The Ugly Goat » food

I’ve been cooking!

The Ugly Goat — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 07:19:30 +0000

I’ve been cooking recently. Early Christmas gatherings to cook for, as well as just the plain old boring need for food.
In non-boring news, I think I have perfected the ultimate gluten free pizza dough, and have finally made home made mozzarella!

Gluten Free Pizza Dough!
This dough is NOT gleegan (gluten free AND vegan), but could be tweaked to be so.

You’ll need:
2/3 cup potato flour
1/2 cup rice flour (you can both of these at coles)
1/3 cup grated parmesan cheese dust – you know the kind. You buy it in a packet and put it in a shaker. To make this gleegan, replace with potato flour.
2 tablespoons of oil
1 tablespoon of sugar
2 tablespoons of milk or water (I’ve made it with either, makes little difference).
10 grams of yeast.
Small bunch of basil.
Extra water

Mix up the yeast to the packet’s specifications.
When that’s done, put your sugar and milk (or water) in there and give it a good mix up. Add oil.
Measure in your flour (I’m using potato and rice because I find it to be the best for making the dough feel right. I like cornflour in other recipes, but it’s somehow too slinky and slippery in dough) and add the cheese, or just add more potato flour to make it gleegan.
Chop or rip up your basil, and throw that into the mix too. Oregano would also work. Throw in whatever herbs you like.

Mix it all up as best you can, then add enough water that you can knead it as a dough. Don’t over wet though.

Cover, and leave in a warm spot for the yeast to cause it to rise. Probably 45 mins.

Punch down dough and knead briefly, then cover and leave for another 45 mins.

Knead dough, and roll out into circles about 1cm thick and cook in a hot oven until it looks good to you. I like mine a little doughy, Seth prefers his really crunchy.
Cover in toppings, throw it back in the oven until toppings look melted or toasty, and eat! OM NOM NOM

For best results, make your own home made

Mozzarella!

I followed these instructions, and they seemed to work well for me.

However! Don’t throw away the whey left behind after you extract the cheese from the milk!

Caramel Sauce

Using the liquid left behind after the mozzarella, you can make a tasty caramel sauce to put into coffee, over ice-cream or straight into your mouth if you prefer.
I just dumped a cup or so of raw sugar into the liquid and slowly, slowly reduced it until it was sauce like. Put in a jar, keep in the fridge, and yum! Huzzah!

Now go forth and eat things.

And repeat

The Ugly Goat — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:07:01 +0000

sad Feeling by ~Auu on deviant ART

Well, I don’t feel any better today. If anything, I probably feel worse.

I feel small and ineffectual. I want to go to bed and think about what a useless person I am, and how I can never climb the mountain of work I have in front of me.
Like emptying the dishes from the dishwasher…it’s such a daunting idea. How did I ever manage such a complex task in the past? How does one even start?

But it doesn’t take a genius to realise that going back to bed to ponder all the millions of ways I fail as a human being probably isn’t the ideal way to get through a day of depression, and luckily I’m the very not a genius to make that realisation!

So, after a little bit of computer work, I headed out to the garden for fresh air and exercise.
To be honest, it was the very last thing I felt like doing, but I’m glad I did. I feel like I actually got something done, which is always a good thing. Did some weeding, planted some more plants, mulched and added compost. There’s still SO MUCH to do out there, but hopefully once more seedlings start popping up it’ll look more like a nice garden and less like a wasteland.

Annoyingly, the months of bad weather we’ve had (gale force winds, hot dry days, sudden cold snaps, sudden downpours that don’t provide enough water and more gale force winds) has seen me lose a few things.
The basil, for instance. It didn’t just shrivel and die – the poor little seedlings were actually uprooted and blown away. And my ‘Jack-be-little’ pumpkin seedlings just withered and died after the wind shredded them and then a branch fell on them, really finishing them off for me.

But! It’s not all bad.
My normal pumpkins have started sprouting. And after picking peas and snow peas last night, there are a bunch more out there ready to pick today.
And the passion fruit vine (which was starting to grow in a ‘Z’ shape from being ripped down by the wind, tied up again by me, ripped down by the wind, etc) is finally recovering.

In other, and entirely unrelated, good news, the rock melon paddle-pops I made yesterday taste FANTASTIC.
It’s goddamned cold in the house today, but after work in the garden had warmed me up a bit I braved the cold just to try one.
Now I’m keen to try all sorts of other fruit. Especially strawberries, since we’ll have some of our own before too long. I think I need more paddle-pop molds…

Anyway, after all that work, I do feel a little better. I feel less like going to bed for the rest of the day and more like sitting and staring blankly at a wall for the rest of the day instead.
Uh…which is an improvement. Of about 90°, geometrically speaking. Or of jack bloody all, in real terms.

Still, it kept my occupied for a bit, and I’d have felt worse by now without it.
Time to find another (easy) task. Something less scary than emptying a dishwasher.

God thinking up a title is a lot of pressure…

The Ugly Goat — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:07:14 +0000

Having a bit of a down day today. Which is funny – I had a really great day out yesterday, then started today all warm and toasty while it rained outside.
I guess maybe the gloomy weather got to me a bit though, I don’t know, but suddenly I’m finding myself feeling pretty depressed.

Still, as we all know, depression has up and down days.
I met my deadline of having an artwork finished on Friday, and though I have plenty of other work to do, I took today off from computer work and tried to distract myself from feeling crap by getting other stuff done.

And – lo and behold – I actually DID get stuff done!
I tidied my room, which was a MONSTER task. My drawers had stopped functioning, so all my clothes were all over the floor in a sprawl several layers deep. I got a cheap and nasty mini wardrobe from IKEA to help fix that problem, but hadn’t had the time to actually pack my stuff into it properly until today.
Then, once my drawers weren’t so over full, a bit of sanding and then running wax over all the timber saw it working again. Just got to make sure I don’t cram too much into it or I’ll have the same problem.

So now, at least my room feels nice to be in. Well, It doesn’t today, because I feel crap, but tomorrow, or the next day, or whatever day it is that I feel better again, I’ll be really pleased.
And for now, at least it’s one less job weighing on me.

I also cooked pears and apples with some of the maple syrup my dad bought back from Canada for me, which turned out to be thoroughly delicious.
I made crepes and we wrapped up the mix in the middle of them then ate them for breakfast. Maybe not the MOST healthy breakfast ever, but certainly the tastiest. And, I mean, it’s fruit isn’t it? A shirtload of sugar, but at least fruit sugar. NATURE WOULDN’T MAKE IT IF IT DIDN’T WANT ME TO EAT IT!

Other good news on the food front is also good news on the garden front:
Firstly, the ruby chard patch is going so well that we can eat a bit of it daily, and the patch still keeps getting bigger, not smaller.
Additionally, today also saw us eat our first peas, snow peas and our first (very) baby carrot from the garden.
Snow peas and peas were soft and juicy and sweet, carrot was fail. But that’s because I really hate carrots. I don’t know why I thought this one would be any different. It wasn’t. It was disgusting.

And, even if it is currently depriving me of my vitamin D, the rainy weather should see stuff grow like mad. I hope.
I’m also hoping I’ll feel a bit more excited about garden things later in the week, and that I’ll get out there and plant more seeds and transplant seedlings. Right now I feel very ‘meh’ about the whole thing, but hopefully that’s just short lived.

Then, keeping myself busy this afternoon, I pureed some really delicious rock melon (cantaloupe) with a dash of milk, and poured the mix into paddle-pop molds to pop into the freezer to eat on a hot day. I’ve got my fingers crossed that it tastes as good as it smelled – I’ve still got the dried juice all over fingers, which I keep sniffing just because it smells so tasty, which makes me look like finger-sniffing creep. Probably because I am.

Anyway, I’ve made it through a ‘down’ day again by swinging from task to task. A good thing, I think.
Even if I did wear my pajamas the whole day. But you can do that on rainy days, so long as you get stuff done, right?

And tonight, after watching a show about Ed Wood’s ‘Plan 9 from Outer Space’ with Seth, I’ll go to bed early and relax and listen to the rain on my window, and hopefully tomorrow will be better.

Maple Syrup

The Ugly Goat — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:55:44 +0000

When my dad came back from Canada recently, he bought me back a tin of dark maple syrup.

It’s a fair size tin – 540ml, but I don’t want to waste a drop of it. You CAN get real maple syrup over here, but it’s pretty damned expensive. Usually you get the weird arse fake stuff that’s maple flavoured and actually tastes more like old cork floor tiles than maple.

SO! In order to get the most out of my can of maple syrup, I have been planning very carefully (when I’m not getting distracted reading the french on the side of the side of the can) and think I have arrived at three recipes I can make using my one tin.
And they are:
Baked apples with maple syrup.
Mulled apple cider with maple syrup.
And a Maple Cheesecake.

I must say, I’m particularly curious about the Maple Cheesecake.
I’m not 100% certain yet though. I may swap out the mulled cider for drizzling a bit over my yoghurt, in an attempt to replicate the flavour of the Wallaby Maple Yoghurt I had while in California.

And since I bought that up, I’m very confused about Wallaby Yoghurt. They say it’s ‘Australian style’….we have a style of yoghurt? Funny, since we sure as hell don’t have any maple yoghurt here. I have NO IDEA what qualifies it as Australian-like, but apparently they felt so strongly that it was Australianesque that they named it ‘Wallaby’.
Very confusing.

Anyhow, I SHALL KEEP YOU UPDATED ON THE SYRUP FRONT.
I know you’ll be hanging on the edge of your seats.

A horrible secret

The Ugly Goat — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 13:22:48 +0000

Sometimes I get in a mood where I want to drag the tv into my room, get into bed (dragging the cat in with me), watch a romantic comedy and cry.

Yes, it’s wrong. Yes, it makes me feel dirty to even write that.

I have no idea why I get these moods. But I’ve been feeling melancholy yet oddly energised today. An odd little individual washing clothes and tidying dishes while listening to Zoe Keating’s (yes, I know I’ve mentioned her a million times before, but she’s incredible) Cello x 16.

Also, there are no cookies in my house. This makes me sad.

Good things from the world of me

The Ugly Goat — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 01:00:15 +0000

I’m up to my eyeballs in work right now, which has had me a bit too busy to appreciate some of the good things going on around me.
So! Here are some good things, along with some of my day’s favourites on deviant art (I love to go there and just roam around, looking at lovely things):

1. Avocado Milkshakes
Selina Fenech mentioned having had avocado milkshakes while on holiday in Bali. Initially I found the idea as unappealing as the idea of grilling a cow pat, but after thinking about the creaminess of an avocado, I saw how it could possibly work.
A quick whirlwind tour of avocado milkshake recipes later (thankyou google!) I had made one and it tasted really good. Really really good.
And it’s healthy and filling too. Win.

Mackerel sky by *dev1n on deviant ART

2. Spring is here.
That means summer is almost here.
That means WARM.
Already I can see the days are stretching and that the air is warmer. THANK GOD.
Everybody knows how much I hate the cold and dark of winter, so I’ll save that rant for another time. Suffice to say that as miserable as winter makes me, summer makes me equally happy.
Which brings me to…

Painted by *dev1n on deviant ART

3. Gardens.
I am really enjoying seeing gardens all in bloom everywhere.
I lost a bit of steam with my own garden recently (it was windy, then rainy and I got out of the habit), but today somebody came to remove all the rubbish that the landlord had left piled up the back of our yard.
And oh. my. god.
Our yard is HUGE now. HUGE! Turns out there were two other citrus trees hiding back there too. A lemon, and maybe a second mandarin. We’ll see when it fruits.
Now I can’t wait to get back into it. As soon as I get my tax return this year, I’m buying me some more plants! Oh yes.

More blue magic by *jchanders on deviant ART

4. Blue.
I never really liked blue much. I had no issue with it. It wasn’t like all the other colours were invited to my birthday party and Blue was the only one left out, all sad and alone. Blue was just more of a friend of a friend. I never wanted Blue unless Purple or somebody else was there too.
Now I realise I was missing out, and that Blue is the coolest guy around. I want blue clothes and a blue bedspread. Maybe a blue wall. I have some lovely blue bruises at the moment too (I bruise like a summer fruit), but I’m not as fond of them…

in your bed by =HannahHavoc on deviant ART

5. Comfy Beds.
My bed is really comfy, and since so much work has left me feeling pretty tired, I really look forward to bedtime of a night these days.
I’m all set up with soft LED lights, good books and comfy soft sheets. Actually, writing this is making me tired and itchy to get to bed…

And there you have it. Enjoy.