Five Food Challenges

Sue tagged me for the Five Food Challenges meme a couple of weeks back. I know, I've taken a while to respond. Don't you love procrastination too?

Helen's Five Food Challenges for 2006

Bake bread
Every celebrity chef / foodblogger / toddler I know waxes lyrical about how satisfying it is to bake your own bread. I love baking cakes but for some reason I have this trepidation when it comes to yeast. I've made pizza dough, uh, twice but the whole kneading, proving, bashing thing always sounds like waaay too much work. I need to do it though. You could say I've got something to prove...

Make risotto
Another easy one I should've done ages ago. No excuses except a morbid fear of soggy rice (an Asian's worst nightmare!)

Resist sugar
I have a terrible sweet tooth. I looove sugar. Yes sucrose, and glucose and yes, you fructose as well. Moderation is key, but I must stop that terrible habit of having something sweet after dinner, after lunch, after, ah, breakfast, and with my morning coffee as well.

Eat because I'm hungry
Food is not a cure for boredom.
Constantly opening the fridge door will not trigger a spontaneous theatrical performance by the leftovers within.
Rummaging for chocolate will not solve writer's block.

Hunt and gather
Food grows in soil, flourishes in water and geez, it can run damn fast away from you when it senses a growling stomach. Perhaps I'm not quite ready to skin my own kangaroo but I think we all forget that food takes time and, for most of us anyway, food bleeds. I should spend more time hunting and gathering my food personally so I can really appreciate every mouthful. It's been a long time since I've been cherry picking, fishing and pig shooting (pass me ma gun Jed).

I tag cherryripe, Chickpea, J, Julia and Oseary.

11 Comments:

At 2/22/2006 9:46 pm, Anonymous said…

they are all great challenges :)
I am at the resist after dinnerchoclateone right now ;)
At 2/23/2006 2:03 am, Anonymous said…

Thanks for the comment!! I am going to challenge myself... :-)
At 2/23/2006 7:43 am, Reb said…

Well I'll have t disagree with at least one AG - food IS in fact a cure for boredom. Well cooking it is anyway. Nothing eradicates a bored afternoon like cooking up, oh, I don't know, a complicated curry, a batch of scones, choux pastry in its various forms. I've actually convinced myself that the calories expended in food production equal or superceed the calories obtained from consumption.
At 2/23/2006 9:56 am, Julia said…

Reb that is exactly my line of thinking too!

Thanks for tagging me Helen, I'm off to post about it now...
At 2/23/2006 1:13 pm, Robyn said…

I wanna bake bread too! And I keep saying I will...but then I don't. Um.

I made risotto once and it wasn't hard, but it probably wasn't that good either. It was tasty to my unrefined palate. ;)

Ohh man, I need refined sugar!
At 2/23/2006 2:55 pm, Anonymous said…

hey! two of your challenges are exactly the same as mine (risotto and sugar). but the not eating when bored thing is very sensible too. (she says, staring at the two chocolate bars on her desk) ;P
At 2/23/2006 5:31 pm, Anonymous said…

Hunt and gather? Wow.

Thanks for playing and I look forward to seeing the rewards of the resolution.
At 2/24/2006 12:40 am, Helen (AugustusGloop) said…

Hi Clare Eats - Yes I know that temptation. I find that if you eat it really quickly, you can almost fool yourself into thinking you never ate it at all!

Hi Oseary - Wow, that's some response rate! You put me to shame!

Hi Reb - Ok I should've said "eating is not a cure for boredom". Constantly guilty of that one. And I do find that when I cook something, I've inhaled so many fumes from it that I feel like I've eaten it already and don't have much appetite for it anymore. Do you think it works for Darrell Lea workers?

Hi Julia - Great ideas you have. I've always wanted to go mushroom picking too, but I've already been crazy worried about inadvertently keeling over from poison =)

Hi Robyn - I love good risotto so I think I've been spoilt. But I know, it's easy to make, I just have to make sure I do it well.

Hi bowb - Great minds... I was actually thinking I should get into recreating

Hi Sue - What, I'm gonna get assessed too? =)

I'll work on 'em.
At 2/25/2006 9:58 am, Anonymous said…

Meme's up. Thanks, Helen.
At 2/26/2006 9:43 pm, Chick Pea said…

Ooohh...my first tag. Thanks!

A bit of a toughie, but I'll work on it! :)
At 2/27/2006 11:32 pm, Helen (AugustusGloop) said…

Hi Cherry Ripe - Kewl. Thanks for playing.

Hi Chick Pea - I look foward to reading it. Amazing how much this one actually does make you think about your eating habits and attitudes.