We had decided earlier on to make a nice roast pork dish, and I figured pork loin would be a nice cut.

So for those of you who are feeling adventurous, do try this, it's really yummy! Actually its not even all that challenging. Quite simple really, if you have all ingredients at hand.

The meat was really juicy and not dry as I thought it would be.

This was HB's effort (mostly :P ). He did the cutting and mixing of seasonings while I coated the wedges with the said seasoning. Now, I really love my potatoes, and this turned out REALLY yum. I think I could have finished the entire 4 potatoes myself!

We coupled our meal with a glass of wine, and it was just like a meal in a restaurant, albeit 90% cheaper. :P The wine we had was a Chianti Classico, and it was quite mild. I think I am probably used to stronger tasting wines these days :P And no ma, that does NOT mean I am turning into an alcoholic. =________=

So, for those of you who may be interested, here's the recipe for our Roast Pork Loin and Baked Potato Wedges.  

Baked Potato Wedges

4 potatoes, washed (leave skin on)

4 teaspoons grated Parmesan cheese

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

1/4 teaspoon paprika powder

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

8 teaspoons vegetable oil (we used olive oil)

1. Cut potatoes into wedges

2. Mix the parmesan cheese, salt, pepper, paprika powder, garlic powder and oil in a small bowl.

3. Place potatoes skin side down in a baking pan/tray. Brush the seasoning mixture over wedges.

4. Bake in a 180 degrees celcius oven for about 45 minutes.

Roast Pork Loin (serves 4)

1 boneless pork loin (about 1 kilo).

4 tablespoons softened butter

400 grams chopped prosciutto (can be substituted with shaved/chopped ham)

4 tablespoons finely minced garlic

2-3 tablespoons dried rosemary (of course, better if it is fresh)

3 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese

1 teaspoon black pepper (or more if you prefer)

2 cups dry red wine

1. Mix butter, prosciutto, garlic, rosemary, cheese and black pepper.

2. Cut slits on loin about 4cm long and 2cm deep on both sides of loin.

3. Spread butter mixture all over loin and ESPECIALLY into the slits. (Use fingers for best results).

4. Place loin in a Ziploc bag and refrigerate overnight. (Do not freeze!)

5. Preheat oven.

6. Place loin on a roasting pan and pour wine all over it.

7. Roast for about 1 hour or so at 180 degrees celcius, depending on size of loin.

8. Baste with pan drippings every 20-30 minutes.

9. Let it rest in oven for about 10 minutes before serving.

Sit back and enjoy the aroma of roast pork and baked potato wedges wafting through the air. :) I had actually wanted to steam some broccoli to go with this meal, but we realized that there is already too much for us to down :P So, we made do with grapes later on for fibre.

We polished off the potato wedges, and there's about 1/5 of the loin left in the fridge. Excuse me while I go heat it up and have another wonderful meal. ;)

But, it seems that eating those food are too much for us, so we decide only to cook the spaghetti *actually we called it Spaghetti BarBar*, and the mashed potato .... :p

So, today become a revolutionary for my blog, 'coz for the first time i will wrote about a Food Recipe ...... :) :) :)

Spaghetti BarBar ala Donny & Icha *don't ask something bout the name, 'coz i'll explain it later*

Ingredients :

• Half box of La Fonte Spaghetti *or another brand*
• Ready-to-fry Potato Wedges
• Ready-to-fry Chicken Schnitzel
• 1 pc Bombay Union Onion *means bawang bombay*,  medium size ---> cut it into dice, with 3mm x 3mm size *actually i don't measure them*
• 1 pc Tomato, medium size ---> diblender supaya halus
• Dehydrated Oregano Leaf
• Kethup sauce
• Chilli sauce
• 100 gr Rolling Meat *means Daging Giling*
• Cooking Oil
• Margarine
• Sugar Ray Sand *means Gula Pasir*
• Cheddar Cheese
• 400cc of water

Cooking Instructions :

1. Boil 400cc of water with an eat spoon *baca sendok makan* of cooking oil, till ngeblug-blug *maksudnya mendidih*

*********TRANSLATOR ERROR*********

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> application terminated :)

> bahasa indonesia mode = ON

Cara Memasak Spaghetti:

1. Didihkan 400cc air yang sudah dicampur dengan satu sendok makan minyak goreng.
2. Begitu campuran air dan minyak goreng sudah mendidih, masukkan setengah box spaghetti. masukkan perlahan agar spaghetti tidak patah.
3. Rebus dan tunggu sampai spaghetti menjadi empuk (sekitar 15 menit dengan api sedang menggunakan kompor Rinnai) *atau sesuai selera, kalo seneng yang mentahan juga gpp ;) *
4. Tiriskan

Cara membuat bumbu spaghetti *lupa namanya* :p :

1. Panaskan 1 sendok makan minyak goreng di wajan secukupnya *masak iya di baskom*, panaskan. Setelah itu masukkan kira-kira 5 sendok makan margarine
2. Masukkan bawang bombay yang sudah dipotong dadu, lalu tumis hingga harum
3. Masukkan tomat yang sudah di blender, trus aduk-aduk kira-kira 2 menit
4. Masukkan saos tomat sesuai selera, trus aduk sampai rata. Tambahkan sedikit air
5. Masukkan daun oregano kering, aduk lagi sampai rata
6. Terakhir masukkan satu sendok makan gula pasir, aduk sampai rata

Terakhir, cara menggoreng Potato Wedges & Chicken Schnitzel

1. Panaskan 200ml minyak goreng dalam wajan sedang selama kira-kira 3 menit dengan api besar
2. Masukkan Potato Wedges (sesuai selera) kedalam wajan. kecilkan apinya menjadi medium ketika menggoreng
3. Saat potato wedgesnya sudah berwarna orange, angkat dan tiriskan.
4. Lakukan hal yang sama saat menggoreng Chicken Schnitzel-nya.

Tadaaaaaa .......

Setelah semuanya selesai, Hidangkan :

1. Taruh spaghetti-nya di piring, tambahkan bumbu spaghetti diatas spaghetti-nya.
2. Taburi dengan keju parut di atas pasta dan spaghettinya
3. Tambahkan Potato Wedges & Chicken Schnitzel yang sudah dipotong-potong
4. Habiskan sampai tidak bersisa .... :) :) :)

Nyammmmm ..... trus gimana rasanya ??? Pokoknya Yo'i Do'i To'i banget deh.

Dengan konfigurasi bahan diatas dijamin bisa dinikmati untuk bertiga dengan porsi dahsyat yang membuat anda kekenyangan....*makanya disebut Spaghetti BarBar* hehehe .... :D :D :D

Note : Jangan gunakan TipuTranslator v 0.95, karena selain masih versi beta *baca : sering ngawur dan suka nge-hang* , dijamin hasil translatornya juga akan merusak tulisan blog anda :) :) :)

Ciao ....

I found myself going through the hallowed doors a second time when I couldn’t believe they were actually selling a suitcase of hamburgers for $8. They do and the rest of my weekend was spent praising god for placing so many Starbucks and their relatively clean bathrooms so closely together.

The final time I went into White Castle was after a night of heroic drinking. I was walking home and decided the night had room for one more bad decision. For some reason I only bought an order of onion rings and for some reason I walked a good thirty feet and then threw them at a passing car. That was the end of my White Castle days.

I didn’t resist going to White Castle because I’m health nut by any means. I think I respect my body as much as a big company respects a college intern. The real reason I didn’t grab a fist-full of burgers everyday on my way home was because I wanted Fast Food to be special.

When I was growing up, Fast Food felt like the only thing in my world that made sense. Everything in small town Vermont looked like crappy shows like Little House on the Prairie while Fast Food places looked like cool shows like Miami Vice. Everything in a Fast Food place came in individual packets, was built to be climbed on and tasted like salt. My house was all about lentils in bulk, “careful, that’s an antique” furniture and food that I described as tasting like a wet pair of underwear.

Even though I loved Fast Food, I almost never got to eat it. Due to the ruralness of my town, the nearest fast food place was almost an hour away and my “You can eat bark and not die”-parents never liked feeding me something as kitschy as a Big Mac. Instead it was reserved as incentive to coax us onto the road at 5:00 a.m. or into a “surprise” that almost always turned out to be a trip to the dentist.

That’s why my head almost blew up when, in 8th grade, my family moved to a town that had every form of Fast Food known to man. Carl’s Jr., Jack in The Box, and Del Taco? We’d never heard of these places before!

The first day after we arrived in our new town, I grabbed my bike off the moving truck and headed towards downtown. The wonderful, world-is-at-your-fingertips freedom! It was almost too much to handle. You know what else was too much to handle? A frosty, a jr. cheeseburger deluxe and a large fries while I rode on my bike. As I was crossing the street of a hectic intersection, my bag ripped open and all my fries fell onto the pavement. I should have just accepted my losses and walked away, but my country boy attitude told me there were a few fries that were still good. I frantically picked up as many loose fries off the pavement as I could while cars honked and people yelled at me.

From then on, I forced my dad to drive me for Fast Food. And drive he did. He felt so guilty about uprooting my brother and me that he caved every time we started chanting “K-F-C!! K-F-C!!”

After a few months my brother and I created "The Perfect Meal," and on Sunday nights we would make my dad drive from place to place picking up essential elements before The Simpsons came on. Here’s how the meal generally went:
- Whopper from Burger King
- Potato Wedges from KFC
- French Fries from Carl’s Jr.
- Chicken Nuggets from McDonalds
- Soda from Taco Bell (we were convinced they had the best dr. pepper)

My father finally put his foot down when we requested he stop at Wendy’s because they had the best plastic forks.

Through our Fast Food gluttony, we amassed a stockpile of condiments. My brother and I insisted we keep them until we could figure out what to do with 20 lbs of small ketchup packets. My parents, however, figured out a plan first. They handed each condiment packet out at Halloween instead of candy. What better way to say “Hi, we’re new here. Fuck you!” than shoving a handful of mustard packets into someone’s candy sack. I became “The kid who lives at that house that gave away mayo packets for Halloween” and then later “The kid who lives at that house that keeps getting egged.”

Hundreds of Whoppers later, I burned myself out on Fast Food. Now, I only reserve it for when I’m on the road. It gives me something to distract me from wondering “Will I get a speeding ticket” or “How much further!?” I can wonder if the Whopper has as many pickles on it as I remember or if they ever got rid of that stupid bun in the middle of a Big Mac. The beauty of Fast Food has always been the anticipation, the thought of something a little salty, a little greasy. It’s never been the “that feeling you might soil yourself means you’re full” taste.

Dijon Garlic Aioli

Ingredients
1/2 cup - mayonnaise
1 teaspoon - Dijon mustard
1 clove - garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon - fresh lemon juice

Directions
Mix together all aioli ingredients in a small bowl. Cover and refrigerate until ready to use.

Today was an altogether more successful day, despite my confusion (which I have to say is a fairly normal state of affairs).  Jason let me lie in today, which was wonderfully welcome except for the fact that I dreamt that I was in Folsom Jail, on stage with Johnny Cash facing a lot of riled up prisoners banging tin cups.  We were supposed to be starting the show, but I had no idea how to play the bass guitar, as only minutes earlier I had been peeling potatoes on kitchen duty.  Apparently Johnny thought that as he was a bass player down (he never explained why, and I never asked.  You don't like to really), that because of my dextrous way with a potato peeler I'd be handy with a bass guitar.  Now, even though I was a convicted criminal (what for I'm not quite sure) and clearly, as hard as nails, being the only woman in an all male jail (I think I had facial hair and tattoos), I didn't refuse him.  Instead I foolishly agreed, desperate for my fifteen minutes of fame.  Oh woe and shame, shame and woe!

Now Johnny may have been a legend in his own life time, but I feel it wasn't one of his good decision making days, and that both he and I might have only a slim chance of living to regret his choice of bassist.  For a start my arms are too short to make a good bass player (the neck of a bass guitar being much longer than an average regular guitar, fact fans), and my bosom was getting in the way, despite prison fatigues.  It was all going horribly wrong when I had the very good fortune to wake up and realise that I was in bed in Glenfield, and the worst thing that was happening to me was that I couldn't remember what day it was.  I expect Johnny Cash had many a day like that.  Mind you, it is unlikely he had many of them in Glenfield, more's the pity.  I would love to have had one of those blue plaques on the wall of my house: 'Johnny Cash didn't have a clue what was going on here - Circa 1968'.

If I don't stop having dreams about musicians soon I really must go and see somebody about it.  It's quite troubling.  I get quite nervous about who might be popping up next.  What if I had the terrible misfortune to squander a good night of dreams on someone like Aled Jones for example?  Now, he's hardly on a par with Slash from Guns 'n' Roses or anything, but you just never know do you? Dreams are tricky things at the best of times.  It would be just my luck to have a dream where we both ended up naked.  It is a hideous thought, and one which I shall do my best to blank out of my mind altogether.

One of my friends at university had the great misfortune to spend a night in bed with Aled Jones.  He went to visit his girlfriend's family for the weekend, and they were very strict on the whole boyfriend and girlfriend not sleeping together until they had a mortgage and a dog type thing.  His girlfriend's sister had also brought her boyfriend down for the evening, who just happened to be Aled Jones.  As there was only one spare bedroom and the bed in it was a double, my friend ended up pyjama to pyjama with Aled for the weekend, and was understandably, severely traumatised by the whole experience.  It's not something you forget easily, much like the execrable song; 'Walking in the Air' which still haunts us every Christmas, despite the fact that Aled is now a rugged, beer drinking family man with a hairy chest and a deep brown voice.  Be sure and your sins will find you out!

Now let us move from dreams to nightmares, and my impending brush with whatever hideous plague the children have seen fit to bring into my house.  I have been on spot inspection again today and so far none have turned up, although I am driving myself slowly bonkers thinking about them and have now developed a rampant itch all over, which is almost sure to be psychosomatic.  Psychosomatic and bloody itchy nonetheless.  Tilly has taught Oscar to say; 'Spot!' at the top of his little lungs and jab whatever part of your torso he can get near, which is why I ended up getting a funny look from the woman next to me in the queue in Borders, and having a very watery eye where he poked me randomly in a moment where I had let my concentration lapse momentarily.

Yes! I did finally get to go to Borders today, and as predicted have seized a tasty haul which bears no resemblance whatsoever to what I went in for, but which is monstrously pleasing nonetheless.  I treated myself to the new, illustrated version of Pippi Longstocking with pictures by Lauren Child which was an astronomical £20, but which is now half price, and seems much more worth it.  I have been trying to read Pippi Longstocking to the kids for years, and they find it too wordy and boring.  I used to love the Pippi books when I was a kid and find them hilarious.  I am hoping that the illustrations will finally get them to sit with it for more than thirty seconds.  Even if they don't, I love the book and will bore any grandchildren that come to me with it (but not hopefully for many years to come thank you all the same).

I bought tons of novels, all of which are to read when I'm less busy reading everything else.  At this rate I'm going to have to go for early retirement from motherhood or send the children to boarding school because the ratio of non-read to read books is beginning to tilt alarmingly and it is frankly ridiculous of me to buy any more.  Not that I would admit that to Jason mind you.  Death before dishonour and all that!  If he can prance about in pixie ears, I can squander money on lovely, lovely books.  At least I don't have to read them in a windswept field in the middle of nowhere in Elvish.

My brother accompanied us on our bookish odyssey and then to Pizza Hut.  I dislike Pizza Hut intensely (having moved on in my middle class aspirations to prefer the hallowed portals of Pizza Express!), but it was right next to Borders, it wasn't very busy (due to the fact that all the pizzas taste like they have been mounted on stiff cardboard), and the children love it.  This is a huge plus point, and however unpleasant the food is, it is a step up from McDonalds.  This isn't saying much admittedly, but beggars can't be choosers.

I hate spending my hard earned money taking the children out for lunch when all they can do is whinge.  It drives me mad.  I do however, love being a lady who lunches, and don't see why I should be one of those sad, Supernanny bound individuals who haven't been out for a meal for eight years because of their hideous children.  I have conscientiously trainned my children to always be very well behaved in restaurants, for the simple reason that if they play up I take them outside and kneecap them in an Mafia style slaying incident.  I can't stand children who run round ruining other diners' meal times as well.  I feel that people who allow their children to do this unchecked should be forced to pay everyone elses' bill for them at the end of the meal.

My children merely whinge over the food.  If it's something they have decided they don't like they can eke eating one teaspoonful of said item out for about the length of the average soap opera, and with as much drama.  They could easily win awards for it at some televisual luvvie event.  In real life however, it's painful and boring and really puts you off your food.  Quite often whichever one of them is on a go slow gets left in the kitchen while we all go off and do wondrous things in another room (sadly this is impossible to do in a restaurant without the authorities getting involved).  It works a treat, as it never fails to annoy the crap out of them, almost as much as they have annoyed us.  I highly recommend it.

We don't do what my mother used to do, which is stand over us and threaten us with the fact that if we don't eat it we will spend all night at the table, and if we still don't eat it we can have it for breakfast tomorrow.  That's too much like hard work, and I have vivid memories of sitting for four hours over one particularly unpleasant roast dinner one Sunday night, which I have no intention of paying therapy bills for with my own children.  We simply leave the room with a time limit set, by which time if they haven't eaten it, it gets scraped in the bin and nothing gets served to them until the next meal time, and then go off to eat chocolates and watch illicit television loudly in the lounge.  It will be in my upcoming child rearing book called: 'Kids and the Revenge you can wreak upon them - Volume 1'.

Today, with my Pizza Hut plan I really thought that nothing could possibly go wrong, and that we would have a marvellous lunch together full of bonhomie and boingy cheese.  When we found that they are even offering chicken nuggets on their children's menu these days I allowed myself a little pre-emptive victory dance, round the confines of my own head, mind you.  How foolish I was.

It turns out that the chips were the wrong sort of chips, and had the damned effrontery to be potato wedge shaped, which was totally unacceptable.  The chicken nuggets were the wrong sort of chicken nuggets because someone had dared to put some kind of herb based product in the batter mix, and the tomato sauce was too tomatoey.  They sighed and wailed and pushed their food around their plate looking for all the world as if I were force feeding them Pedigree Chum with a liberal side helping of mouldy cauliflower.  They muttered and prevaricated and Tallulah let out a test sob whilst watching me out of the corner of her eye.  I quite calmly stated that as they had picked their own food and I had paid for it, if they didn't eat it there would be rivers of blood in Pizza Hut before the day was out (I am, as you know, drawn to the dramatic.  Then I blame my children for exactly the same penchant.  This is o.k. because I am a parent.).  By the time Rob and I had finished our food they had eaten enough to keep an anorexic mouse alive and I had lost the will to go on.  We left, never to return.

We spent the rest of the afternoon at my mum's house.  She has been trying to coax us over since Boxing Day.  This is because she realized at about three o'clock on the day in question that she had fallen into the age old trap of over-catering wildly and needed lots of people to turn up and eat all her food.  She tried diverting a pensioner's bus trip to the potteries to no avail, and only had us to fall back on.  Hence her attempts to feed us all her leftover party food, including the abortive ginger pig, which she is now trying to sell me as being 'lovely', mainly because she's sick of the sight of it, leering at her from the back of the fridge.

Now, I love our family parties for the very fact that you will never go hungry.  I can't stand those parties you go to where people think that a family sized bag of crisps and some peanuts in a bowl will tide you over for four hours because there is after all, enough drink to sink a battle ship.  It's pants.  I cannot go for more than an hour without having a little snack.  I make Winnie the Pooh look like he's on permanent hunger strike, and if I'm going to a party I need to be fed, and fed well.

I once, and I almost hesitate to say this dear reader, for fear of shocking you (you may want to sit down), went to the birthday party of a friend of my ex-husband's, at which there was no, and I mean NO cake!  Now call me crazy, but surely the whole point of a birthday, and indeed a party to celebrate said birthday, is a cake.  How on God's green earth can you have a celebration without some form of cake based produce? It's an abomination.  There are not many things I would leave my house to march in the streets about (because I am a lazy cake eater mainly), but this is one of them.  I thought that they had forgotten the cake, but when I enquired of the hostess where her cake was, she said, and I quote: 'Oh! That's just for kids.  Who needs cake when there's all this alcohol?'  It was at this point that I had to be restrained from lamping her one with the punch bowl ladle, and shortly thereafter Jamie had to take me home, via the Londis shop for a fortifying box of French Fancies.

I now refuse to go to any party of someone I don't know very well, unless whoever has invited me can confirm the presence of cake.  I don't want to be lured in on false pretences again.  Once was enough, twice and the shock would probably kill me.  Consequently, like my mother before me, I always over cater massively at any parties held in my house and there are at least three types of cake available at any given moment.

My best cake party memory was my friend Kate's wedding.  Her mother is a stonkingly good cook and even better, likes to feed me up.  Now I'm not saying that they laid on the entire wedding feast for my benefit, but it is a sure fire bet that she knew that I would be coming, and consequently she was the first to tell me that she had assembled a vast and dizzying array of over thirty different kinds of cakes and puddings.  I needed restraining again at this point, but for entirely different reasons than previously.  I was, as you can imagine, quite overcome, particularly after sampling sixteen of her offerings.  I would have soldiered on to the bitter end, but Jamie refused to drive me home afterwards if I didn't stop then as he was worried for the upholstery in the car.  It was a quite magnificent day.  I am hoping that Kate and Gary will renew their vows in a few years and have another party.  I am in training already.

I don't really like eating leftovers much though, particularly not a few days later leftovers, so I refused to be drawn into my mum's evil plans of emptying her groaning larder.  She was quite disappointed, so in recompense I cooked us smoked salmon risotto with peas, white wine and cream.  It was lovely and she and I secretly agreed that we were much happier with that than left over pig.  Everyone else had pasta, because they're boring and don't like risotto because it's foreign and sloppy!  Actually, Oscar ate it with great gusto, but then on the days he's not being a fruitarian, he eats everything with great gusto, so it doesn't really count, although it does make a lovely change from the: 'These are the wrong shaped bananas mama,' brigade.

She did try to get us to take the remains of ginger pig home with us, and had even wrapped it in a cunningly disguised parcel, which I think she was hoping to get one of the girls to smuggle into the car for her.  Thankfully the evil smell gave her away and we were able to dispose of it on the grounds that it was vile and stinky and she couldn't make us!  When even the cat won't eat it, you know there's something amiss.  I think the only thing for it now is to release it back into the wild and let it breed tiny ginger piglets in time for next year.

いつ：二月一日2008年
どこ：Waroeng Penyet
だれと：家族
カメラ：Canon IXY40

(左から）Es Cendol （ココナッツミルク飲料）、Jus Alpukat（アボカドミルクセーキ）

Gado-gado（インドネシアのミックスサラダ）

Ayam Penyet（ 扁平フライドチキン）

Bawal Bakar（グリルシマガツオ）

いつ：一月十一日2008年
どこ：Arnold's Fried Chicken
だれと：家族
カメラ：Canon IXY40