My Love - Food

Food is one of many loves I have and in this series of blogs you will get to read about them all.

I can't really remember when i started loving food (for more than just its nutritional and survival factors), I do remember me and my cousin cooking up a storm (that was later cleaned up by my aunt and uncle), when i used to sleep over as a teenager.  But i seriously started cooking for myself when I was like 15/16.  I started of as anyone else would, using pre-made sauces to make pasta's, and curries.  Then I moved on and started making recipes from magazines and books.  Peter Russell Clarke was a big early influence, mainly because I got 3 magazine style cookbooks of his through a Kraft promotion.   

My cooking didn't really kick off until i was 26/27, by then we had moved out of the shop and were living in a normal house, no Milk Bar attached.  It was then that my experimentation started, I would go out eat something I liked, and come back and try and make it at home, no recipe or anything, sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.  It was also around this time, that I stopped using, pre-made sauces and started making my own curry pastes, pasta sauces and marinades from scratch. 

Its unbelievable the thrill you get when you make your own sauces etc..., not to mention the taste.  The thing that I found was that it wasn't that hard to do, especially now that we have so many more ingredients available to us here in Australia.  I highly recommend making your curry pastes in particular, the freshness of the meal, the vibrancy of the flavors is magnificent compared to just opening a jar and pouring in the sauce. 

I have now moved on to making my own pasta, even baking bread and i won't look back.  Sure all these things take time, but take pasta for instance, it might take about 2 hours to make, mainly due to waiting for the dough to rise, but it is so worth it, you haven't eaten pasta until you eat freshly made pasta. 

My next goal is deserts, I want to learn how to make a good choux pastry, I tried it, but it didn't work the first time, but then again I didn't really concentrate hard on doing ti properly,  I just tried it to see how easy/hard it would be, now I realise I need to do everything exactly how it is explained. 

The other thing that I have discovered is that the more cookbooks you read and recipes you try the more you work out how flavours, ingredients interact with each other.  If you do that you soon don't need a recipe, you can just do it of the top of your head.  The greatest thing about cooking is the experimentation, you try and taste and try and taste. 

I really don't get people who say cooking is too hard, or they don't have time, seriously you can cook a great meal for you and your family in less than 30 min if you really want too.  Maybe if people put more time into cooking and less time into their gadgets and other crap, we might be able to turn around the obesity problem we have in Australia.  Rather than go out to Macca's make your own burgers, and if you want use the bloody pre-made stuff, but trust me its no where near as good as freshly made. 

As well as my love for cooking, comes my love of eating, and it is one of my goals to visit as many of Melbourne's finest eateries as possible.  I am even compiling my own review system for these places, and its not just high end, fine dining restaurants, its anywhere, where you can get a good feed. 

Well I hope you enjoyed this, and if anyone needs any help with their cooking feel free to let me know. 

In part two of this blog I will look at chefs, and who my favourites are and who I don't rate.

Also stay tuned for the rest of the My Love series of blog.

Driving

What is it with people in Australia and them thinking that the right lane of a multi-lane road is a scenic tour lane??

I am sick and tired of traveling on a freeway behind some retard doing less than the required speed limit in the right lane.  Why is it so hard for these idiots to understand that the right lane is an overtaking lane, that's why people there are those signs that say "KEEP LEFT UNLESS OVERTAKING". 

Since we're on the subject of driving, what is it with roadworks these days.....I swear, they better make the Western Ring Road 5 lanes each way with this huge upgrade, I don't want to have to be travelling on that road doing 80 ever again. 

So Bin Laden is Dead

Nine years, 7 months and 21 days to find, as my brother in law put it, an old man on dialysis.  So they found him, now what is the war on terror over?...Will my car insurance go back to what it was pre-Sept 11 2001??  Will i now not get strip searched becuase i am of Lebanese background??  Will the bogan on the street not refer to me as a camel jockey??

The death of Bin Laden is symbolic and for those families that lost loved ones on that fateful day only, and not for anyone else to get excited about.  It means absolutely nothing to us that he is dead, becuase the terrorist Wahhabi from Saudi Arabia will continue to kill the western 'scum'.  You might not agree with this but Bin Laden has achieved what I believe he set out to do, cause mass disruption to the lives of those in the west.  We have seen our civil liberties deteriorate, we are no longer free to live the so called democratic life the Muslim terrorist is apparently so jealous of. 

Nothing will change with the death of this lunatic....I only wish he was killed 20 years ago, rather than be armed with cash and weaponry by the CIA, in their previous fight against the RED MIST of communism.  At least its good to see that the Americans have learnt from their previous failed foreign policies......Ohh! wait a minute....

The New Blog

Hello World, Its Michael here.

I did have another blog some of you might have read it was called the Political Demon, but for some reason after months of inactivity I can't open it to post, so I created a new one.  I hope you enjoy this one, I will post a lot more often, some of it will be about me and my life, some about things that annoy me, anger me, frustrate me and some to highlight the fucked up world we live in.

One thing that is really pissing me off at the moment more than anything, is the crap that's going on in the Middle East.  In particular, the role of the US and the other Western Countries.  It amazes me how stupid people are, in particular, Politicians, Journalists and gung-ho everyday conservative 'sheep'.  Now the 'sheep' I understand, because man has become so lazy and dumb that its a lot easier to just follow and believe.  I can also understand the stupidity, ignorance and hypocrisy of Politicians, at the end of the day they are just salesmen/women who want another term, so anything for survival.  But journalists, I mean, they are charged with bringing us truth, not just a regurgitation of a media statement.  Where have all the investigative journalists gone, and no I am not talking about Martin King investigating the local builder who conned a newly married young couple out of their first home.

All i can say in regards journalists is thank God for Julian Assange and Wikileaks.  I recently watched All the Presidents Men, which is the Watergate story.  I equate this to what is happening to Julian and Bradley Manning.  Woodward and Bernstein uncovered a major conspiracy involving not just the government of the USA, but the President himself, and they were considered heroes.  Julian Assange by publishing memo's written by government officials is called a traitor and has idiots like Gillard, Clinton trying to jail him and fear mongers like Palin calling for his execution.  I can understand governments not liking him, but to call him a terrorist and call for his death is a bit extreme don't you think??

Anyway getting back to my original frustration, you will notice that i can get side-tracked a little, The West is charging Saudi Arabia, that Great Bastion of Democracy (yes that was sarcasm), with overseeing the democratization of the Arab world.  Doesn't that just make you piss yourself laughing.

This is the same Saudi Arabia that;

• has the death penalty wide range of crimes, including offenses such as apostasy (formal disaffiliation from or abandonment or renunciation of a religion by a person), sorcery, and blasphemy.  But that's not all it also allows death sentences for juveniles. 
• has arrested over 160 peaceful dissidents in violation of international human rights law since February 2011.
• Still doesn't allow women to vote.
• Still allows underage marriages, and doesn't allow women to study engineering, journalism, and architecture.

YAY Saudi Arabia.

It makes me sick to my stomach that such a disgrace of a country is feted in the Western World, all because of their oil. 

Anyway enough from me tonight, Liverpool v Birmingham is about to start.