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Mr Fussy's Marmalade

Rice plus previous oriental stir-fry

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Ever eaten something and not been sure if you like it or not? It’s happened to me a few times.
At a Chinese restaurant at Christmas 2006, my then-girlfriend told me I wouldn’t like the seaweed – so it almost became a challenge that I had to have some to see how bad it was.
To this day, I couldn’t be 100% sure I really liked it. It was weird. Kinda salty and crunchy. It somehow tasted like it looked..if that makes sense.

Likewise, I’ve had people give me food before – watch me eat the first mouthful and say “well..do you like it?”, only for me to reply “I don’t know. I’ll tell you in a minute”.
Normally I wind up eating some more, and some more, and sometimes a bit more. Occasionally I’ll eat half the cake/meal/other foodstuff, and still not be sure either way.

Last year, the aforementioned girlfriend cooked me a curry (although remove the rice and I’d have said it was a casserole). She did rice with it, and I don’t think I’d ever actually eaten rice prior to that. At the time, I wasn’t sure if I liked it, so as I was tired tonight and had left it til gone 9pm to start cooking, and as I have chicken in, and I bought some rice before for future stir-frys, and I have Chicken Tonight, I did a repeat of the oriental stir fry (listed on this blog, 16/09/07) but added the rice I should have put in the first time.

Quite simple to cook really. I had no idea when it was ready or what I should be looking for, to tell if rice is “tender”, so I followed the instructions on the packet. I was slightly put off as it was a weird kind of orangey-brown colour to start with. There seems to be a lot of different types of rice, and at the time I bought it, I hadn’t done any research, so grabbed the one that was described as easy to cook.

You seem to wash it in a sieve in cold water, put in boiling water for 12 mins, and wash it again in boiling water. Seemed easy enough although it loses points for making me use a saucepan lid (“cover the rice and leave to simmer”), and because the sieve is a sod to clean. You never seem to be able to get all the bits out of it, and theres always some stuff caught between the handle hoop part, and the meshy part.

I think it turned out alright. My rice with sweet and sour chicken on top, was quite a lot like the picture on the Chicken Tonight jar.
Taste-wise I’m still not sure about rice. I could have happily eaten the meal without it, although it does seem strangely filling, which can be good if I’m not sure I’ve cooked enough, to fill up on.

Mr Fussy's Marmalade

Old El Paso Fajitas – Chicken with Tomato and Peppers

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¡Arriba! ¡Arriba! ¡Ándale! ¡Ándale! (spelling courtesy of wikipedia)

“Wow!”
There was a certain look of surprise on a housemate’s face as he walked in on me cooking something that didn’t come entirely from a packet. Something that actually involved actual vegetables.
Also, apparently it’s something he likes a lot. Well that’s nice to hear from someone who I consider to eat a lot healthier than me.

Coincidentally, my first major cookery mistake since the start of the blog, happened tonight. Details below.

I chose these in Tescos the other day because you have chicken with them, and I like the overly-Mexican adverts on tv with the dancing cacti.

Also, I thought it was a simple dish – pour in, fry, done.
But when I turned the pack over in the supermarket, I saw you had to cook fresh red pepper, green pepper, and onion with it.
Normally I’d shy away from anything involving such a detailed list of vegetables, but I was near the fresh vegetables anyway, so thought I might give it a try after all.

So ingredients used tonight:
Half a green pepper
Half a red pepper
Half an onion
About 250g of chicken breast
and
Old El Pasto Roasted Tomato and Pepper Fajita mix (consisting of 8 fajitas, 1 sachet of spice mix, and 1 packet of tomato and pepper salsa).

The recipe says to use 500g, and whole vegetables, but the packet says it serves 4. Two person’s share is enough for me I think.

So onto the cooking. Cut the chicken into strips and place in a pan with a little bit of oil. I chose a wok as it holds more and I didn’t get burnt with fat the last time I used it.
Started that cooking away, and went to chop the onion, and peppers. I’ve no idea how to cook peppers and having never eaten one before – was surprised to find them hollow.

Onto the onion, and I peeled the outer skin, then started chopping. Half way through chopping (which seemed a little hard going), I realised I hadn’t removed the whole of the outer skin.
That done, it was a lot easier to chop.
Are you meant to cry when you chop onions? I didn’t seem to.

When the chicken was cooked, I added the onion and peppers.
Next complex step here. My housemate mentioned earlier showed me how to move things around the pan so they all cook and nothing burns. It might be useful, that.

Next I needed to add the “roasted tomato and pepper fajita spice mix” – a small packet contained within the fajita kit. It has a “helpful hints” section on the back of the box all this comes in, that tells you to make it less spicy – use less spice mix.
This makes sense, and as I haven’t eaten anything spicy ever, I decided to put about 1/3rd of the sachet in. Remember – I’m using half the ingredients.
I did a quick turn of the chicken, and make sure everything was coated in the spice mix.

As I don’t like vegetables cold, I left them in a long time. I added more oil when it went dry because I was determined to get some properly cooked vegetables.
I microwaved half of the supplied tortillas so they were warm, eventually thought the vegetables must be cooked and killed the heat.

Now, onto the serving, where the accident happened.
You are supposed to add “2 tablespoons of the chicken and vegetable mixture” into the tortillas, then pour on some of the included salsa, and roll to make a fajita. It includes pictures of before and after rolling, for the truly stupid (me).
I’ve never eaten tortillas before either by the way – so this was interesting. Looks like pancakes, tastes of not a lot. Saves putting hot food directly in your hands though.

I added the chicken, tried to add more peppers than chicken, to up my extremely poor vegetable intake.
Then onto the salsa sauce. I poured some of this on in a line, then rolled.
Started eating…unusual…bizarre – different mouthfuls taste different to last depending on if there was more pepper or more chicken in it. It’s almost like a weird healthy version of Revels.

Seemed quite hot though, even though I’d only put 1/3rd of the spice mix in.
Weird.
I drink some water.
Still hungry, I finished that fajita and started on a second – chicken, vegetables, salsa.
I really am feeling quite hot in here. Maybe the heating is up too high, or it’s just because I’ve been cooking. I ignore the sweaty sensation on my face and get myself another glass of water.
These fajitas are quite filling but I don’t want them to go to waste so I get a third started – chicken, vegetables, salsa.
I can now feel the sweat on my face quite badly. I give in and get some kitchen roll to mop my brow. I get another glass of water.
My housemate comes in and draws attention to the fact that I seem to be sweating quite a lot. I near the end of the third fajita, but can’t finish it. I stop eating.
I can’t understand why I’m sweating – I put less than half of the spicy bit in, and the rest is just chicken and some vegetables. I read the ingredients for the first time tonight, check what I’ve cooked, and what I’ve eaten.

Ahhhh. Now it all makes sense!
Turns out that I’d slightly miscalculated one part of the meal. Onions, peppers, spice mix – all fine.
BUT I’d been smearing the salsa on in plentiful supply. In fact I’d eaten over 3/4 of the packet on 3 fajitas….when it was designed to be enough for 8.
The spice mix – that they warn you off using too much of – seems to contain mostly tomato, pepper, onion, and lemon.
Oddly enough, the ingredients of the salsa are almost the same. tomato, pepper, onion, lemon, chili…….I think that explains it.

Overall though – an unusual meal, which was quite interesting.
Not sure if I liked it or not, but I didn’t hate it. I could eat it again I think.
Also, when I looked in the wok at what was left – there was more chicken left than vegetables. This means either I ate more vegetables than chicken, or I had more chicken to start with. As I can’t really remember, I’m going with the former.

Mr Fussy's Marmalade

Swedish meatballs, new potatoes, gravy

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…and I even threw some green beans in for some ‘vegetable’ aspect.

Tonight I was struggling to decide what to cook. I finally settled on Swedish-style meatballs, purchased yesterday in Tesco.
Despite Swedish meatballs looking very interesting in an episode of Eurotrash I saw years ago, being made by a half-naked Victoria Silvstedt, I had only first tried Swedish meatballs a few months back in the restaurant section of my local Ikea.
They came with something brown I assumed was gravy, and I was offered cranberry sauce which I foolishly took and wished I hadn’t.

Recreating this at home seemed like it might not be too difficult, I thought optimistically.
However while shopping in Tesco yesterday afternoon I realised I didn’t actually know what went into Swedish meatballs, except for meat of some kind. While browsing the fresh meat aisle, I spotted some Swedish-style meatballs already prepared. Convenient or what?

So tonight – meatballs!
What do you have with meatballs? The ones in Ikea had come with potatoes, cranberry sauce and…some sort of Swedish form of gravy?
A quick look on Ikea’s website tells me it wasn’t gravy at all. Apparently what is sold in the restaurant is “traditional Swedish meatballs with cream sauce and lingonberry sauce”.
What the hell is a lingonberry?

Well, lingonberry jam, according to wikipedia:
“is served both as jam, with cereal or pancakes, and as a relish with meat courses such as Swedish meatballs, beef stew, liver dishes, and regionally even fried herring. It has also been used to sweeten the traditional oatmeal porridge. It is less commonly used as marmalade on toast and as a topping on vanilla ice cream”.
Talk about versatile! I can’t think of too many things you could have with sausages, fish, on toast, and with ice cream – and have them all still be edible.

Well that was out anyway.
I’ve got a friend coming round in an hour, and I’d quite like to finish eating before they get here, so I don’t really have time to go to Tescos and get lingonberry jam/sauce/juice/relish to go with them, so I decided that ordinary chicken Bisto would have to do.

New potatoes on, and the oven too. The oven took a surprisingly long time to heat up, but I’m not too fussed because new potatoes always seem to take longer than the 20mins I think they will, even if I start them off with boiling water instead of cold.

The meatballs don’t smell particularly appealing cold from the fridge, it has to be said.
15-20mins in the oven is apparently enough for these. Even starting them probably 10mins after, and putting them in for a full 20mins – the potatoes still didn’t seem quite done by the time the meatballs were.
I killed the oven and left my balls to keep warm (ok – I had to have one – I lasted this long), while I did the green beans.

Eventually, all done..
I removed my balls from the oven (that’s the last one, I promise). The tray is a bit greasy and they’re not really smelling much nicer cooked – they don’t really smell much like I remember the ones in Ikea being like. More like ‘value’ sausages.
Still, as I’ve decided I’m not judging food entirely by smell anymore, I plated the meatballs, potatoes, and green beans, and added gravy.

From the first one, I can tell you Tescos pre-prepared meatballs taste absolutely nothing like what I ate in Ikea.
I don’t know if I left them in a bit long, but they looked a bit overcooked for one thing. Even allowing for that, the blackened outer coating wasn’t hiding much inner goodness either. They were a bit rubbish really. I’m not sure what the official definition of “Swedish-style” is, but clearly English supermarkets and Swedish furniture stores have different guidelines.
I only ate roughly half the packet, so I may attempt a second cooking of the rest, later in the week.

I guess as the Scandinavian flat-pack-masters sell them in their food section, I could buy some next time I’m looking for a stool the size of a bedside table and some unusual pot-plants. Definitely worth considering.

Mr Fussy's Marmalade

Ciao Burger – chicken burger

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Last night after my radio show, I broke the habit of a lifetime (well…of the last year or so anyway) and didn’t go to a Miss Millies for a fast-food dinner.
Instead, I thought I’d try an alternative local fast-food outlet called Ciao Burger.
I’ve heard good things about this place from various people – one of them was one of my housemates.

I entered Ciao Burger and queued behind a woman who may have been drunk. I think it was English but it wasn’t really understandable. She wasn’t talking to me though, so what did I care.
I gave my order of chicken burger and chips – price around £4.20ish from memory – ever-so-slightly more expensive than Miss Millies, but not a deciding factor in future visits.

It’s at this point I realised I was quite bored and tired.
I was straining to hear the radio, which considering it was playing Radio1, was surprisingly good. Mark and Lard got mentioned a lot, and apparently Colin Murray was going to be having Mark Radcliffe on as a guest later on. Mark and Lard leaving Radio1 is about the same time I stopped listening to it to be honest, so this sounded like it would be interesting.
Apparently it was going to be on “soon”, and like I say, I couldn’t really hear it well enough to linger around the takeaway for the whole thing.

Now I know I’m meant to be trying to eat better, and that was the purpose of me going to Ciao Burger tonight, BUT if doing so meant missing a good radio show, I’d gladly accept Miss Millies instead, purely on a speed-basis. Maybe this is part of my diet problem.
Sadly, everything in Ciao Burger seems to be cooked fresh, so while it might taste nicer – it wasn’t fitting in with my then-ethos of “get out quick and put the radio on at an audible level”.

Shortly after (but it seemed like longer), my food was ready, and after a member of staff assured me I would be back and I’d love their food (I guess he knew from how I read each and every poster for every local music venue in there, that I hadn’t been in before), I left with it.

Home, and I’m slightly uncomfortable about the amount of salad that’s in this.
What I wanted was a chicken burger with barbeque sauce.
What I didn’t really want was half a lettuce, half an onion and possibly some more vegetables all crammed in there.
The chicken is a lot nicer cooked, it’s not coated in all the spices and stuff, which is a shame – but I have to admit it tastes fresher, and.. alright I’ll admit it – the chicken tasted nicer.
I ate about 1/4 of it, before I decided to remove the lettuce and onion as they were spoiling an otherwise-perfect takeaway burger.
The chips were cooked – which is an improvement on how shockingly bad Miss Millies was last week (the reason I was here tonight), but they were so salty I was forced to have a drink with my meal. They’d included an extra unopened salt sachet in with it too, just in case I wanted even more.

So overall, I suppose it is better. Healthier. Although with more salt.
That said, I’m not sure I’m ready for that yet. I still prefer banana flavouring to actual banana. Really, I want the same old greasy chicken burger I used to have – but cooked better. I’ll probably just take a detour next Thursday and go to a different Miss Millies.

Mr Fussy's Marmalade

Bakewell tart and pure apple and mango juice

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I know that’s not an evening meal. I had my lunch today (sandwiches, etc), and then was surprised to pass what used to be a Somerfield store, to find it had been replaced with a Marks and Spencers. Brilliant.

Despite already having had my lunch, I stopped there anyway and bought some apple and mango juice (not from concentrate), and a bakewell tart from the bakery.
Very nice they both were too.

I wish they’d replace the rest of the Somerfield’s in the country with a Marks and Spencers. There’s two on Gloucester Road that could be got shot of straight away. In fact they could just replace the ones in Bristol. In fact I’m not that harsh. One of the ones on gloucester road. And I wish the residents would stop whining and get that big Sainsburys built too. Then I can stop shopping in that tiny Sainsbury’s MetroExpressDailyLocal..whatever it’s called.

Mr Fussy's Marmalade

Tea-Roulette and Jacket Potatoes pt2

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In my day-job in IT, I had a scheduled call-out this morning in an unusual place. It’s a company staffed almost exclusively by Chinese girls.
When I arrived, I was asked to wait for a moment or so as the person I had come to see (a man), was not available yet. I was given a seat in reception and offered a drink of tea or coffee. I accepted the tea politely, and the receptionist disappeared off to get it for me.

Only after I asked, and she had disappeared (although she was still visible through a doorway, from my chair), I realised I hadn’t told her if I wanted milk or sugar or what. I don’t know why, but I decided not to mention it at this point. I would just wait and see what she brought me.
This could have been risky. It could have been earl grey, green tea, apple tea, or any number of strange other variants.

After a few mins waiting, and me watching her cross the doorway back and forth as if she were looking for something, she arrived back with my tea and a smile. She presented the tea to me in a strange round glass with no handles – much like the empty Nutella jar you can wash out and use again. It was passed to me in a very oriental way as well – much like you might pass someone a bowl of soup – held at the sides with both hands, and slight bowing of the head.

I took it from her in the same way, then relaxed into more of an English way of drinking from it – one handed, occasional slurping noises, etc.
Anyway it wasn’t bad. A bit too much milk perhaps but it was definitely tea, drinkable, and may have had a sugar added perhaps. While I don’t have sugar at home, I often prefer it at work as a lot of people are so bad at making tea it wouldn’t be drinkable without it.

Dinner tonight was jacket potatoes. I thought I’d have another go after the other night.
The remaining pre-packed potatoes are 3 days past their date, but I don’t see what can go off that quick as they’re only potatoes, so decided to take my chances.
I realised I wasn’t onto a great start after I put them in the oven and stood chatting to some of my housemates for a while, only to suddenly remember I hadn’t made the holes in them like you’re meant to.

I removed the potatoes from the oven one at a time with oven gloves on, and prodded holes in them, then went and sat at my computer. Another mistake ahoy. I’d been sat there a while when I wondered how much longer my dinner was going to take. It’s at that point I realised I wasn’t really sure when I put them in the oven.
Through a series of guesstimates, questioning how long one of my housemates had been sat in a particular chair, and trying to work out what time a tv show I didn’t know the name of, that I hadn’t really been watching, finished, and how that related to when I saw it, and when I went back to the kitchen to put the oven on – I removed them after what may have been anything from 1.25 to 2 hours.
Beans and cheese added again.

They are a lot better than a few days back when I first tried them. Cooked entirely inside, and I ate some of the skin as it was so superbly cooked.
That’s quite annoying, as now I don’t know what I did differently, and I can’t really work out an optimum time based on tonight’s, given that I’ve no idea how long they were in there.

It has proved I can cook them to a good standard though – even if I’m not sure how I did it.

Mr Fussy's Marmalade

pasta shells in creamy tomato sauce

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Not to be disheartened by my earlier attempts at eating pasta, I decided at 21.00 tonight when I still hadn’t eaten any tea, to try some pasta again.

Last week I bought this Dolmio stuff – pasta in one bag, creamy tomato sauce in the other. You buy them separately and can mix and match as you like.

No E-numbers, no artificial colours, flavours, or preservatives (says the packets they’re in). It is described as a “healthy choice meal for one”, and apparently you should check with your parents before cooking.

So, contents of tonight’s meal is:
Pasta: 200g – “My Dolmio” Pasta Shells
sauce: 150g – “My Dolmio” Creamy Tomato Sauce

Sauce contains mostly tomatoes, cream, and mascarpone cheese. Oddly enough, it also may contain traces of peanuts. Only the sauce though – there’s no such warning on the pasta itself.

It comes with good very simple directions, and as they take different times to cook in the microwave, it even tells you to cook the sauce first, and leave that to stand while you do the pasta.

It says 45 seconds for sauce and 75 seconds for sauce. Despite me having the exact same wattage microwave, I never trust microwave times, so always add on a little bit. Plus with my recent experience of pasta going cold very quickly, I thought putting it in for a bit longer might help to combat that.
I cut the corners from the packets, put the sauce in for 60, removed, and put the pasta in for 90.

There was a funny “sparkly” sound coming from the microwave during cooking. I’m not sure what it is – maybe our microwave is on the way out, because presumably if Dolmio tell me to microwave it, it’s microwavable.

All ready from microwave, into a bowl.
The sauce smells, looks, and tastes very nice. It’s a shame there’s not a bit more of it.
However, I’d forced myself to eat maybe 1/3rd of the bowl of pasta, when even a nice sauce like that couldn’t cover up just how boring pasta really is.

Reading from the ingredients, pasta = water, egg, wheat semolina and…no..that’s it. There’s literally nothing in it.
In my problem-solving, energy conserving (lazy) brain, that seems like something extra to cook/eat for no real reason.

Someone told me once during a conversation about food, that they could “live” off of just pasta. I don’t understand it. For a while as a teenager (and possibly even into my early 20’s), I “lived” off of toast. I have to say that was considerably more interesting.

Tonight’s attempt does gets bonus points for the lack of almost-all washing up. The only washing-up you end up with at the end is one bowl and a fork. That’s not bad going.

I will say it again too. The sauce was very nice. It was so nice, I was imagining what else I could put it on while I was eating it. I bet it would taste great on a nice piece of chicken.

Thinking about that, I made myself so hungry I decided to toast some hot cross buns I purchased yesterday and have them instead of the pasta.
That’s not really a proper evening meal though is it?
I didn’t think so either, so I had a snickers bar as well.
I might have one of my healthy organic yoghurts for dessert. That will make up for it.

Mr Fussy's Marmalade

jacket potatoes with beans and cheese

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Whenever I go to The Mall, from all of their food available, I nearly always have a jacket potato. Quick, nice, and I didn’t eat them as a child.
They’re also great at music festivals, because no matter how bad you store/cook a potato, the chances of food poisoning are considerably less than with meat of some kind. Nobody dies from eating an underdone potato. Some slightly underdone potato doesn’t keep you in the toilet for the next 2 days.

That said, I’ve always found them a sod to cook.
My first attempt at this in my old flat involved me putting one in the microwave for what seemed like forever, then removing it and finding it rock hard. Repeated blasts in microwave I think resulted in it being rock hard. Possibly even harder than it was when it went in.

I discovered a while back that Tescos sell pre-cooked jacket potatoes, with cheese already in them. You warm them in the oven for 25-30mins and then eat. They’re about 80p each though, and they taste a bit odd. I don’t know what it is – maybe something to do with the cheese. They’re not as nice as properly cooked-from-fresh ones though.

Talking of Tescos, it’s only in the last few months that I’ve realised just how poor the fruit and veg is in my local supermarket.
I went in a couple of days back, went to get a baking potato, and the loose ones were all blackened, beaten to within an inch of their lives, or a funny red colour. I’m not sure if red is good or bad, but its not the colour I was expecting. The pre-packed sets of 4 potatos “for baking” looked considerably nicer, but price wise – are clearly more expensive.
I went in this morning for some pineapple juice and went to buy some apples, and the only Royal Gala or Pink Lady varieties on display were bruised. Not beaten yet, I tried a layer below, or one of the green trays behind/beneath the visible one, and found them to be going mouldy under there.
Sometimes I wonder if this isn’t all a big con to get me to buy the fancy looking pre-packed ones.

Anyway, I got my pre-packed rip-off baking potatoes a couple of days back, so thought I’d have them for my tea with a can of baked beans and some cheese. Healthy and easy enough.
I was quite disappointed to read on the packet the potatoes came in, that the average cooking time was 75mins. It was already gone 20:00 when I was looking at starting cooking. I assumed given that I have a fan-assisted oven, I could knock 10mins off of that.
If I took a shower and watched some tv, it would fly by.

Potatoes washed, spiked, and in at 20.24.
I went for my shower – took my time. Was still out by 20:50.
Wasn’t much on tv, so started looking at some random rubbish on Youtube.
Sorted some household bills.
Finally, it was 21.20. I assumed it’d definitely be done by now.
Not really sure how to check if potatoes are done, so I cut one in half with a sharp knife, and poked the inside to see if it was rock hard. It seemed soft. Then I realised I was using an ultra sharp knife, that would probably feel soft if I poked it into a raw potato.
I repeated it with a normal knife, and it felt a bit raw.
Returned to oven.
Constant checking is probably bad for it, but by 21:40 I had waited enough, and cooked or not cooked, it was coming out.

Beans and cheese added, and eaten.
It was ok. About 95% cooked through properly, which is good I guess.
Quite nice..although not quite as nice as if someone else had cooked it for me.

I’ll cook it again – I just need to find something to do for 80mins next time, and not wait til I’m hungry before I think about cooking it.

Mr Fussy's Marmalade

Moon cake

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I didn’t actually cook this. I was somewhere yesterday where somebody offered some slices of mooncake around. I took a piece to see what it was like. It looked quite nice, and “mooncake” sounds like something hippies might cook, but it tasted absolutely revolting.

I didn’t really know what was in it at the time, but according to wikipedia, the proper description of a mooncake is:
“A Chinese pastry traditionally eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival. Typical mooncakes are round or rectangular pastries, measuring about 10 cm in diameter and 4-5 cm thick. A thick filling usually made from lotus paste is surrounded by a relatively thin (2-3 mm) crust and may contain yolks from salted duck eggs.”

Just from the description, my sister said it sounded horrible.

As for tonight’s cooking, it’s better than last night’s, where I was naughty and skipped dinner entirely.
Tonight, I cooked the remainder of the oriental stir fry from the other night (froze the chicken in between). Was ok – chicken possibly slightly overcooked. Not sure I enjoyed it as much as before, but that could be because I was quite tired…probably because I missed dinner last night. I never learn.

Mr Fussy's Marmalade

Miss Millies

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I’m very disappointed with myself today. I slunk back to my old ways of chatting on msn, downloading music, watching tv, sorting radio stuff, and not getting around to cooking anything at a decent hour.
About 22.30 I decided I was really quite hungry, and as I’m working tomorrow and need to be awake and make a good impression, I really can’t just skip dinner tonight entirely – because I know I’ll be exhausted tomorrow if I do.
Thing is, if I start to oven myself a pie and chips now, I won’t be eating for another hour.

After my oriental stir fry the other night, I froze half of the chicken that I didn’t use. I had intended to take it out the freezer this morning to thaw out in the fridge, and then cook the rest tonight in a repeat stir fry.
As anyone who knows me is well aware though, I’m never on-time for anything. In my rush to get to work this morning, I forgot to take it out the freezer, so I don’t really have anything much I can cook quickly.

So I decided to go to Miss Millies tonight for some greasy fried chicken and chips.
I normally go Thursday nights after my radio show (finishes at 22.00), but if I remember to take the chicken out the freezer tonight, then I can eat the rest of the oriental stir fry tomorrow night. Problem solved.

It has to be said that the food in there has gone right downhill in the last couple of months. There used to be a Spanish girl who worked there, and aside from having very random conversations where I didn’t understand half of what she said, and she didn’t understand half of what I said – she at least could cook some chips all the way through.

Don’t get me wrong – it’s a crappy job and I wouldn’t want to work there (the girl from Spain moved onwards and upwards somewhere else), but tonight, half of the chips weren’t cooked properly, and I’m not convinced all the chicken was cooked either. They’re not even cooked by the same person so I don’t know what’s going on there.

It’s clearly a good reason to improve my cooking. Or at least go there on a different night.