The Kitchen Cabinet

Today is my day. Let's start with breakfast:


Pretty basic stuff: some juicy tangerines, a mug of coffee, and my favorite S. Pellegrino sparkling water. I include my coffee press in the photo to show that, at the time I took the photo, I was having my fourth cup of coffee (hence the press was empty). Also, as you may be able to tell from the background, I was having my breakfast in the lab. All of my other meals are probably going to be on the same desk in the lab as well.

Crushing Our Enemies:

And now the drinks, as promised. Mixing cocktails is becoming a bit of a hobby of mine. I made three rounds of drinks:

Spoiler

Daiquiris: not the fruity rum slushies that some may be familiar with. These are classic daiquiris - light rum, lime juice, and sugar syrup, shaken with crushed ice. Delicious!

Spoiler

Old Fashioned Southern Belle: This is a modification on the Old Fashioned, typically made with rye or bourbon. Rather than rye or bourbon, what we had on hand was sweet tea flavored moonshine. I mixed a shot of that with a muddled mixture of orange, bitters, club soda, and sugar syrup, then stirred with ice cubes and strained. Fresh orange is the key!

Spoiler

Vanilla vodka, coconut rum, and ginger ale: exactly what it sounds like.

Click to expand...

PLease could you give me the exact recipe for your Southern Belle? It is a bit different to the recipe I know.

And, time for lunch:


I was originally going to remove the notebook to the left, but then I decided it's more honest if I take the picture with it in the frame, as that's where it'd be normally .

For the food itself, this is an "egg'n'egg platter" from one of my favorite local foodplaces, Clover. The right compartment is a messy mix of slices from a hard boiled egg, eggplant (hence the "egg'n'egg"), hummus, and cucumber and tomato salad. The left compartment is beet salad - I think, I always get the "raw salad" without ever bothering to ask what that day's offering actually is. And finally, there's a very tasty whole-wheat pita.

In terms of beverages, there is the usual S. Pellegrino sparkling water. This is not the same bottle as in the breakfast photo, as that was done about two hours ago. My coffee mug is also visible, though empty - I actually didn't have any more coffee after the one I posted in the breakfast photo.

Looks good, r3n!

Flem, here's my recipe:
1. Slice an orange round and put it in the bottom of a glass or cocktail shaker.
2. Muddle with three dashes angostura bitters, simple syrup to taste (I used about half a tablespoon), and a generous splash of club soda.
3. Add 2 oz of sweet tea flavored moonshine and stir with ice cubes.
4. Strain into an old fashioned glass.

If I had cherries on hand, I would garnish with one. If one substituted bourbon for the moonshine, this would be my recipe for an old fashioned, though some would call me crazy for muddling the orange instead of garnishing with it (or run me out of town for using bourbon instead of rye).

Finally, my Christmas Eve dinner:


Apologies for the bad cropping, but I had originally taken the photo without turning my monitor off. I only realized after I had already eaten the meal and could not longer take another photo, so I had to crop the monitor.

Dinner's fairly basic. Some grape tomatoes and fresh mozarella I bought earlier today while doing my groceries, and a bit of extra virgin olive oil I have stashed in my office from my last visit to Greece. And of course, sparkling water - the grocery store was out of S. Pellegrino, so I had to switch to Perrier.

And that's it in terms of food for today.

Not my turn, but I am going to bump this thread, to share some more of the food I had cooked and photographed over the break. I've stretched the images using the terrible img code because I am too lazy to resize them.

[img=200,300]http://i1269.photobucket.com/albums/jj598/mcmasterdonia/Mobile%20Uploads/1F73D195-1408-4056-888B-D5E74D2530A0_zpsxemmtqiu.jpg[/img]

In the above photo we have two items. Towards the rear we have a turkey roll, which is made from rolling Turkey breasts together and stuffing them in a net. I'm not sure if you eat it like that overseas, but it is quite nice.

To the front we have a beef wellington. It was made using a 1.5KG scotch fillet roast. To make it, I first made my own pastry. I then covered the pastry in cooked mushrooms, garlic, onions, various sauces/spices, hot english mustard. I was taking this from a Jamie Oliver recipe which also included Chicken Livers, but we decided against going that extreme for the Christmas eve meal.

Once the pastry was covered I placed the fillet roast on top and rolled it to create the wellington shape. It was then cooked in the oven for around an hour. I also made my own beautiful gravy to accompany it.

I didn't take a picture of it when sliced, but this is how it looked in the recipe:



And I have to say that it turned out fairly close to that! Honest >_> >_> <_>

[img=200,300]http://i1269.photobucket.com/albums/jj598/mcmasterdonia/Mobile%20Uploads/42EF0321-5202-4B22-AC68-9778CE456C63_zpsuttfo6fg.jpg[/img]
In the above we have a cob loaf dip, which was made using spinach, sour cream, cream cheese and various herbs. Absolutely delicious.

[img=200,300]http://i1269.photobucket.com/albums/jj598/mcmasterdonia/Mobile%20Uploads/AD79B634-55F1-4B33-8335-AB9D6C541DD2_zpsm9nwqru1.jpg[/img]

A homemade smoothie, containing strawberries, watermelon, mango, and raspberries.

And finally:

[img=200,300]http://i1269.photobucket.com/albums/jj598/mcmasterdonia/Mobile%20Uploads/EF8A5833-4D02-4EDA-A814-BBA42CDD5620_zpsinadbdsk.jpg[/img]

A 2005 Capel Vale Riesling. Wonderful.

Obviously like everyone else, I am sure, I had plenty of other wonderful food over the christmas period.. I just kept forgetting to take photographs of it!

Yum, yum! I am hungry now!

~ Tomb