Culinary Detour...

jaynie (75)Memberin WORLD OF XPILAR • 25 days ago

Well, today took an unexpected culinary turn, lol. I had planned to spend a bit of time in the kitchen anyway… veg and bacon soup, and a chicken curry were already on the cards… but things escalated rather quickly when I went into the garage to grab some bacon from the chest freezer… and discovered the chest freezer was off. Everything inside had defrosted, eish!

Over the past two weeks, we’ve had several days in a row without electricity - and not even load shedding-related (I almost say “unfortunately” to that, lol), because if it had been load shedding, our inverter would’ve easily carried us through. No, this was a different mess entirely. They’d recently replaced the electrical box across the road, and thanks to all the rain we’ve had lately, the underground cable that connects just to our house had started acting up. So yes, I had switched off the chest freezer to save power on the battery… but after all the “on-off, on-off” chaos, I clearly forgot to turn it back on the last time. Oops.

Luckily, there wasn’t too much in there. A tub of ice cream I keep for when my dad visits, some 2% milk for my ex’s eternally miserable mother who never once appreciated a single solitary effort I made for her (I digress, lol), and a bit of meat. Two things I absolutely wasn’t willing to waste: venison burger patties (technically the ex’s, but venison is venison), and a few haddock fillets… which, to me, are pure gold!!! I love all fish, but haddock is my ultimate fave… and unless it was about to get up and walk out of that freezer by itself, there was no way it was going in the bin.

So now, on top of the soup and curry, we had fish and venison patties to deal with too. I decided to quickly poach the haddock in some milk with bay leaves and black peppercorns. Once it was done, I had a bite or two and figured that if I didn’t end up hanging over the toilet later, then the rest was definitely good to go, lol. (I’ll let you know how that pans out, haha.)

I had to fry the bacon anyway before adding it to the soup, so I did that first and then used all the leftover fat to fry the venison patties. It’s “clean meat” - no seasoning at all, because the ex was going through his carnivore-clean-eating phase at the time. Yet another daily food preference I had to accommodate that was, of course, never remotely appreciated. It’s actually been quite something to notice just how much unacknowledged effort there was, now that I’m on my own, lol. But anyway… not the point, Jayne! The patties were done and dusted, and then the thought of hamburger rolls popped into my head… along with a strong lack of desire to get into my car and drive to the shop.

So I decided I’d make sourdough hamburger rolls. For clarity: yes, I bake sourdough bread just about every day, but I rarely branch out from that. Mostly because I can’t stand baking, haha - yip, the truth is out there now! I only make bread because it’s the one thing we actually go through on a daily basis. But today, the effort it would take to go to the mall and deal with actual “people” far outweighed my dislike for baking… So here we are!

And I do say “attempt” with good reason. I’m terrible at following instructions, recipes, rules… or anything, really, that tries to tell me how something “should” be done, lol. So I watched about 25 seconds of maybe four different videos, listened to basically none of them, made up my own tweaks to my usual dough, and hoped for the best. There was definitely a little “Oh my glory, what are you doing?” moment as I trotted from the kitchen to the lounge… but oh well. Live and learn, haha. Time will tell.

I know this probably sounds like a lot, and it kind of is… but I didn’t grow up in a household where you turned your nose up at leftovers. If it wasn’t growing something fuzzy, it was still perfectly edible. Everything gets eaten, reheated, repurposed… and when it really can’t be salvaged, it goes into the dog’s food (which I also cook myself these days). And if they can’t have it, it goes to the worm bin, which means eventually, it feeds the garden. Waste not, want not… that one stuck.

So yes, all in all, I won’t be doing much cooking this week, which I’m not mad about. And I’m really hoping I don’t end up sick from the haddock, because I’ve already imagined plans for that other fillet… midweek dinner with some mash and veg… yum.

As the evening settled in, I realised a full day in the kitchen might’ve been exactly where I needed to be. I didn’t even light the fire, and it was definitely cold enough to… but now we’ve got food for days, and I can spend my Sunday drawing instead.

So, cheers to that.
Hope your Saturday held something lovely too!

❤❤❤

Until next time...
Much Love from Country Bumpkinland, South Africa xxx
Jaynielea

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