It seems every other day I'll try cooking. Just because~

Today I tried my hand at Bavarian bread dumplings and beef goulash, with maple rice pudding as dessert. The bread dumplings and beef goulash were an astounding success with all four of us. The maple rice pudding will be death of me. T_T"

Clockwise from above right: garlic bread, bread dumplings, beef goulash and leftover schnitzel.

The bread dumplings taste like a cross between pau and bread, and the ones I made were soft and smelled good. Not sure how it's really supposed to be, but -hey- it tastes a-okay to me!

The cross-section of the bread dumpling. Looks like I didn't add enough parsley in.

The beef goulash was soooo good... I couldn't use the red wine the suggested in the recipe, so I replaced it with grape juice+vinegar, and it worked just to perfection. The meat was soft and easy to chew, which could have been down more to the hour and a half stewing and not specifically to my cooking expertise, but if it tastes good, who cares?

Maple rice pudding... now that was a disappointment if I ever saw/ made/ tasted one. It wasn't as simple as the recipe made it out to be. After double boiling for 35 minutes as instructed, the rice was uncooked and crunchy still, so I kept adding in more and more milk till I was sick of adding milk. One hour after double boiling started, it still wasn't done. And I didn't want to make it even more fattening than it already was by adding in MORE milk (albeit low-fat). In the end I added hot water and microwaved on high a few times at 2 minute intervals. I couldn't be bothered to cover with plastic to stop film from forming over the rice pudding, so it became a little more glutinous-y than I think it's supposed to be. It also tasted a little bland, which could be because I used pancake syrup (only 2% maple syrup) and not pure maple syrup. Hmm. I suppose this whole thing is a learning process after all.

The maple rice pudding, bless it's heart.

It tasted bland and okay, but a little is more than enough for me. I still have more than half the original dish left. :( btw, those are cranberries and raisins. Just in case you thought they were roaches infesting my horrible cooking.

I also re-heated leftover spaetzle (egg noodles) and mushroom gravy from two days ago. But the Bavarian bread dumplings and beef goulash were so filling, I was the only one who ended up eating these poor has-beens. Tasted great still though.

You poor dears.

Okay. So ends today's cooking adventure. I shopped at NTUC a while before beginning the cooking at 2PM. I ended around 7 because of them bloody rice pudding. The goulash and dumplings were actually already done by 5, but the rice pudding took soooooo long...

I don't really care that the pictures really don't look a treat haha. It's only to remind FutureFina how her cooking used to look. By the future (hopefully) she'll have improved and can look back and laugh at her former follies. And anyway, I'm not much of a photographer. I'm a Jack, not a master.

t-N-oodles!

p.s. I wasn't lying when I said the goulash was deeevine. Shall use that recipe again soon!