A students guide to cooking – The morning after the night before.

Last night was Halloween. You dressed up as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle (how original), you went out, you partied, you drank, you failed to score. But you still went to bed happy, secure in the knowledge that you would definitely not end up with a hangover the following morning. After all, on the advice of your best friend, you drank a whole glass of water when you got home. Unfortunately it turns out that what they actually meant for you to do was to drink a couple of pint glasses of water. Where in fact you drank one single, solitary shot glass of tasteless, flat water. Woops silly you.

Now of course you’ve been rudely awoken by the distinct sensation of your brain trying to exit your head, via your ears. It’s just a shame that your brains have been so poisoned that they’ve actually gotten rather lost. Instead of heading directly for your ear canals, they’ve somehow gotten turned around, and are instead trying to exit via your temples, eyes, and judging by the twitchiness in your stomach apparently via your mouth as well.

Well then, as of now the single most burning question in your mind has to be, “How do I survive my brains attempts to murder me?”. Well fear not Auntie Amanda is here with her guide to making the perfect hangover survival breakfast. That’s right just follow some simple steps, and you too can turn from a soon to be corpse, to a soon to be 24 hour zombie.

1. Without opening your eyes sit up and place your feet firmly on the floor. Don’t be too concerned if this takes you several attempts, instead think of it as reliving a key part your very early childhood.
2. Open your eyes.
3. Regret opening your eyes, and slump back on to your bed, while moaning for your mommy.
4. Remember that your mommy is another county, and can’t help you.
5. Remember that if even if she was in your house all she would do is laugh at you, before slamming your bedroom door shut as loudly as possible.
6. Holding one hand over your mouth, again with your eyes closed, lever your complaining body upright once more.
7. Dash to the bathroom, and proceed to be heartily sick.
8. Remind yourself to reread Terry Pratchett’s “Feet of Clay” with its very amusing reference to being “heartily sick”.
9. Stagger unsteadily downstairs to the kitchen. While you do this please remember to hold on tight to everything, whether it will actually help you to keep upright or not.
10. Sit at the kitchen table, and contemplate having some breakfast.
11. Wake up again one hour later, with your face slightly glued to the table by what you hope is your own drool.
12. Stand up determined this time to actually make some breakfast.
13. Realise that not only did you forget to do your food shopping, but you actually drank your food money for the week, last night.
14. You start to panick until you notice 2 eggs, a knob of butter, and a splash of milk in a carton.
15. Right, you think to yourself, Scrambled eggs it is then!
16. To cook scrambled eggs when you find that all the pots have been used as “flower” pots by your hippy housemate, take out one bowl.
17. Wash said, bowl.
18. Grease the inside of the bowl with the knob of butter. Do your best to ignore the slimy sensation of the butter in your hands.
19. Break both eggs into the bowl.
20. Pour the splash of milk into the bowl.
21. Whisk the mixture well with a fork, having cleaned it first please.
22. Place the bowl in a microwave for one minute.
23. After the microwave signals that it has finished, by setting off what sounds like a church bell, open the door and stir the mixture in the bowl again.
24. Put the microwave on again for a further two minutes.
25. While you wait try to find a slice of bread to make into toast.
26. Remember that you thought it was a great idea to feed the ducks, at three this morning, hence no more bread.
27. Jump out of your skin when the microwave goes “BING!” again.

At this point one of two things is going to happen. If you didn’t use  a microwave safe bowl you will…

1. Open the microwave.
2. Pick up the bowl with your bare hands.
3. Half way to the table realise that you can smell burning flesh. You will then look down and realise it’s your own fingers.
4. Drop your breakfast. Breaking the bowl and spreading the last of your food across the floor.
5. Make a half-hearted attempt to clean it before going back to bed, and crying yourself to sleep.

However if you used a microwave safe bowl you will…

1. Open the microwave.
2. Carry the bowl to the table.
3. Shake a little salt over it.
4. Realise that what you thought was a little salt, was in fact half the salt production of the Dead Sea area for the past 2 years.
5. Shrug, and pick up your fork.
6. Look closely at what you have made for the first time.
7. Realise that instead of delicious smelling, fluffy, slightly moist scrambled eggs you have somehow ended up with what appears to be a circular, sort of rotten egg scented, brick.
8. Shrug again. After all you’re hungry, hung over, and this is the last of your food. Jab your fork into it.
9. Scream as your fork rebounds and embeds itself in your forehead. Turns out that the circular, sort of rotten egg scented, brick, is actually made from some kind of high density rubber.
10. Leave the first fork where it is. It must have hit an acupuncture spot, you head actually feels a little better with it there. Get another fork.
11. Try again, this time more carefully.
12. Without looking too closely at what’s on your fork pop it into your mouth and chew thoroughly. This may take some time depending on how dense a rubber the eggs have formed.
13. Repeat until the bowl is empty.
14. Return to bed.
15. Wake up the following morning, use part of next weeks food money to buy Ramen noodles, and walk to class. Wondering the whole time why people look at your face, and scream in horror.
16. Sit quietly at the back of the first lecture. Feel yourself slowly drifting off to sleep.
17. Wake up screaming when you hit the desk face first, jamming the fork ever deeper into your skull.
18. Still it was a great Halloween, can’t wait for next year!

So there you have it a survival guide to the morning after the night before. Complete with the recipe for Microwave Scrambled (Rubber) Eggs.

Next time we will finally get around to my famous recipe for non-crunchy porridge, I promise.

My daily newspaper and the four year old girl.

As regular readers of my blog will know, I am deeply involved with an older woman, who in addition to owning a sexy little car and an even sexier body is the proud grandmother to a four-year old, who will henceforth be known as the Force of Nature.  A Force of Nature for whom we of course occasionally babysit.  Now don’t get me wrong I adore the little rug rat.  She’s cheeky, funny, sweet, actually plays Minecraft (well beats up the sheep and cows anyway) and she also does a great thick Dublin accent.  Hearing her say “Winter” as “Weeeiinthaaar”, is without a doubt one of the funniest moments in any day.  But as great as she is to babysit, there is one period when minding her is torture.  I speak of course about the morning after.

I am not by any means a morning person. For example I consider 9am in exactly the same way that I think of 5am.  It’s the middle of the frikkin night, now shut up and let me sleep.  As someone who deals with a lot of physical pain on a daily basis and so suffers from insomnia,  I have come to absolutely treasure my sleep.  But our semi-resident four-year old is of the considered opinion that, when she is awake we should all be awake.  Yes that’s correct dearest reader, night ends when her eyes open and the whole world has to wake up, ready to service her every whim.

Even on a morning when I manage to sleep late, I have certain habits which help me to wake up and ease into the day.  Usually I wake up, take some medications and while I wait for them to work I get what housekeeping needs doing, done.  Then I sit down at my PC with a couple of slices of toast and a very lesbian (fruit) tea, then the digital editions of various morning newspapers are devoured.  I love reading my morning newspapers.  I love taking small sips of scalding hot lesbian tea and diving into the analysis segments.  Even more I truly enjoy reading the loony bin and crack pot thinking shared with the world in any daily papers “Letters to the Editor” segment.  It brings me joy.

But not on the mornings when the Force of Nature has been to stay.  Those mornings are usually typified by variations on the following conversation.

Force of Nature,  still dressed in the pajamas she point-blank refuses to get out of, walks up just as I finish opening up all of the articles I want to read on their individual browser tabs.   “Amanda.”

I smile lovingly, having forgotten for the moment the last ten times this has happened.  “Yes Force of Nature?”

“Can I play my game?”  Referring of course to Minecraft.

“When I’m finished with what I’m doing.”

“Okay.”

I start to read the first article and about half way through a voice comes from behind me.

“Amanda..?”

“Yes Force of Nature?”

“When will that be?”

I swallow, my mouth is unaccountably dry.  Oh Goddesses, I think to myself,  it’s started again.

“I’ll be finished when I’m finished.  You need to learn some patience madam.”

“Okay.”

I finish my first article and swallowing another delicious mouthful of good lesbian tea I hear from behind me, “Amanda..?”

Oh dear Goddess, “What Force of Nature?”

“Are you done now?  Can we play my game now?”

“No I am not done, I will tell you when I’m finished.  Now if you don’t leave me in peace to read, we won’t play your game at all today.”

“Bu..bu..but. NANNY Amanda won’t play my game with me!”

In walks my beautiful partner. “Now Force of Nature, she already told you that you can play when she’s finished.”

“Bu…but Naaaaanny!”

This of course goes on in much the same vein for quite some time and by the end my brains have half melted and poured out of one of my ears.  I Amanda Harper, a dominatrix of an obscure school of BDSM am a broken woman, who wants nothing more than to curl up with a teddy bear and sob for hours.  Only two thoughts now echo in my mind.

1: Thank you Goddesses for my being sterile.

and

2: My partner in addition to being hotness personified is a living saint.  She raised three of those and didn’t find herself in prison for manslaughter.

Apologies – Lateness

I realise that I am for me extraordinarily late with the Saturday blog.  This is due to a “My birthday was yesterday” malfunction.  My partners granddaughter is currently making use of Emergency Repair procedure No. 1 so a rebooted normally functioning Amanda is at worst several hours away.  In the mean time enjoy this picture of my dog Winter when she was an ikkle puppy.

Winter back when she was a really cute beagle puppy. She’s now a rampaging ball of beagle powered destruction.