The Susanne

I awoke this morn­ing feel­ing fam­ished. And a little ill. After care­fully weigh­ing my options I decided to stay at home and write off today as an invest­ment in better health the rest of the week. After a few hours of relax­a­tion and Gilmore Girls I decided it was time to head to the super­mar­ket for some­thing to stave off the unbear­able hunger. I wanted to get fresh eggs, some bacon and maybe some veget­ables, although my fridge was already packed with the stuff. What I ended up buying was a kilo of mus­sels! Yum! Just from seeing the little nets of fresh, lovely mus­sels my stom­ach did a little flip and my mouth watered. I ran home and made Cozze alla Mar­in­ara. By the time it was done my hands were shak­ing so badly I couldn’t lift the spoon to my mouth without spill­ing. But some­how I man­aged to get a whole, deli­cious bowl down, the shak­ing stopped and I feel so good! There really is noth­ing like some fresh sea­food to turn a bad day around.

I had to make some slight changes to the recipe today as the market didn’t have any fresh pars­ley (what the?!) so I used a little dried pars­ley and then added some fresh cil­antro. I prob­ably should have left the cil­antro out, but the fresh chili I added with the tomato really gave the dish some lovely heat. In fact, I think I just might have room for one more bowl ;)

After a long day at uni filled with frus­tra­tions and with no oppor­tun­ity for eating (from 10 am till 4 pm) I got home crav­ing some­thing filling and autumny. A quick stop at the super­mar­ket gave me the answer: Shepherd’s Pie! Mmmm! I used Gordon Ramsay’s recipe with a few alter­a­tions: I used twice the amount of both onion and carrot, as well as loads of green beans, as I wanted more veget­ables. I also didn’t grate the onion and carrot, but rather chopped them quite finely so that I had small pieces which still had some ‘bite’ to them. Lastly I changed the butter for non-​dairy mar­gar­ine. It turned out great! This is one meal I won’t mind eating night after night (as there’s so much it’ll prob­ably take me all week to finish)– no prob­lem at all with some­thing as good as this!

My oral exam for the phon­et­ics course went really well. It was basic­ally just a pro­nun­ci­ation test and I do have pretty good pro­nun­ci­ation. My lec­turer opened by saying it was really a little unfair to those of us who had to do the test this early in the semester as we haven’t covered the things we’re being tested in, but that she didn’t think I’d have any trouble as I’d prob­ably just get it right instinct­ively. Which I took as a com­pli­ment! And I did get it all right. She said she noticed a hint of my Aus­tralian accent as I pro­nounced the name ‘Carl’, and my Scot­tish accent as I said ‘Scotland’. I was intrigued by the fact that she was able to point it out so accur­ately and explain to me how and why she noticed it. I really like her, she and Juan (my lec­turer in Shakespeare) are my def­in­ite favour­ites this semester. I really love having lec­tur­ers that inspire me to do well. I notice it more and more, but espe­cially this semester as it’s the last semester of my BA — that extra little incent­ive to do well really does make a dif­fer­ence in the amount of effort I put down! Now let’s just hope my inspir­a­tion stays up until the end of the semester and through­out the exam period, and I’ll be look­ing at some pretty spec­tac­u­lar exam res­ults. Yey! (Yea please bear with me and let me toot my own horn a little. I’ve no one else doing it for me at the moment ;) )

As I made may­on­naise last night I had a couple of egg whites left over. Of course, this meant egg white omelette for break­fast! Quick, easy, yummy and good for you, what’s not to love about egg white omelettes? What I did was I sautéed some chopped green beans, added a little chopped leek and then the egg whites which I’d whipped up a little with some salt and pepper. I cooked it for a few minutes on each side then grated some parmesan over the top — good­ness me, it was deli­cious! And I don’t feel heavy-​full as eggs usu­ally make me feel. Lovely :) I feel ready for any­thing this day can bring! (Such as a four hour sem­inar on The Winter’s Tale, a quick pro­nun­ci­ation test for my phon­et­ics course and the biweekly edit­or­ial meet­ing of Filo­lo­gen. Life is good!)

I have always believed that the sign of a bril­liant week­end is a hor­rible hangover. I’ve def­in­itely one of those today. Last night’s house warm­ing party at my sister’s new place (she moved in with our friend Karo) was loads of fun, but unfor­tu­nately also loaded with alco­hol. I think I must have had about a litre too much wine. And I’m def­in­itely feel­ing it today. Not going to go into par­tic­u­lars but I’ll share one little anec­dote from my morning:

I made pop­corn whilst lying on the floor to stop myself being sick. Truth. Oh, and there is a sofa in my kit­chen. It has lovely, soft cush­ions. It was just too far from the stove whereas the floor was, well, right there…

So I’ve been want­ing to make spa­ghetti and meat­balls for a while now, but some­how things have just got in the way. Such as the liver exper­i­ment. But today I had noth­ing else on my plate, so to speak. Well, except for the Joyce present­a­tion I’m pre­par­ing for tomor­row. Anywho, after seeing that funny clip of the kid doing the Gordon Ramsay impres­sion, I decided to look through my Gordon cook­book to see if he had a good recipe for meat­balls. There was none in there, but I did find a recipe for tomato soup which reminded me of the tomato sauce mum usu­ally makes. It’s basic­ally toma­toes roas­ted with onion, garlic and fresh herbs. Lovely. So I did that, and found a good recipe for meat­balls in one of my ‘Sicilian cookery’-cookbooks that I got in Sicily. Yea, I got two. I can’t help it, I’m a food nerd. Then I invited The Ex over for dinner — as I know he appre­ci­ates a good bowl of spa­ghetti. And boy, did he appre­ci­ate it!

I must admit I think this is my best spa­ghetti so far, and trust me, I’ve made many. Spa­ghetti has been my staple dish for a long time, the one I’ve turned to when inspir­a­tion was lack­ing and the one I’ve exper­i­mented with the most. Always with tomato sauce, by the way. Ser­i­ously, though, I don’t think I’ll need to exper­i­ment any fur­ther. This was abso­lutely scrump­tious! The sauce tasted divine, which I put down to the roast­ing. Roas­ted veget­ables just seem to have that extra little bam! about them. Will def­in­itely keep making tomato sauce this way — thanks mum and Gordon! The meat­balls were fant­astic: tasty, moist, and incred­ibly fla­vour­ful. Mmmmm! I’ll post the recipe for both the sauce and the meat­balls on the recipes page as soon as I get around to it. No time today — must pre­pare for my presentation!