Barmy Blue's Bland Blog

What to say? Nothing really. The odd little bit of information but I can’t really remember much. There should be a little list in the back of my mind of minor things to mention since my last entry but I can’t remember it. It’s not important anyway. So, why bother with this now? I’m kind of bored, it’s late but I don’t want to go to bed yet but I will soon so there’s no point starting anything, certainly anything I really need to concentrate for. I’ve been making soups this week. I got a few things, realised I didn’t need so much and have been trying to get rid of it. Hence a vegetable soup with potato, half a sweet potato, carrot, leek and onion. Then a chicken soup with leek, onion and spring onion and today’s brilliant idea of mashed potato with one and a half sweet potatoes, a couple of regular potatoes, a leek, spring onions and three shallots as oppose to onion because that would be too much (the shallots were left over from the last Sheppard’s pie mum made a while ago (onions and members of their family are pretty cool things, leave them long enough and they’ll shrivel up and sprout huge green shoots that can get pretty long, usually something needs to be planted and watered before it does that)). I rather hate potatoes, probably because most of my dinners when I was young consisted of potato products and I wasn’t allowed a drink at dinner time (potato is incredibly hard to swallow at times) smiley faces and potato waffles being the worst offenders. When you’re thirsty it’s nearly impossible to swallow and potatoes seen have a habit of absorbing moisture when you’re trying to swallow them. This wasn’t actually at home, this was at my child minders (and let me specify. Child minder, not babysitter, I was never a baby in her care, although she did look after babies too). Have I ever mentioned her before? I don’t think I have. When I joined the community and when I started blogging I was already out of her care, thankfully. Damn I hated it there. I think it had a severe effect on my lack of self confidence. But I’ll save all that for another entry. The point of this is my cooking skills it would seem . Also, I don’t think the school dinners helped much, put me right off of mashed potatoes. So, since that time I’ve always had a dislike of potatoes, smiley faces, roast potatoes, potato waffles and certain chips (which I must state are not the English equivalent of French fries. ARE NOT THE ENGLISH EQUIVALENT OF FRENCH FRIES as was stated in a recently repeated episode of the Simpsons that I happened to catch. Chips and fries are completely different, they fall into different subcategories of potato products chips are considerably fatter, less crispy and usually shorter (also I doubt so many people have set fire to their kitchens trying to make home made fries as they have home made chips)). However, sometimes I remember feeling fond of mum’s mashed potatoes, she’d usually add some milk, cheese and/or butter, makes a nice creamy mixture. A couple of years ago I had a craving for it and tried to make it myself. The results were not good but to be fair the local shops only had very hard starchy potatoes (there are different kinds) that weren’t particularly good for mashing, I suck at using the potato peeler (it’s very old now so I think it’s a bit blunt, I find a knife works better) and I didn’t boil the potatoes long enough. All in all it wasn’t very pleasant, the texture was lumpy and unpleasant but still, it was reasonably okay. I’ve gotten used to cutting vegetables now (still need more practice though, I peel of too much flesh with the skin, it’s quite a waste) and boiling them until they’re soft so it went better this time. We didn’t have any milk (save for mum’s semi-skimmed goats milk and I wasn’t sure if it would go as well as cows milk or not (I can’t stand semi-skimmed, it tastes like milk mixed with water. Mum says that it doesn’t and that skimmed milk is the real watered down milk that I claim semi-skimmed is. I never want to try it. I’ve always been fond of full fat cows milk, which is why two kinds of milk have been in the fridge for many many years, semi-skimmed for mum (which later on became semi-skimmed goats milk) and whole milk for me (and the cats, when we hat them) Napoleon (when he lived with us) was never fussed about milk, he was happy to eat cereal with tap water (obviously a man with no taste buds) which is a entirely disgusting mixture I must add)). So, I had no milk for today’s attempt at mashed potatoes. I couldn’t have it plain, creamy mash is so much nicer. I was also worried about the butter, we use a spreadable butter now (it was stork margarine before that for many many years, butter is nicer) but I stumbled across some leftover Tesco brand unsalted butter that I use for making cinnamon cookies (they’re more like biscuits really but cookies sounds cuter, and it’s easier to say) it was left over from a few weeks ago when I took cinnamon cookies to the JCS end of year barbecue (they’re quite loved in the JCS, it makes me feel proud ) there was about a third of it still left so I threw the whole lot in, then two kinds of sliced cheese (one kind cheddar and the other those little slices you usually get in cheese burgers). All in all my leek-shallot-spring onion-unsalted butter-cheddar cheese-processed cheese-sweet potato-mashed potato came out very well. I served it with two pork medallions that I’d seasoned with a special pork seasoning and a little light soy sauce to make it stick and add a little extra flavour. The meal came out pretty well. My skills are slowly improving. Now I just need to learn to handle money, clean up, do laundry and get a job and I’m fully independent. Haha. Still got a way to go then.