OMG, I LOVE these things!!!!  I used ot eat these nearly every day in Japan, always had some in my freezer.  They're essentially a little rice cake/ mochi filled with ice cream and they are lovely.  I was bopping about York after my interview (I don't want to talk about it) and found a tiny little oriental supermarket, mostly Japanese stuff too and lo, in the freezer there were the yukimi daifuku!!!  I never thought I'd be able to find them outside of Japan.  Now if only I could find Pino too I'd have all of my Japanese ice cream needs seen to.  Oh and if Mr Donut could launch over here that'd be swell coz I've been craving an angel cream for an age!

Oh yeah, the other thing, we harvested our mushroom crop today!  I bought dad mushroom plugs last christmas and today we ate the delicious results.  Mushroom Bruschetta and pictures of our monster oyster mushrooms over at Annainthekitchen. 

*sigh* I tried to make Italian Brioche/Cornetti this evening.  FAIL. 

When we're in Italy staying with Emily she brings up brioche for breakfast and they are divine!  They're shaped like a croissant but they're made of a delicious sweet bready dough and often have jam inside.  I think they're particular to the Como region.  I have been desperately searching for a recipe to make these lovely things for months and I could only seem to turn up two recipes that even seem to come close.  Well, strike one off the list, it's very nice but it is so not what I was after!

The dough was HELLISH to work with.  I dug out mum's kenwood to do the mixing for me as it was so wet and even then I had to add tonnes of flour to even begin to roll it out.  This dough was a right diva.  Absolute nightmare!  Took me a good 4 hours to get, well it'll do for breakfast tomorrow... and the day after that... and the day after that for that matter (didn't think the recipe was going to give that much as it did, when I wrote it down I got the conversions wrong and then once I'd started had to scramble to get it right).  Anyway, the hunt for a brioche recipe continues.  If I spoke Italian I'd probably be away, alas I don't.  But I'm totally getting Emily to ask the local bakery for their recipe.  Hopefully they'll give it to me on the basis that I'm in another sodding country and can't nab market share!

After weeks of searching for the perfect madeleine tin I gave up and bought the almost perfect madeleine tin.  As a result I have made madeleines twice in the last two days.  I bloody love madeleines!  Essentially it's a sponge but it's so light and airy in little easy bite sized scallop shapes. I may be in love!  Recipe and pics over at Annainthekitchen as always. 

Another discovery was that I am allergic to hyacinth bulbs.  Seriously allergic.  I'm allergic to a lot of things but usually it takes a while before I notice symptoms.  This evening I was putting the bulbs in the bulb vases to force them and within 5 minutes I felt like my face and neck were being bitten all over by ants.  It was awful, spiky, prickly, itchy, nasty!  I was trying to claw off my face within a minute of it starting.  I gulped down an antihistamine and the second I was able I raced upstairs to wash my face, hands and neck and slather on antihistamine cream but it took a while for the redness to fade.  Luckily it wasn't more serious than that but it was the most unpleasant feeling.  I thought the way my hands swell up and itch when I'm exposed to some plastics was bad but this was torture!

Right, I've a job interview tomorrow at noon, any positive thoughts you can spare for me are always welcome!  Legal Secretary job, could be interesting but it's a job and this is the first interview I've had in months! 

The pics and recipes for my Halloween Feast are up over at Annainthekitchen, I'm rather proud of this one!

In news that is utterly irrelevant to anyone other than me the shower in my bathroom was finally fixed today, the new one is AMAZING, powerful and really hot, love it!

Now bed before I stay up reading fic until 4am and cock up the interview before I've even got there!

I've pretty much spent the last 24 hours cooking, bar a few hours sleep in the middle there.  Bliss!!!  I'll post tomorrow aboout the epic halloween cookfest coz now I'm a little bit tipsy and going to bed!

Well, I ended up watching True Blood for nearly 24 hours in the end. I've still got 4 episodes to see but I passed out last night after over 24 hours awake so I'm saving them for later.  Not as keen on the second season.  It all got a little odd but, whatever, I watched Buffy for 7 years, odd I can handle!

Just to mention, has anyone noticed how much better I'm being with the !'s?  I used to put 3 on the end of every sentence, I annoyed even myself but I'm learning restraint and only need !!!!!!'s if I'm really really excited/pissed off about something.  It's been 10 years or so so it's an ongoing process but I'm weaning myself off them. 

In other news hits on Annainthekitchen have picked up a lot in the last week and I'm very googleable.  I'm in the first ten hits if you're looking for a recipe for Christmas muffins (which, if you're searching for those, god are you ahead of yourself!), nikuman and spicy butternut squash soup.  Yay!  If you do happen to drop by please do leave a comment as I know that people are looking but I'd love to know what you are thinking too!   I enjoy it a lot and I love the experimentation it has encouraged me to do in the kitchen, it's a very rewarding hobby.  Tomorrow I will be making Boeuf Bourguignon for the first time.  Mum has handed it over totally to me so we shall have to see if I do a Julie and burn it! 

Frodo was sent to the vets last week.  He is no longer an "entire" dog as they so charmingly phrase it!  He was developing a mean streak and other behavioural problems and it just seemed the best course of action.  Which is not to say that he wasn't/isn't a sweetie, he was but occasionally he was pushing it on how violent he could get and he was running away after scents, we assume a bitch, and not coming back until he wanted to.  The poor thing is all distressed though (as you would be!) and even worse than having one's 'boys' cut into he had an allergic reaction to the dressing they stuck over the wound! 

He also had the weirdest reaction to the anesthetic.  He is a lovely dog and has never bitten anyone, only nipped in play, even when he got snarly and growly he never actually made contact, just snapped at you.  Well, mum got bitten when the vet tried to fit an elizabethan collar on him.  He turned really really violent!  He's totally better now but for about a day he was totally out of sorts.  The vet said he'd never seen anything like it, if a dog is a biter, sure he'll bite but to have such a change in temprement before and after surgery was just weird.  Our next door neighbour Ez is a bit like that though, she's so lovely in person but she once decked and knocked out her anesthetist because she gets really violent and curses a lot under anesthetics!  Anyway, he's fine now and seems to have forgiven us.  He's got anti inflamatory drugs that seem to knock him out at night so he's currently asleep under my bed and not coming out.  I have a growling bed!

I've been going through a little bit of a funk recently.  I ran out of my B6 pills on Friday and couldn't get any more til today, add to that that I stopped taking my pill today and I've been a right treat!  I was sleeping a lot and finding it very hard to get out of bed because I couldn't see the point.  It doesn't help that jobhunting has slowed right down either, it's a knock to my self esteem even after this long!  Any way, I was cutting up onions for dinner and the knife slipped, I didn't cut myself, only took out a chunk of skin leaving a 'dent' but it was a hell of a shock so I burst into tears and cried all over the onions for a bit.  It was just a shock but I'm all off kilter so my grip on my emotions is a bit off at the moment.  I'm thinking it's going to be a fun week. 

In other news, Dad shaved off his beard today and looks like he's lost a stone, mum insisted on making sandwiches for her lunch again as there was leftover roast beef (totally typed beast there, twice) but I wrestled her lunchbox off her and added white sugar paper RIPs to make them gravestones and a  sugarpaper ghost too.  I try!

I just got back from finally seeing the film!  I really enjoyed it and managed to drag my mum and sister along too.  Mum didn't really want to go and was kicking up a fuss because of that and Robyn is home sick so she wasn't feeling great but I enjoyed the film none the less.  I am left with an overwhelming urge to make boeuf bourguignon.  I bet I'm not the only one! 

When we came out of the cinema we popped into Tesco to grab some dinner and saw them stuffing the contents of the reduced counter in sacks to go into the compressor.  I managed to rescue some mince and some mushrooms but it was just scandalous the amount of food being thrown away!  At least 3 large sacks of stuff were there.  If the freezer weren't full I'd have been grabbing loads of stuff but unfortunately I just don't have the space nor do I have time to cook anything as the next few days are organised!  It just really pissed me off. 

It is a tiny bit overwhelming... and bloody annoying!  I have had a lovely week, very calm, very quiet, little lonely in places but I got over it.  The second they were all through the door chaos ensued.  Dad had lost his wallet somewhere between Spain and here.  We cancelled the cards, called the police, the airline and the airport... then mum found his wallet in the bathroom.  Dad has lost all rights to look after his own valuables ever again!

I thought I'd lost the cat earlier as Oscar was nowhere to be found.  We looked EVERYWHERE, in every little nook or cranny in the house, we shook biscuits, we called for her, we did everything.  The only conclusion was that she'd got out.  Oscar has never been outside, she's afraid of the sky, she wants to know why there's no ceiling!  So we started running about outside calling.  I was falling apart as I thought I'd have to tell mum I'd lost her kitten.  I went back inside to give one last sweep, we were up to moving whole pieces of furniture and opening locked cupboards by this point.  I thought I'd have one last try with wet food rather than dry... and out she sauntered... the useless sodding cat was RIGHT THERE THE WHOLE TIME!!!!  She'd been hiding under the sodding duvet!!!  I could cheerfully have killed her right then.  She was very nearly a hat!  (And, yeah, she's called Oscar, there was a mix up! I call her Doodles.) 

The dog has abandonned me now that he has all of his people back so I'm without my shadow.  This whole week I have never been alone in a room except when showering and even then he was lying outside the bathroom door across the threshold!  I kinda miss him already.  It will be interesting to see if he goes to bed with mum and dad or me. 

I hit the farmers' market in Ripon this morning.  I got a whole bunch of squash for an autumnal display and a celeriac.  I've never had celeriac but I thought I'd give it a go.  I also got dad a chilli plant so he can eat his own chillies, which he likes.  As far as markets go it was obviously smaller than the usual market but it had 3 different meat producers, only one for veg but a separate one for herbs/plants, where I got the chilli.  I also got Elephant Garlic to plant up.  We'll see how that works out! 

I also picked up more butternut squash for soup, which Robyn did not then eat and I also made fresh plaited bread rolls, which, again, went uneaten!  I did manage to force a blueberry muffin down her throat, which is a little consolation.  I also managed to make a very passable roast, the chicken was lovely, really moist good quality bird.  I made far too much in veg though, but last time I made far too little, c'est la vie!

Now I'm going to sleep for a week, someone else can walk the damned dog!!

I made cream puffs today... I may be sick. 

The recipe makes 24.  I've eaten 6 and will be happy if the next time I look in the fridge there are no more cream puffs.  Normally this might happen as dad snacks.  However, I'm home alone so unless the cats manage to break into the fridge and develop a fondness for pastry overnight I am going to be disappointed.  They're not even all that great as the chocolate I put on top is too heavy for me and the cream lost a lot of it's oomph. At least the pastry was ok, for a first attempt anyway! (I'm a perfectionist so I will be working on these a fair bit I think!) 

eat them I've got a bit fed up.  The problem is I love the act of cooking and I love people eating my food but I'm not so into eating it myself.  There's no emotional perk to eating your own cake on your own.  I like the praise I get from other people, it makes me feel good and what's wrong with that?  *sigh* anyone want a cake? I'll bake to order!

She's coming home today, yay!!!  She has reached safe levels of radiation so at 5pm tonight she is being released.  This is after I stocked her up with 3 days worth of food yesterday so she should be bringing home goodies!!  I made her Date and Walnut Scones, Mini Quiche, Tomato Soup and Bread, as well as a plate of sandwiches.  I'm very interested in trying the date and walnut scones as I'm usually a sultana girl but she raves about date and walnut so I tried to make some for her.  Dunno if they'll have been as good as the ones she remembers but I gave it a whirl!!  Now to frantically tidy the house. 

Ok, chic_geek_girlhas been moved I am now Anna In The Kitchen over at WordPress. 

It's a whole new blogging world, with fun things like statistics and pingbacks and other things I just don't understand!!!  I need and 'LJ Cut' button.  I'm sure there's a way to do it but damned if I can figure it out!!!  But yeah, it's shiny and new.  Not as shiny as I would like it to become as I made that header in Paint.  I have no graphics knowledge so if any kind flist members do have any knowledge any help would be appreciated.  Paint, you guys!!!

So that's what I've been doing the past few days.  If I haven't been blogging about food I've been making food to blog about or shopping for food to make to blog about.  Made a marathon Japanese dinner tonight, I tried out making nikuman for the first time, so worth repeating!!!  Pizzaman next, yum!!!

Tomorrow I am off to Manchester to keep mum company while Robyn does some drama thing.  They've been selected to take their exam piece to a showcase at The Green Room so much preparation is going on.  God knows what, but I'm off to Primark!!!!

I am thinking of moving chic_geek_girl  somewhere else and changing the name.  chic_geek_girl  was originally me messing about with clothes when I was living in Leeds.  Then I left Leeds and Pickhill just doesn't care about clothes (jeans, tshirt and a warterproof are my standard dog walking wear these days) so it became my food blog. 

Now as much as I love LJ it's a hassle switching between blogs when I want to post stuff and it just doesn't seem to have a great food blog presence.  I'd love to be able to get some kind of feedback on my recipes and belong to more of a community so a change in location may well help with that. 

My problem is the name.  I've never been great at naming things, I often struggle to name my goldfish!!!  Buffologist has always been my staple but I want this to be separate from this me.  It's time for something new.  So if anyone has a suggestion I am open to it!!! 

In the last 3 1/2 hours I have cooked:

Scotch Egg Pasties (boiled egg, sausage meat, pastry - should taste just as good but with half the calories coz its baked)
Bacon Wrapped Ricotta Stuffing
Smoked Mackerel Pate
Cheese Straws (finally figured out how to make them perfectly!)
Lemon Crunch Cupcakes (invented on the spot, go me!)

I think that that's pretty good going.  I got to watch, well mostly listen to, a truly appaling Steven Segal movie too.  It was TERRIBLE!  I enjoyed it a lot.  I also watched River with whatshisface and his dog, I like that show a lot too.  And then I accidentally started to watch a movie about the Japanese invasion of the Phillipines... that was rather horrific actually.  It's one of those areas of history where I really wish I didn't know a much as I do.  But I turned it off before I got too upset and finished making cakes so all is good. 

I also managed to organise our preserves cupboard today, we have 17 different kinds of stuff in jars.  Come the apocalypse we are gonna be fine for quite a while!  We made blackberry and apple jam to add to our strawberry and apricot from last week.  It's a good year for jams here, normally we only make 2 kinds a year.  As such I went brambling again today, looks to be an excellent year for them, I just have to keep inventing recipes to eat them in!! 

Hopefully we should have a good picnic tomorrow, cannot wait to see Sam!!  Most of the stuff I cooked was for that.  The rest is for mum's lunches this week.  I'm trying to get out of a bento rut but right now it is time I took myself off to bed as I have bread to make in the morning. 

Ok, a bit of  self pimp here... well, entirely a self pimp actually but please do check out chic_geek_girl  as that is where I have been posting all of my recipes lately.  If I cook something that is where I'm putting it, I think that there are some fab recipes there and I hope that they look as good as they taste but I could do with some feed back and also I want other people tobe able to cook them!

I take cooking for granted as I love it so I don't know how well they read or if I've said something is easy and someone else reads it and thinks it's nigh on impossible. So please do check it out and let me know what you think, you might just find some nice new recipes and I think everything is pretty easy but as I've said I could be wrong.  

If you think it's lacking tell me what you'd like to see and I'll do it or fix it.  Even if it's the easiest way to chop an onion (there's a controversial issue I tell you!!!) I will do a post on it. What I'd really really love was if some of you who I know don't cook could use these recipes to start you off as it's really really rewarding.   Um, yeah, enough waffle here, so please do check out chic_geek_girl  and see what you think, thanks!!!

Just a few pics to tempt you:

Haven't been posting much as I've been rushed off my feet trying to be a housewife and get everything in order for mum coming back.  Since we did sweet FA in the first week we're busting our asses now!!!  That being said we've got fresh flowers in every room so that's something. 

I'm very much enjoying the bread making though.  Kneading is very theraputic as is having bread that you've made from scratch to eat every day.  I'm also enjoying experimenting a bit, even though today's attempt at tiger bread was a disaster.  I failed to make tiger bread and I also seeed to have an allergic reaction to the sesame oil as my lips swelled up and went all poofy.  Wasn't too serious though.  Tonight I was short 20g of flour so I used some malted wholegrain stuff we had to make up the difference, it totally changed the colour of the dough so we'll see how it effects the bread tomorrow.  Off to bed no, these 15 hour days are taking abit of getting used to!!

I have conquered my fear of the deep fat fryer and I made chips!!!  I made fucking good chips too.  They were exactly as you would wish a chip to be.  And I didn't get burnt or set on fire.  Result!!

I also invented a very pleasing chicken thing.  I had bread crumbs left over from the first bread I made so I decided to make chicken cordon bleu... only the cheese had gone off and I didn't want to open an entire pack of ham for the sake of a few slices.   So I had a look at what was in the fridge and decided that red pesto and mozzerella would make a good stuffing... only it turned out there wasn't any red pesto.  So I took the green pesto (yuk) and mixed it up with some tomato puree, voila, red pesto!!!  The chicken was delightful also. 

Dessert was delishious too but I only made the chocolate sauce for that:



Yeah, basically I spend my days walking the dog (we went for a walk with another dog today, very exciting), cooking and eating.  That's it.  But I'm getting quite good at the cooking. 

( Bread outsides. )



This one's fantastic!!!  The last one was rather doughy and dense inside (the 'crumb' look at me learning the lingo!!)  This one is light and fluffy but just doughy enough to give the perfect, to my mind, texture.  And it's not at all yeasty, I don't like yeastyness.  I am just in bread heaven!!  As you can see from the outside picture it's not, perhaps, the prettiest loaf, there was an issue with stickiness, but my goodness it tastes great!!! 

Home made bread with home made pate.  I feel so wholesome!!  That elderflower could have been homemade too but I'm drinking the commercial Starbucks stuff so I can use the bottles for my own... mine's better anyway!! 

( Bread Insides )
I made bread!!!  It's the first time I've made it from scatch and I'm rather proud of myself.  I don't know if it was good bread or bad bread but it was definitely bread!!  I found a recipe at around midnght last night that said you could leave it to rise in the fridge overnight and then bake it in the morning so I did just that.  It said it was Easy White Bread and after a few teething problems (too wet) it was, indeed, easy.  The recipe wasn't tremendously helpful to be honest, if you didn't know the terms you were screwed (thank god for google-fu!) but I'll definitely be trying it again on a regular basis.  I feel so wholesome.  Given that otherwise I feel like shit today it's nice to have achieved something. 

I think I'm feeling so rotten coz I'm trying to get up at 8am each day coz the animals need feeding and the dog needs walking.  With my sleep pattern it's like living with jet lag or getting up at 3am everyday.  Completely fucks your system.  I totally crashed at about noon today and just curled up and went to sleep for 4 hours having made bread, walked the dog twice and done some laundry that was me, done.  Then Robyn threw a hissy fit about going to the cinema so we argued and I caved so we went to see Ice Age 3 in 3D then had a late dinner.  While it was fun, and very funny, it wasn't that great and even with Orange Wednesday it still cost us £10.85!!!!  I knew I'd stopped going to the cinema for a reason.  Why pay that much when you have an internet connection???  Intellectually I know that piracy is wrong but financially I'm in no position to let morals get in the way. 

Anyway I'm off to bed coz I'm so tired I'm actually hallucinating a tiny bit.  I just don't feel like I'm acheiving anything.  I can totally see why housewives take their kids' ritalin, I've only been doing this for three days for crying out loud!!!

Today I have made Chicken Liver Pate, a light box, a small triangular fabric chicken and two fabric strawberries. 

 
Still experimenting with the lighting though (perhaps midnight wasn't the best time to try it out?!) and I've only got another 10 strawberries to make!!!  The chicken was a success also, I'd seen them before in shops and Charlie had some and they looked easy and cute so I thought I'd have a go. 

I eventually want to have a basket full of fabric strawberries.  Audio books and dvds are my friends for the next week I think while I go on a sewing bender.  I've set myself a little work bench up in the guest room with all my sewing stuff strewn about.  Tis much fun.  Anyone have any other ideas for little hand sewn nicnaks?

The chicken liver pate came about coz I love the stuff (won't touch liver with a bargepole but love pate!!) and saw that a tub of chicken livers are only 44p!!!  The rest of the ingredients are all store cupboard staples for me so that's certainly value for money!!! YUM!!!