Some of the wonderful things about TNBR are:

1. The amount of work they have obviously gone through to eat, research recipes and then cook these meals.
2. The fact that they describe how it's supposed to taste (Pad Thai is supposed to taste: sweet, salty, sour and spicy...and none of these flavours should dominate.)
   
3. What would make it bad (slick greasy noodles or unbalanced flavours) or good.
   
4. Useful tips and common mistakes.
   

Armed with these tips I attempted to make my own version of one of my favourite takeout dishes. My result definitely tasted different from other Pad Thai's I've tried, and also different from the book. I re-read the passage and finally isolated my problem. "Tasters like the garlic at 1 tablespoon minced". The ingredients list 3 garlic cloves. I have no idea how big their garlic cloves are but my 1 1/2 garlic cloves was at least 3 tablespoons worth. So I tasted a lot of garlic. It's a good thing that garlic is good for the heart. Next time I make this, I will definitely keep this in mind.

The tips for making the noodles just right were perfect since I do have a terrible tendency to overcook my noodles/pasta to the point of glugginess. I was impressed with the way the noodles didn't stick together to form one big ball of rice noodle. I do think I could have made it a bit drier and with more egg (since my eggs seem to be smaller than their "large egg").

Although the garlic did overpower any other taste, I did manage to salvage this by adding a little fish sauce and sugar. So in the end it did not turn out so badly. However I'm so used to seeing Pad Thai with a tinge of red so I was disappointed by how colourless mine looked, but TBNR says "the vinegary tomato flavour is out of place". It might just depend on taste so tomorrow I am going to add a little bit of tomato sauce to the rest of my Pad Thai to see how it turns out.

Cooking time: 40 minutes (The noodles need to soak for 20 minutes)

This was a pretty scary task. The recipe was 2 pages long! Those who know me, will also know my attention span does not go that far. It's funny because I love to read. But ask me to read a joke or question that is 2 pages long and I will skip straight to the end just so I can get the punch line. So in order to accomplish this recipe I had to rewrite it into dot points first. Just like studying!

I think my pictures look just like the book, or close to anyway, But I had no idea what kind of string I was supposed to use in order to tie it all together so mine wasn't a perfect cylinder. But I will eventually figure it out. I really liked the tomato sauce, so much so that I wanted to drink it! It was that good. It was tomatoes, carrots and celery. Not my favourite vegies but somehow it worked. Good thing there is enough left over for tomorrow's meal.

This has been the only recipe I have attempted to take more than 30 minutes. The fact that I managed to pay attention for that long seems like an accomplishment. But in the end it was worth it because the steak was tender and sauce was the perfect blend of salty and sour since I don't really like that much salt.

Cooking time: 50 minutes
Taste: 5 stars (my favourite recipe so far)
Ease: 2 stars (It wasn't that difficult, it was just really messy to try and roll it up tight enough to tie up)

I went to the library after work today to pick up another cookbook I had on hold "Barefoot Contessa at home" by Ina Garten. I haven't actually reached the recipes and already I've learnt something new.

"When I lived in Washington D.C., I used to see cute young guys roaming around the Georgetown Safeway with a grocery cart and a cookbook, trying to shop for dinner. (For that reason, it was always considered the place to find a date for Saturday night.)"

Now there's a tip! Hahaha. Actually that wasn't what I was talking about. She gives some really useful tips on how to write a grocery list.

1. Make headings on the page: Dairy, Shelf goods, Meat & Fish, and Freezer
2. Go through each recipe and put the ingredients under the appropriate heading, if all else fails put it under Miscellaneous.
3. Write down how much you need, so you don't find that you needed the larger can when you thought you could save money by buying the smaller one. (I've never had this problem)
4. Take the list and a pen so you can cross things off (I always tell myself I need a pen when I am at the grocery store!!!)

These tips will definitely come in handy next weekend, especially if I remember a pen.

P.S. The steak isn't pink, that's ham!

Fudge it turns out, is not as hard to make as I thought. However when making any desserts with nuts, it's probably best not to buy salted nuts. I bought the salted pistachios because the Woolworths near where I live is quite small and they only had salted nuts. So my fudge is probably a little saltier than it's supposed to be.

I made quesadillas for dinner again, with 'ham and cheese' and 'beans and avocado'. It was very filling, but I still had room for this tiny piece of dessert and a cup of tea. Apart from the saltiness of the pistachios, this was really good fudge. It was dry to touch, but melts in your mouth. At least this is how I think fudge is supposed to taste. I used Lindt 70% cocoa dark chocolate which is my favourite chocolate at the moment. It is so rich I can only eat one piece at a time (as opposed to milk chocolate where I can eat a whole bar in one sitting).

The recipe says that it makes 64 pieces, which really scared me. So I divided the ingredients by 5. It happened by chance that I had 70g of chocolate in the fridge, which is how I came to dividing the recipe by 5. Problem is, I now have a lot of condensed milk left over. I ended up cutting my block of fudge into 8 pieces. And it will probably still last me the whole week.

For brunch today I decided to try another recipe by Tessa Kiros. I've never had eggs with potatoes before so I was pleasantly surprised. And for once, my photo almost resembles the one in the book. For those in doubt... I was pretty pleased with myself even though it was just eggs. It was very easy to fry the potatoes with some garlic and butter. The potatoes tasted as good as fries. Fried potato mixed with runny egg yolk tastes surprisingly good together. I had some spinach and bread with this and it tasted just like breakfast. All it needs is some bacon and baked beans to make this a really good big breakfast.

Today has been a day of many domestic duties. This morning I did two lots of laundry. I've folded half and yet to iron the other half. Then I went grocery shopping, which involved more food than I think I will be able to eat this week. Before I started cooking I managed to clean the bathroom and mop the floors. So I thought I'd be a little ambitious today and try more than one recipe. So stay tuned!

I really need a new pan, I don't think my wok is very good for omelettes and frittatas because it's too heavy to flip and I don't get the same regular shape you see in Nigella's photo. So mine pretty much broke and I decided it would be nicer for you to see part of it rather than the whole thing. So my Spanish omelette was very much the same as the potato frittata except it had some jalapenos in it and I decided it would taste better with some salsa on top. Usually I eat omelette with soy sauce and rice. So I have no idea what to eat omelette with, I think it was supposed to go with salad but I thought what the hell I'll just have wedges. Whatever benefit I reaped from the gym this week has been destroyed in 24 hrs since I had KFC for lunch and I had wedges for dinner. And I'm too lazy to cut myself an orange now so I basically got no fruits or vegies today.

I was lazy today, I didn't really feel like cooking. But I felt that the the ingredients were just going to sit there otherwise. So much work needs to go into planning what to cook. For like perishable goods such as herbs or vegies I need to plan my menu so that I will have two meals that will overlap in ingredients in one week so that I get the most out of them. Like one lemon made 2 meals and I still have a quarter of a lemon. I bought a bunch of parsley, and it's only used as a garnish so I used like 3 sprigs? It just didn't seem the effort. Maybe that means I'm getting lazy. I need to re-motivate myself and cook something really fantastic this weekend. Because falling into a rut is what got me here in the first place. It is nice to know that I can eat things I wouldn't usually eat if I give them a chance because even if it doesn't sound like bacon, avocado and sweet chilli should go together, it can still taste good. I've also learned that I'm not a very scientific person because all these recipes have not been followed as closely as the writer may have liked.

I also think I'm cheating because I haven't really done what I was supposed to do. I was supposed to step outside the box, instead all I've done is make the easiest, fastest, or simplest recipes. The one's that require the least time or the least number of ingredients. I don't think I've been fully throwing myself into the spirit of this adventure. So my goal is to do better next week and to cook myself something really fancy. Something I wouldn't eat every day.

Today I have a really bad headache and all I wanted to do was go back to sleep. So I decided to reward myself for not only making it through the weekday but also being motivated enough to go to the gym (trust me, it was a struggle). I am slowly making my way through "Nigella Express". I've pretty much got tags on all the pages, just waiting to cook them. So I will probably fit as many as I possibly can in the next few weeks.

In the quesadillas there was some ham, cheese and jalapenos. I don't have a griddle so I didn't get that nice lines on mine. If it burnt, it just burnt in patches. I just browned the quesadillas until crunchy rather than burning them. I then put salsa on top. It tasted really good! Very simple, but the salsa made it taste so much better.

I usually don't fry chips. I usually leave it to my dad or little sister because I don't like spitting oil. And it tastes so much better when someone else makes it for you. I have a lot of memories of eating wedges during uni. A huge bowl smothered in sour cream and sweet chilli sauce. I have decided I like sweet chilli sauce more than I like sour cream. So now I just eat wedges with sweet chilli. Lately I had been craving wedges so it was a good thing they tasted to well with the quesadillas. I'm not sure the Mexicans would have done it, but it tasted okay to my picky palate.

Cooking time: 6 mins for the quesadillas, 10+ mins for the wedges
Taste: 4 stars
Ease: 5 stars

Still listening to "If I never see your face again", it's catchy.

I am probably going through the Nigella Express ones before I go through TNBR because it's a library book and I will be asked to return it soon. I really wish I'd bought a copy because I would have liked to keep it. Everything in this book has worked like magic so far. Everything has been simple, and it tastes good. This is another recipe that worked out really well, in taste even though it does not look as aesthetically pleasing as Nigella's. I am convinced that it must all be trick photography, and once I've learnt the secret to photography my food will look twice as good.

I had planned on making this yesterday while the salmon was fresh, but once I got back from the hot air ballooning, all I wanted to do was sleep. So I ended up sleeping for 12 hours, and getting up just in time for work. But the salmon didn't taste fishy, and that is all I ask of my salmon. Although this dish was very simple after adding some more soy sauce to the rice and some of my mum's chilli it tasted a lot better. This was such a quick dish to make, that might actually eat fish more often. It involved simply marinating salmon in a mixture of sugar, soy sauce and mirin before cooking it without oil in a hot non-stick pan.

Another annoying thing about cooking for one person is buying ingredients such as mirin (ingredients that only require 15 ml) and having to buy such a large bottle. So I think I have a business idea, making a little kit that has tiny portions of spices and sauces for the one-person chef. It may be cheaper to buy in bulk, but what am I going to do with that much mirin? I don't think you can even drink it!

Cooking time: 8 minutes
Taste: 4 stars
Ease: 5 stars

Currently listening to "If I never see your face again" by Maroon 5 feat. Rihanna

Today was one of those days I was just glad for it to end. I'm still feeling sick so I'm glad it is soup day. This is the first time I've made soup that didn't just involve boiling water and then stirring. I did cheat though and "real" vegetable stock. Even though everyone keeps telling me it's easy to make stock. Well I haven't read that section of my cook book yet. So don't rush me!

Nigella Lawson is my new God. I'd only ever looked at her cookbook for the pictures to be honest. But I got home from the gym (body combat) at 7:30, and by the time I'd had a shower and relaxed it was almost 8:30 and I was hungry. This took about 12 minutes to make and then you're supposed to let it stand for 5-10 minutes as well. When I was small I went to afternoon care with these nuns and they would feed us soup and bread, so I often reminisce about that while I'm eating soup. This soup was no different.

One of the reasons I don't often eat minestrone soup is that it usually comes with way too many vegies I don't like, such as onions. But this recipe was very sparse, so she obviously left something out because her picture looks a lot more colouful than mine. The next time I make this I will definitely put some celery in, problem is you can't just buy one skinny branch of celery (one of the worse thing's about cooking for one person, you can't eat all those vegies!). I did however add half a carrot, but red and orange doesn't make soup colourful it makes it monochromatic.

Overall, I did like the taste of soup. But I REALLY need to get some measuring cups or something. I added the beans to the stock and I thought, there was way too much soup so I kept adding more beans. And I did the same thing with the pasta. And as the pasta swelled up there was a little less soup. So towards the end I ran out of soup because I didn't trust the recipe. Now if I was in a chemistry lab my experiments would have probably exploded by now, but luckily nothing has exploded in the kitchen yet. I will definitely be making this one again though because it was delicious, at least the part that tasted like soup rather then just beans and pasta. And even though I put too many beans in, I still have half a can leftover. I can't make more soup, because I still have one bowl of soup left. So I will have to think of a way to get rid of those beans.

Cooking time: 20 minutes
Taste: 4 stars
Ease: 5 stars!!

Currently listening to "You know I'm no good" by Amy Winehouse

Today I had such a sore throat and at one stage I felt a little feverish. So I'm hoping I don't get sick. I considered making soup today because it would make me feel better, but I'd already decided to make that tomorrow and I didn't want to deviate from my schedule.

My mum makes rare beef slices cooked using just lemon, pineapple and chilli and then we eat it with prawn crackers. It's a similar concept to this recipe. The steak was cooked first and then the lemon, garlic and thyme was used to cook it some more. I don't really like rare steak so I may have cooked it more medium than rare. So it did not look like it was bleeding unlike beef tataki which looks so off putting.

Nigella Express is such a good cookbook because it has lots of very pretty pictures (the most important part of any cookbook I think) and all the recipes look like they only require a handful of ingredients and this recipe took me less than 10 minutes. And it tasted just like steak so I didn't think about the fact that it was rare.

I am determined to make this again, without the cous cous. I had leftover cous cous from yesterday and I thought it would taste okay with steak but I should have made chips or fried potato to go with this instead. Nigella suggests broccoli but potatoes are the superior vegetable! So no disasters tonight, which was a relief since I'm feeling so crook I would have eaten it anyway.

Cooking time: less than 10 minutes
Taste: 3.5 stars (tasted better on it's own than with the cous cous)
Ease: 5 stars

Currently listening to "School of rock" by Jack Black

You may notice the recipe says "Sole" and not "Red Throat Emperor". I only know 5 kinds of fish: Salmon, Tuna, Sardine, Barramundi and the colourful kind. Every other fish is just fish.

Not knowing Brisbane very well yet, I had no idea where a fish shop was, so I ended up buying this fish from the supermarket and they didn't have sole fish. If my mum didn't make the fish or if I couldn't buy it cooked the closest I came to cooking/eating fish was the stuff I remove from a can. So I don't know why but when I saw that picture in the cookbook I just had to cook it! So now that I have admitted to not knowing how to buy fish or cook fish I can tell you about what actually happened.

Yesterday I thought I had done such a great job of buying all the ingredients I needed for the week, and it wasn't until I'd just gotten home from the gym and I was sweaty, tired and REALLY wanted to eat fish that I realised I didn't have any flour. I contemplated just making something else but in the end I went and bought the flour. So problem solved. Then there was a new problem...I had no idea what to serve this fish with, since Tessa Kiros decides to leave that up to the chef. So I decided on cous cous because that is something that I CAN cook and eat in case all else fails. It was lucky I chose the cous cous, because my other option was fries and if I'd tried to make fries. the damage done to the kitchen would be unimaginable since making the sauce and frying the fish and making the cous cous all at one time was enough of a challenge for me.

So in the end, yes I may have burnt the garlic in the butter lemon sauce. I didn't burn the fish, I burnt the garlic, and then I tried to cover up the burnt garlic with green parsley, and I'm not sure burnt garlic can be camouflaged. Don't judge a book by it's cover, because burnt garlic and all my fish tasted pretty good. It was nice ad flaky on the inside and slightly crunchy on the outside with lots of butter and tangy lemon. Okay, maybe it doesn't beat my mum's fish but I ate it all up without complaint and for someone who rarely eats fish that isn't a bad sign. I'm not really sure that cous cous goes very well with fish though, so I will have to research what to serve as a side dish with fish because I don't like to eat fish on it's own.

Cooking time: 15 minutes
Taste: 3.5 stars
Ease: 2 stars (way too much multi-tasking)

Currently listening to "The way I am" by Ingrid Michaelson.

Today was a pretty productive morning. I'd figured out which projects I was going to attempt this week, bought all the ingredients I needed and I even bought myself two pars of shoes before I made myself a frittata for brunch. It doesn't look like the other frittatas I googled but I have decided it was because my pan was too big so it looked like I did not have enough egg. Even though I divided all the ingredients according to serving size.

A frittata is just an omelette with more filling inside and you're supposed to leave it in the oven, a bit like a quiche without the pastry. So it wouldn't call this an absolute disaster. It still tasted moist and firm like the recipe says and it tastes like egg, potato, cheddar and thyme. I probably would use a different pan next time though. I will attempt a different frittata another time once I buy a different sized pan. It's also a bit boring on it's own. This would be because I didn't read the book properly because TBNR section on fritattas also suggests serving with potatoes, vegetable side dish and/or a leafy salad. Which probably would have made it more interesting to eat and aesthetically as well.

After all the cleaning I have done today I don't think I will be cooking myself anything tonight. I will instead finish off my leftover noodles.

Currently listening to "Overboard" by Ingrid Michaelson

One of the things that anyone moving out for the first time has to face is ... the kitchen. Sure I'd been in there before to make toast, boil water for my tea or instant noodles, re-heat stuff in the microwave and I've even baked on several occasions. So it's not like I'm a total n00b in the kitchen. But I'm not much of a cook. Or rather I don't know what to cook. How did my mother ever do it? For me, food has recently lost it's spark because I could only make like 10 things. Sure it's 10 more then some people, but when you have to eat 365 dinners a year, 10 becomes a very boring number.

By now some of you may have heard me talking about a book I recently finished reading: Julie and Julia by Julie Powell. For those of you who have not read it yet, it is about a woman who feels that she is stuck in a rut where she doesn't love her job and she feels that at the age of 30 she has not accomplished anything in her life. So she decides she's going to cook 500 French gourmet recipes from an iconic cookbook "Mastering the art of French cooking". As if that wasn't crazy enough, she planned to accomplish this all in a year. And it changed her life.

So I'm not attempting to follow in her footsteps. I don't think I could even handle 365 recipes, let alone 500. And I'm not sure I could stomach French cuisine (you can keep your livers and brains!). I love my job more than I hate it, but maybe I am in a bit of a rut. Maybe I just need something to look forward to on a day to day basis other than waking up, going to work, going to the gym, eating, surfing the net/reading a book, going to sleep and then repeat.

So Viv and I have decided to push the limits of our culinary skills before we attempt French cuisine. The book we finally decided on is "The New Best Recipe". If you're ever in a Borders, have a look for it. It's the book that resembles a dictionary with so many words that it probably has the words 'fashionista' and 'supercalifragilisticexpialidoceous' in it. There's only about 1000 recipes in it typed in size 8 font and 0 photos. For our own sanity, I can assure you we're not planning on making it all through 1000 recipes and especially not in the next year or 2 even. I don't think there is even a plan. I think the idea is just to find something exciting to look forward to and plan for.

So, this is it.