You live, you learn

So I should have taken my own advice when it came to preparing my lasagna: keep it simple. In my first blog, Page One, I ignored the fact that I was going to remain down to earth and disregard "the pretentious crap that surrounds food".

In my head, I was set on making a cooking debut that would be talked about in years to come. Instead, I forgot the white sauce for the lasagna and served a leaking quiche. Of course, everyone who ate my meal just smiled and politely accepted their fate. I was told it was "lovely" and my dad promised me that he would eat the left overs at work for lunch. When he arrived home the next day and told me he had finished everything in his lunch box, I couldn't be sure if he had pawned the meal off some unsuspecting victim.

Either way, I learned not to take on too much too soon. Clearly I am a novice and lasagna is not something I should be attempting just yet. Although, I am proud to say that my home-made pasta was awesome! Yes, that's correct I made fresh pasta. To be honest, I declare this task as the easiest part of my day, because it required little complexity. However, this was of course aided by the fact that a few years ago my mum did give my dad a pasta machine. But I mixed the pasta dough and churned it out of the machine all by myself. I, of course, will accept a gold star on the star chart.

So the lasagna was not my finest moment, however, my quiche was definitely a hit. My mum is vegetarian so only cooking a mince lasagna was not very fair considering I had promised I would cook dinner for the whole family. I ended up finding a nice easy recipe for a tomato and baby marrow quiche in the Pick n Pay recipe magazine, Fresh Living. My mum loves baby marrows and it was the easiest recipe of the day! But, considering I'm a noob in the kitchen, I found a way to botch it up.

The recipe tells you to use a loose-bottomed tin, but don't be fooled. Rather use a shallow glass dish that is safe for oven use. Our loose-bottomed tin is not all that secure and there was leakage. Mind you, my freshly made pastry cannot be excused either. I didn't make enough to line the edges of the tin and so the egg and sour cream mix overflowed, which was a result of me pouring all of it into the tin.

At the end of the day, the quiche was edible and it will definitely feature again with a few minor alterations. But all in all, I need to remember there is only so much a new cook ca handle and right now lasagna is not on that list.

Page One

This is a blog about food.

Surprise, surprise! Everyone's writing about food! Everyone thinks they know food and that because they watch one episode of Master Chef Australia they are now culinary connoisseurs. Well, I'm not going to pretend I know anything about food. I have never prepared a dinner and I wouldn't know where to start if I had to cook rice. This does not bode well for someone like myself who is moving into digs this year and has to cook dinner for 4 other people.

Now, you might be wondering why I have chosen to write about food - a topic I clearly know nothing about. Well, I wish to put my writing skills to the test as well as to remove all the pretentious crap that surrounds food these days. Cooking shows like Master Chef, I believe, are incredibly intimidating for the casual home cook when all one wants to do is cook a tasty meal without fear of being marked down on presentation. As a student and a future kitchen calamity for my unsuspecting digs mates, I hope to take you on a journey of burned pasta sauce, under cooked chicken and half backed lasagne.

My challenge for the next 24 hours is to come up with a lovely dinner dish for my first set of guinea pigs - my family. My ambitions are quite high as I hope to find a good lasagne dish that I can reuse in digs. I cannot count on a great success and I might just have to update our take away menus.

Well, I hope that has given you some idea of what to expect. I must wrap up as it is lunch time and I hear a sandwich calling my name.