nandos corn

One of my favourite take-away foods is the corn from Nandos... charred and spicy, it's so delicious! I don't know about you, but I seriously can't afford to be going to Nandos as much as I'd like - that stuff is ghali!!! But on one random trip down the sauce aisle we found Nandos peri-peri sauce, so whilst I was at my sister's house today helping her de-clutter her wardrobe (which I'm very good at), we made our own version of Nandos corn.

You'll need to get some Nandos peri-peri sauce (we used mild) which you can either purchase it at the Nandos restaurant or check your grocery sauce aisle because maybe they stock it too. And of course you'll need to get some corn - you could use fresh or frozen cobs (we used fresh). If you use fresh you need to take off the outer husk.

After we had boiled it until ready (depends on the size of your cobs), we then slathered the corn with the Nandos sauce and charred using a hot frypan (you could use a griddle but we didn't have one). And waalaa! Homemade Nandos corn! Drench in butter and you've got an incredibly tasty snack (or meal, depends how much you eat...)! Will be eating as much as possible before I go back to Kenya next week, might even take a bottle of sauce and see if it tastes as good on maize... haha

the next steps

Great news! I got a new visa to enter Kenya (yay!) so will be heading back next week Thursday, arriving in Kenya just in time for the weekend. Woot woot! However after some careful consideration I've shortened my time there to only doing a further three months, as I feel that's all that is necessary. So I'll be finishing up work on the 18th of December and then taking in the sights of Kenya, coming home January 2. It'll be good to get back and finish up those projects, write up my reports and put steps in place for future development.

Whilst I've been home I've been thinking about what on earth happens after Kenya? I'll now have working experience in a developing country, two Masters degrees under my belt and a decent debt owing to the Bank of Mum and Dad...

Probably should get a job right?

I'm sure every Graduate goes through this process, but seriously, where are all the entry-level jobs? I spend hours scanning the jobs pages and every time I come across a great sounding job it requires "at least five years experience", "in-country experience" "working knowledge of blah blah blah", "experience working with global partners" and other shitty descriptions like that. I've followed the big-wigs advice - I've got a workable Masters degree in my industry, I've done an unpaid internship in a developing nation, I've got a LinkedIn account and joined groups and followed people and watched youtube lectures and done online short courses... so now what? How do I get my first job? Is there something I'm missing? Where are the jobs?

Sigh... all I can do is keep plugging away and pray there is a job out there for me somewhere. 

on break from the counting of days

For those who have been keeping up with what's gone on you will know that this blog post is being written from Australia, specifically my parents house in Melbourne. For those who haven't been keeping up you'll be like "say what?!"... To make a long story short, I applied for a new visa and was denied so rather than waiting for a new visa in Ethiopia I decided to wait for my new visa in Australia. Expensive decision but hey, at least I can eat as much cheese as I can handle.

Changing topics, yesterday was Father's Day, and normally I would buy my Dad a great novelty t-shirt from whichever location I had been to most recently (e.g. last year was an Argentinean shirt). However in the rush of moving locations I was yet to have bought my Dad the traditional t-shirt. So instead of giving him a t-shirt, I made him a cheesecake. You may think that this was selfish, a cake made of cheese, but hold your horses - my Dad loves cheesecake and I made it Kahlua flavoured.

Look at it, so yummy! It was incredibly delicious, and starred in my dreams alongside a very good looking man. So here's the recipe, which was a mish-mash of several different recipes from The Hummingbird Bakery, Smitten Kitchen, and the Donna Hay Basics cookbook and me winging it. It is a very tall cake but feel free to reduce the amount of filling.

Base
250g digestive biscuits
200g melted butter
2 tablespoons cocoa

Filling
4 pkts of 250g cream cheese at room temperature
4 eggs
200g caster sugar
3 tablespoons Kahlua (coffee flavoured liqueur)
3 teaspoons instant coffee dissolved in water
2 tablespoons plain flour

Topping
300g dark cooking chocolate
250g cooking cream
3 tablespoons Kahlua

1. Put biscuits in food processor and blitz until fine crumbs
2. Add melted butter and cocoa and whiz
3. Spread biscuit base in a springform tin lined with baking paper
4. Refrigerate
5. Preheat the oven to 150C
6. Put the cream cheese and caster sugar into the bowl of a free-standing mixer and mix until smooth.
7. Whilst the beater is still on, add one egg at a time until mixed in.
8. Add the coffee liqueur and instant coffee and plain flour and beat
9. Turn up the speed for a minute or two, but not too long or the batter will split!
10. Pour the mixture ontop of the biscuit base and bake at 150C for 40 minutes - the cake should be still be wobbly but not liquid. Take the cake out of the oven to cool.
11. In a saucepan melt the chocolate in the cream and Kahlua and mix to cool
12. Once cool, pour ontop of cool cheesecake and refrigerate until set (overnight is good)
13. Eat and enjoy!