Eat Off the Floor

American Lime Pie (Attack of the Limopleurodon!)

2009-11-20T18:04:00.000-08:00

Well, it's my good friend Charlotte's 21st, and it's my opinion that a good party is made into an amazing party if pie is involved. So, I rallied the troops (and by that I mean my mother), hijacked her kitchen and all her wonderful utensils, and created this masterpiece.

As we cooked we debated over what to call it: Tyrannolimus Rex? Limeopleurodon? Pieyterodactyl? I don't know why it had to have a dinosaur name, but it was mighty fun all the same. I quite liked Limopleurodon.

Limopleurodon Pie:
1 packet Gingernut biscuits
50g butter
1 1/4 tins sweetened condensed milk
3/4 cup lime juice (about 5 limes)
zest of 2 limes
2 eggs

1. Tip the Gingernut biscuits into a plastic bag, and release your pent up anger at the world (or your secret love of Bob Dylan that nobody understands) by smashing them with a rolling pin until most of the biscuits have been broken into pieces
2. Pour the smashed biscuits into a food processor (not a blender!) and continue on your biscuit destroying rampage until they are small crumbs.
3. Melt the butter in the microwave, then tip it into the biscuit crumbs in the blender.
4. Add the zest of 1 lime to the biscuit crumbs and butter, then blend further until the crumbs have come together slightly.
5. Press the crumb into the bottom of a pie dish, and up the sides.
6. Put the pie base into the oven for 10 minutes at 180 degrees Celcius, or until slightly browned.
7. While the pie is in the oven, whisk the condensed milk, zest of 1 lime, lime juice and eggs in a bowl until combined.
8. When the pie base has cooked, pour the pie filling into the warm base, and put back in the oven at the same temperature for 15-20 minutes, or until the pie filling has set (you can gently shake the dish (NOT HARD) to check if it is done).
9. Let it cool on the bench for a little while, then put it in the fridge for about 2 hours to chill.

Wordpull

2009-11-20T16:54:00.000-08:00

Keeping up the pace of writing is so difficult. I sit down day after day and force myself to pump out another coherent piece of mind-jumble; the creative streak waxes and wanes, and with it the quality of the material I produce. I can't imagine how old-school literary freakazoids wrote while high on drugs, or sleep-deprived and fuelled only by caffeine. Even being slightly tired dulls my mental processes to the point where my stories are devoid of all reality, and before I know it I've written something so seriously off the wall that I wonder what my brain is up to while I'm not looking.

Yukio Mishima's Confessions of a Mask has been my latest read: wacky, off-beat and sad, it follows the troubled childhood and teenage years of the young Mishima, struggling with homosexual feelings and violent fantasies against the backdrop of WWII. Mishima writes in such a way that you can feel an affinity with a character you have nothing in common with; I read this book and enjoyed it, but felt strangely unsettled by the connection I had formed with Mishima's disconnected and deranged personality by the end of the story. Mind games aside, it is an excellent piece of Japanese literature that I would highly recommend.

I got lost in the library again. Darn books keep calling out to me: "Read us Leah! Read us!". I'd say the pile beside my bed is now nearing 40 in number. Egads!

Dirigible Weasels

2009-11-17T20:35:00.000-08:00

That's my flatmate Dre. He's great. His expression reminds my stepdad of Stanley Spadowsky. He's a character from a comedy directed by Weird Al Yancovic's manager. I just heard my mother say "I think these are some very 'loose' interpretations of giraffes here". I wish I knew what she was talking about. It sounds great.

Something needs to come out of this head. At the moment all that's going around inside this grey matter of mine is: “A cat's purr is the same frequency as an idling diesel engine. A cat's purr is the same frequency as an idling diesel engine.”

I like the hum of really loud bass when it vibrates through my ribs.

There's a song called “Secret Meeting” by The National, with the lyric “I had a secret meeting in the basement of my brain”. That's how I feel most of the time, like my thought processes are all a big, underground meeting of a wacky fanatical cult, and nobody else is invited. Occasionally these meetings are infiltrated by cleverly disguised Russian spies, and that's when people really get to know what I'm about; the crazed ramblings that I often burst into are only the tip of the iceberg people, you're only scratching the surface.

I was cleaning in the law library yesterday, and the sun shone in through the window, lighting up some odd marks on the table next to me. They looked like finger marks, as if someone had been dragging their fingers hard along the tabletop. I hoped it was sex, not murder. The evidence of either is yet to be found.

The Veils

2009-11-13T04:33:00.000-08:00

Finn Andrews is the most painfully beautiful man I have ever seen. His haunting, mellow, achingly perfect voice fronts the musical genius of The Veils in such a way so as to draw something out of your very soul, and capture it forever. Together with Sophia Burns on bass, Dan Raishbrook on guitar, and Henning Dietz on drums, their sound is so unique, and unquestionably heart-rending; one look into the twisted, grimacing face of Andrews as he drawls out another crying note, bass throbbing away in the background, and you're hooked. All three of their studio albums, The Runaway Found (2004), Nux Vomica (2006), and Sun Gangs (2009) are well worth a listen - most especially the newer two, and I can assure you that they are every bit as amazing live.

The night kicked off to a great start with An Emerald City: fabulously fresh psychedelic folk gypsy punk rock. That's the best way I can describe it: each band member appeared to be playing his own style of music seamlessly intertwined with the others, all culminating in a rhythmic, almost primal sound that was filled with great intensity in every song. I was too crazed after the gig to go and ask them where I could get one of their albums - I would highly recommend them if you want something original to listen to.

When The Veils came on afterwards, the crowd went absolutely wild. I had my first real-life eyeful of Finn Andrews, and fell head-over-heels in musical love. I couldn't take my eyes off him (except for moments to admire the deliciously vamp gorgeousness of Sophia Burns), and I soaked up the fabulously fulfilling sounds of Not Yet, Calliope, Advice for Young Mothers to Be (check out the music videos), Jesus for the Jugular (in which a madly executed sound layering feedback created the feeling of having every sound wave in the spectrum being played at once), and other amazing tracks from Nux Vomica. With Sit Down by the Fire (from Sun Gangs), and a mellowed version of The Tide that Left and Never Came Back (from The Runaway Found) Andrews cast a spell over the crowd: as I held hands with the people on either side of me I felt whole in his music, unbelievably satisfied. It was the first time that The Veils had played in Dunedin, and they grinned and bowed as they left the stage after three magnificent encores. An excellent night, thanks to an excellent band: The Veils are not to be missed.

Holy Spinoza, What a Ride

2009-11-12T09:02:00.000-08:00

It's 6am, and I haven't slept. I just spent the night with a good friend of mine, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, Burroughs and all the rest; the Beat Generation tale spiralled into an Alice in Wonderland of my own, rabbit hole turned out to be quite a warren. It was an interesting little journey indeed, a sort of dream-trance imaginary world that was real once, lived a thousand times over, repeated once more in a half-lit rat hole of a flat. Some writing was done, very odd night time conversations were had, and in amongst it I was asked to prove my identity in rather difficult and obscure forms; it's pouring with rain now, I'm cold, it's so goddamn early and I need a coffee.

Cinnamageddon

2009-11-09T23:19:00.000-08:00

Finally, exams are over - to celebrate, I ended my day with some well deserved baking at my mother's house. We'll just forget about the chocolate brownie that I ate earlier at Eureka with my classmates, *ahem*. So, it's a cinnamony, fruity end of the world (of exams) pour moi, smothered in jam and butter; hopefully my exam results are not so apocalyptic as the damage all this baking is doing to my cholesterol. Mmmmmm.

Spiced Fruit Yoghurt Scones:
3c flour
6 tsp baking powder
75g butter
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp mixed spice
1/2 cup peach and passionfruit (or other) yoghurt
3/4 cup milk

1. Combine the flour and baking powder
2. Rub the butter into the flour
3. Add the raisins, cinnamon and mixed spice
4. Gently mix in the yoghurt and the milk, mixing only as much as necessary for the dough to come together (over-mixing will mean the scones aren't light and fluffy)
5. Place the scone dough on a floured tray, and cut into 12 or 16 scones and move them apart on the tray.
6. Optional: Brush the tops with milk and sprinkle with a little brown sugar, for a really sweet scone.
7. Bake at 200 degrees for 10-15 minutes

Eat. Should be served with butter, not margarine, because according to my mother serving margarine on scones is a crime.

Take My Hand; Lets Go!

2009-11-09T17:03:00.000-08:00

Today, after I relayed my abandonment of corporate dreams and money-making legal ventures to a friend, he asked me what my plan was. I normally pride myself in my goals, the paths that I choose to take - but Frost's words ring in my ears with a reverberation that I feel quivering in my bones more than usual:

"Life is too much like a pathless wood,
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed it open."

The difficulty now for me is where to go from here. This year has been a never-ending tunnel, the final breakthrough has left me grasping at straws; the journey has changed me, so that even as I stand in the sunlight now, the forest stretches on ahead, dark and unclear. I told my friend that I dreamed now of humanitarian ideals, travel and the unknown, championing the emancipation from corporate bondage: a quick rebuttal in the form of a hypothetical quandary left me floundering; he had exposed the weakness in my dreams, shed light on them for what they truly were. Alas, they were but unformed embryos, seedlings of ideas, and now it seems the journey stretches on into the abyss, the mixing of the cement into these watery conceptions is making slow progress. Perhaps I am not constructed of the material for changing things; I'm still on the playground where all the children are turning into wolves. Maybe I'll reach the end of the world one day, where I can see the snake in the mirror and devour it, triumph and expose the seedy underbelly of truth, hold a torch high and be proud in my efforts.

I took a trip some time ago, and I keep remembering the cacti, spewing forth from a pot in such abundance; the blue porcelain bowl held them carelessly, they erupted out like a tiny Atlantis. They grew tall but at graduated heights, miniature sky-scrapers, seeping out from the edges, breaking the pot with their roots. The pot was surrounded by plants, overtaken and overgrown, the life-bed had expanded too quickly, outstripped its little planet.

I admired those cacti, found them entrancing in their rapturous explosion from the boundaries that held them in. I suppose that even in my newly formed ideals I shall find a fresh goal, a novel way to break free of my own boundaries - I am a child of driving motivation, I push on into the unknown with an end-point still blurry. When facing these challenges of changing ideas, I discover new depths to myself, new dichotomies - I shall play through the next era of my existence, time-span unknown. Frost too knows the foibles of youth, the truths in this enjoyment that I now take on.

Even though my play may prompt criticism, sneering jibes at the loss of a serious outlook on where I'm headed, my searching across this vast, earthly expanse is what I am content with for now. Until I find my new way, my new goal, I shall tell those who jeer to take heart in my freedom: "One could do worse than be a swinger of birches".

Are we Inside the Pie or Outside the Oven?

2009-11-06T21:59:00.001-08:00

This world has seen a lot in its time: from the big bang to the bacteria-filled pre-Cambrian stages, the explosion of diverse life forms in the Cambrian period, the Mesozoic era of dinosaurs, all the way to the advent of humanity and the modern day. Humanity itself has traversed through the Graeco-Roman Classical ages filled with philosophy, mathematics, science and architecture; we have dragged ourselves through Gothic times to the Renaissance, the Golden Age of art; through Neoclassical times to The Age of Enlightenment, Romanticism to Realism, Modernism to Post-modernism. Each cultural movement corresponds with a particular epoch in human history; and alongside this are the political and social movements: industrialisation, urbanisation, liberalism, socialism, capitalism, civil rights, feminism, gay rights, environmentalism, and of course many more. While several of these concepts are still in force in our post-post-modernist world, what defines our age now?

Is it the rapid and exponential advances in technology; could it be the explosion of media outlets; globalisation of economy, law, communication; cultural acceptance and assimilation; biological and cybernetic advances, for example GE, stem cell research, robotics, AI?

The benefit of hindsight is enormous: we can look behind ourselves to ages gone by, analyse and review the texts, the opinions and the movements. While we are still within our new epoch of thought, it is difficult to agree on what defines this epoch. We live in an era of political 'correctness', of 'transparency' and an effort to surpass post-modern irony and replace it with social improvement, self esteem and feeling good. Despite this, a media induced 'shallowness' is hard to deny, which Alan Kirby describes as a "silent autism”. While this view is particularly negative, we cannot avoid the strangely isolating effects of global communication networks: we are now detached from social situations through our cellphones, incredibly reliant on computers and the internet, all operating within a dynamic shift from local to global production and commerce; we are losing touch with our immediate surroundings in favour of the wider world through the vehicle of technology: but is this a good thing?

While Miss H. McKinnon reacts to ideas such as these in quite negative terms, stating that this proposed discussion is "the biggest load of pretentious shite [she's] ever heard", I believe she is incorrect in rejecting the concept of discussion outright. Why not question, why not discuss? Do we really lose something in spending our time musing on and debating the now global society in which we live? Perhaps it could be said that time could be spent on more worthwhile pursuits: actual education, reading, sports, playing music; nonetheless, discussion and thought prompts the crystallisation of ideas, the dissemination of concepts to be enacted in future. Why maintain the status quo? It is us who will be leading the world one day - so why not change it?

Even so, as we cannot predict the future, the next-best option is to analyse our present and shape it as we see fit. The real question then becomes: is it really possible to examine the water in our fish bowl?

500ml of Cream put to Good Use.

2009-11-04T13:00:00.001-08:00

The pressures of modern life, especially as a lawyer, all too often have negative consequences vastly disproportionate to their worth: many lawyers turn to alcoholism, over-eating, smoking, and in many cases may suffer from depression or commit suicide. One writer proposes a novel solution to this problem: surfing. He postulates that if lawyers were to de-alienate themselves in this way, they would regain touch with humanity and thus save themselves from the mental and physical after-shocks of a stressful career. Throughout law school we are taught to think like lawyers; we learn to argue, to reduce a problem into components that we then analyse based on legal rules, principles, and policy conceptions; and we are taught initially that law is neutral and objective. Through this process, a fundamental change takes place in the psyche of a law student, which, if one is not careful, can have far-reaching and unintended effects. Personally, I fight against this idea, tooth and nail; I deconstruct my world with the aim of positive introspection, greater understanding and challenge at a deep level; all the while avoiding dehumanisation as much as is feasible. I can honestly say that personal relationships have kept me grounded, and have undoubtedly helped me through the philosophical struggles that this world has imposed upon me.

When my little brother Fynn passed away earlier this year, everything stopped. Family life came to a halt, exam study went out the window, my relationship of the time ended; everything had ground to a standstill. It was the first death of someone close to me that I had really experienced; great-grandparents had been sucked into oblivion when I was a child, but sadness never truly hit home: funerals were where all the adults cried a lot, and us kids ran around, bored, eating all the miniature sandwiches. The process of grieving is a strange one, natural but utterly unique in each form it takes, dragging and pulling at threads of your being that you didn't realise were there. The emptiness that loss leaves behind is raw, obvious, tangible; whatever space that person filled with their physical and emotional self is magnified ten fold, a huge, gaping wound in your spirit that you are constantly reminded of.

Fynn taught me a lot of things in his time: to love unconditionally, to forgive, and to enjoy small things as if they were immeasurably wonderful. He was a very musical child, but in a somewhat unconventional way; he enjoyed every sound to excess, the utter bliss of noise itself; perhaps it would stand us in good stead to appreciate our hearing - once it's gone, it's gone. Even so, I don't think our neighbours appreciated their hearing the day that Fynn waltzed out of our house, through the hedge and in through their unlocked front door, where he took it upon himself to awaken them all at 5am with his ukulele-playing skills.

Fynn taught me about perseverance. He had a lot to get through in his childhood, but he was always smiling, always moving forward. He showed me how to run as fast as you can, and not to worry if you fall over, just get up and keep running. In the past, when times were rough I thought of Fynn; when he died, terror overtook me that I had been left stranded, safety net whipped out from underneath my feet. I miss him every day, and in that remembrance I take solace in the fact that if I choose to, I can persevere without him; keep trucking on, keep smiling.

He reminded me that if you're excited to see someone, you should be excited, and if you're angry with someone, be angry. Fynn enlightened me to the joys of bagpipes, incredibly tight hugs, bouncing basketballs as high as they can go, and most of all, lawnmowers. Anyone who knew Fynn will be hard pressed to find another child that enjoyed power tools and machinery so much.

I have many memories of Fynn, but I must say one of my favourites was a dark and stormy night several years ago. It's hard to forget being woken at 3am by a small face peering into mine, asking me if I was awake: I got up, only to find that the kitchen sink taps were on at full blast, sink overflowing with water, plastic Tupperware containers, and 500mls of cream. I was furious, a massive cleaning up task lay ahead, and it would have to be completed before Mum woke up. I glared angrily at Fynn, but all he did was grin naughtily at me and splash his hands a little in the cream-water. I burst out laughing at the absurdity of the situation, and tried to clean up while being pestered to play Wii Sports by a little boy with dark hair and bright green eyes who hugged me and told me he loved me, asked me for a kiss. It's things like that which made Fynn unique - he did exactly what he wanted, when he wanted, and nobody was going to tell him otherwise.

While remembering Fynn and his lessons, we must also remember that the process of dehumanisation is not only present in the legal world; many people spend their lives working at a job they abhor for the only end of earning more money to buy more unnecessary material goods. Marx's idea of commodity fetishism (in other words, consumerism) encapsulates this process, dehumanising social relations to the point where private property and the dominant ideology of capitalism overtake and subsume more worthwhile life pursuits. The recovery of our human selves is no easy task, but it can be done: we must recognise that there is significantly more to life than materiality; there are relationships to be had, fun times and laughter to abound, sadness, heart-break, grief, triumph and joy: perseverance and an awareness of what it means to be human will get us there in the end. When we get there though, we can sit down and have some cake with cream on the side; listen to some bagpipes, and play the ukulele, even at 5am if we want to.

Love in the time of Jurisprudence

2009-11-03T20:09:00.000-08:00

I began this blog with the intention of cooking, photographing and documenting my escapades in the kitchen, but as you can see, I'm having trouble sticking to that. In keeping with the fickleness of character that I possess, I daresay this journal shall become vastly greater than what it was initially intended for. Adventures of all sorts are to be had in this world; be they emotional, physical, intellectual or spiritual: it seems I am in a constant state of any one of these adventures, some with rather toothy ends. Speaking of teeth, I went to the dentist today. Two fillings later, face delightfully numb and feeling dreadfully self conscious, I arrived at the library. Books returned: The Rainbow, by D H Lawrence, and Fathers and Sons, by Ivan Turgenev.

Fathers and Sons was recommended to me by a lovely fiery-haired boy that I met one fateful night in Christchurch: a whirlwind romance, (cheered on by literary love-making) culminated in a spur of the moment Wellington adventure, followed rather swiftly by the advent of exams and the romance crashing down around both our ears. It saddened me that it came to such a blunt finale, but alas, such is life! Turgenev is an excellent writer: Fathers and Sons follows the journey of Bazarov (a delightfully inflammatory nihilist), and Arkady (a meek but kind-hearted Bazarov admirer) two fresh-faced University students who travel home to see their respective families. Painfully unrequited love results for both young men, and their parents face the harsh realities of their baby boy-birds having well and truly flown the coop. This book really hit home for me with the truths of unrequited love that we all face; all too often the inner self is water-logged with something that can not be. Thus, if we wish to have any semblance of leading a life free from these shackles of uneven feeling-distribution, we must take it upon ourselves to smile at these emotions, grin at their irrationality and shape them into something worthwhile.

The Rainbow was a much less entrancing story, although really it was only the length that turned me off this one. D H Lawrence was criticised and censored in his time for the overt sexuality contained within his works, including The Rainbow. It follows the Brangwen family up until Ursula Brangwen arrives on the scene, after which it focusses on her transition from childhood to womanhood, and the troubles she faces with her burgeoning sexual desires and romantic dreams (or lack thereof). It was a wonderfully descriptive novel that I most definitely did enjoy; it just dragged on a little much for my liking.

Now: Lord Jim is in progress, (a nautical adventure story of a young man faced with the consequences of a cowardly act at sea) alongside the many Jurisprudential readings I am tackling on behalf of LAWS302. Jurisprudence has opened my mind to the wonders of legal philosophy, sociology and linguistics, as it has also done for many of my classmates. The concept of ideologies at play beneath the surface of our world, sneakily propagating power-play in favour of dominant groups sickens me, and thus I have begun a new adventure - the deconstruction of my world, one text, one painting, one song, one person at a time; myself included. I've taken it upon this poor body of mine to train for a marathon - in one years time I hope to be fit and able enough to not only complete one, but to complete it in a decent time (this time has yet to be decided mind you). The everlasting struggle I face against my own flighty recklessness shall prove the biggest obstacle: Seems like it's the Fight Test now, me against me. In the words of one of my favourite bands, Grandaddy:

"Bust the lock off the front door
Once you're outside you won't want to hide anymore
Light the light on the front porch
Once it's on you'll never want to turn it off anymore

And now it's on"

Milk and Honey

2009-10-25T00:52:00.000-07:00

My love affair with food began god knows when, but it's grown and exploded into today with a force that I can't come near to stopping. Pleasant memories of basil leaves, roasted red capsicum, avocado oil and mozzarella salad, tangelo cakes half-devoured in an afternoon, spending several days grinding rice with a mortar and pestle to make a mexican milk drink - much adored horchata; the effort is most definitely worth it.Ever since I was a child I've been beside the stove, outside above an open fire, anything that can heat, i'll cook something on it. I'm eager to try baking cookies inside a car left in the sun actually, I've heard they stay softer than usual, sounds tasty! It's all become a part of me, fundamental, and I absolutely adore it.

Thinking back to the days of childhood, it was icing sugar wrapped in fresh bread, taken outside to eat sneakily by the garage. I was a mischievous child, and I infected my brother with my troublesome ways. He and I were inseparable. We'd fight of course, but it was even-handed, typical childs' play. We were skinny things, waifs, tanned to the bone and wild. We'd grab our bikes and ride for hours, stopping at bakeries, dairies, anywhere with sugar that we could get our fix, arriving in development areas, new subdivisions. Climbing scaffolding got us into no end of trouble; we weren't afraid of heights, or of builders for that matter, and we'd reach for the skies in our adventures.

Stolen money from mother's purse bought us cigarettes and movie tickets, we eloped with strawberries from a neighbour's garden, naughty city-kids. My brother was subdued, a good boy; I was the troublesome child, dragging him along on my escapades. Next door was Peter the vampire man (he had unnaturaly pale skin, sharp teeth); river running through his yard called to me. I knocked on his door unbeknownst to my parents, dangerous in hindsight but I was a bold child, no fear. Luckily he was innocuous, we'd play in the river catching cockabullies; I dissected one on the bathroom windowsill, examined its tiny insides, then discarded it on the floor for my mother to find later. Around the corner lived a guy in his early twenties whom I befriended, kayaking in his pool and trying on his disposable contact lenses. Now that I think about it, we were little terrors, tearing down the barriers of house and home.

As I grew up I became more subdued, turned my escapades indoors. Experimenting with foodstuffs, trying weird and wonderful new things, I'd become a food-buff before I knew it. Baking, a fixture in my highschool days, flowered and grew to the point that I've become stuck-up and snooty, bad cakes and slices irritate me long-term: one bad cookie and I'm in a shocking mood for the rest of the day. It's strange, food's become an integral part of my existence so much that it affects my temper to no end. It's what my lovely beau calls 'dietary bipolar disorder' - if food's in short supply, watch out, anger and violence will abound.

Anzac Biscuits

2009-10-17T22:38:00.000-07:00

It had been a long vinegary-rice smelling day at work, and when I got home I felt as if it would be an excellent idea to do some baking. Only problem was that we had no milk and no eggs! Luckily I had Mum's trusty Anzac Biscuit recipe, what a lifesaver!

So, the things you need:
1c flour
1c sugar
1c oats
125g butter
1 Tablespoon of golden syrup
1 teaspoon of baking soda
1 teaspoon of vanilla
1 Tablespoon of boiling water water
a pinch of salt

Instructions:
1. Put the flour, sugar and oats in a bowl.
2. In a pot, heat the butter with the golden syrup and vanilla on low until all the butter is melted
3. In a cup, add the boiling water to the baking soda
4. Tip the melted butter mixture and the baking soda mixture into the dry ingredients, mix.
5. Place twelve teaspoons of the mixture onto a baking tray, rolled into balls
6. Bake at 180 degrees for 9 minutes.

:)

Aiii, desperation dinner!

2009-10-05T23:38:00.000-07:00

Bah, so we had no food once again, I set out to make dinner with flour and water, elbow grease and sweat. Actually, that sounds pretty disgusting - Remember kids, wash your hands before you cook, and after touching raw meat/blowing your nose/killing anyone or anything/going to the bathroom/picking poisonous mushrooms, that sort of stuff.

On the menu today: Potato and Mushroom Pie, Roast Vegetables with Couscous. Now, I know it doesn't look super delicious and amazing, but I promise, it is.

Now, if your place is as poor as mine, you'll have to make your own pastry too:
1c flour
1/3 cup butter
3 tablespoons cold water

1. Chop up the butter into bits, and rub it into the flour until it looks like breadcrumbs.
2. Add the water, and mix quickly to a solid dough - chuck this in the fridge for an hour, or put it in the freezer for 10 minutes like I did (because I spilled fish sauce all over myself and had to go change, time was short!)

Turn the oven on. Turn it to 200 degrees Celsius.

1. You get your tin, (mine was quite big, so I quadrupled (!!) the recipe), and roll out half of the pastry, press it onto the bottom of the pan and up the sides.
2. Prick holes in it with a fork, then bake blind for 10 minutes. No, I'm not suggesting that you either take off your glasses, shut your eyes, or even remove your eyes - baking blind is when you get some baking paper or paper towels, and cover the pastry with it. Then you tip uncooked rice or dried beans (or actual porcelain baking beans if you have any) over the top, so the paper is weighted down.
3. Cook it all in the oven for 10 minutes, then take the rice and paper off, put it back in the oven for another 5. This makes sure the pastry is cooked, and won't bubble up all over the place.
4. Roll out your other half of the pastry, this will go on the top of the pie.

Now, the filling!
Some potatoes. I don't know how many you will need, just fill up your dish! I used half a bag to make pie for 6 people, but we had LOTS of pie, so you probably don't need that much.
Mushrooms. Again, as many as you want - I'd say maybe 3 cups of chopped mushrooms. You want lots of mushrooms. They're yum.
2 onions
Sour cream - I used a whole small tub, could probably use more - maybe a whole large tub! You could use cream cheese here instead if you want.
Some Pepper, salt, sweet basil, maybe a tsp of each. Lots of pepper though. Mmmm.

1. Chop and boil the potatoes until they are cooked, about 10 minutes, then drain them.
2. Chop the onions. Fry them in oil until they are cooked.
3. Mix the potatoes with the chopped mushrooms, sour cream, onion, salt, pepper and sweet basil.
4. Tip the filling into your freshly cooked pie shell, then put the remaining rolled out piece of pastry over the top, sealing it at the edges.
5. Bake in your pre-heated (200C) oven for 40 minutes. Make sure the top of the pie doesn't burn.

At the same time as all this was going on, I made some roast vegetables with cous cous. That's pretty easy, you just chop veges (like Kumara, potato, parsnip, pumpkin, beetroot), some garlic, onions, salt, pepper, put them in a roasting dish with a bit of oil, and cook it while the pie is cooking. Or, you could make honey soy sauce for the veges.. that would be tasty! (2 Tbsp Honey, 4 Tbsp soy sauce, 2 Tbsp oil, drizzle over top) Then when they're done you make some couscous, and mix it with the veges. Then add a couple of tablespoons of mayonnaise.

Vegetarian Lasagne

2009-09-29T19:56:00.000-07:00

Oh Lasagne, you are so tasty! I love the way your pumpkin-licious layers glisten, vegetables bright and cheery amongst the cheesy overlay. The cheddar waits, draped like a soft, salty blanket o'er it all. Ah! And the feta! Egads, this crumbling delight shall forever have a soft spot in my heart.

Okay, so you get some ingredients:
2 boxes lasagne sheets
Cheese
1 packet feta cheese
oil for frying

Pumpkin Layer:
1 whole pumpkin
50g butter
1/4 cup milk or cream

Spinach Layer: Spinach. Maybe 1 packet? I don't know, I used silver beet. Whatever you have.

Pasta Sauce Layer:
3 tins diced or whole peeled tomatoes
1 onion
3 cloves garlic
Whatever vegetables you have: I used 1 broccoli, 1 red pepper, 1 orange pepper, 1 carrot and about 12 mushrooms.
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp sweet basil

1. Chop and skin the pumpkin, removing all the seeds.

2. Put the chopped pumpkin (pieces the size of .. er.. small mice? haha) in a pot of boiling water until it's cooked (about 10 mins) then drain it and put it back in the pot.

3. Mash the pumpkin with the butter and milk or cream, leave it in the pot for now. If it were me, I would eat some of this pumpkin-butter goodness. Grab a spoon. Eat it. Mmmmm.

4. For the pasta sauce, chop up all the vegetables and garlic

5. Heat some oil in a frying pan, then fry all the vegetables in the oil. When the veges have been fried for about 5 mins (until the broccoli is bright green and the onion is see-through ish), add the chopped garlic, cook for another couple of minutes - don't burn the garlic or it won't taste so good!

6. Put the tins of tomatoes in the pan. Add a pinch of salt, pepper, oregano and sweet basil.

7. Cook the sauce until a lot of the liquid is gone - if it's too liquidy the lasagne will be soggy and won't hold together.

Now - the layering!
1. Get some lasagne sheets and lay them out along the bottom of a large dish

2. Spread 1/3 of the mashed pumpkin over them

3. Cover the pumpkin with spinach

4. Cover the spinach with 1/3 of the pasta sauce

5. Crumble 1/3 of the feta over the pasta sauce, then grate as much cheese as you want over this.

Repeat twice more - so the top of the lasagne should be feta and cheese, three layers of lasagne sheets in all.

Cook the lasagne at 180 degrees (Celsius) for about.. 40 minutes. You should go away and do something fun while it's cooking, like raid a small village, or graffiti the town hall. You can check if the pasta is done by stabbing the lasagne with a knife - if it hits crunchy pasta resistance, retreat immediately to wherever you were and leave it for a bit longer. Also don't let the cheese on top burn - you can cover it with foil if you need to.
Hopefully when it's done it should look appealing, and like you want to have it in your tummy. It might not though, but if you think about all the awesome ingredients that went into it, how could it not taste good? So don't worry too much about what it looks like when it's done. This is what my one looked like. You want to eat it, don't you? I want to eat it. Mmmm. I'm only somewhat excited about the prospect.. can you tell? Hehehe.