Cooking with F.R.I.E.N.D.S

I think I have a bit of a problem, most people before they go to sleep would read a magazine or check Twitter, or read a normal novel, but all I keep doing lately is poring over cook books, pictures of cakes and pies and soups and sauces which is not so ideal because I have to try and drop asleep with images of warm plates of food rolling around in my head.

My most recent cook book gem is the hilarious cook book based off the TV show 'Friends' I hate writing it as F.R.I.E.N.D.S but it seems to be the only way to type it without people assuming that it is a cook book about cooking in groups with a generic set of friends, no no no, every dish is based on some 'Friends' reference from the show, and they quote it along the side of the recipe to prove it!

It is such fun if you have seen every episode and really get every single reference, so for me it has made for some very light reading before I drop asleep too. The only real down side is that instead of having pictures of the dishes, it has pictures of scenes from the TV show, so that's a shame, I think.

So far I have made:

Brocolli stir fry with Lemon-Garlic sauce, which was really really good, I made my own egg fried rice to serve it with.

Mrs Gellars Simple spaghetti, it was indeed simple and tomato based, but tasty.

Mr Gellars Pasta with sun dried tomatoes, I added olives to try and differentiate it from Mrs Gellars dish above and it was a lot more smokey and interesting in flavour but generally a drier sauce.

I am really enjoying working my way through it, although I think that the sad part is that the book was produced too soon. It came out long before the series ended so there are a lot of missed opportunities for some great dishes and ingredient references in the later episodes.

Some dishes that could have been really fun to include!:

Joeys Peanut Butter Fingers - TOW Cheap Wedding Dress
Not-Rachel's Salmon au croup - TOW Rachels new dress
Rachel's Surprise Sneezers - TOW the joke
Phoebe's 5am Chinese Food - TOW Chandler gets caught
Chan-berry sauce - TOW the late thanksgiving
Jam Good, Custard Good! trifle - TOW Ross got high
Greatest Meatball Sandwich in the World - TOW the ride along
Monica's Get-a-room cake - TOW Chandler gets caught 
Fried stuff with cheese - TOW the truth about London
Chandlers #3 macaroni with cut up hot dogs - TOW Unagi


Buckets of brownie points to you if you 'got' all of my references!
I had probably more fun than I should have thinking up references and fun names for all of these!

Oh-Flu I haven't missed you

I've been struch down with flu-like symptoms, similar to what I had way back in January (and on New Years) that was fun...
It's a real shame because it hurts to sit up, it hurts to see light, I had to close all my shutters so my room was really dark and dim..in the middle of the day!
I can't really get out of bed easily and the light on my laptop screen to type this is turned down as low as possible and in my opinion is still not dark enough as it's making my eyes ache!
I got a little congestion going on, along with a headache and achy joints and nausea, it's all a barrel of laughs!

Last night I slept for an amazing 16 hours straight which has helped a little, but all the congestion seems to be getting worse.

Here are a few things I have been able to stomach, first of all is water, I always have a bottle of water with me.
I can eat a few bits of plain pasta
I can eat a banana but it takes about an hour!
I can eat a few corn thins which are these...

I usually load them up with tomatoes, pesto and olive oil, but plain they were ok

and a little jelly pot!