Bake Away Your Blues.

I get emotional a lot. No, don’t worry. This won’t be a rant about the perils of student living and the amount of work it seems to take to keep things afloat – uni work, work work, social work (and not the kind that benefits society), love work and all that other mundane work – but I just thought I’d establish that sometimes life gets too much.

I could take the easy way out and drop out of uni, waste glorious amounts of time and eat myself stupid, whilst being a full time blogger that earns zilch from her craft but does it anyway to entertain her one reader – but that doesn’t seem all too far removed from what I do already. And there’s an easier way to do away with student blues.

I know I’ve harped on about it before but I’ll torture you all and do so again.To me the best way to distract myself from all that’s gettin’ me down is to bake my little heart out.

Today I had a strong urge to make choc chip cookies. There’s something nostalgic and cheerful about them that is the perfect antidote to, well, life. Most recipes call for actual chocolate chips but a look at the price of even the smallest packet was a very rude awakening. To me they’re poor value for money unless you buy a generic brand, which I’m often wary of. So instead I say take the cheaper way out and buy a large block of chocolate. Not only is it more affordable, you can also get a bit of variety to spice up your biscuits – hazelnuts, almonds, and other types of nuts make wonderful additions.

Following my bake-a-thon my emotions are a little more stable. The therapeutic nature of baking lies in its rhythmic calm: sifting flour, measuring things and mixing and pouring and licking the bowl. There are no mentions of Foucaultian theories or global economics or the human anatomy. No customers to pester you with ridiculous questions. No drama, no fights, no plot lines to rival a bad daytime soap. The only work involved is easy and makes perfect sense and produces a delicious end result. Not only will you cure your own bout of doom and gloom but you’ll probably make someone else’s day a little sweeter, too. Naw.

Hazelnut Choc Chip Cookies.

Hazelnut Choc Chip Cookies

Makes 20

150g butter, softened

1 tsp vanilla essence

3/4 cup caster sugar

3/4 cup plain flour

1/4 cup corn flour

200g hazelnut milk chocolate (any type of chocolate is fine), roughly chopped into choc chip-sized pieces

1. Preheat oven to 180c/160C fan forced. Grease an oven tray and line it with baking paper.

2. With an electric mixer, beat together butter, vanilla and sugar in a medium bowl until light and fluffy.

3. Sift the two flours into the butter mix and stir well to combine.

4. Add the chopped chocolate and combine.

5. Using your hands, shape the dough into tablespoon-sized balls and place 5cm apart on tray.

6. With your fingers or with a fork, flatten the balls slightly.

7. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes or until the cookies are golden brown.

8. Remove from oven and cool on trays.

Tipples for Tight-Asses.

I love a good cocktail. Whether it’s fruity, milky, delightfully refreshing or enough to rival a huge bowl of ice cream, if it’s served with a fancy garnish in an overly ornate glass, I’ll drink it.

Now sadly most cocktails in Sydney cost enough to rival eight bowls of ice cream – and admittedly don’t give you the same sickly satisfaction. I’ve seen them rise even to $25 a pop which is often how much I’ll spend on a month’s worth of alcoholic beverages. As much as I love cocktails, I simply can’t justify their ridiculous price.

But there is hope for the less financially stable among us! Quite a few places do happy hours or student nights where the price of various drinks – often including cocktails – comes down considerably. Two for the price of one deals, half price drinks, buy one get one free… look out for them. They’re definitely worth it. And yes, I realise they’re all the same thing.

My flatmate and I particularly love the $8 cocktails at The Sackville Hotel in Rozelle. The list isn’t as varied as other places I’ve been (there’s a sad lack of the creamy cocktails I love so dearly) but it contains things a little more obscure: gone are the usual mojitos and Cosmos, replaced by the unusual Pear Collins and Russian Gimley. Check out the cocktail list for a comprehensive description of each one.

The night we went, I chose the Berry Jewel, a mix of fresh berries, Bombay sapphire, blueberry liqueur and ginger ale. It wasn’t the best cocktail I’ve ever had – it had a slightly too sour tang which wasn’t tempered by the ale or liqueur. The berries were almost redundant with their lack of flavour and were difficult to drink through a straw. To give it some merit, it was definitely fresh and vibrant and cooling, just a little lacking.

The Berry Jewel.

My flatmate chose a cocktail called ‘Below the Pacific’, a tropical concoction of lychees, passionfruit and pineapple. Hers was the star of the night – sugary sweet and delicious. It was what a cocktail, to me, should be. If I want sourness, I’ll go for beer, but when that hit of sugar is all that’s needed, a cocktail is where it’s at. The mix of passionfruit, lychee and pineapple go so well together and, although I wouldn’t have thought of peach as the ideal match for fruits found in the tropics, it worked really well.

Below the Pacific.

Check out your local – most of them do good discount nights with a decent array of cheap cocktails. It’s a champagne (sort of) lifestyle on a sack wine budget.

The Sackville Hotel

599 Darling St

Rozelle NSW

Ph: 02 9555 7555

Welcome, welcome to my humble blog.

I’ve always meant to start a blog but never had the time (read: the motivation) to sit down and treat myself to hours of narcissistic self-indulgence.

But so many around me are jumping on the blogging bandwagon so I thought it was high time I jumped on too. I mean, who doesn’t have a blog these days? It’s, like, totally the trend du jour along with Justin Bieber and tired jokes about Kate’s party.

So what, you might ask, is my blog to be about? Well, I’ve never been one to divulge my personal issues online (wanky Facebook statuses aside) so something about my day-to-day life is out of the question.

But I do love food and have wanted to write about food for a long time now. I know, I know, there are millions of food blogs on the net and why should mine be any different? To be honest, it’s probably not. I think almost every niche possible has been covered in the blogosphere.

But I’ll try to give you the hard sell anyway. Many food blogs review expensive restaurants and food shops, helping gourmands know where to go to get the best Russian caviar or French truffles. This one doesn’t.

Others have elaborate recipes that one can marvel at but never have the courage to try and accomplish. Don’t expect that here.

And others still combine the two, making me question where on earth they get the time to eat, cook, blog and maintain a normal life. I’m not one of those people.

It may seem I’ve done a terrible job of convincing you to keep reading but the lack of luxury dining and insane culinary skill is where my blog gets its hook.

I’m a student and a poor one at that. Having recently moved out of home, my budget is very limited in terms of what I can cook and where I can eat out. I try to make the most of what I’ve got, creating fairly decent meals for my flatmate and myself out of very basic ingredients.

I think there’s a lack of guidance out there for students living out of home. I hear of so many of my counterparts eating loads of Mi Goreng and take away (which is often expensive).

I guess I just want to show that cooking your own food can be easy and affordable. I do love to cook but I’m no Masterchef. I’m not here to provide recipes for those with astounding cooking expertise to master them. Cooking can be simple and especially for a student who’s already hard-pressed for time, balancing work and university and a moderate amount of social activity, it really needs to be.

Most of the time I make stuff up – adding a pinch of this and a handful of that. Rarely do I measure things when I’m using my own judgment. Often this means things need a LOT of tweaking before they’re edible and things so strange they work make their way into my food. But never fear – everything I put on here is tested by my incredibly critical flatmate who proclaims my food as ‘tasty’ or ‘OK’ (she’s also evidently articulate). You’ll only see ‘tasty’.
I also want to try the cheapest places to eat around Sydney. The dingy and often slightly unhygienic student haunts. Eating out doesn’t have to cost the world, nor a week’s rent.

Occasionally I’ll splash out and spend more than $5 on a single item but hey, you need the odd indulgence to maintain your sanity.

So here it is: a documentation of my years out of home and what I’m cooking and eating to get through them.