I am the Kat that Walks By Itself

* 1 sachet Apple-and-Honey quick-oats
* 1 banana
* Greek Yoghurt
* 1 raw egg (Aussie hens are apparently free of the strain of Salmonella which can infect eggs before they're laid, so the eggs are okay to eat raw as long as they aren't damaged)
* Peach Jam
* low-fat milk

The flavour was mainly banana, with an undertone of peach.

I don't cook much. What I do is normally on the level of tossing together a stir-fry (and of course, my ice cream experiments, if that counts as cooking when nothing is actually, you know, cooked).

However, today, for no particular reason (unless craving sweets counts) I wanted to Mess With Stuff. Which I never do. Except I did. And I was fully expecting it to be awful, and burnt and stuff. And it wasn't.

Oh, what did I do?

Well, I wondered what would happen if I took some cocoa butter and a tin of evaporated milk and put them together with some sugar... I had a vague idea that one makes caramel with sweetened condensed milk and sugar, but I didn't have any condensed milk. So... It was rather a journey towards the unknown...

First I took a couple of lumps of cocoa butter (yes, lumps) and melted them in the microwave.
Took the little bag of fructose that had been sitting in my cupboard for a long time, and stirred six tablespoons into the melted cocoa butter.
Poured in one tin of evaporated milk. Stirred.
Decided I definitely wanted something caramelly but flavoursome... so I added in three heaped tablespoons of Extract of Malt (the syrup, not the Malted Milk Powder that is more common).
Did a bunch more stirring.
Put the whole lot back in the microwave, and watched it bubble, and kept on increasing the time. At least five minutes of that.
Thought it wasn't sweet enough, so put in the rest of the fructose. Let it bubble some more.
I can't quite remember the order of this, but there was a point where I thought it still wasn't sweet enough and added a cup of icing sugar.
However the other interesting thing was... it got to a point where it looked like we had strange oily brown stuff, and little lumps of light brown stuff all through it - really quite strange and odd-looking, and not at all attractive. So I thought, hmmm, perhaps this needs some emulsifying. So I added some Soy Lecithin, and then stirred the bejusus out of it with my Bamix. I'm not sure if it was the Lecithin or the stick blender, but it turned into a nice smooth caramel-coloured liquid, slightly thickened.
So I put it in the microwave again, and watched it bubble again. For at least another five minutes.
Then I took it out and used the stick blender on it again. And tasted it again (trying not to burn my finger). And it was caramelly. And sauce-like.
So I declared it done.

Caramel sauce!

So I poured it into a couple of jars, then had the last little bit on some ice cream, and it was delicious!

And I will never be able to reproduce this recipe again, because I was doing no measuring whatsoever.

Yesterday I invented a yummy variation of iced coffee, which was inspired by afuna mentioning the iced coffee she had while on holiday: drip coffee, condensed milk, poured over ice.
( skip for those who aren't interested in iced coffee )
Recently I've been watching Season 2 and 3 of Bones. Stephen Fry! As a psychotherapist! That was fun. Ah, I like these people. Though I don't like Hodgins' new haircut in Season 3. I preferred it when his hair was longer.
The other thing I've been doing at the same time is making necklaces. Hopefully I will make enough that I will have plenty of Christmas presents ready for Christmas this year, instead of completely stressing out at the last minute. Though I have still been doing some last-minute; I made a necklace for my eldest niece for her 21st birthday, and I was still working on it the same day I gave it to her. It was very pretty, though.

Other necklaces I've made have been: a white necklace, a blue necklace and a purple,blue,green and clear necklace.

Yesterday I bought The Ultimate Student Vegetarian Cookbook, not so much to follow the recipes slavishly (since I expected many of them would have ingredients I wouldn't be allowed to eat) but more to get ideas. And I got a soup idea!
( recipe )
It was delicious. I had no idea that those ingredients would work so well together. I have some left over for tomorrow.

I also bought "Molecular Gastronomy" yesterday, and have been reading it. Very interesting stuff.

Also, family came over and we played games all afternoon. That was fun.

Not an ice cream experiment today...
( do not drop the pot, Igor! )