A Year End Meme, Weekend Dog Blogging and New Year Wishes

Mumu at A Curious Mix tagged me for a meme, which originated at The Seasonal Cook. Essentially, the meme calls for a list of things I would bring in order to cook in someone else's kitchen.

I have to say I've almost never cooked in someone else's kitchen. Usually, I'd prepare the dish at home and then bring it over. At the very most, I'd save the last step for the foreign kitchen -- which is often to bang the dish into the oven or fry it up in a pan. So what I've done is thought about the various kitchens that I am most likely to cook in and made a list from there.

The first would be my mother's kitchen, which is bursting at the seams with all manner of cooking equipment to turn out a fabulous meal. The second is my good friend L's, whose oven I have baked cakes in a couple of times. The third is in C's mum's kitchen, where I've pottered about once or twice putting together a salad for a barbeque in the garden. And so without further ado, here's my list:

1. My Henkel's chef knife
I don't know how our mothers can own all sorts of wierd gadgets for shaping carrots into roses and lifting surface oil from a curry, but not have a good knife that would slice a cabbage in half without any sawing action.

2. Oven thermometre
L's oven is the single most finnicky, unpredictable, and frustrating oven ever built. We've wasted many cakes in that damn appliance. Cakes that turn out perfectly fine in my dinky-ass DeLonghi mini oven, shrivels up to a burnt mess in hers. Or they take three times the duration to bake.

3. Real Aged Balsamic Vinegar from Modena
Once I tasted the sweet, mellow flavour of the real, aged stuff, regular Balsamico just doesn't cut it anymore. I take my precious bottle anywhere that requires me to whip up a salad dressing.

Meanwhile, I wanted to share Oxford's breakfast shenanigans in this Weekend's Dog Blogging event, which is, as always, hosted by the lovely Sweet Nicks. So without further ado, here's How To Steal A Pancake, by this weekend's guest blogger, Oxford.


Step 1: Practice stealth. Approach the plate quietly and keep it at eye level.


Step 2: Attack swiftly. Keep an eye on the guards who may waste no time in taking you down.


Step 3: Exercise restraint. Never try to pull more than one pancake off the plate at a time. Keep your eye on the prize and wait until the next opportunity.


Happy New Year everyone and thanks for all the support you've shown me in the last two months. See ya next year!