Sophistication

I can't help but think sometimes that I'm not quite living up to the student stereotypes of dossing about, eating supernoodles in front of daytime tv and getting very drunk on cheap beer most nights of the week. Everything's a bit more...middle-aged on an average day to be honest. Today was a pretty fine example of that.

I was up and in work (well, Uni) at 8.45am this morning, sorting out a few last things for our 9am group project presentation, which went down pretty well, despite throwing an exception up at us (ouch). So glad that's finally over, just got my exams left now - hah, 'just' - then I get a month and a half or so before I move to Reading and start work, scary stuff.

Popped home after that to make a lovely pasta bake with salami, home-made cheese sauce, tomatoes, courgette, peppers, tuna...and then a ton of cheese, of course - which should feed me for a couple more days. That was absolutely delicious, though I feel a bit bad about enlisting Julie-oh to help me with the sauce, given that she couldn't eat any of it!

To make up for that, and the fact that she's been known to pop by and cook nice things for me once or twice, cooked for her (and Tim, 'cause he's revising hard) this evening, with something pretty much of my own devising. I had a look at some recipes for stuffed peppers online, but they all looked pretty rubbish, so here's what I came up with.

Stuffed Peppers:
Ingredients:
One pepper and ~50g paella rice per person
Salami/Chorizo
Mozzarella
Extra virgin olive oil

1. Cook enough paella rice per person to fill a pepper - don't rinse it first, you want the rice to be a bit starchy.
2. Take pepper - cut off top, keep it to one side.
3. Remove all the middle junk from the pepper.
3. Coat the inside of the pepper with extra-virgin olive oil.
4. Layer in mozzarella, salami and rice, finishing with a thick layer of cheese that entirely covers the top of the pepper.
5. Brush the outside of the pepper with the oil.
6. Wrap in foil, and bake for 30 minutes.
7. Put the tops back on the peppers, and serve.

In other sophistication-related news from the day, I bought an absolutely ace purple smoking jacket from the rag market (just need a pipe and some port now...), and spent the evening playing Set and Chess with Julie-oh whilst listening to the marvelous Aretha Franklin.

Pretty terrible for a student eh? Never mind, I promise to behave appallingly come Eurovision night.

Xx