"Anyone can cook. All you have to know how to do is read."

One thing that is always necessary when studying a lot is taking study breaks. So my big study break today (as opposed to my smaller study breaks) was watching one of my favorite movies, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. If you haven't seen it, I suggest you do (even if you're a guy and am not a big chick flick fan). It's HILARIOUS, and Kate Hudson is hilarious acting like those crazy girls that we all secretly hope we're not. Plus, the fact of the matter is that Matthew McConaughey is such a beautiful man, so it makes this movie 10x better with that.

"You let our love fern DIE!"

Talking about movies, one movie I really want to see that I haven't gotten around to renting is Julie and Julia. The one with Amy Adams and Meryl Streep?

Yeah, that one. I really really want to see it. It looks adorable, and plus, it's about cooking. This Julie character wants to cook every recipe in Julia's cookbook.

Yeah, probably again another chick flick. (Notice the pattern here: I LOVE CHICK FLICKS) But I think it's a great thing to be able to cook, and learn how to cook more than the Kraft blue box of macaroni and cheese or a frozen pizza. (Not that there is anything wrong with either of those, I pull those out every once in a while myself. They're delicious) Regardless of whether you're a male or female, being able to cook is a good skill to have, and people will definitely be impressed. So, since I've been living on my own, I've been trying to cook more "real food".

Granted, with my semi-busy schedule (and it'll probably get busier from now to finals), I eat A LOT of sandwiches and anything I can pack into plastic sandwich baggies (rice cakes, chips, fruit). But my mom was nice enough to give me the big crock pot and the electric skillet (two necessary kitchen staples, especially for quick cooking and cleaning), so I figure I might as well use them, right?

This morning, I made myself some whole wheat blueberry pancakes with turkey bacon. I'm definitely getting better at the whole "not burning the pancakes and making them into a shape somewhat resembling a circle", still have a way to go. And using a skillet with the turkey bacon can be challenging, but again, getting the hang of it. So having that as a positive experience this morning, of course there's going to be a neutralizing factor somewhere with cooking... which leads me to dinner. I attempted to make this crock pot recipe that called for 6 pieces of chicken drenched in barbeque sauce and cooked on low heat for 8 hours. Then 15 minutes before you want to serve, you fry up some bacon, and put two strips on each piece of chicken and top it with a slice of swiss cheese, and cook it on high heat for 15 minutes. Sounds delicious, right? Well, I learned an important lesson: make sure you check on your food every couple of hours if you can. And, to never EVER skimp on sauces used. I DEFINITELY needed to add more barbeque sauce... as the chicken was extremely dry and most of the bbq sauce had turned a nice black color. But I wasn't going to be deterred from trying it anyway. So I put two pieces away (made 3 instead of 6), and put the bacon and cheese on it. And surprisingly enough, it was actually still pretty good, dry chicken and all!

So I'm proud of myself for at least trying to cook decent meals, and I'm on the lookout for my next recipe I want to try (as in a lunch or dinner recipe). I found this DELICIOUS recipe for a New Zealand type cookie dessert, called Yo-Yo biscuits. (Another thing you must know about me: I LOVE everything about New Zealand. I mean it, EVERYTHING.) So I found this recipe, and next time I hit up Kroger, I'm going to get everything to make this. Here's the recipe if you would like to try it:

Yo-Yo Biscuits


Yo-Yos:
175g butter, softened (1.5 sticks)
1/4 cup of sugar
Few drops of vanilla essence
1 1/2 cups plain flour
¼ cup of custard powder

Butter Filling:
50g butter (0.4 sticks)
½ cup icing sugar
2 tbsp custard powder

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add vanilla. Sift flour and custard powder together. Mix sifted ingredients into creamed mixture. Roll teaspoonfuls of mixture into balls. Place on lightly greased oven tray. Flatten with a fork. Bake at 180 C (355-360 F) for 15-20 minutes. When cold sandwich together in twos with Butter Filling. Makes 20.


And here's a picture of these YUMMY sandwich cookies:

Wish someone could get me some of these now... or just get me some Tim Tams.

Well I have to get back to studying, enough procrastinating. I do hope that everyone takes some time to cook, even if it's just once. It's a great great great activity to, and it's good because then you get to eat, and who doesn't like to do that? Later, blog world.