More Cooking

Buns recipe that is apparently amazingly delicious:

Nova Scotia Oatmeal Rolls

Also:

Challah Rolls (4 egg yolks)
Pavlova (4 egg whites)

Zotero, Bread, and Burgers

One of these things is not like the others...

First, I am thinking I will use Zotero as a citation manager. Since I use Scrivener a lot, I think I will have to refer to these posts soon enough:

How to use Zotero (with Scrivener)
Zotero and Scrivener
some tips for thesis-writing on Scrivener

Secondly, I want to make bread, but I don't have a reliable, quick, easy recipe yet. I've heard this one praised, so I'm going to try it:

5-Minute Artisan Bread

Last night I tried making burgers in the oven instead of in a frying pan. It worked out very well and I think I'll do it again one of these days:

Oven-roasted hamburgers

I've also discovered another homemaker's blog that seems to have some good ideas, so I'd like to bookmark that here with her tips for saving money at home:

Beauty through Imperfection: 10 Money-Saving Tips (I think this is where I got the bread recipe, actually)

Cloth diapers

This blog is essentially my storage place for online research for the home, so now I'm expanding from culinary concerns to baby. All my friends have been using cloth diapers for their babies, and it looks a lot easier with the systems now than it was however many years ago that I was trying to change my little sister (my mum gave up and used disposable). I even stumbled upon a detailed post about cloth diapers here:

View Along the Way: Cloth Diapers

So I'm going to give it a valiant effort, and I have high hopes for this working out. Of course, most of our friends also acknowledge that in the first few weeks, it's best for parents' sanity to use disposable.

Roasting Chickens, etc.

Having recently roasted a chicken, I want to keep a record of all the sites that inspired me this time around. I also looked up whether I should wash my chicken first before roasting, and the most recent consensus of Health Authorities is not to wash chickens, which is great because I think it's a strange step.

Roast Chicken ideas:

Top 10 Steps to Making a Perfect Roast Chicken
Basil Lemon Roast Chicken
Williams Sonoma Roasts Chicken

Here's an article on getting over the common problem of needing to eat lots of sugar and starch every day that a friend posted on Facebook. It seemed interesting: Beat Your Sugar and Starch Addiction.

And finally, a Friday-Friendly Recipe that actually looks really yummy:

Mario Batali's Baked Pasta with Mushrooms and Mozzarella

A Hankering for Mexican-Inspired Cuisine

A couple of weeks ago I was craving Asian (especially Korean) cuisine. I satisfied myself with additions of gochujang (Korean hot pepper sauce) here and there, and imitation Korean BBQ (using left-over lamb and making ssamjang substituting soy sauce for the fermented soybean paste, which I had forgotten to buy at the local Korean grocery store).

I've since moved onto a taste for Mexican flavours. This is going to be a challenge, seeing as my husband decided long before I met him that tomatoes were not part of God's prelapsarian creation.

I have located a Latin American grocery store in the city called LaTortilleria, and I can't wait to try their freshly made corn tortillas, made simply with corn and traces of lime.

The other preparation I'm immersing myself in is to accumulate a few Latin American-inspired recipes. Such as:

Mexican Eggs
Chicken Enchiladas Verdes
a list of Mexican recipes
a possibly better list of Mexican recipes

I also stumbled on a very non-Mexican recipe I'd like to try someday:

Dukkah Baked Eggs

But really what I should be focusing on is tonight's Chicken Soup. I made some homemade chicken stock after Saturday's deliciously moist chicken roast. I froze three large yoghurt containers' worth, and still have about a litre and a half. What with my spicy tooth, I think I'll try a bit of a twist on the traditional recipe, inspired by a couple of recipes:

Spicy Chicken Tomato Soup
Mexican Chicken Soup
Mama Jean's Chicken Noodle Soup

Obviously, any tomato is going to have to be heavily disguised.