The crock pot has seen a lot of action this month - and most things cooked in it taste just a little better with the addition of some beer.

The display at the National Museum of Singapore during Get Curious : All About Food.

I see at least three distinct reflections of me in this one.

For some reason, a lone slice of pizza is sharing space with these salmon burgers.

Seen moments before all were devoured at the Horizon Court Buffet on the Coral Princess.

I've had many failures in cooking pempek, its not easy. So that I don't make a big failure, I'm trying to make a mini version.

A mix of kanji flour, ordinary flour, a mash of tengiri fish meat, salt and cold water, shaped into a triangle pocket, added a table spoon of egg white and closed. Boil them until the kanji's gluten is cooked, then deep fried.

Too much kanji? Wrong kind of flour? I don't know why this one fails yet once more.

Its really hard to master the art of making pempek.

Peppers, tomatoes, zucchini, ground beef/chicken, espresso grounds...

Summer Cooking Camp Shirt design (2013) for FBCZ. Created in Adobe Illustrator. If you'd like the vector art, let me know - I'll be happy to send this over to you.

Action Pack Magazine - Family Cooking action-pack.com/2012/06/action-pack-family-cooking/

If only I had a mandoline - I'd have such attractive looking slivers! KS claims we do have one, we just have to put it together. If we do have one, how grand would that be?

Photo by Kevin Mensah

A wee while ago Sophie handed me a hand made cook book. *This is for you Dad, I put this together and the recipe's are easy as.*

I thought I might do a Julia & Julia;

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie_&_Julia

Every Tuesday night I do the cooking and to be honest my one trick pony (Grilled salmon and Asian salad) was looking pretty bloody tired.

Tonight was recipe No 1 and it's *Julianna's Brazilian Stroganoff - from a real Brazilian :) she claims.

2 chicken breasts

1 red capsicum

1 brown onion

1 tea spoon of garlic (from a jar if you are like me)

1 punnet of mushrooms

1 tin of crushed tomatoes

1 squeeze of American mustard (from the plastic squeeze bottle - Heinz is good)

Dash of low fat cooking cream

Dash of tomato sauce

Dice the onions and place in a wok or pan - add the garlic and cook till brown.

Add the diced chicken breasts and when cooked chuck in everything else - I diced everything and it seemed to work fine. Turn down and simmer till it thickens a tad and serve with rice. I used white rice from a pkt - 90 seconds in a microwave - Beautiful!

Not being a cook I must say I enjoyed the experience of shopping and picking good produce. It also gave me the opportunity to by a chocolate peanut bar :)

Verdict for the stroganoff: YUM!

Cooking soybean instead of cooking locust bean (Iru) for cooking soup. (file name: SO_PH 026)

Sustainability cooking class on how to make salsa from August 13, 2014. Photo by Breanne Pierce

Scallions

avgolemono pasta

Preparing a recipe from my 1973 Jell-O cookbook.

My mom cooking on the wood stove

Cooking up Green Beans and Potatoes. Power food! before a good nights sleep.

They tasted not bad..... but we had our doubts for a moment.

chocolate wheaties

i'm not sure if you know this but i'm not really an alcoholic. i just play one on TV.

so today it snowed - A LOT. so what do you do when it snows? bake. i baked A LOT. cookies & banana bread. but i want to let you in on a little secret - not sure if you do this or not. but i make my own vanilla. see that bottle - it's pure gold. no more paying out the wazoo for vanilla.

here's what you do: go to the liquor store and get yourself a fifth of vodka. order vanilla beans online at penzy's or some other vanilla hub bub place. for god sakes, don't buy them in the local grocery store - buy them some place good. and get about 10-15 of those puppies. well don't really get 10-15 puppies - that would be silly. anyhoo - take the vodka and make yourself a drink for goodness sake - a stiff one. take the vanilla beans and slice them down the middle and drop them in. put the liquid gold in a dark cool place and every once in awhile, give that bad boy a shake. in about 6 weeks you will have the most amazing vanilla you ever came across (god my english sucks). when it starts to dwindle down (and it will) add more vodka and keep shaking baby! like my bottle, i'll add more vodka now. and this will keep getting better and better.....never throw it away. (you can see my bottle has a date jan 2010 - i dropped and broke my previous bottle so i had to start anew. i had had it for 5 years. i literally cried - balled was more like it.) in about a year, add more vanilla beans - don't take the old ones out just add more of their friends. i took a half gallon of vodka and did this one year for holiday gifts....handed out my own vanilla.

so go get yourself some vodka (good vodka) and do this yourself. all the stuff that you buy in the stores in the same thing - alcohol and vanilla beans only so much better and cheaper.

Cooking Thanksgiving dinner with my three kids is one of my favorite annual traditions. Check out our cooking and travel blog www.singlemomglobetrotter.com

Cooking Sections - Empire Remain exhibition.

5 Historic sky maps from the british empire history.

About 10% of our cookbook collection.

Parboiled about 15# of lobster and then made a roast lobster mid-PM dinner.

© Andrea Lhostis

@ovahshoot