Forever alone - hey, that's me!

So we are having this party, tonight: a party that we have been planning for ages, since our former flatmate informed us that he would be moving out in two weeks that later became one whole month, and that, since no one was meant to replace him, we would finally be able to access the backyard, have a living room, and use the house like it's meant to be used: three bedrooms, three people, and one lounge.

Like all potentially good things, the living room craze lasted about one week: we barely had the time to clean up and put the PS3 gloriously beside the television screen, that our other flatmate asked the landlady to swap rooms and take the one downstairs. To which the landlady said yes, but you are going to pay a higher rent, and i'm going to find someone to take the small room.
And here we are: we will soon be four again, four and unable to go outside and pet the neighbours'cat. Or to have friends round and chill out outside the kitchen, for that matter. Yeah, sad story is sad. But what's sadder is that we organised this party, tonight - conceived as house-warming, turned into Farewell Living Room and Social Life - and no one's coming.

I invited my classmates from uni and a few other friends, and my boyfriend fueled my celebrative spirit by promising that all his ex-colleagues would be there; we came up with a list of little less than twenty people, which is a lot for a couple of socially awkwards as we are, and chances are that we will actually be no more than six, because all the others didn't even bother to reply.
Goodbye to my positive disposition and hope that everyone will have fun, then: I suspect that, as always, I will end up feeling responsible for my guests, which means feeling crap because I invited them to something they disliked.

Fuck, I hate organising parties. And I hate the emo-teen-like sensation that I always get in these situation, the kind of feeling that sounds like no one gives a damn about my party, which means that no one gives a damn about me, which means that I screwed up with everyone and I don't know why.
Seriously: why do most people in the world only have to say ah to be surrounded by friends, while I'm unable even to have the people I made friends with over the past year come and have a drink at my house?
It's frustrating; I hope, at least, that the dessert I invented from scratch this afternoon will taste good, but I guess you'll find out in my next post.

For this one, since we're talking about half-failures, let me introduce you to my half-failed muffins. They were supposed to be delicious - and they are, indeed - but they were not supposed to be so small.
Why are they so small, you ask? Well, because the chef is an idiot, for a start: I guess they would have been the right size if I had made eight of them like the recipe said, and not twelve.
They should have also represented my first serious try at decent food photography, but I discovered far too rapidly that my kitchen is the worst location ever for that. I guess I'll try again when I'll have the money to have my own house and my own lifestyle-magazine-like kitchen; for the moment, I cannot even afford Ikea, fancy that.

Ricotta and Chocolate Chip Muffins

(I found the original recipe on an Italian forum, so I guess there's no point in pasting the link)

Ingredients for 8 muffins (eight, understood?):

125g flour;
60g sugar;
50g butter;
50g milk chocolate;
125g ricotta cheese;
¼ glass milk (I use skimmed milk, but you can change that if you prefer);
½ sachet baking powder;
1 egg.

Recipe:

- Melt the butter in a heatproof bowl, over simmering water; remove it from the hob and mix it with the sugar.
- Add the egg and ricotta cheese, and beat well, until the batter is even; then, add the flour and baking powder.
- Pour the milk over the batter; mix well, and add the chocolate, which you will have previously chopped into not-too-small chunks.
- Pour the batter into a greased muffin tin, and bake for 20 minutes, at a temperature of 180°.


That's it, and it's terribly easy, if you are just a little smarter than me (which everyone potentially is, trust me).
In the end, the muffins were so tiny that I could have eaten all of them in one go; I'll definitely try them again, to experience the pleasure of having them full-size.

(On air: Delain - Frozen)

Of muffins and ingratitude.

Despite not receiving one single piece of advice on the last post (which might mean, now that I think about it, that no one reads my blog), I eventually decided to turn this into a cook-blog.
It might actually do me some good - first, because I need to get used to be a regular at something again, and second, because I am starting to fear that my obsession with diets will rise again if I don't get a job and/or push my life back again on the right track soon. When the angel on the right shoulder says you know, losing some weight sounds so much like a good idea, and the devil on the left replies screw it, if eating makes you happy then it's exactly what you have to do - who does the self-esteem-less food addict listen to?
It's hard, it's always been hard. I guess it always will be. But that's another long and complicated story, and I hope you won't mind if I choose not to tell it.

Anyway, I want to cook, and cook, and cook again. Because it's fun, because it keeps me from thinking about practically anything else (apart from gosh, do I really have to wait for it to cool down before serving?), and because, trust me, nothing makes me more happy than a recipe gone right.
I also want to write, write, and write, and write again - so, what's better than blogging about food? I'll have one more good reason to cook without feeling guilty, and one more good chance to improve my writing.
Done deal, then. Stay tuned, because here comes something I have created myself.

Chocolate Coconut Muffins

(the chocolate sponge was store-bought, alas! But I hope I'll give a try at that as well, soon)

I was inspired by this recipe, which I actually intended to try on that fateful day. It was a Tuesday, if I can remember well - a typical English Summer Tuesday, whose promise of heavy showers of rain had made me give up on my resolution to dress up, get out, go to the library and work on my master thesis.
I was alone at home, and, as it alwas happens when I'm home alone on a rainy day with nothing to do (obviously the thesis doesn't count), I was sad. Sad, and with a couple spare eggs in the fridge. Which was actually the perfect combo, because cooking muffins would surely have made me happy and given a purpose to my boring afternoon.
Unfortunately, there were no pineapples or white chocolate in my cupboard, and at that point I was feeling too lazy to dress up, get out, walk ten minutes to the supermarket and then walk ten minutes back; this is when creativity became the keyword.

As you can see, the ingredients are slightly different comparing to the original:

- 180g plain flour
- 100g sugar
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt (which I actually think I forgot, on that occasion - nevermind, that's one good reason to try again!)
-180ml skimmed milk (just because I'm a health freak; if you want to use semi-skimmed or wholemilk, that's perfectly fine)
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoon Amaretto liquor (again, the only one I had at home)
- 90g milk chocolate chips
- 50g grated coconut.

The recipe per se is quite simple, but I'm proud of the result. You should obtain twelve muffins - and this is why I highly recommend you to set twelve chocolate chips aside before melting all the others. You'll see why...that was actually my own personal touch!

- To prepare the batter, mix the milk, egg and liquor, and then add the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar.
- Melt the chocolate chips (remember, all of them minus twelve!) in a bowl over simmering water, and add them as well, together with the grated coconut.
- Split the batter evenly into a greased muffin tin. First of all, put only one tablespoon in each muffin case; add one of the spare chocolate chips on top of this "base", and then cover it with another tablespoon of batter.
- Pre-heat the oven to 190°, and cook for about 15 minutes.
The outcome? Extremely moist muffins, with a chocolatey surprise in the middle. I usually fail miserably at first attempts, but this was a pleasant exception to the norm.

Then came the moral dilemma: as usual, the angel on my right shoulder, subtly whispering come on, you're most definitely not going to eat twelve muffins on your own.
I usually exploit my boyfriend for tastings, and he is usually more than happy to accept such a task, but we weren't planning to see much of each other that week, and the muffins had to go before they lost their softness. So, I decided to insert my flatmates into the equation.

It had been a long time since I last had cooked for them, and I also wanted to apologise for the way I had treated them during the past couple of weeks: true, they had been unclean as usual, they had let two bills expire and, on top of it all, they had thrown the loudest party ever, up until four in the morning and making as much noise as possible while I was trying to get some sleep (don't worry, if you want to be on your own and study this evening we won't disturb you!) - but I surely had overreacted to it all, and it wasn't fair to blame them for my being stressed, unsatisfied of my job and unwilling to make any effort to get my thesis done.
Let's prove them I'm still a good person, I told myself, leaving eight muffins in plain sight on the kitchen table. I added a funny note, and hoped that, if they didn't want to appreciate the thought, they still would appreciate the food. Well, guess how many muffins they ate? One. Out of eight.

I left them untouched for two more days, just in case they changed their minds, but nothing happened. So, what does this teach me? Indeed, not everyone deserves to be offered your food.
Or, more broadly: stop trying to be kind to people, they just don't care.
But that's a lesson I'll never learn, I'm afraid.

(On air: Phoenix - Armistice)