Essays and a Saturday night with Jamie

I'm in the middle of hell at the moment. Work have paid for me to do a module on a university degree course at Hull University in research methods. I'm incredibly grateful as it will undoubtedly help me progress as a researcher but at the moment I'm wishing I never opened my big mouth and said I wanted to do it.

I loved being a student. It was absolutely brilliant but I was an absolute horror for leaving things until the last minute. I would start each term with the best of intentions - I was going to do all the reading for each lecture, I would pick my essay title and start the reading for it immediately, I would go to every single lecture and tutorial that was required of me. Even the ones that started early in the morning. But no matter, by the first month in, I was skipping lectures, wouldn't think of doing the reading for them and although I would start compiling my reading for essays, what would generally happen is the books/photocopies would sit in a pile in the corner of my room until about a week before the essay was due in and I would panic and start reading and writing.

I just think I'm one of those people that cannot perform unless there is a looming deadline, unless I'm feeling the heat of impending panic I can't seem to make myself get going. Everything always got handed in, I only ever had to ask for 1 extension in an undergraduate degree and a Masters degree, and there were many many many late nights and early mornings getting my masterpieces finished off, but they were always in on time.

So I didn't panic too much when I knew my first assignment for this research module was due in, "That's how I roll" I told myself "You'll get it done. You always do."

Except there's one big difference this time.

I'm working full time!!

Why did this not compute in my tiny little brain? Of course I could always get my essays done on time at uni - I had all freaking day to write and read! Trust me the last thing you want to do after you've been at work all day is come home and then work all night. My head can't cope with it, it's totally frazzled. I've ended up having to use a holiday and took Friday off to get all my reading done in the hope that I can pull 2,500 words from somewhere over the weekend, in time for the hand in date on Tuesday.

So after spending all day sat in front of the computer whilst the sun was blazing outside, I needed something to cheer me up for the evening. So I turned, as I always do, to food. Nothing like it for making you feel better. I turned to my cook books and pulled out good old Jamie Oliver's Ministry of Food. I've made a couple of things from here before and they really are easy to make. My only criticism is that they're not necessarily cheap to make, you need quite a lot of basic staples already in your cupboard so the initial layout can be quite expensive.

For Saturday night there's really no option.....CURRY

The curry recipes in this book are great - he tells you to use a jar of Patak's curry paste but also gives you a recipe to make your own curry paste if you're more confident. That's definitely not me yet so I headed to the supermarket to get my jar of curry paste.

It was also fun because I got to dig out my little glass bowls. My Dad got these for me from Muji years ago and they're great - perfect for putting dips in but also great for pretending you're a chef on tv and putting all your ingredients in them before you chuck it all in one pan.Yes I know I'm a geek but I'm very proud of it :) I went for a Rogan Josh and it was really easy to do, you basically just chuck it all in and then leave it simmering for an hour, which even I can manage.

The rogan josh wasn't the star attraction though. That accolade went to the onion bahjis. I saw these and ummed and aahhed about whether I would be able to do it or not. What swayed me eventually is that I'd be able to use my food processor which I got my birthday and haven't got around to using yet!

Once they were made I felt amazingly proud of myself, they looked brilliant and tasted amazing, I couldn't believe that I'd actually made them and I can't wait to make them again when we have people round.

So in the spirit of the Ministry of Food movement I thought I would pass the vegetable bahji recipe on...

But in another post because this one's too long now!