Monat: Dezember 2018

Baby crazy

This week Clare returned to the show.

Clare

Does anyone remember Clare? She was around for about five seconds six months ago and appeared to have a crush on Jack. Then she was raped by the Beachwood Beast and promptly disappeared afterwards.

Anyway, she arrived in town and immediately offered to be a surrogate for Jack and Lincoln.

Jack was thrilled with the idea for some reason, and said yes without even thinking about it.

What is wrong with Jack? “Well, I’ve been sober for a month after a serious p-addiction, I have essentially zero income, I haven’t finished school yet, and Lincoln and I have been together for only a couple of weeks, so this should be great!”

Jack and Clare ambushed Lincoln with the idea, and he was a bit ambivalent about it. Who would blame him?

He eventually came around to it after being pressured into it.

I assume that what we are meant to gather from this is that these people have all completely lost the plot?

Jack at least sort of has an excuse- those drugs probably really munted his brain. But the rest of them don’t have any excuse.

I’m also a bit worried about Clare. She was raped only a few months ago and is also only like 19 years old. And does she even know about Jack’s drug addiction?

In yesterday’s episode we had the very contrived twist of Clare overhearing Lincoln on the phone saying that she was “damaged” and that the surrogacy was probably a bad idea. Yeah, great idea to have that conversation in the staff room where anyone could just walk in at any time.

Ferndale fail, indeed.

Does this remind anyone of Morgan’s disastrous surrogacy storyline back in 2009? You know, when Morgan decided that she just had to carry a baby for her friends?

Well, it turned out that the parents-to-be were actually total lunatics who were constantly at each others’ throats. They kept harassing Morgan, often screaming at her, and threatening to file lawsuits against her. Yeah (!), I’m sure a baby would fare very well in that kind of environment (!).

What a horrendous storyline. I think it may have been worse for me than it was for the characters. By the end I wanted to throttle the lot of them.

So how long do you think it will be until this new surrogacy situation goes pear shaped?

The end of Curtis/Esther?

I know it’s taken me ages to write about this, but I just had to talk about this.

This week, Curtis abruptly left the show to pursue detective work in Christchurch. Yes, that’s right. After two years of will-they-won’t-they between Curtis and Esther, our “payoff” was Curtis telling Esther to “go to hell” before disappearing forever. What??

I think what we were meant to gather from this was that she didn’t want to keep him from missing this career opportunity, and this was the only way to get him to do this detective course.

But now what? Esther languishes on the sidelines for a few months? Curtis is totally forgotten just like that? I’m guessing Jayden Daniels decided to quit the role, but they still could have figured out a much better way to handle it.

Granted, the most recent character exit storylines have been pretty abysmal: Finn abruptly leaving for Sudan after a month of buildup for a romance between him and Zoe, only for Zoe to sit on the sidelines for a couple of months before completely vanishing without a trace (where on earth is Zoe by the way?). Then we had Vinnie decide that he just has to move to Singapore for a “better life”. Who cares about what the woman he married wants, or that she’s still recovering from PTSD after a car smashed into her, right? Oh well, I guess we just “want different things.” Vinnie became unrecognisable towards the end, but this behaviour was even more out of character.

Then we had Frank abruptly decide that he actually does want to go back to being a serial criminal, and hire a hitman to kill Dylan before skipping town. No one really seemed to care much that he was gone, so that was interesting. Kylie was like “oh well, I guess there’s nothing I can do about it” before immediately jumping into bed with Dylan. I hope they have plans to bring in more new characters, because the cast is rapidly hollowing out right now. We gained Lincoln in August but we’ve lost Vinnie, Frank, Finn and now Curtis.

Get your shit together, show!

Bagels with vegan herb and garlic cream cheese

Bagel recipe from here (hot for food), cream cheese recipe adapted from this recipe as well as hot for food’s

Cream cheese:

  • 450g silken tofu, drained
  • 1 1/4 cups raw cashews, soaked for at least 4 hours or boiled for about 15-20 mins, until softer
  • 1 tsp garlic powder
  • 1 tsp onion powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/3 cup neutral tasting coconut oil, melted
  • 1.5 tsp lactic acid
  • 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
  • 1 teaspoon dried oregano
  • Chives

Let tofu sit out for about 15 minutes until it is closer to room temperature. This is because if the melted coconut oil touches the rest of the mixture, it will become solid again and it will be more difficult to blend these ingredients. Combine all ingredients in a high power blender until completely smooth. If the mixture is too thick for the blender to blend, move to a bowl and microwave for about 15-30 seconds so that the coconut oil melts again.

Once blended, the consistency should be like this.

Transfer to a container and refrigerate for at least 4 hours before serving. It will thicken a lot and the tanginess will decrease a bit.

For the bagels, follow the hot for food recipe.

Once the bagels have cooled, slice in half and slather with vegan cream cheese and whatever toppings you prefer. I like to add vegan chick’n strips (Beyond Meat/Lightlife), sliced tomatoes, cucumber and avocado. Or you can make carrot lox and add that.

Bagel with vegan cream cheese, carrot lox, tomatoes and capers

Vegan dumplings with soy curls and mushrooms

The other week I decided to try making dumplings with soy curls. Soy curls seem to work well in everything – curries, shawarma, stir fries… They absorb flavours very well and don’t have any odd aftertaste that I can detect.

You will need dumpling wrappers for this. Most of them are vegan. I found some at my local H-Mart in the frozen section:

Vegan dumplings:

Dumpling wrappers
1/2 package Butler’s soy curls
1 tsp Butler’s veggie “chicken” seasoning
250g diced mushrooms, any kind should work
1/2 large onion, diced
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp diced ginger
2-4 tbsp mushroom “oyster” sauce, to taste
1 tbsp agave syrup or sugar
Hot chili oil, for serving
Bamboo steamer

Place soy curls in a bowl. Pour boiling water over them to cover, and add veggie “chicken” seasoning (Butler’s sells this as well). Let sit for about 5 minutes, until rehydrated.

Heat a pan over medium-high heat with some vegetable oil, and add garlic, ginger and onion. Saute for a couple of minutes until the onions are softened/browned a bit. Then lower heat to medium, add mushrooms and saute for a couple more minutes until softer and more fragrant. Add mushroom sauce, sugar and soy curls. Saute for another couple of minutes, then remove from heat.

To form dumplings, place ~2 tsp of the filling in the centre of the wrapper. Then close the sides and seal them.

Heat some water in a wide pan over medium heat, and place the bamboo steamer on top. Put some lettuce leaves on steamer to keep the dumplings from sticking. Once the water is boiling, then add the dumplings, cover with the top and leave to steam for about 12 minutes. If the water level becomes too low, add more.

Eat with hot chili oil or whatever dipping sauce you prefer. Enjoy!