Lazy day

Today is laundry day. And baking day....surprizingly. I was nuking my breakfast (the patty) hamburger, when I spotted this green paper tucked in with a bunch of perscription receipts next to the micro. So I pulled it out and then I remembered this recipe I found in a library book years ago, and I've been dragging it around ever since. It wasn't even a cook book. It was being used as a marker in a murder mystery. So I decided to make it. Either keep the recipe or throw it away. Well it's a keeper. The recipe was written on a page of someone's day timer.

Lazy Daisy Cake

2 eggs

1 cup sugar

1 cup flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 pinch of salt

2 tbsp butter

1/2 c milk

Beat eggs till light and fluffy, add sugar beat well. Bring butter & milk to a boil. Add sifted flour salt and baking powder to egg mixture. Mix well. Then add boiled milk and butter to egg & flour mixture. Mix well. Pour into 8X8 pan (i used 6x12) bake at 350 till lightly browned and springs back about 20-25 min.

Topping

1/2 c brown sugar

1/2 c flaked coconut

1/2 c chopped nuts

3 tbsp butter

2 tbsp whip cream

Melt butter, add brown sugar and cream. Let bubble a few minutes. Then add coconut and nuts to cooked mixture, spread on warm cake. Put on broil. Stand there and watch it till it bubbles up all over and turns a golden brown.

yummmm and so fast, really a no brainer. As with all recipes I didn't exactly follow to the letter, and it still turned out excellent. For starters I didn't feel like getting the mixer down from the cupboard, to much work. Then I couldn't find my hand mixer. Found the beaters, and the cord, but not the machine. So I just dumped the sugar and egg into the food processor attachment that came with my plunge blender and just whipped it up into a sludge. Didn't have any coconut, but I did have a hunk of creamed coconut. So I grated that up into the batter. I copied the recipe exactly as I found it on the paper. So the next time I feel the need for a piece of cake, I will definately use this again.

Last night my hasband decided that he needed some prawns for dinner. Last week I bought a huge supply of them for family and friends from the wholesaler. I do this once a year in February. It just happened that my freezer is somewhat empty so that's a good thing. Because it's full of prawns and mussels right now. And the freezer is in the garage. Last friday I brought the load home and managed to get it all in the freezer. That night my husband went to work and didn't close the garage door (it faces out towards the alley) and it's a lucky thing the light bulb was out that's attached to the door opener. Because the garage was open for the whole weekend. My neighbour knocked on my door at around 8 pm on sunday night and let me know. Meanwhile we were parking on the street for some reason all weekend. So in a panic I ran out and envisioned all my tools - gone, all my gardening equipment - gone. And most of all the hundreds of dollars of prawns in the freezer-gone. But everything was happily where it should have been. I gotta say I live in a great neighbourhood. No one comes around here except the people that live here. NOt like the last place that's for sure. The last place I never had to take my empties to the recycler myself because I would just leave it outside by the dumpster and by the time I brought the other bag down, the first one dissapeared.

Usually when I grill prawns I just marinate them in some bottle of italian salad dressing that I've doctored up. But didn't have any yesterday so I had to actually think of a marinade. So I remember copying the recipes over to my program (I copy all the recipes from most cook books into mastercook) from barefoot contessa's bunch of books that I picked up at the library.

And they turned out lip smacking. Although I used my George Foreman Grill, not a barbeque grill (haven't used the barbeque in the year since I bought my foreman grill)

Grilled Herb Shrimp

3 cloves garlic crushed

1 small onion small dice

1/4 c minced parsley

1/4 c minced basil

1 tsp dry mustard

2 tsp dijon mustard

2 tsp kosher salt

1/4 tsp pepper

1/4 c olive oil

juice of 1 lemon

2 lbs shrimp

Well as usual I had to improvise.

I didn't have any parsley or basil. But I did have some pesto, so I added about 1/2 tsp (mine is really thick) and used only 1/2 an onion. I only have 1/2 a lemon, so I also used the lemon peel with the rasp. I gotta say though use a sieve when reaming the lemon. My little ity bitty 1/2 lemon had a surprising amount of seeds. And since I used the pesto, I should have only maybe used 1 garlic clove. And I added a splash of balsamic vinegar. I only had about 5 tiger prawns (not a big fan) and It's a good thing, because I was really suffering from the garlic. My husband was breathing all over me all night. Not a pleasant sleep.Next time I'll marinate them overnight in this mix. They probably would have been even better if allowed to absorb more of the flavour. They cooked really fast, about 3 minutes. So make sure everything else is ready to serve. I just made some spagetti and ceasar salad. It was a very garlic evening.

The butter chicken I made last sunday, well I was taking it to work for lunch on monday, tuesday and wednesday. By wednesday it was tamed right down and especially good. I made kraft dinner with it on sunday and when I stored it in the fridge I just dumped the whole chicken mess on top of the macaroni and put it away. The next day the macaroni absorbed all the liquid and then I just sliced of 1/3 and put it into a sandwich container to nuke at work. That was a really good recipe.