SG, you'll have to tell us how he liked it. :)

Here is a Mexican-style casserole. This is the kind of thing that you can make fancy or plain. The basic idea is to layer corn tortillas with other stuff like black beans, cheese, corn, chopped onion, whatever you like. I dip the tortillas in a tomato-based sauce before layering in the pan.

Mexican lasagne!
Looks gorgeous. Make me some when I come visit, okay?

Tonight is Sneaky Spag Bol Night.
I'll take a pic.

Darling. What on earth does this mean?

Spaghetti bolognese



[or as it is generally termed in my family: Spaghetti bolllocknaked.

what does "as a sop" mean?

I believe a "sop" is a meal eaten only in England, consisting of some deeply domesticated foreign food eaten in the belief it is exotic, and eaten at a time of significant national distress, like losing a cricket game.

ah...like the way we eat "tacos" over here!

thanks, Zen!

A 'sop' is a piece of food, usually bread, soaked in liquid (i.e dipped into a broth): that's mainly a medieval usage, but gives rise to the modern term 'sopping wet'
It is also:


I think that it comes from the idea that the 'sop' soaks up the bad feelings.


It is not a foreign or exotic meal:P

Ah, Dana is so very English!

Or is that "veddy English," ?

thanks for the clearing up. Sometimes you kids baffle me with your hip hop lingo

Fo'real.

Fo shizzle! Mexi lasagna sounds like a plan for tonight! Thanks Alluv!

I've been shopping at Aldi since I was a little kid. They always have the best cheap sandwich cookies. When I was in Vienna a couple of years ago I noticed a store with an Aldi-like logo. It was called Hofer. I went inside and it turned out to be an Aldi in all but name.

Thought that was funny. I'd always associated Aldi with low socio-economic areas in the US, and here I'd found one in a sketchy part of Wien.

The nicest Aldi I've ever seen was in Newcastle. Makes sense I guess.

An Aldi opened near me. I went in and became very confused and frightened, and had to retreat to a Trader Joe's to hyperventilate over a spiced chai tea and an organic flax seed and pomegranate muffin.

(not really, i just thought it would be fun to compose that sentence)

I don't like the Aldi stores we have here. There's not a huge variety, and some of the product quality is not exactly what I prefer. It's great for catering kids and teenagers parties though. Lots of cheap lollies, softdrinks and chips.

So it's like a gas station convenience store, but on a larger scale?

Hmmm...sort of. Most of the stock is not well known brands. It's mostly imported (but then again, so is most of our processed food), but from different places than we're used to. It's kind of like an alternate food universe really.

It's good for cured meats, the sort of sausages you don't usually see, and they do a really good value mixed salad. Or is that Lidl? They're very close to one another in Aylesbury, and close in type. It's £0.99 for a 500g bag, which is much better than Sainsbury's or Tesco - I always buy it if I'm providing salad as part of any meal I'm preparing.

Oh and fish - very good for fish for their size. Our smaller supermarkets tend to stock only breaded or battered, but both Aldi and Lidl (of a comparable size) do a range of plain fish, which suits me a lot better. More expensive on fizzy water though. But I've checked every supermarket in a 3 mile radius and I don't really think I'll improve on 12p for 2 litres!

To me they're nothing like the shops at petrol stations, but then I can't be sure that ours are anything like yours anyway :)

petrol stations are where you go to get Rizlas and chocolate milk at 4 am....


*misspent youth*

We have Aldi's here but I've never heard of any of the brands of anything they carry. My friend shops there and swears by it. I usually do Kroger or Dorothy Lane Market. We have a Trader Joe's and it's ok...but DLM is better.

Clod, take your supermarket, remove all sections around the edge. No butcher, no bakery, no deli. The one I was in had no fresh produce either.

Remove all brands, leaving only store brands. But not one store brand... every product seems to have its very own mysterious brand, which only applies to its category. At times the branding seems modern, at other times it's weird and coldly generic. You will have heard of none of them.

With only one brand of toilet paper, one brand of orange soda, one brand of bread, etc. this reduces the size of the market to about a third of what it previously was. Now there is no need for aisle marking, as there are only 4 aisles.

This allows the prices to drop dramatically, at least for the things people recognize, and then this in turn attracts a certain type of customer, which the store is full of. Imagine the Walmart clientele but a little less discriminating about their products. They don't shop per se, since there's no decision about which toilet paper to buy, they just fill their carts.

Wow, UT. That's quite the sneer.

Most people I know who shop at Aldi do so because they're on a tight budget, not because they can't evaluate quality.

That was my experience; it may be affected in this location because there's a Walmart in the same shopping center...

It's the communist ideal of shopping!

State of Origin Cupcakes!

QUEENSLANDER!!! Dazza is from New South Wales, so I had to make both blue and maroon (pink) cupcakes.

Attachment 23988

:haggis:

Cornbread muffins substituting water and oil for the milk. Not only did I manage not to burn them but they are fluffy and moist. I think I will never use milk again.

I went to make cornbread the other night and was much chagrined to find that I was out of meal !

I admire you Alluvial. I haven't mastered baking anything from stratch.

Aww! Thank you.

Did you hear the one about the new bride searching in the grocery store for a box of "Scratch", the baking mix? :D

I started out from zero. My mom could.not.cook. So I am self-taught, with some help from different folks at different times in my life. Now that I'm pushing 50, I finally feel as if I know what I'm doing.

But I think Aliantha is ahead of both of us !!

haha good joke Alluvail. I would be fun to ask a grocery clerk for a scratch mix sometime but I wouldn't be able to keep a straight face.

yes and ali is marvelous cook. I've been ignoring the cupcakes on purpose. mmm That frosting is to die for.

Those flour shells look crispy. Are they fried? I thought not but they look scrumptious.

I love mexican food. I ate tacos all the time when I was pregnant for some reason. I just craved them. Not the typical pregnant food. *shrug*

are you pregnant?
right now, i am grilling some chicken breasts marinated n A1 cajun stuff and some zucchini with olive oil salt and pepper.


i burnt my thumb. but i put calendula on it and it doesn't hurt any more.

jinx decided to whip up some banana blueberry muffins while i'm fucking around

No I am not pregnant lj. This was years ago but the memory of my penchant for tacos does not diminish. mmm tacos

I just bought sirloin steaks to cook up with sauted mushrooms,onions and a baked potato on the side.

Have you ever noticed that NSW upside down spells MSN? I didn't until Mav saw the cupcakes and asked me why I wrote MSN on some of the cupcakes. It took me a minute to figure out what he was talking about until I noticed he was reading them from the wrong side of the bench.

I don't think I'm ahead of anyone really. I like cooking and I think it's something useful to be able to do. I think anyone can do if they really want to. It's all really just a process. ;) I think you cook some great stuff All. Keep posting stuff. I'm going to start asking for recipes soon. lol

That frosting is so easy to make. Just cream some butter (about half a stick) then add in a couple of cups of icing sugar and a tiny bit of hot water (or milk) and away you go. Much better than in the shops. :)

There is some kind of sponsorship opportunity here. Especially with rugby players getting turned upside down and stuff.

I hate this thread. grumble.

Not really, it just makes me really hungry. :(

The real question is why aren't your cupcakes safe for work?

Too distracting? lol I don't know. (NSW = New South Wales, a state here)

Ah, that's the secret ingredient at work.

You have no idea how hard it was for Ali to gather all those cane toads, and squeeze out the toxin from their glands, and measure out just the right amount ...

If affected, do not drive, operate heavy machinery, or attend an important meeting.

not to mention the cockroaches!

Should we explain that to the furriners, do you think?

you can if you like. It's probably not very interesting to anyone not Australian though I reckon.

QUEENSLANDER!!!

thanks!

I agree Ali, cooking new things is fun and anyone can learn. :)

Today I made some chicken tenders for my son. He likes curry so I marinated them in some curry paste before cooking.

Yummy. That looks delish All.

He ate half of that skilletfull. Must have been alright! :)

Someone asked me for the recipe for those cupcakes, so here it is.

3 cups of SR flour
2 cups of Sugar (I prefer castor sugar)
1 cup of milk
1 stick of butter chopped up and softened
4 eggs

put all ingredients into a large mixing bowl (preferably electric mixer) and beat slowly till ingredients are incorporated, then on high for 10 minutes and it's done.

Put it in cupcake pans and bake in a hot oven for about 15 mins, or you can make a large cake (or two). Baking time will be around 30 mins on medium/hot oven depending on what size pan you use.

It's really important to have the ingredients all at room temp for this one. If they're a bit cold they don't tend to rise as well.

I did steak fajitas on the grill last night. They turned out pretty good with a nice tangy/smokey flavor.

Okay - this is in advance.
Like - I can't believe I expect to eat... or, I just didn't make...

Shop bought a selection of food to welcome Mum & Dad home.
I bought far too much, which is a family tradition, but I was buying special deals (3 for 2 etc) and it can all be eaten up until the weekend.

The wheel that turns the whole meal is an M&S fish platter which I saw a couple of months ago. We all love fish, so this should be a nice surprise. I will suggest we take some round to Grandad as well, who asked me for a salmon and cucumber sandwich yesterday and today (sadly, today I was in Tesco and they'd run out).

Pics of said platter below.
I will take pics of other items and post separately.

Forgot to take any further pics of the feast.
But here are the bare essentials - in a VERY blurry photo. Sorry, ir was while I was figuring out what should be heated and subsequent reheating times.

Add to the pic, tortilla chips & dip, baguettes, and the fish wheel as above. And laid out much better, on a set table with cutlery, napkins etc. I was very pleased.

Oh - some of the labels are a bit awry, but even with the blurring you should be able to work out which is which.

Smoked a small flock of chickens for tonight's barbeque. They lived in the smoker for about six hours, then I finished them in 225 deg oven overnight in the roaster you see here, with a foil tent on top and a bottle of porter in the bottom. I'm starvin!

Dang, that's a whole lot of chicken! Must be a large crowd comin'.

Makes my mouth water.

I went back and looked again after Tulip's comment - I had the scale of the photo wrong in my head. Them's whole chickens! I thought that was 4 sections on a UK sized grill pan.

I made my best ribs ever, this weekend. I've been experimenting.

I coated the ribs with prepared mustard, then coated with a variation on Paul Kirk's sweet pork rub. I smoked it at 225F using one chunk of hickory, three of oak and 5 or 6 of cherry (not all at once, of course).

I also made up a new sweet sauce that everyone seemed to like real well.

Sorry no pictures. It got eaten too quickly.

lamingtons the cheat's way.

Meatballs for dinner tonight! (Full recipe here, if you're curious.)

What's the cheats way?

You buy a cake instead of making it yourself (then cut it up and dip it in the chocolate icing and roll it in coconut) and you still get the credit for making it all yourself.

HA! You dirty dog. lol

Are you Aussie by any chance?