Singular Scene

So Singular in Each Particular

Further Kitchen Adventures

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Original Recipe sourced here

In these days of recession, from time to time you may be invited somewhere with an instruction to ‘bring a plate’ (which, of course, means bring a plate with something on it to share for dinner… rather than bring a piece of crockery from which to partake of your meal…).

If you’re anything like me, you may be a little bit hopeful that one of the other participants may bring that bastion of pot luck dinners… the humble scalloped potato.  It’s great cheap food and a little of it goes a looong way!!! And ooh, goodness, doesn’t it taste goooood!

It was my turn to take these babies to dinner last night and in order not to break the belts of everyone there with the usual cream or cream soup based dish I found a recipe that calls for a much less calorie rich ingredient list.. (and so I added the things (like bacon and cheese) you wouldn’t add if you were calorie minded and were basing the whole thing in cream.

For the life of me I can’t figure out why the images are out of order in pictobrowser. If you click through to Flickr you’ll find them in order I don’t have time today to paste them all in individually! You’re clever, you’ll get the idea!!


 INGREDIENTS

    * 5 large potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced
    * 120 g chopped onion
    * 45 g butter or margarine
    * 30 g all-purpose flour
    * 415 ml chicken broth
    * 30 ml mayonnaise
    * 5 g salt
    * 0.3 g pepper
    * Paprika

DIRECTIONS

   1. In a greased 2-1/2-qt. baking dish, layer potatoes and onion (and bacon pieces and a little bit of Parmesan cheese if desired). In a saucepan, melt the butter; stir in flour until smooth. Gradually add broth, mayonnaise, salt and pepper; cook and stir for 2 minutes or until thick and bubbly. Pour over potatoes. Sprinkle with paprika. Cover and bake at 325 degrees F for 2 hours or until tender.


Father’s Side of the Family.

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My Dad’s older sister sent me these a while back and they’re too good not to share.  They’re pix from the family album featuring my Dad at the gorgeous Mangawhai (Mung-a-fie as in pie) Heads where my grandparents co-owned a bach with Grandma’s sister and their family.

How’s the first one, do you get the impression that the kid in the background is a little jealous of my father’s good catch?

This is the first outing for the family boat.  I need to find out its history because, of what I know of my Grandfather I’d be very surprised if he didn’t make this.  My Dad too is handy with wood-working tools, as is my brother, and Dad has made canoes and dinghys in his time.  If I’m not mistaken that’s my Grandma sitting up front.  Can’t tell if it’s Dad in the back… if so it’s a picture taken much later than the one above.

Here he is again loving the surf.  Age?  Maybe 10?  If that’s the case then the year is 1955.

I have my own early memories of holidays at Mangawhai, we went to the bach a couple of times as kids but Grandad sold up while we were very young.  Extended family members still go up there from time to time, usually staying in caravans.

My weren’t those the days, before sun-block and hats and covering up!!

Ed. You may have deduced from the prolific entry posting today our author had a whole bunch of much more important stuff she should have been doing…

Power Outage

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So, at the beginning of the week I blog about Blog Mojo and by the end I’m cooking up posts like it’s no tomorrow. Bizarre…

The power went off at my place today.  One minute I’m typing away on the old Mac and I observe that the battery icon is lit rather than the power one.  Of course, I spend a few minutes cursing the power adapter, it’s the new one, until I realise that I’ve actually got no internet access… I get up to check the rest of the house and sure enough, the circuit breaker is tripped and while the lights are on, the power points are all out of action.  No hot water (yeah, it’s dodgy and is plugged into the normal power supply), no fridge, no Internet.  AAAARRRRRGH No Internet.

Good air in, Bad air out.

I go upstairs to the circuit board to untrip it.

It trips again.

Hmm… something’s screwing with my power… I call the property manager. Leave a message, but decide I can do without a sparky and go looking for the culprit.

I unplug everything but one lamp.

Trip the switch.

Back down the stairs to my place, because you know these circuit breakers are never within easy reach, they’re outside on the side of the house and would really be better managed if one had an other half to test all the appliances while I man the switch and turn it back on when necessary.

OK. the lamp’s still on. Good start. I figured I’d turn everything on one, by one until the light goes off…

Hot water on. Lamp still on… WIN.
Fridge on…
Kettle on – Lamp FAIL.

Ok. Kettle is plugged into a 4point board so I unplug the board and the kettle, observing, not for the first time that both units are a little the worse for wear to the tune of a fair amount of Kitten Chewing.  Not Lulu, you understand, my well behaved princess (Ed. *snort*)  but Chino her much younger and more boisterous predecessor.

So it’s clearly time to replace both the board and the kettle.  Something I’ve been putting off, because, well, I’m cheap.  It also seemed sensible to go get a new power board lest I have to show all my electrical arrangements to a sparky who would probably have apoplexy… I live in a small house with.. . hang on… a grand total of 4 double outlets in the kitchen/living/dining/office area and 1 single outlet in the bedroom.

To plug in the myriad of appliances I’m running I have to rock 4x6point power-boards and 1x4point boards and even then there is usually some juggling.

So I hit the store and discover that the Kettle of Choice is $75.  And this is for a teeny tiny 1litre kettle.  Yikes…

So I went looking for a kettle cord to replace the cord as the kettle I have, ugly though it is, is still functional, and guess what. Nobody stocks them.

A pox on our consumeristic society.  So, roll on Sunday when I’ll have an extra shift’s worth of cash with which to buy the new kettle.