, from copy and paste to the full photoshop suite. Copy and paste gives me access to endless supplies of money, coke and fabric ( cause once you have one you can replicate it as much as you need) but I need that bandaid tool in the real world. Copy and paste will not get rid of the pimple that has appeared the day before I'm due to meet my future husband.

And just for the record I'd use my copy and paste powers for good too, stopping in at the blood bank and organ donor warehouses once a week to boost their stocks. I'm a giver. But not of my own blood. They wont let me, cause I'm not fat enough.

Brrrrr...

I am so ready for summer to come back. I'm sick of feeling cold all the time.

Normally we will have the fire going pretty much constantly through the winter in our house. But at the moment, Mum, Dad and our youngest sister have decided they're sick of the cold too, and they've gone off to Darwin. That leaves 3 of us home, but one has just broken up with her boyfriend and is out living it up, leaving Casey and I here, and unfortunately, the two of us aren't really around enough to keep it going. She works mornings (I sleep mornings) and, since noone's been home at night, she's been having dinner at friends houses, while I'm at work.

Even though the fire is very good at putting out heat (average winter temp without fire - 17C, with fire - 28C) its not very good at staying going for a long time. Even big chunks of wood, with the air supply turned down, tend to be burned through in about 3 hours, so the dream of lighting it before work to come home to a nice warm house never comes to fruition, especially as it's even worse when it's only just been lit. It needs attention every hour for the first 5 or so hours, and so I'll be coming home to a cold house after I finish work. Again.

Tomorrow though, I finish at 8.30, so I've got a good 4 hours of couch sitting time at my disposal, making lighting it totally worthwhile. Well, telling Casey to light it. I've built it all up ready, she just needs to put a lighter in and find some matches, and maybe I'll be nice and warm again.

P.S. Retro quilt got finished yesterday, and is very nice, but camera is on the charger, and can't make it out to the clothesline. Also, I wish it was warmer.