Kitchen epiphany

Cooked dinner for Carla & Jez on Friday night – my first risotto. It mostly went ok, but the rice wasn’t quite cooked even after all the stock had been absorbed, so Ben had to give me a few helpful pointers. He also made some kick-arse garlic bread and we added a salad to boot. And the verdict? They both had seconds and even admitted to being full at the end of it. With Jeremy being quite a strapping young lad and Carla having earned an extra appetite since picking up a uterus hitchhiker, that was an achievement in itself. Win! They’ve got the pictures on their camera so you’ll have to wait for the photos.

I’ve very quickly learnt that recipes aren’t really my bag. I’m one of these people that skims through cookbooks and food websites, kind of scrunches their nose up at everything, and then proceeds to make it up. Cooking is very different to baking, and I grew up clinging to Mum’s metaphorical (and literal) apron waiting for my opportunity to sift flour or stir in the chocolate bits, so I’m ok with baking. And baking requires strict adhesion to recipe. One of the joys I’m discovering with cooking is that I can just make stuff up as I go along, and as long as I don’t do anything too ridiculous, it’ll probably work out. It doesn’t really matter too much how many carrots you put in or how much wine gets added (although I find ‘just a bit more’ to be a good rule), just trust your taste buds. It’s fun.

I also spent an hour cycling around Centennial Park with Carly on Saturday morning. What a fantastic way to start the day! Sunshine, puppies, the wind in your face. We managed four laps and probably could have managed another hour. We took it at leisurely pace, maintained a conversation the whole way around, and it was a lot easier than I remember it being. The only problem was, I was knocked out by a headache in the afternoon, even after taking pre-emptive painkillers. I think I am allergic to endorphins. It sucks. Actually it is because I get "exertion headaches", even though I didn’t feel like I was exerting myself all that much. Stupid exercise. This could pose a problem on the day of the event, but this 'exercise intolerance' feels like such a cop out that I am determined to ignore them. The doctor says 1 in 100 people or so get them but there’s nothing I can do about it that I’m not already doing, so, whatever. Anyway, the moral of the story is, I can cycle for an hour without wanting to die, so that is very exciting news. I think it was about 15km or something, so now I know I can get at least a 6th of the way to Wollongong.