just thinking out loud

I have been wanting to eat carbonara for months and whenever I asked my husband he always says that it contains pork which I don’t eat. One time I badly wanted to buy a cheesy carbonara I saw in Lidl but I put it back on the shelf. Finally, today I made my own version of carbonara or white sauce which I made for the first time and you know what? It was absolutely fantastic. My husband who is an Italian loved it and finished one big bowl of it. He even asked me to make more pasta because there was so much sauce left and he wanted to finish it. I couldn’t be any happier.

So here’s my ingredients:

Cream of celery soup

250 ml of Soy milk

Mushroom

1 big onion

Garlic

Olive Oil

A pinch of salt

Cut the mushroom thinly to cook easily. Basically, you have to sauté the garlic, onion, and mushroom and add a pinch of salt. When the mushroom is half-cooked add the soya milk and the cream of celery. Let it boil and simmer until the sauce becomes a little thicker constantly stirring so it won’t stick in the pan.

Well, this was not my carbonara but it was almost similar because it’s got the mushroom too. And for the pasta I used fetucini. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to photograph my carbonara because we were too hungry we couldn’t wait to eat.

I told you I am into cooking lately and the first cake I have ever baked is carrot cake. Well, when I made carrot juice I felt it was a shame to throw the grated part away. So I went online to print a recipe and make my cake.

My ingredients were not complete but at least I got the most important ones. When the carrot cake was done I couldn’t wait to sample it. It was a bit wet but it was cooked. I think I should have put more flour and used nuts instead of raisins. Also I could have discarded the orange juice as it just made the cake taste sour but otherwise it was good. It tasted a little bit like leche flan.

I never imagined myself cooking for my husband much less an Italian food. Yes, you heard it right, Italian food. I came to England with no knowledge in cooking except rice, frying  fish and boiling eggs.  When I first came to stay with my boyfriend, he always had to do the cooking.  But since I am a keen observer, I soon  learned how to make pasta.

When I realized I could cook and it was actually fun, I began to try other recipes like roasting chicken, baking barley with tuna and other stuff. I print recipes from internet and follow the instructions word upon word. It’s so exciting! Now I am starting to bake cakes too. Next time I will be trying to make bread.

I just love honey, how about you? Because I hate the taste of sugar except in a chocolate, I use honey to sweeten my drinks and cereals.  I read somewhere that honey is the best antibiotic and so I when have a cough I cut garlic in thin slices and put them in a jar honey and I would scoop a spoonful 3 times a day until I get better.

Anyway, I grew up with honey. My mother used to buy and sell honey and I remember having a huge bucket filled with honey in the house. And everytime a seller comes to our house my mother would test the purity of the honey first. Depending where she is she used either of these two tests.

The paper test: She would drop a pearl-size honey on a paper and observe if the liquid passes through the paper. If it doesn’t then it’s pure. Otherwise it’s contaminated.

The match test: If she is at home, she takes a match, dip the head in the honey and strikes it in the box. If it fires up then it’s pure. Otherwise it’s contaminated.

So go to your cupboard now and do either of these to test if your honey is pure.

By the way if you are from the UK the pure honey that I have tested and tried is the Morrison Value Clear Honey.