Cooking

I always remember wanting to help cook growing up, it meant getting to lick the tasty spoon or mixer blades and watching something akin to magic happening.

Think about it as a child you see all these disparate ingredients ready to be mixed, you have no clue how it happens but through alchemy, science and magic your mother/father creates something that you like and its awesome.

I have always loved my moms cooking (most people will say the same thing) she knows how to cook anything and when she does it its still a little like magic taking place. I envy her ability to juggle 4 pots an oven, a kettle and a microwave in her culinary ballet.

So i decided once i moved out that i would at times forgo the easy option of microwave meals or the easier option of take-away and i would cook for myself. There are quite a few things i can cook for myself that i got my mom to teach me. Lasagna, full roast dinner, glazed carrots (omnom). And then there are the things i try out myself, like Chile, Tacos, weird strawberry desert thing i made once.

I sometimes have these ideas and just run with them sometimes they work sometimes they don't but when they do.......droooool

Today for myself and Cathy i made the following.

Skinless breast of chicken stuffed with Philadelphia light with chives, wrapped in parma ham and topped with a tomato and olive pesto and a light shake of Parmesan cheese. With mint + lime buttered baby potatoes, boiled carrots and sweetcorn.

It was a real challenge to pull off, seeing as my kitchen is smaller than my bathroom and i can use either the hob or the oven not both.

Anyway it worked and it was awesome, here is how i made the chicken.

Ingredients
2 Skinless Breast of chicken
1 packet of parma ham
1 tub of philly light with chives
1 jar of tomato and olive pesto
2 tablespoons of parmesan

Directions
Butterfly cut the chicken breasts
apply philly to one wing then fold the chicken back over (the amount varies depending on your taste)
wrap each breast in parma ham
use toothpicks or skewers to hold the ham in place
place on a baking tray or tinfoil in preheated oven at 250c
Cook for 25 minutes
spread pesto on top of each one (amount to your taste) then shake the parmesan on top.
put back in the oven for 5 minutes. (i used this time to prepare everything else)

The chicken turned out perfect, not too dry and oh man the flavors.

What will i cook next week.

This last week has been a creative whirlwind for me, I finished off the figure I was painting, wrote another chapter of my short story (I am not entirely happy with it but I am going to wait till its finished before re-writing it) and i started work on a project for my Friday night Rogue Trader game.

In this game i play an astropath, a sort of psychic communicator and the only way to send interstellar messages is through astropaths. My character has a very complex back-story (that's the story I am writing) and last week he acquired a deck of tarot cards. In this game the 'Imperial Tarot' are psychically charged and used to divine the future.

So i decided to make a set :)
Examples





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"Death can not stop true love, it can only delay it for a little while."

And so it begins...

I had a plethora of creative urges this week and even managed to pen the first part of a story I've had in my mind for the last few months. I hope this is the start of a renaissance in my life. It has been too long since I did anything truly creative and felt good about it.

Tomorrow after I do some chores I am going to try and paint a mini or two. That is another thing i haven't done in a while and really need to get back into. It used to be such a good relaxation tool for me and I was just starting to get good when I stopped painting and collecting.

Vidi, vici, veni

-Edit- I did some work on my Ultramarine Captain, a few customizations on him, also hes not finished i have to paint his plasma pistol and power fist still.



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"Sometimes your nearness takes my breath away;
and all the things I want to say can find no voice.
Then, in silence, I can only hope my eyes will speak my heart."

Less Than Three :-*

I have met a most wonderful person, she has brought
happiness back into my life. When I am with her I feel
strong and weak at the same time, the thought of her
having to go home at the end of the day put butterflies
in my stomach.

Part sadness to see her go and part irrational fear of
her not coming back.

I'm too hard on myself sometimes, I get embarassed when
people give me compliments, I never feel deserving enough.

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"Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom:

If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved."

Laughter is....

.....the best medicine. For anything short of imminent death laughter will help you heal. I used to read the readers digest when I was 11 and loved the section named as my topic is, it always meant I would hear a joke or two I had never heard before. Sometimes i didn't get the jokes because being only 11 I wasn't world-wise enough.

Through all the bad times the one thing that kept me going was my ability to laugh at myself and my situation. Once you can see the funny side in anything there isn't a lot that can upset you.

We gain strength from our humor and lack for lack of it.

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"The ages made her that made us from dust:
She is all we know and live by, and we trust
She is good and must endure, loving her so:
And as we love ourselves we hate her foe. "

Epiphanies

There are several moments in my life where I have had an epiphany or 'moment of clarity' each one as profound as the last. They work to strip away my preconceptions, my bias and any plans I might have made. They are not always a welcome occurrence.

But one does not stand in the way of fate, luck, destiny or semi trucks.

My most major one came after I moved out of home; I had slightly gone off the rails and tried to change my environment. For a while it got worse, and then BOOM it hit me. (Not a semi truck) I came across the idea that everything I do affects me in ways that I cannot comprehend; to act negatively in all things was poisoning me at a mental level. My thoughts decayed and it got worse.

I made a conscious decision to change, my friends saw this as me not really going out or being stubborn about not doing certain things. In a way my decision to change caused even more negativity but in a different way. My relationship with people I had called 'best-friends' for the last 8-10 years disintegrated as we grew apart. Now I rarely talk to any of them and it feels like so much bad blood has gone between us, which it hasn't. But that doesn’t change how it feels.

At that point old Matt died and new and improved Matt was born. Several of old Matt’s friendships survived the transition and were strengthened in the crucible of change.

I believe there are only so many connections one person can maintain without causing themselves mental anguish. We can only focus so much energy on the external before our own energy is depleted.

So my epiphany was this, let go of your bitterness, anger and remorse, and don’t let your environment poison you, live for the future or die in the past. Life is too short

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"Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise."