Cameraholic turned chopoholic

It was one of those days. One of those days when everything is going just grand and all of a sudden, one little important-to-you thing goes haywire. Like the temporary expiration of a camera. The camera of a cameraholic. Not a pleasant thing.

It all happened a little over 7 weeks ago and since then I've found a filler-inner. (Kinda like a hobby, but kinda not.) I don't think you could necessarily call cooking a hobby in this household. Nine of us take different meals during the week (from J#1 to D#7) and all enjoy it, some more than others. (One specific "other" is known for his frozen fish sticks. Yum.)

Cooking skills can always be improved and a myriad of recipes approved. New recipes always take a bit longer as...

#1: you look for new crazy, but not too crazy, recipes instead of the quicker route of the well-known and worn-out cookbook/box,

#2: you look for the glossary of cooking terms,

#3: you avoid showing off your strange ingredients to the guinea pigs walking by,

#4: you get carried away reading variations,

#5: the cookbook measurements are metric 'nuff said.

New recipes shouldn't be intimidating. No one has tried them and can't say they should taste any different - big advantage. Simple or hard, new recipes have been attempted in this foreign arena of cooking. Stuffed peppers, bobotie, kebabs, ham & pineapple cucumbers, cheddar scones, duchesse potatoes, and the unpopular but simple poaching of eggs were in the dwindling list.

Tonight a new ten cent recipe was in the making. That's right: $.10. With a bag of simple bread dough divided into 20 pieces, 10 of those were plaited, left to rise, deep-fried, then dipped in a cold ginger, cinnamon, and cream of tartar sugary syrup. Koeksisters, that's what they were. And a scrumptious Sunday snack for 10; under $1.

Another big hit around here was an invented dessert of an apple dumpling/pie nature. I cored 6 apples, stuffed them with chopped pecans and brown sugar, wrapped each apple in pie dough (leaving the steam hole open and attaching a pie dough leaf to the top of each), sealed the apples half-way with tinfoil and baked in the oven at 180C for 30 minutes. Deliciousness in a jiffy!

The conclusion of today's cooking and camera chronicles is that my camera is on its way to being fixed, thanks to some chums! J#1 is excited to have his Blackberry camera in full possession again and a couple of the little guinea pigs want to see on their plates, food they can pronounce.