I awoke this morning covered in the stench of a fab night out. It's been a looooooong time since I've been able to indulge in such things as a hangover, and it was a bit of a doozy. Since the middle of February, I've been immersed in my very own schedule o'crazy, involving huge freelance deadlines, essay-marking deadlines, paper-writing deadlines, design deadlines, pattern-writing deadlines... A full-night's sleep became a bittersweet memory; sex was rushed through in a shared shower; blogging was something I did in my head walking to uni and back.
It's not over yet, but I'm past the properly insane bit, which is why this morning my head felt like someone had injected me with nanobots hellbent on dismantling my cerebral cortex.
At the beginning of last month, Lou and I launched Loumms Creations, our very own Etsy site, where we are currently selling Grow Your Own Soup kits, but will be adding various knitting kits, patterns, projects bags and whatever else catches our imagination. Though we haven't made any sales through the site itself, it led to our first wholesale order -- awesome! It's an fab opportunity for us and means our stuff (stuff we made with our hands!) will reach heaps of people who we probably wouldn't have connected with otherwise. And we made it! Over a hundred supercute individual kits, with wee instruction booklets, origami seed packets and hand-embroidered labels, made by us!
Since I've decided to ignore my freelancing this week and have a mere four delinquent student essays to mark, last night Lou and I met up at the Royal Albert in Deptford to celebrate with a quick drink after she finished work. That quick drink turned into two bottles of wine, which later morphed into a third bottle, oatmeal cookies and a slightly burnt loaf of bread back at my place. Today I hurt.
Throughout it all, I've been very careful to block out 6--8 in the evening for dinner. Cooking, like my morning potter about my garden with my first cup of tea, is the height of relaxation. And thus what better way of easing my poor lumpy noggin than to fix myself a greasy breakfast, nonetheless packed with the vitamins and minerals I need. I have no picture for this because I was deeply hungover and in no mind to remember such things, but this is one of my very favourite brunchy/lunchy/make it bigger and call it dinner meals.
ingredients (makes 1 serving)
half a packet of firm tofu
6 mushrooms (any size, though preferably a bit large)
approx. 3 tbsp. each cornflour
and ground almonds for dredging
1/3 c. mixture of olive oil and vegetable oil
1 tsp. dried oregano
freshly ground black pepper and salt to taste
method
Press the tofu in a clean towel to remove as much liquid as you can. It takes a good couple of minutes, but it totally worth it. Tear the tofu, rather than cut, into roughly 1-inch pieces. Cut the mushrooms into fat slices.
In large pan, pour your oil and add the oregano and salt and pepper and set the hob to a medium-high heat. As olive oil shouldn't really be used at high heat, I've used it mixed with vegetable oil. When it's sizzling round the edges of the pan and beginning to show bubbles at the centre of the bottom of the pan, it's ready, just make sure it doesn't start smoking because then it's too hot. While the oil is heating, dredge the tofu pieces in the cornflour and ground almonds. (I use a separate plate rather than a cutting board for this: 'dust' the plate with the cornflour and ground almonds and then dunk the tofu into it. Try to make sure the pieces are all pretty evenly coated.)
When the oil is nice and hot, carefully place the tofu in. Don't move it around, otherwise the coating will dislodge itself, which defeats the purpose entirely! After a couple of minutes, it should move on its own if you give the pan a gentle shake. Turn each piece (carefully, don't burn yourself!). Now add the mushrooms and turn the heat down. The mushrooms will take about three minutes either side.
Serve up, using a slotted spoon, on buttered toast layered with spinach. Nom!
Thanks for the recipe. Good luck getting through the less crazy busy bits. And the grow-your-own kits sound awesome.
Posted by: katie m. | April 06, 2009 at 02:56 PM
I tried your recipe last night—SO YUMMY!!! Thanks so much!
Posted by: Camille | April 05, 2009 at 06:13 PM
Ooooh, tofu sounds delicious! And grow your own soup kits = awesome fun idea!
Posted by: adrienne | April 04, 2009 at 10:46 PM
Best opening line I've read in a long time!
That sounds SO DELISH! And I've already got corn flour and ground almonds on hand, yay! Thanks for sharing.
Posted by: Camille | April 04, 2009 at 01:27 AM