Experimental Monday: Spinach and Ricotta Cannelloni

I haven’t blogged the last couple of experimental Mondays – I went on a bit of a soup binge and I can report that roasted sweet potato soup is yummy. Last week I was feeling totally uninspired and cooked easy, familiar comfort food.

But fear not! During the week I got a craving for cannelloni and did a bit of Googling for recipes. I’m trying to cut down on my meat intake (twice a week is plenty, I think) so spinach and ricotta was the obvious choice. I suspected that just mixing some spinach with ricotta wasn’t going to work and I was right. I ended up using the filling from one recipe, the construction/cooking principle from a couple of others and substituting homemade tomato sauce with store bought pasta sauce.

It was so good. Really, so good. Must write it up so that I have for the next time. I divided the cannelloni and sauce between one glass dish and three foil dishes. Topped the glass dish with a bit of cheese and baked it, the three foil dishes have been covered and put into the freezer. So I now have three portions of home cooked yumminess for another day. Yay!

With all the cheese, I suspect that it’s not the lowest calorie thing ever but I thoroughly enjoyed it and it’s wonderful comfort food while tasting nicely fresh from the spinach. Plus, it’s vegetarian!

Now I must go and cuddle a cat. Annie is rather determined that I need to pay her lots of attention and give her lots of cuddles pronto. Pushy little annoyance

There are good reasons why I nearly cried at work today

Today has been a Bad Day.

My back has been hurting a fair bit for the last couple of weeks and I’ve been waking up a lot through the night, finding myself lying flat on my back which only makes it worse. I’m suspecting that part of the reason for my back being so sore and stiff when I first get up is the sleep position issue. Last night I tried sleeping with a cushion to prop me a bit and another to cuddle-ish and it seemed to work. Or at least, I slept pretty well and wasn’t lying on my back or front when I woke up! And wasn’t *quite* as stiff as I’d been other mornings.

Unfortunately, shortly after work I started to get really bad stomach cramps and nausea, which didn’t make me feel amazing and my back then kicked in. Yay. Took several hours with herbal tea, heat pads and anti-spasmodics to get it under control and quell the urge to just double over and wish for death.

In the middle of this, we discovered a big issue with the project that I’m working on. That wouldn’t have normally got me massively upset, but the project is suppose to go for release on Thursday and the issue could mean that I miss my release. It’s that size of issue.

Plus, I haven’t got the first clue how to fix it because it was one of the few bits of the software that actually appeared to be working correctly. It’s all about which code gets assigned to data for which dates (yes, it’s a load for some huge, complicated database tables) and it’s wrong for some data. Gah.

We discovered this and my boss announced that it needed fixing just as I was feeling particularly ill. I didn’t take it well.

And that is why I nearly ended up in tears at work today.

Thankfully my stomach is settled and feeling fine now. So fine that I’ve got a huge craving for fish and chips or possibly sushi, but I’m playing it safe and having baked salmon with steamed veg instead. My back is…um…yes. And although I’m home, I’ll be spending the evening working because a whole bunch of data needs to be re-loaded for validation first thing tomorrow morning.

Really, this week can stop sucking. I’m serious. Why is food my first thought when things are going badly?

Yuck

Dear body,

I want a divorce.

No love,

AG

Good and bad day

The good: the code for the project that I’ve been working on for nearly two months finally worked properly today. The data still needs to be validated, but this is the first time that it’s run through (twice!) without issues and produced data that looks good on a cursory inspection.

The bad: OMG, indigestion. And bloating. And can we say gas? Plus, did I mention the indigestion? There might also have been a touch of acid reflux in with that.

Hello there, IBS. You’re trying to persuade me that I need to carry Tums with me at all times, aren’t you?

I was so glad to get home. And stuff myself with Tums. And at least be able be gassy, crampy and ick in the privacy of my own bathroom.

For extra fun and laughs, I’m going to be stuck in a minivan (people carrier for the UKers) for several hours tomorrow while I go to Moncton and back for a potentially pointless meeting. Yay? If my GI tract does a repeat of this, my co-workers will hate me by the end of the day.

Worst part? We’ve just had to do our ‘employee engagement’ survey and one of the questions was about whether we get indigestion/gas/bloating/cramps/constipa

tion etc. In other words, have you got IBS? And, heh, are we to blame? Not said in those exact words, but the implication was clear.

Some days, my body sucks piggy wonks. Now I’m going to watch Holby City and try to forget about this entirely pointless exercise in management BS. Instead I shall focus all my good vibes on getting home in time tomorrow to join my knitters in the bar and eat yummy food.

Agatha Christie binge

I’m on an Agatha Christie kick. One might even call it a binge. I blame it all on netgirl_y2k, who mentioned The Body in the Library in a recent post and got me thinking Christie-ish thoughts.

I’m currently on my fourth Christie in three weeks. My sister enabled it by presenting me with four more (that I’ve never read!) from a second hand bookstore as a thank you for putting her up for a few days. I don’t see myself emerging from the Christie kick any time soon. After all, I have twelve in my own collection (er, sixteen) and I’m sure the public library can help as well. This is also the reason that my sister and I watched The Unicorn and the Wasp on Monday. Doctor Who and Agatha? Bring it on!

One of the amusing parts was that the book that the Doctor showed at the end, Death in the Clouds, was the Poirot that I had just finished. Heh.

I think that after work on Friday, I’ll take myself down to Chapters. There I shall spend some time browsing the cook books before buying some hot chocolate and spending a pleasant time reading Christie and drinking cocoa. It’s supposed to rain on Friday, which makes the plan even better. Sitting inside a bookshop drinking hot chocolate while it’s raining outside makes me very happy.

Then I’ll buy groceries and treat myself to sushi takeout. It’s entirely possible that I’ll follow that up with two episodes of Grey’s Anatomy (having not watched last week’s episode) and call it a thoroughly lovely evening.

Damn, when did I get boring?

Alternative expressions of creativity

It appears that my current main obsessions are cooking and knitting. It keeps surprising me because a few years ago I’d never have thought that I’d end up loving such domestic, home-making things. I’m not an artist, I never will be, but I consider myself to be creative and it appears that these crafts are the outlets I’ve found for that.

Anyway, my new sweater is progressing apace. I’ve finish the back of the shrug section and joined to start knitting the arm in the round. Gave it a quick try last night and, despite my misgivings, it appears that the fit is just right so far. Even better, the Cashsoft felt amazing against my skin so I should end up with a sweater than doesn’t itch me. Hooray!

It’s October, which means that winter is fall is here and winter will be on top of me before I know it. Last winter I found acquiring good fruit and veg and issue. Although that has largely been resolved by the farmer’s market and Pete’s, I’m still starting to conclude that my current breakfast of grapes, granola and plain yoghurt is not sustainable. The grapes that I picked up this week are flavourless and I can’t imagine that they’ll get better as the winter goes on. Plus, they’re not exactly eating local and sustainable!

So what can I do for breakfast that’s healthy and nutritious? I’m thinking that I need to look into breakfast muffins – homemade, of course – so on Friday I’ll make a trip to the bookstore to have a look for a suitable recipe book. I want things that aren’t too sweet and are preferably filled with fruit, nuts, bran and other healthy things. The kind of thing that I can heat up in the microwave and enjoy with a glass of milk, possibly accompanied by a small bowl of granola-and-yoghurt, and feel warmed and comforted for the day. They’ll need to be good for freezing, so that I can make batches and defrost a few at a time, and having a variety of recipes to try would be great.

Yup, I need a new recipe book. I may also look for a soup book. I really fancy making soup. My biggest regret right now is that I didn’t steal my mum’s copy of the Covent Garden soup book when I visited in February. She said I could because she never uses it!

I’m going to end up with so many recipe books at the rate that I’m going

Yarn, Thanksgiving and roast potatoes

I have just enjoyed a Thanksgiving weekend with my sister. It was pure accident. She booked her flights, told me the dates and I squeed as I realised that she’d unwittingly booked to be with me over the long weekend so I’d get the Monday off work to spend with her without worrying about vacation time. Hooray!

I picked her up from the airport after work on Thursday and dragged her along to my knitting group, where we ate pasta and chatted away happily. She’s knitting a beautiful pair of mittens. Er, I got teased because my sister is as insane as me with the whole ‘knitting primarily with skinny yarn’ thing. Heh.

She spent Friday hanging out at the house, relaxing and resting from her time in Toronto while I went to work. Then we went out for sushi for supper, which was amazing, and she introduced me to grilled eel maki which I absolutely love. Wonder whether it’s totally indulgent to get some sushi takeout this Friday on the way home from the grocery store?

Saturday started out bright and early with a trip to the farmer’s market followed by a drive down to Mahone Bay. We did lots of walking, bought lots of yarn (love having a knitter sister) and ate some amazing Schezchaun (sp?) carrot soup from the Biscuit Eater Cafe and Bookshop. Possibly the best part of the rather wonderful soup were the cheese and herb biscuits which were hot and fresh and divine. Between the soup, the biscuits and the chocolate espresso shortcakes, we didn’t need supper that night! We had to make a quick stop at the mall on the way home (bathroom break) and I spotted the Rowan Greatest Knits book in Chapters. Hmm. I’m in two minds, largely because while some of the older patterns are fun, the patterns I love are from Rowan 42 which I already have. So it requires thought and possibly a revisit before I decide on whether to add it to my wishlist.

Sunday was a slightly quieter day. I made French toast for breakfast and then we toddled up to the mall for a quick visit to Gap before going to the beach for a long walk. Bliss. We relaxed for the rest of the afternoon with our knitting and some TV before going out for seafood supper and then a visit with my aunt.

Monday was Thanksgiving and we spent the day relaxing, watching movies and knitting so that I could be on top of my game for cooking the big supper. This is the first time that I’ve done a major event meal and also the first time that I’ve done roast potatoes. Yes, it was the potatoes that had me panicked and declaring it as my Experimental Monday dish. Thankfully my recipe (trusty Comfort Food to the rescue again) was clear and concise, enabling me to produce tatties that were crispy and nicely browned on the outside and fluffy on the inside. No raw bits, no sogginess, and I’m very proud. My aunt supplied stuffing and I cooked salmon, due to my sister’s non-meat-eating status. It all worked out perfectly, with all the food cooked at just the right time and lots of yummy noises at the table. Phew!

My sister goes home tonight and I’m going to miss her. We’ve had a lovely few days together and it’s been so much fun to just hang out and knatter. We seem to get along better and have more in common as we get older, which is fabulous.

Knitting-wise, I finished my lovely purple shawl (I’m wearing it right now – the office is slightly chilly) and cast on for my Tubey sweater. The yarn that was coming surface mail and I wasn’t expecting to see for months arrived on Friday – yippee! I’m most of the way across the back of the shrug section already (almost finished the second ball) so it’s going swimmingly. I swatched and discovered that I had to go down a needle size so apart from the usual “OMG, will this fit?” worries I’m feeling cautiously optimistic. In fact, I’m even daring myself to have it ready in time for my Christmas trip to England. I’m insane, right?

Day of Caring and sweater thoughts

Oddly, this post may not be about actual knitting even though it has sweater contents.

But to kick off with the United Way Day of Caring. This is a thing that my company supports and thus yesterday I went out in the community with a bunch of my colleagues to clean and paint a shelter for single young mothers. My company paid me my normal salary and I did some much-needed work for an organisation that barely covers its costs for day-to-day running and just doesn’t have the time or resources to give the place a really good scrub-down and re-paint. I’m quite fond of that idea and it was good to be able to put something back into the community, particularly for an organisation (SHYM) that I previously knew nothing about but would like to find ways to help in the future.

The bit that I’m not so fond of is the after effects. Ouch! My back hated me yesterday (all that bending backwards to paint high up stuff) and although that’s a bit better my legs now ache from all the crouching and standing. I actually feel worse than I did after climbing Snowdon and that’s just embarassing, to be honest. This fall/winter I have to get off my butt and actually do something about my fitness levels. Get out walking when the weather is good, make myself do some time on the treadmill every day that I can’t get out. I’d like to be back at my Snowdon levels of fitness, ideally.

Or at least able to keep up on all the walks that I know we’ll be going on when I visit England at Christmas.

The sweater thing is a bit of a whine. Why is it that this season (as with last season) it is impossible to find sweaters that aren’t 100% acrylic and don’t contain either wool or angora? Even 5% or 10% of either makes me itch. Sometimes its not too bad and I can tolerate the sensation for a day, sometimes my skin seems particularly sensitive and I can’t even cope for 30 seconds. My middlish days, I can tolerate the sweater for a few hours but by early afternoon I’m dreaming of taking the sweater off and burning it. I’ve never liked wearing long-sleeved shirts under sweaters (I get that “get this off me!” sensation in a few minutes) and that doesn’t always help because the guard hairs often prickle me through the T-shirt anyway so I’m hating the double layer and itching like crazy. Woo.

This year I managed to find one acrylic sweater that is OK-ish for softness and improved a lot after its first wash. I’m going to have another trawl around the mall to see if I can find another – it was a lone acylic in a jungle of wool. I picked up a sweater in Old Navy that didn’t feel too bad (cotton/acrylic mix with 10% angora) when I tried it on and drove me crazy by late morning when I wore it to work this week. And all their sweaters have angora. Some also contain wool for added itch. Last year it was the same in Gap and, really, in every store that I tried. Which is why I have a sweater with angora and a cardigan with wool, both of which are unwearable a lot of the time. The cardigan is tolerable some days, the sweater is going to charity.

I’m trying to knit up sweaters for myself out of fibre blends that I can tolerate (merino, man-made, cashmere – Rowan Cashsoft is fab, going to try Extra Fine Merino at some stage), but that’s going to take time and I’m short on sweaters now.

Really, is it too much to ask for some soft sweaters that don’t contain wool, alpaca or angora? Seriously?

Experimental Monday mishap (and other foodie things)

Yesterday was Monday and thus it was going to be a new experimental dish: stir fried beef with broccoli. Um, that wasn’t quite what I did…

Firstly, I must confess that I worked out my menu when I was in a rush on Thursday and didn’t have the time to do my usual poring over books, looking for something so yummy that I get over-excited and must cook it. Nor did I do my research on an empty stomach, which oddly is usually quite effective.

I got to about mid-way through yesterday afternoon and realised that I just didn’t fancy a stir fry. Nope, not even remotely interested. In fact, I had a huge craving for spicy fries and mayonnaise. That wasn’t going to work with a stir fry!

I hadn’t been able to buy any pre-cut meat for stir frying so instead I had a top sirloin grilling steak in my fridge waiting to be prepared. Hmm. Now what could I do with steak that goes well with fries? Whatever I did would be new to me because steak simply isn’t something that I normally have outside a restaurant or BBQ situation.

Readers, I pan fried it. Daubed a bit of BBQ sauce on a couple of minutes before it finished and called it done.

In fact, aside from the fact that it wasn’t quite as well done as I like (although not actually raw – just a tiny bit pink in the centre) it turned out really well. Not something to do regularly, but a nice new skill to have and know that I can do as a treat sometimes. Plus the fries were awesome and I had some peas for healthy-value. I suspect that the main problem was that I had a steak and I had a memory of a very nice looking steak-and-fries in my Comfort Food book and couldn’t quite cope with a stir fry after that. Heh.

Thus Experimental Monday wasn’t what I planned, but it was still a total experiment (need to work on getting the heat/cooking time right) and it was fairly successful with notes on what needs to be done differently next time.

Last week’s Experimental Monday was shepherd’s pie, because I’ve never made it before and it’s a great comfort dish when the evenings start to get colder. That one was a complete success, even down to the mash (right quantity, right consistency) and the fact that I made two mini-pies and thus had a second one for later in the week. Score!

This weekend was an experiment in baking weekend. I think that I finally defeated the pizza dough. After perusing my Marguerite Patten baking book, I started to suspect that I was over-prooving and not knocking back. So I shortened the prooving time (the dough had pretty much doubled in fifty minutes – my original recipe called for ninety minutes) and kneaded a bit before turning the dough into a pizza base. I also used my hands to stretch and pull out the dough into the thinnest base I could make. For the first time, I got a light, tasty base that wasn’t over-risen. Woo!

I also experimented with garlic pizza bread, which was a total success. Now I just need to perfect cooking times…

My other baking experiment was fruit buns. These are a tasty, yeasty bun that is slightly sweetened, loaded with fruit, and glazed lightly on top. They are sold in bakeries and grocery stores throughout the UK and taste great cold or toasted. They are also completely absent here in Canada, so I decided to try making them. This was a recipe from the divine Marguerite so I followed it carefully and attained rather good fruit buns for a first try. In fact, I don’t actually feel the need to fiddle with the recipe at all! Most of them have gone into the freezer so that I they don’t go stale before I can eat them all. It will be interesting to see how they de-frost.

Now that I’m getting the hang of yeast baking, I’m seriously considering starting to make my own bread rolls for lunches. That could be interesting

Not the post I planned

I was going to write a post about the weekend, about the pizza I made (from scratch including the base!), the over-indulgence in cheesy herb bread resulting in a low-fat plan for this week and the baby shower I went to on Sunday. Except that I’ve largely forgotten how that post went and instead I have bits and bobs of stuff that I’m not sure are connected.

Just finished Elantris by Brandon Sanderson and thought it was rather excellent. I’m now on a kids’ lit run, though.

Grey’s Anatomy is so stupid. And so addictive. Yargh.

I’m obviously losing my mind because I watched the first week of Strictly Come Dancing and am currently acquiring week two. OMG. I had a ton of commentary and thought on dancing, choreography and why the first elimination sort of deserved to be gone and sort of didn’t because a large part of his problem was that the choreography that his partner put together showed her off and didn’t do the celebrity in question any favours. Except that is a really boring post.

I actually bought the yarn for my Tubey sweater today and thus I am impatient to begin it. I still need to seam my sister’s cardigan, though.

My sister arrives for her visit in a little over a week. Woo!

The first week of American TV that I’m actually following has been rather good (yay House!) and I’m enjoying my silly, stupid new series of Merlin as well. In fact, there’s more good TV than I have hours to watch it in right now!

I should really go and do something constructive with my evening before NCIS starts.