My current dream is to be a
food writer, to cook and eat food and write about them so I
can persuade others to cook real, wholesome food and enjoy it.
I've never written a blog
before.
At university I never had the
time and I felt I didn't have anything to write about, and
considering I did a Creative Writing degree I thought I did enough writing
already.
But now that's all over and I'm
starting a new challenge - real life.
No longer student, lolling
around watching Jeremy Kyle in my jim-jams, spending my government money
on clothes I didn't need and pot noodles. No more laying in till 10
o'clock and rolling into class with moments to spare and doing my
assignments the night before.
Only I didn't do
that. Yes, I liked to watch TV but I was always more of a Nigella
fan, preferring to spend my mid-morning watching her concoct a feast
of "festively adorned baby aubergines with pickled red
onion, fabulously juicy lamb skewers and lusciously light lemon
cake". And I always handed in my work at least a day before the deadline
for fear of the online submission site crashing.
I won't lie, my first year did
contain a fair amount of super noodles, but I did jazz them up a bit with a
pinch of chilli. In my second and third years I had more space and
freedom (and money) to be more adventurous with my cooking. I could never
do particularly challenging dishes on Thursdays as I finished classes at 5
o'clock so I always tried to make a larger meal on Wednesdays so I had
leftovers for the next day. Those larger meals would usually consist of some
form of pasta bake or lasagne but always made from scratch.
Weekends would be when I was
most adventurous - I only did a full roast once for Christmas, and I
had my flatmates cooking with me. I feel that roasts are my mum's department and
anything I could do would be abysmal in comparison so, for the moment, I'm
leaving that to her.
I'm massively into baking, from
just simple brownies and tray-bakes at uni to my more flamboyant
cakes at home. My favourites to make are carrot cake with crunchy
pecans and an orange scented cream cheese frosting and I also love a simple
chocolate and almond loaf cake - the ground almonds make it one of the most
moist and delicious cakes in my repertoire.
I'm told I make a cracking
sticky toffee pudding with a pecan toffee sauce but if I'm honest, the recipe
is entirely Delia's and so I can take no credit.
I like quite
strong flavours so I use a lot of herbs and spices and citrus. I love
garlic so I find myself reining in the amount I add to sauces so
I don't overpower anything.
I love love love the paprika
spiced Spanish chorizo sausage and I use it in a lot of dishes, from adding it
to simple pasta with sun-dried tomato pesto to using it as a base to
a summery rice dish with red peppers.
So this was my first blog! I
quite enjoyed writing it. I'm going to try and do at least three a week so I
have something to occupy me and keep me organised. I'll be talking about jobs
I'm going for, food I'm cooking and eating and general chat about life as a
graduate living at home between uni and work.
I love baking and you can never, ever go wrong with chocolate cake.
Our uni Christmas dinner complete with goose fat roasties, asparagus wrapped in parma ham and the classic pigs in blankets.
Family
dinners are always nice to do so my mum gets a break from cooking. This one is
a turkey, mushroom and sweetcorn cobbler.
