well its another decade, come and gone.. and i can’t believe how lazy I have become about maintaining this place, and i’ve decided that for this year i’m going to make it my goal to write in here regularly. Starting now.. and my first mission is to upgrade wordpress, and hopefully i don’t break anything in the process 
Camera: Sony Cybershot
Exposure: 0.02 sec (1/50)
Aperture: f/5
Focal Length: 20.3 mm
ISO Speed: 200
Exposure Bias: 0/10 EV
Camera: Nikon D50
Exposure: 0.004 sec (1/250)
Aperture: f/4.5
Focal Length: 85 mm
Exposure Bias: 0/6 EV
ISO Speed: 200
So it came over me to make chicken soup the other day, but I wanted to try something different using
fall veg. So I made chicken soup with leeks and it was quite delicious, here’s what I put in it. Sorry for not having a photo, but I ate it too quickly.
First I made some chicken stock, to do that I simply
boiled 6 – 8 cups of water
add 4 chicken breasts on the bone, skinned is okay, but I removed the skin before cooking
so I wouldn’t burn my self.
Then I added 4 carrots quartered and unpeeled.
2 Medium Onions quarted
4 cloves of garlic
1 large leek quartered
a bit of sea salt ( I’ll add more for flavor later on anyway )
quite a few basil leaves, I’d say 5-6 larger ones.
a few sprigs of thyme
the juice of half a lemon, and then I juiced half in the stalk.
a few whole peppercorns
boil for about 20-30 minutes
after, strain and discard of these veggies leaving your stock aside in a bowl etc., put chicken a side remove from bone and cut up.
next! prep.
bring to boil about 2-3 cups of water and add 1.5 cups of rice. I used more water than required
so the rice will be totally saturated and won’t make my soup in to stew.
I cut up 2 more onions, 4 carrots, and 3 leeks.. and 3 cloves of garlic.
in a large pot, add olive oil and 2 tablespoons of butter mm and sea salt.
cook down your veg. until the onions are soft, the carrots will still be hard but that’s okay.
add a bit of curry powder and turmeric, 4 minced basil leaves, and about 3 sprigs of thyme, just peel your fingers down from top to bottom to remove the leaves.
add 1/2 cup of white cooking wine.
let this cook down for about 5 before adding your broth.
add chicken, rice and simmer. test for salt content to make sure you don’t need a bit more.
before serving I added a bit of fresh lime juice.
uh hopefully this works out for you I’d tell you what the amounts are, but seriously, I have no idea I just throw stuff in.
Ham dinner
mm ham okay so this is the recipe, which actually I made up so I can’t tell you word for word.. but this is my amazing ham delight.
to start ->
slice 3 garlic cloves thinly
saute in a frying pan with olive oil and butter about a tblspn or more of butter
open a can of sliced pineapple put juice a side.
place pineapple slices on top of the butter garlic and oil. until golden.
trim off a fair bit of rosemary in to the mix.
mince, or used dry sage add a a bit, about 5 leaves or so or a just a light dusting if your using dried.
add whole fresh peppercorns and sea salt.
and two fresh cinnamon sticks.
add the pineapple juice and reduce.
add crushed red pepper seeds but not too many so the spiceyness won’t be over powered.
juice one half of a lemon and a whole orange.
add a tblspn and 1/2 of brown sugar
add about a tblspn of honey and reduce until it just starts to thicken
I like balsamic vinegar and added a touch of it, but not everyone likes it.
now, some people like to boil their hams ( for about 30 minutes or more prior to baking ) but i’m far to lazy for that..
I scored the fat on the top and the sides fairly deep so the fat could run through the ham
I started it off at 400F and brought it down gradually to 300 over the course of 3 hours and basted it with my juice every 20-25 minutes or so. it tastes amazing, and the cinnamon perfumes it in the oven very well while cooking because it burned just a bit.
my ham was 7lbs so cooking time varies.
So, here we are blogging again at zyconium.com. hopefully it works out better this time, we’ve worked out a few issues mostly server issues with too much spam. Hope you enjoy.
