Last night Tim and I went to his friend’s 21st party in Palmerston North. We had a fantastic time and ate and drank like lords. I thought that I would show you a picture of the staggeringly enormous birthday cake – it was about 2ft wide!

Above: As Wesley in the Princess Bride would say: “I have never seen its equal.”

It took us forever to get back to Wellington on the bus, mostly because of the incompetent boobery of our driver. However my faith in bus drivers was restored when Tim and I, weary with carrying our heavy load and longing to get home, emerged from the railway station, hobbled across the road, and saw the bus that goes up to our flat about to take off in the distance. I ran towards it and waved it down and the driver actually stopped and let us on. The fact that buses that go up our way only come around once an hour on Sunday made this victory extra sweet.

Am very, very tired so no update tonight. (She says, presuming people are actually out there on tenterhooks awaiting my every word.) The exam is over, which is such a great feeling, I wish I could bottle it. Eau d’temporary freedom. Anyway, you will find out about tonight’s dinner tomorrow, but in the meantime, here’s what we did tonight –

Tim is off at his awkwardly early staff Christmas party, to which partners (ie me!) are not invited. With him is the camera you see, and since I forgot to upload the latest photos it will be a wee while before you can see how the roasted pork turned out, and indeed, the Thai stirfry with cubes of leftover roast pork that we had for dinner the next night.

All is not lost though, because as per usual, I have plenty to ruminate upon. I walked into town with Tim today, and left him at Starbucks to begin his shift while I went off to wander round town, clutching my complimentary Chai steamed soy milk. It was cold and drizzly today- the perfect weather to be inhaling the spicy gingerbread scent of Chai. While on a fruitless mission locating Kilner jars (for Christmas food projects!) I ended up in Kirkcaldie and Staines – a place I don’t really frequent for fear of knocking over something expensive, or having some long thin woman look down her long thin nose at me.

However, in their “Cuisine” section, I found the place where I want Santa to visit for me this year. It’s as though they read all of Nigella’s books, wrote down everything she uses, and then sourced it out for this shop.

I found all manner of enticing goodies including (not exclusively, by the way, I’m sure I’ve forgotten a few things in the excitement):

-Dried Trompette De Mort mushrooms, sold 25g at a time, along with chantarelles and porcini
-Beautiful glace fruit, glistening with sugar; Orange slices, figs, and muscatel grapes
-Gelatine leaves
-Carnaroli Rice (like arborio rice for risotto, but well, more expensive)
-Tiny sugar flowers for decorating cupcakes
-Smoked paprika
-Canned chesnuts, whole and pureed (I was lucky enough to get a can of them last Christmas)
-Mushroom Ketchup, something that has presented a giant question mark in my mind since Nigella mentioned it in How To Eat…well, it exists!

In the cookware section I salivated over copper pots, mini bundt and savarin tins (although what on earth would I do with them?) ceramic pie weights for blind baking and of course, Nigella’s range of Living Kitchen gear. I had a moment of wishing I could buy the lot (singing “If I were a rich wo-man, do do do de do de do de do de deeee) but sometimes it is nice just to dream, and happily I felt satisfied and inspired, rather than resentful and skint. In the end I bought a present for Tim – some very classy looking sugar-free shortbread. The man before me at the checkout had bought some leaf gelatine, but he didn’t look at all pleased about it like I would have. I suppressed the temptation to say to him, “Isn’t it a trifle off-putting that in large letters the label states that the main ingredient is pig skin?” Maybe he’d already noticed.

Thus, with my Starbucks takeaway cup and Kirk’s bag I must have looked a lot richer than I really am, strolling down the road.

In other news, after seeing the headlines in the Dominion Post (can’t remember specifically, but it was tantamount to “The End Is Nigh and nothing you can do will stop it”) I unplugged all possible power cords at our flat, and quaked nervously for a bit. Our flat is actually pretty green – most of our lightbulbs are the aforementioned long lasting ones, we recycle religously, we only use cold water in the washing machine, we only buy free range eggs, do all our groceries in one go (less car trips!) and anyone who leaves a lightbulb on while out of their room gets a withering look. I know every bit helps, but it’s not easy to keep from freaking out at such headlines as the Dom Post had. I do, however, see the irony of doing all this while drooling over imported foreign Nigella-friendly food items…c’est la vie…

Hoorah! This page has had 200 views! Not bad considering I have about 4 readers. Also exciting is that this blog has been around long enough to have archive pages…

The 200th view may or may not have had something to do with me clicking the ‘refresh’ button…

I am a person who likes to tick their recipes as they cook them. I enjoy looking over a cookbook peppered with notes and markings – it shows that the book is being used, and loved, not to mention that it shows what recipes I had particular success with. Keeping them pristine and smudge-free just doesn’t interest me. While perusing the Supersavers Cookbook for the Cauliflower Bread recipe to tick off, it struck me just how many fantastically awful sounding recipes this book has. After receiving my paternal Grandma’s Aunt Daisy cookbook I was particularly taken by some of the recipes – Simple Tart and Wholemeal Prune Surprise being among the more amusing – but the Supersavers Cookbook, despite being published a mere 27 years ago, completely trumps Aunt Daisy. I entirely forgot about looking for the Cauliflower Bread and instead immersed myself in compiling this list of the following recipe titles which actually exist in the book. None are made up…

• Curried Apple Soup
• Beef in Fruit Sauce
• Red Flannel Hash
• Potted Bloaters
• Oatmeal and Carrot Soup (might go well with wholemeal gravy, Mum…)
• Cucumber and Beer Soup
• Jellied Fish Mould
• Prune Mousse

And the piece de resistance –

Pigs Hearts A L’Orange!

What the!?

Aka, an outlet for my desire to talk about food, or the ultimate procrastination tool.
I thought long and hard and asked for the brutally honest opinion of those around me before getting started with this – for one thing, does the world need another food blog? There are millions! With really classy photographs as well! What on earth do I have to offer the world?

For one thing I think the perspective of a student living on a budget could be interesting. Okay, so not every student’s budget allows for pink peppercorns, cardamom pods and Boyajian orange oil but…For another thing, when I was living overseas I loved writing about what I had been up to and emailing it out to friends and family who were, to my surprise and delight, only too happy to hear what I had to say (at great length more often than not – as some wit said, “If I’d had more time I’d have written a shorter letter.”) As I am flatting in Wellington now and going to uni, there isn’t so much call for me to send out massive epistles, so perhaps this blog can be a natural transition – presuming people are interested in what I have been having for dinner (and trust me, I’ll tell you about it anyway.)

Anyway, my hopes for this blog is that people will actually read it, that it will be fun to read, and that it will bring something new to the world of cooking blogs, without being an extended love letter to Nigella Lawson (I use non-Nigella cookbooks sometimes!). The title itself is a little tongue in cheek – there was a long period of time last year where pretty much all we ate was rice, but things are easier now that we are in a slightly less dodgy flat. It is also a line in a song from one of my favourite musicals, Rent, (I don’t know why, but I am always embarrassed to admit I love this) and seems to embody the whole student aesthetic rather snappily.

Cooking dinner is certainly one of the things I look forward to most (interjection from Tim in a hopeful voice: “apart from coming home from work to see me?”) and, as Nigella Lawson (well, who else?) says in Feast, “How we eat and what we eat lies at the heart of who we are – as individuals, families, communities.”

When it comes down to it, what I have been up to lately and what I have been cooking are often the same thing.

And thus, my entry into the world of blogging begins.