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."