yay! fries!

And now for 800 million recipes with that student favorite- potatoes! yay....

yummy oven fries-

• 3 good sized clean potatoes (whatever ya got- just... not green, ok?)
• ~3T oil- whatever ya got
• 1t-T salt
• 1t-3T seasoning- depending on how much flavor you want/ how strong it be

Take your oven and set it at the temperature at which everything but pizza cooks at (350f). Cover a cookie sheet with foil (messy, very messy). wash your potatoes.

Now for fun stuff. Cut the potatoes into sticks about 1/2 inch or 1cm wide, by the same size deep, and as long as your potatoes will let them be. don't worry about making them even, or perfect, or peeling them, unless you insist. if you use red ones you probably won't want to peel them anyway- those suckers are spendy- and it takes more time.

Now pull out a good sized bowl- like the one you'd use to make pizza dough- you remember pizza, right? anyway, dump the oil and potatoes into the bowl, and sprinkle your seasoning and salt over them. mix them up- with your hainds- untill everything's nice and mixed, and coated well. taste some of the oil on the potatoes. If it's not strong enough, or not salty enough, add a bit more- but be careful, they can get too strong really fast.

Spread them even-like on the cookie sheet, so they're only in one layer. toss that puppy in the oven- on the middle rack if you can. Wander off for 15 minutes or so. Make sure they aren't burning. check for crispy edges and undersides, and squooshy potato-ness. If ya don't think they're done, put them back, and go away for another 5 minutes or whatever. when they're done, they should come off the sheet pretty easily with a pancake turner/ spatula. Serve them with whatever dipping sauce you like. tonight I used mayo (yep, too lazy to mix up ranch)

flavoring ideas- cajun seasoning. Curry powder. Wasabi. taco seasoning. any kind of powdered pepper. Garlic. poultry seasoning (tastes like stuffing). cumin, garlic, cayenne. whatever you have in the cupboard. Not all at once.

cheap, fun, filling, hands on time of about 5 minutes if you don't kill yourself with the knife.

j.

after x-mas.

I had a thrilling holiday or three.

x-mas eve I hung out at home, played online, and did my super-special x-mas dinner shopping- 2 bags of chips and $10 worth of "mexican" food parts.

Then I ate all the chips, drank all the soda, and napped untill about 8am x-mas day.

when I goofed off all day, hunted down online chem help, played web sudoku, read some online comics, ate my "mexican" food, and generally acted like a total homebody. I think I left my room maybe twice.

yesterday was "boxing day" whatever that means. I get the feeling it's like the day after thanksgiving. So I stayed home. played online. watched movies, read books, practiced chem (yes, I do actually study sometimes.)

Today, I'm so proud of me- I not only left the house, I also returned my library books on time. It was "hot" out- probably about 70f. chilly for just standing around, but I must be waaaay outta shape, 'cause I was sweating like i couldn't believe. If I'd been wearing golf clothes, I'm afraid I would have looked like those fat old men at the golf course- with their shirt plastared by sweat to their backs, and a visibly sweaty butt. sweaty butt= ick.

Any dieting I had been doing seems to have fallen away. Getting the computer back means I don't have to go to campus for internet, which means I'm always near food. I think maybe I pick up some popcorn next time I wander to the grocery store. gotta be better for me than the two bags of chips I had for lunch. Or the huge bowl of oven fries I had for dinner.

Need to get out on my bike and get some excercise. And get a job. And find a golf club that will have me, that I can afford. And stop eating so damned much junk food.

exciting, no?

j.

crazy crazy crazy

Kinda weird sitting here (in bed, I admit), typing this stuff, to bunches of people who actually read it. I mean. Wow.

It was weird enough when it was just friends and family (when they remembered) but now it's, like. all kinds of other people I've never even met, or talked to, or whatever.

I guess either train wrecks are interesting, or I've got the only information that's not lost in cyberspace about massey and life in this rinky dink town.

So, in an (obvious, obnoxious, and attention whoring) attempt to get some actual comments-

You, strangers who visit my sick little blog, what do you actually want to see? Not saying you'll get any of it. Heck, I haven't even bothered to put up photos of my bicycle, and I got that months ago.

So what do you want? You're getting train wreck no matter what- sorry, can't write about my life without crashing tearing metal.

but... otherwise?
you want photos of campus? a photo tour of town? you want me sneeking into the vet building and getting pics? a better idea what pre-selection is like? what to bring? what they lack?

I mean, I can just keep writing random stuff. Or recipes. I know everyone likes recipes. only it's kinda a school-type blog, and I haven't been kicked out of academic school yet, so....

and now, I repeat my challenge (I did put this down already, didn't I? my ps2 dreams are getting in the way of everything else....)

to whosoever should bring the chipotles in adobo (or the el pato) to me, there shall be some reward, which I haven't figured out yet. Probably a beer.

j.

Pizza!

'cause you know you want it.

you need-

• 3C + a bit flour
• 1C warm (~102-105*F) water
• 1tsp sugar
• 1T yeast (I like the active dry stuff)
• 1-2T oil
• ~1tsp salt

Put 2.5C of the flour in a good sized mixing bowl
put the sugar and yeast in the water, and stir it up- wait untill it's nice and cloudy, you may even get some stuff on the surface. this is good.
Mix the salt into the bowl of flour
dump the oil and water into the flour/ salt and mix it untill you can't anymore- try to get as much of the flour mooshed into the dough as you can.

Now for the fun part- sprinkle flour over your countertop, and coat your hands with it. Dump all that yummy nasty looking dough out onto it. Now start mooshing all that stuff together. Once you've squozed it into a kinda attatched ball, you get to kneed. And add in more flour if it gets too sticky.

How do you kneed? Well, you take your (vaguely) ball shaped lump of dough. and you stick the heel of your hand on the middle of it, and you push it away from you, and down, too, kinda stretching it. Then ya fold it back on itself, turn it a bit, and do it again. And again. And again. It'll look like your hand's kinda rocking. Sorta.

Or I'm sure there's a video tutorial somewhere on the web.

When it feels like something sick people would describe as "like a baby's butt" you can let it rest for a couple minutes. Use this time to get a drink, and clean out and oil that bowl you used before.

Kneed the dough again for a couple minutes. Then form it into a nice kinda ball, and swoosh it around in the (about another T) oil in the bowl. make sure all the surfaces are coated. Then toss a towel or something over it, stick the bowl in a warm (but not hot) spot, and leave it alone for a couple hours. Like 1-4 depending on how cold your warm spot is.

you want it to be about twice it's starting size. Bigger is ok too. When it starts smelling like beer, you've got problems.

But now! it's ready to cook and eat!

for pizza- cut it into quarters for personal sized pizzas, or halves for bigger ones. stretch or roll the dough to the size/ thickness you want, top that bastard, and bake in your oven at, oh, 450*F or 500*F, your choice, untill the cheese is melted, and the dough cooked thru.

For calzones- same as pizza, but if you have a pizza stone, or some quarry stone, or can get your cookie sheet nice and hot first, it really helps. build it on foil, then move the whole thing on the foil to the cookie sheet- and don't use too many wet ingredients, or it'll soak thru the bottom, and stick like you wouldn't believe.

For breadsticks- take 1/4 of the dough, and cut it into strips. I usually get about 6 or 8. mix olive oil, kraft parm. cheese, italian seasoning, and salt on a small plate. stretch and twist the dough untill you get kinda doubled up ropes, 3 or 4 inches long. Dip them in the oil mix, and bake them at about 350Ffor 10 or 15 minutes- well, untill they're done.

Optional- add garlic, italian seasoning, oregano to the flour/ salt, before mixing in the water.

or add cinnamon, and use the dough for cinnamon buns- rolled out and spread with butter, sugar or honey, nuts, cinnamon, raisins, whatever, and baked at 350 untill they be good and yummy and done.

or cut the dough into lumps about 2" on all sides, roll them out flat, and bake them untill they're puffy for home made pita bread

or use an extra half cup of flour, and make bbq pizza- roll them out, then pre-cook them for a couple minutes on the grill before you top them.

Or leave out the oil, and or use some milk, and make bread.

or roll out the dough and spread butter thick in the middle, folding over to make a kinda butter envelope, sealing it everywhere. fold it in thirds, like a letter, roll it out again, turn it 1/4 (so the side's in front of you) and fold and roll it again- 3 or 4 fold and rolls are fine. Then roll it out about 1/4 inch thick, and cut it into triangles. Roll them up and you've got kinda croissants. Well, after you bake them. Toss chocolate in the middle before you roll them and you've got pain aux chocolate.

I think that's enough to use the pizza dough with, right?

Next time, that student staple- potatoes.

j.

Things that drive me batty in NZ

They talk- in the library, in class, in line, stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk.

They stand in the middle of the aisle at the store, library, whatever. In large groups.

Like waaay back in middle school, people here seem to travel in packs- wide packs, taking up the whole sidewalk/ aisle/ mall. And then they walk reeeaaaallllyyyy sllloooowwwwllllyyyy. No, seriously. I've seen dead people move faster. Admittedly, they were being rolled on stretchers, but still.

Everything closes early. Except subway, the kebab shop, and the grocery stores. And nothing is really open 24 hours except the hospital. You run out of something after 6pm that you can't get at the supermarket, and you're just SOL.

Everything is rediculously overpriced. $35 for a paperback book is BS. $100 for a rayon skirt is a joke. hell, $114 for dickeys just like the ones I bought back home for... oh, $19 at hel-mart. Just plain wrong.

There is no mexican food. And no mexicans.

The people here are all damned short.

It's only warm for about 6 weeks, all year.

Everything closes down for all the x-ian holidays, so if you didn't get what you needed before then, you are, again, SOL. This can be a problem for non-x-ians, since they don't know when the damned things are going to show up.

It's freaking summer. Everything is decorated for x-mas. complete with fake snow. WTF?

Dude, the place is just backwards.

j.

recipe o' the day

Mainly for use in summer when eggy-plant is affordable. Greasy and veggie, and very bad for you. And very little like a real cheese steak. Oh well.

Roasted eggy-plant "cheesesteak"

• ~1/2 a roasted eggy-plant (instructions below)
• ~ 1 medium onion, roughly chopped
• 2T oil- olive or soy, or veggie, doesn't matter
• 3 or 4 slices of mozz. cheese. or provelone. Or cheddar, if you're that kinda person
• 6 inch sub roll, chunk of baguette, sourdough, whatever
• Salt
• optional- sliced decomposers (mushrooms), bell pepper (capsicum), meat

Heat the oil in a frying pan medium or high heat, depending on how patient you are. I use high.
Toss in that chopped onion. And some salt. If using optional stuff, probably wanna toss it in first. Cook the onion untill it's kinda see thru. Maybe a bit of brown. The salt *should* keep it from burning, but mix it up a lot.
Slice your bread, like for a sammich. Toss it on a cookie sheet, filling side down,on foil if you don't like cleaning. stick it under the broiler for a couple minutes, untill it's warm and crispy. Don't let it burn.
Repeat- DON'T LET IT BURN!
while the bread is heating, reheat the eggy-plant slices in the frying pan.
Ok, now it's time to actually do the sammich making part- layer the eggy-plant on one side of the bread. cover it with the onions and any optional-type stuff you want. Cover the other side with cheese.
Stick this under the broiler untill the cheese is melty or bubbly, or however you like it.
DON'T BURN THE BREAD! (what? me? burn the bread? Never....)
Roll it up in the foil and eat it. yum.


For the roasted eggy-plant.

you'll need-
an eggy-plant
oil
salt
foil (no, trust me)
a baking sheet and
an oven

Cut the top off the eggplant, they're usually easier to peel if you cut them in half at the equater, too.
Peel that sucker.
Cut it into either rounds about 1/4" thick, (like half a cm?) or into sticks about the same thickness and an inch or more across.
Set them out on your foil covered baking sheet.
drizzle or dip or in some other way attack them with oil.
sprinkle salt over them- I usually use about a tablespoon of sea salt per side for the whole eggy-plant.
Toss that sucker under the broiler.
When it starts looking dry, or oily, or like it's trying to peel, or shrink (about 15 or 20 minutes) pull the sheet out and flip the eggy plants.
add more salt,oil if you need it, and cook this side untill it's brown and yummy- but not burned.
flip back to the first side, brown it, and you're done.

You can also pan fry or bbq it- bbq takes less time/ flipping, pan frying is good for small batches.
1/2 a medium eggyplant is enough for one sammich.


Is also yummy on pizza. Oh, wait, I haven't put that one down yet, have I.... Ah well, later.

j.

a bit out of touch

It's summer- finally. I've been back for about a month. I have a flat, flatmates, food, a nice fluffy bed, homework.

Don't have my computer or any of my stored stuff, but I'm dealing with that. I wander around in a slightly altered version of my "city wardrobe" trying not to look like an undertakers apprentice. You never notice how much black clothing you own untill it's all lined up neatly in the closet, and there's nothing else to put in with it.

In happy news, I finally got my pants!

In sad news, the bank seems to have decided to hold my loan money untill forever, and the library on campus is shut down for three weeks for x-mas/ new years.

Oh well. Guess I'll have to find my laptop/ internet sooner, huh?

For those of you silly creatures thinking about coming to NZ for school, I'll start on a bit of a guide soon, I promise. With all kinds of usefull stuff, like photos, and grocery stores, and how to get your bus pass. Heck I might even put in some photos of campus, I know I have some hanging around... somewhere....

Otherwise, I'm just enjoying the weather (less windy/ rainy), reading my way through the pathetic public library, eating my fool head off, and avoiding my summer school work.

er, ignore that last one.

Oh, yeah, more happy news! x-mas party in wellington with drinking and food.

but more sad news too- damn those grades. You'd think you actually needed to show up/ open the books/ study/ work on the assignments to do well in school or something.

Have fun, oh cold as hell northern hemishpere people!

Oh, yeah- Anyone coming to school here next year who wants to bring me a can of chipotles in adobo sauce and actually does will be worshipped like a little tin god. No, really.

j.

ouch, and stuff.

Been back fro a week. Got a bed, and some stuff. Still haven't picked up the rest of my junk- er, I mean, quality valuable posessions.

I'm just so damned tired. Could just be today. But I'm always freaking exhausted. If I'm not feeling more awake and whatnot next week I guess I'll have to go see the dr. Damn, and I wanted the next visit to be for my knees, which, with all the walking I've been doing, are trying to kill me. But cold and tired are more important. Much more important. I guess.

Right. Now I just have to find the energy to go home, call the chick that has my stuff, get my stuff, do my two assignments (one of which is, yep, you guessed it, overdue) and try to talk myself out of going home at the end of the "summer" and getting a job back home somewhere warm for a couple years.

But then I'd be running away, and we all know what mom's say about running away. And who cares if it'll save me a huge pile of money. Ugh.

j.