Once there is a room of one's own

I can't get myself to paint. I can't seem to get absorbed into just developing what I want. I feel impatient and distracted, I don't have enough faith to carry it through to the end, to improvise if I make mistakes. The few times I tried painting recently, I ended up with ruined canvases, which is just awful. I know what I need to do is just sit, look and draw. But I won't. So here goes nothing, I've signed up for an art class. Hopefully, with a block of time specifically assigned to painting, I will get back on track.

In the meantime, Mike and I decided to limit our food/grocery budget. So far, so good. A few pounds shed, a lot more monies in our pockets, less waste and some more cooking. I decided that I will try cooking one previously untested item from a different country every week. We will also cook random stuff as usual. But the former is gonna be my little project. I realize that in the US, you not only get to do a lot of cool stuff, you need to do a lot of cool stuff. I don't have my family around and I haven't made any awesome friends, so its easy to find myself feeling numb and in an existential crisis on the few occasions that I have free time. 

So this week I tried making Muamba chicken, a dish from Angola. I thought it was pretty good, different enough but not out of my comfort zone cooking wise, since its mostly like making an Indian curry. I wouldn't bother with the canola oil, it doesn't add any flavor the way palm oil does, I would add a little more chicken bouillon, and dice up the scotch bonnet pepper, cos its not that hot, may be use 2.

In the general-cooking department, Mike made meatball bubble biscuits. He substituted the frozen meatballs in the original recipe with homemade turkey meatballs, skipped the marinara sauce and most of the cheese, but it came out delicious. I was in the mood for lemonade, so I prepared some lemonade syrup and used dried orange peels (I highly recommend this) instead of lemon peels. Difficult to fuck that up and great to keep unnecessary cravings at bay.

Finally, today, I made some Singapore noodles, thanks to the takeout right next to us, constantly reminding me of what I am missing out on by not eating out. Looks glam, but I have to say, I don't think I used the best recipe. I normally trust epicurious, but I think folks may be better off with this other recipe. I did some last minute improvisation, which helped.