Who knew finding a recipe for coffee would be harder than anticipated.  Oh sure, taste.com has 406 coffee recipes but only 1 recipe is not either a drink or a dessert (and it is for lamb).

I could see how the coffee would work for roasted lamb, after all mum has been using Vegemite on her lamb roast for over 30 years but I had a chicken breast in the fridge and was determined to use it.  So I turned to that trusty source of inspiration that never results in action- Pinterest.

Lo and behold I found multiple recipes for coffee chicken.  I was going to pair mine with a simple bastardised Greek/panzanella/fattoush salad (it is over 30°C here in Melbourne) so wanted something easy, summer-y and uncomplicated.

I found a few recipes that looked like the chicken had been grilled to perfection, but they all required something I did not have at home (and I am being lazy and don’t want to go to the shops- again!) so here is my version: dinner for 1- coffee infused chicken recipe.

Note to self: buy a mortar and pestle.

Dinner is Served.

Coffee Infused Chicken with a Simple Salad.
                          Serves 1.

For the chook:
1 chicken breast
1 heaped teaspoon espresso coffee (pulverise if necessary) (I used a strong nespresso capsule) (note: there is more coffee in those capsules than you think)
1 teaspoon crushed garlic (why not)
1 teaspoon crushed ginger (same reason)
1 teaspoon mustard seeds (this was in one recipe)
1 teaspoon ground coriander (it was meant to be coriander seeds but my philosophy is use what you have)
salt and pepper
oil

Simple Salad
Cherry tomatoes
cucumber (cubed)
red onion (sliced thinly)
baby bocconcini
kalamata olives (pitted)
cos lettuce (shredded)
pita bread (toasted in the oven and broken into pieces)
simple oil and lemon juice dressing.

Toss everything for the chook in a bag (with the chook) and let marinate for however long you have (the longer the better).

The coffee and spices doing their work

When ready to cook, take the chicken out of the bag (this is important), pat dry and grill till cooked either on the bbq or a griddle pan (that is nice and hot). Slice and serve with the simple salad.

For the salad: Toss it all together.  (See- Simple).

This post is a @52blogs post- topic: Coffee.

This is a cop out post for #52blogs. The pic is from Facebook, so I have no accreditation details – my apologies to the creator.

Is it a celebration? A birthday? An anniversary of some sort?

Or is it just an ordinary day studded with the little things that you notice when you slow down long enough?

The simple deliciousness of a roasted mushroom in 2 pieces of bread

The size and colour of fruit and vegetables

The taste of tiny red grapes as they hit your mouth, each one bursting with sunshine, so sweet they almost taste like blueberries and leave the taste and feel of sugar on your fingers

The simpleness of trees swaying in the wind

…of laughing at a mug

…of washing hanging on the line

…of watching the neighbours cluck around and say hello

…of finishing something that will be treasured

…of noticing the beauty in the simple and discarded

…of buying a friend an impulse gift- just because!

Yes, today has been a special day.

Chicken Stroganoff, fluffy (brown) rice, red onion & parsley pickle

So far I have made 2 dishes from the book.  The first I will portray below.  The second (shown above) was my version of Beef stroganoff fluffy rice, red onion & parsley pickle.  I made a few changes- from Beef to Chicken; left out the thyme and the spinach; and used quick cups brown rice (40 sec in the microwave – sized for 1 – perfect!)

The first dish I made was my take on his Lamb Kofte, Pitta and Greek Salad. (page 108).   The main changes I made were to the Kofte’s- I used chicken with Italian style spices.  I was going to add spring onion but forgot it (but would use it next time).  I didn’t ‘time’ my recipe as I was just pottering around the kitchen.

The Couscous

The Salad

The original ingredients will be in brackets.

Chicken Kofte Pitta’s with Greek Salad

Chicken (Lamb) Kofte, Pitta and Greek Salad
-adapted from Jamie Oliver’s 15 – min meals
              -serves 4  (note- I halved all ingredients)

Ingredients out ~ Kettle Boiled ~ Large frying pan (high heat) ~ Food Processor (bowl blade)

Kofte
400g chicken (lean lamb) mince
(1 tsp garam masala if using lamb)
if using chicken:
1 tsp Italian herbs (or sprinkle of each dried garlic, oregano, thyme, basil- which is what I had on hand)
couple spring onions finely chopped
olive oil
25g shelled pistachios
a few sprigs of fresh thyme
1 tbsp runny honey

Couscous
1/2 bunch of fresh mint
1 fresh red chilli
1/2 a mug (150g) of couscous

Salad
1/2 an iceberg lettuce (I used cos)
1/2 a red onion
1/2 a cucumber
5 ripe cherry tomatoes
4 black olives (stone in)
4 heaped tbsp fat-free natural yoghurt
2 lemons
40g feta cheese

To Serve
4 pita breads

Start The Clock Cooking
In a large bowl mix the mince with salt, pepper, and the (garam masala) Italian herbs and spring onion.  Divide into 8 (or more if you want smaller kofte’s; I got 5 from about 250g of chicken mince) and with wet hands shape into little fat fingers.  Put into the frying pan with 1 tbsp of oil, turning until dark golden all over.

Tear off most of the top leafy half of the mint and blitz in the processor with a pinch of salt and pepper and the chilli until fine.  (Remove the blade, stir in 1/2 a mug of couscous and 1 mug of boiling water, put the lid on and leave to sit in the processor.  (I just cooked my couscous normally and then added chopped up mint!)

Cut the lettuce into wedges and arrange on a nice board or platter.  Peel and coarsely grate the cucumber into a bowl, season well with salt, then squeeze out any excess salty liquid and sprinkle over the lettuce.  (This is a really good way of using onion in a salad without it overpowering the salad).  Chop and add the tomatoes, then squash, destone and dot over the olives.  Mix the yoghurt in a bowl with the juice of 1 lemon, season to taste, then drizzle it over the lettuce and crumble over the feta.

Bash the pistachios in a pestle and mortar (or if you don’t have one do what i did, put them in a clean tea towel and bash them with a rolling pin till crushed).  Drain away the fat from the lamb, then toss with the bashed nuts, thyme leaves and honey, and turn the heat off.  Pop the pittas in the microwave (800W) for 45 seconds to warm through, then cut in half and add to the board with the kofte.  Fluff up the couscous, scatter the remaining mint leaves over everything and serve with lemon wedges.

Enjoy!
Will I make this again?- Definitely! 

Chicken Kofte Pitta’s with Greek Salad

ps: This post is for the Week 4 topic ‘bedtime’ for @52blogs.

Stupidity Sign by Bill Gracey on Flickr via CC License

Rescue Me From…Silly things in my technology reader stream, a.k.a How do these make the news?

In my RSS reader I have a few technology blogs I like to skim read to find out what tech is making the latest headlines.  However, I often find articles in them that stumps me, making me ask – How do they think this is newsworthy?

Often they are put in the following types of categories- Geek Out, Social Media, Science and Watercooler but sometimes even in Tech!

So for your amusement here are the following #WTF articles:

• Empire Responds To White House’s Rejection Of Death Star, Calls Earth A Coward in response to This Isn’t The White House Response To The Death Star Petition You’re Looking For
• This Guy Didn’t Steal Your iPhone
• The 100 Most Beautiful Songs in the World, According to Reddit
• Google Not Involved In Donkey’s Murder, Says Company (And No, It’s Not April Fool’s. This Happened.)
• The 10 Most Bizarre White House Petitions
• 250,000 Social Media Users in U.S. Said They Got the Flu
• Stealth Hoodie: For When The Predators Finally Reach Our Planet
• Watch These Dogs Have a Heated Skype Convo
• Wrangler’s New Jeans Are A Skin-Softening Spa In Your Pants

So what do I need rescuing from.  2 things.

1) My stupidity in following links and finding things way too interesting.
2) Silly things in my technology reader stream, a.k.a How do these make the news? Update: This post is getting a little long so will do part 2 in another post, another day.

The Source of Wisdom by crises_crs on Flickr via CC License

Today I read a post by iLibrarian, in which she looks at courses she would like to do for fun.  Being a fan of online courses, I clicked on the MIT Opencourseware link to see what they offered.  BIG MISTAKE.  I now have a list of ones I would like to look into more in the future.  For your entertainment / torture here they are (The brackets are the year the information is taken from):

• Science, Technology and Society
  • Technology in History (2010)
  • Drugs, Politics, and Culture (2006)
    

    Millenium Pizza? by JD Hancock on Flickr via CC License

  • Technology in a Dangerous World (2002)
  • Technology and Culture (2006)
  • Cultures of Computing (2011)
  • Cold War Science (2008)
  • Technologies for Creative Learning (2009)
  • Technology and the Literary Imagination (2008)
  • Cultural History of Technology (2005)
  • The Anthropology of Cybercultures (2009)
• Literature
  • Foundations of World Culture I: World Civilizations and Texts (2011)
  • Foundations of Western Culture: The Making of the Modern World (2010)
  • Foundations of Western Culture II (2002)
  • Foundations of Western Culture II: Renaissance to Modernity (2003)
  • Foundations of World Culture II: World Literatures and Texts (2012)
  • Reading Fiction (Fall 2008)
  • Introduction to Fiction (Fall 2003)
  • Reading Fiction (Spring 2007)
  • World Literatures: Travel Writing (2008)
  • The Film Experience (2012)
    

    Day 106 – I am a librarian by Cindi on Flickr via CC License

  • Bestsellers: Detective Fiction (2006)
  • Popular Narrative: Masterminds (2004)
  • Major English Novels (Spring 2009)
  • Major Authors: America’s Literary Scientists (2010)
  • Major Authors: Rewriting Genesis: “Paradise Lost” and Twentieth-Century Fantasy (2009)
  • Arthurian Literature and Celtic Colonization (2005)
  • Studies in Literary History: Modernism: From Nietzsche to Fellini (2010)
  • Media in Cultural Context (2007)
  • Media in Cultural Context: Popular Readerships (2007)
• Anthropology
  • The Supernatural in Music, Literature and Culture (2009)
  • Anthropology of War and Peace (2004)
  • Food and Culture (2011)
  • People and Other Animals (Fall 2010)
• Music and Theatre Arts
  • Early Music (2010)
  • Schubert to Debussy (2006)
  • Modern Music: 1900-1960 (2006)
  • Music Since 1960 (2006)
• Writing and Humanistic Studies
  • The Creative Spark (2004)
  • Writing on Contemporary Issues: Food for Thought: Writing and Reading about the Cultures of Food (2008)
  • Writing on Contemporary Issues: Culture Shock! Writing, Editing, and Publishing in Cyberspace (2008)
  • Writing and Experience: Crossing Borders (2010)

I told you it was a long list!

Storm Of The Century by JD Hancock on Flickr via CC License

Steampunk Beholder Miniature Robot Sculpture by Daniel Proulx on Flickr via CC License.

I see dead people – I mean I hear voices – ok well you know what I mean.

This weeks subject caused my internal ‘voices’ to have a long dialogue between themselves. They were torn between writing something very personal and confronting or playing it safe and writing about how I am going to use my blog ‘voice’ this year. In the end the latter of the two topics won out, mainly because I am not ready to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and face that confronting demon just yet – maybe one day but not now.

So.. this blog… The Foodie Librarian… neglected and unloved like a 1980′s cookbook. This year I am planning its revival. It will have weekly posts, hopefully even more than one per week. It will have a mish-mash of topics, discussions, pictures and tweets. The question is how. I have 5 ideas and hopefully using them all in one form or another or at one time or another will help this blog back from the brink of death.

This is Radio Nowhere by Thomas Lieser on Flickr via CC License

Idea Number 1: The @52blogs challenge. This is already in play with this post being for week 2.

Idea Number 2: Get back into cooking (and blogging about it). One of my New Years resolutions was to get healthier and eat better – which in turn means getting back into cooking. These do not always go hand in hand, I mean who doesn’t love chocolate, sugar and carbs!

I received a copy of Jamie Oliver’s 15 Minute Meals for my birthday last year so like @jobeaz I am going to attempt some of his recipes (only halving the amounts). I am also going to go through all the recipes I have cut out of magazines and newspapers (and chuck out a lot of those); all the recipes I have taken photos of out of books; go through all the recipes I have on Paprika, pinned on Pinterest and have starred in my Google Reader and all the cookbooks I own and ACTUALLY cook some of them. I may even attempt to review a few restaurants (but let’s not get too ambitious.)

Idea Number 3: My Google Reader. It has posts ‘starred’ from way back in 2009. I have tried to do a clean out previously (here and here) but got stuck halfway through 2010 and there are still way too many. My plan with these is to go through them, delete the obsolete technology ones, add the recipe ones to Paprika (or Evernote Food), place the knitting patterns into my Ravelry queue and well then do something with them. Last year during Blog Every Day Of June I placed interesting links I had found that day onto the end of my posts (most days). It was a good way to share, highlight and save some of the posts I read each day. This year I thought I may attempt a weekly version of that – a sort of highlights package. Hopefully it will make me think more about what I ‘star’, cook those recipes I favourite and make some of the crafty things I like.

Which brings me to…

Idea Number 4: Blog my crafty endeavours. My first ever blog was set up to do just that, record and share what I had knitted, but it fell by the wayside when Ravelry came along. Similar to Idea Number 2, here I shall go though those ‘starred’ DIY posts and Pinterest pins; and attempt them, as well as sharing WIP’s (works in progress) and FO’s (finished objects) from my main crafty love – Knitting and my other crafty love – cross stitch.

Idea Number 5: Lifelong learning. As a librarian I have been known to wax lyrically on the benefits of lifelong learning, continuing education and professional development, so what type of person would I be if I didn’t practice what I preach. So in a fit of over-exuberance I signed up not just for one course, but 3 (and they are all on in late Jan/Feb) will I NEVER learn! So I bring you 2 MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course) and a Google. If you would like to sign up for any of these as well they are linked to the sign up pages.

The first one I signed up for is purely for my interest, it has no connection to my work at all. I have always loved history so the MOOC – The Modern World: Global History Since 1760 appealed to me. It is being run on the Coursera platform. The 2nd MOOC I signed up for is also run on this platform. It has more relevance to my work but is not a librarian course in the traditional sense. It is called E-Learning and Digital Cultures, and is about how ways in which learning and digital cultures online intersect.

The last ‘course’ I have signed up for is the class being run by Google called Advanced Power Searching with Google. Having missed last years’ Power Searching course, I am interested to see what search tips and tricks I can pick up from this to use at work. Sadly, even in Academia, students will use Google rather than the $$$ databases we provide them (or even Google Scholar) so any way we can get them to use Google more efficiently and effectively are always welcome – especially when it comes from the source.

So there you have it, my 5 ideas for getting my blogging ‘voice’ back. Will they work? I guess there is only one way to find out….

Mr. Magoo in Hi-Fi by Kevin Dooley on Flickr via CC License