I Hate Canapés, Curd Cheese, And Fish

Evil, evil canapés. Everybody now has my permission to say the word "canapé" without doing an Oz impression, but they must now infuse venom, spite, and vicious loathing into the word. My head hurts. Canapés are evil. I can't believe I got out of bed just to make canapés for my parents' lunch party/uni-reunion. The first thing I set about making were these little spiked cheeseball things. Which might have been fine, if I'd had nearly enough time to refrigerate them and allow them to set. As it was, the recipe was incompetent, and somehow the blue cheese needed for them managed to "jump out the shopping trolley," at least, according to my stepdad that's what it did. So I substituted with a mixture of cheddar and boursin cheese. Which was sort of ok, albeit gooey, even with the rye breadcrumbs added. I then made my mini-roast-potato halves with boursin cheese and bacon bits, except the recipe for that grossly underestimated the quantity of cheese needed, and as I'd used any I might have had left over for the cheeseballs, I ran out. So I had to substitute in some fresh curd cheese I found lurking in the fridge. Still with me? Well done. Don't worry, though, there's more to it than that.

I'd just like to take a time-out to point out that I am sick and tired of curd cheese. What the bleeding hell do we keep stocking our fridge with curd cheese for? As far as I'm aware, there isn't even anyone in the house that even likes curd cheese. It just keeps appearing, and let's face it, it really is just a lumpy version of cream cheese. I always seem to be the one that has to eat the leftovers, too. Considering we've now run out of pesto to mix it in with the pasta, I am not looking forward to finding culinary purposes to curd cheese. I can think of lots of non-culinary purposes. Splatting the person/society that came up with it in the first place, for instance. Splatting anybody that ever suggests using it in any recipe.

Back to canapés. So once the potatos are improvised and arranged, I have to start on the salmon and avocado parcels. Now these are a slight issue, becase they are far and away the most fiddly thing to make. I made them a couple of weeks ago, however, and they seem to have been a bit of a hit. Every time my parents now have guests, they seem to be a necessity. Every single one has to be tied up with a double-knotted blanched chive. Which might not be so bad, if your hands weren't always covered in avocado gunk when you were trying to tie them. And of course, the avocado has to be covered in lemon juice the whole time to stop it going brown, and I would happen to have a sensitive skin reaction thing to anything more acidic than milk. Final grouch about these things, I hate fish. I really, really hate fish. It makes me feel ill just thinking about the stuff. It's all slimy, with beady eyes, and I'm never convinced it's really dead. So I was just ecstatic about having to handle the slippy smoked salmon in order to make these things.

Then I had to retrieve the cheeseball mixture, and attempt to persuade it to form balls. Which, of course, it strongly resisted, until the threat of excessive breadcrumbs and caraway seeds was finally carried out upon it. However, I would just like to point out, that vodka and strong cheese does not go well together, contrary to any views some smug chef git person that wrote the recipe might hold. The eating of said combination has given me one of those literally pulsing headaches (I can now take my heartrate through the side of my head,) and there are no signs that this affliction plans to move on in the near future. Since drowning my sorrows in expensive red wine provided by my parents has failed to produce any alleviation, I now plan to combat it with hot-chocolate and paracetomol. Sounds like far less fun, but is, I suppose, far more promising.

Ah, the joy. I have to do all this again next weekend. Spiked cheeseballs can burn in hell along with the curd cheese, because there's no way I'm going there again.