Home Night 2

So last night Loulou and I had our second Home Night - come on now, I need a better name for this! It was fantastic, even tho it was my turn to cook :)

Now it is generally thought that I cannot cook and would probably burn water if I tried. This is not entirely true, but not an impression I mind giving either ;) The truth is closer to the fact that growing up The Peeb and I never really had to cook, what with a Mommy trained at Silwood Kitchen in her pre-kiddie days. Peeb got quite into the baking thing at one stage, but otherwise we pretty much steered clear of the kitchen. In my defense it's because every time I did feel the need to advance my culinary skills, Mom would be peering over my shoulder with "you should use this instead" or "I know it's not in the recipe, but you should add a little of this". Now this all might seem like helpful information to you the reader, but to a stubborn teenager, it's really just interfering and these episodes usually ended with a "fine, then you do it" and me storming from the kitchen (as much as one can storm from an open-plan area!).

Anyway, in my defense, I did one of the Pick 'n Pay School of Cooking's course back in 2003. But I've never been much of a recipe girl ... as much as I love them and cooking books, they always look better in the picture than when you actually try to make them yourself. Also, I don't really deal well with the vagueness in recipes. Don't tell me to "cook till brown". What the hell does that mean? Which brown?? Has anyone got a Pantone colour chart? I'm much better with instructions like "cook for 10 minutes". Precise instructions, now that I can do!

But, I've still come a long way from my flour and water samoosa's at Marga's house. Hey Peeb, remember my Pink Oros Rubber cake (Just add flour, water, pink food colouring and 7 cups of Oros!)? I guess creativity, not flavour, was always my thing ;)

Anyway, I have upgraded to actually having a signature dish - Mom's was Chicken a la King back in the day ;) It is a sort of Mexian Chicken type thing. I can't really explain it here, since I made it up, and that would give my secrets away! But last night I tried something new, I've already made my Mexican Chicken for Loulou, shortly after I moved in.

I decided to make Mexican mince (yes, I'm noticing a theme but I can get really good Indian and Thai food at restaurants ... Joburg is seriously lacking in fabulous Mexican restaurants, hence the need to make it at home!) and use it to stuff peppers and then bake them in the oven for a bit to melt some grated cheese over the top. Loulou made some Guacamole since I didn't have a chance to hit the Rosebank Rooftop Market (a fabulous place that Mom always makes me take her to when she is up in Jhb for the weekend!) and buy some of the best Guac ever from Bandito's.

Dinner was a hit, I even awarded myself marks for presentation ;)

Then TV night kicked in and we watched CSI & Nip/Tuck. I'd never seen Nip/Tuck before but heard it was generally considered to be worth watching. And it was, aside from the gore and the "Nooooo!" moments where the one guy enjoyed a threesome with a mother & her daughter - yucky!

And that was the evening. This morning I *finally* had that ECG. I'm fine, by the way. No big surprise. Anyway, hopefully that'll keep the insurance bigwigs happy. Other than that I also collected 3 new books from the post office ... ordered from Loot.co.za, probably the closest thing Kalahari has to competition. Well, I've tried them out now, they were cheaper than Kalahari and I'll definitely be doing price comparison's in the future! Anyway, I bought The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, Freakonomics by Stephen Dubner & Steven Levitt and Geek Love by Katherine Dunn.

At least I'll have something to tide me over till our next book club ... It keeps getting postponed since with so many girls having bailed, we need to get our books back before it's worthwhile. This is a more tedious process than one would think ... oh well.

Oh and lastly (I promise, this post rather got out of control once I started my cooking ramble) I started another blog yesterday. It's called Idiot Drivers, check it out :)