As family and friends know I live in a place I affectionately call ‘the shoebox’. Great location but hardly any space to swing a cat, as they say. As a result I hardly have any cooking facilities – at least I have two hobs but there is no microwave and worse yet no oven. I could probably get a mini-oven but it would take up precious space … which I use for all my clutter. As a result of not having an oven now and then I find myself craving some good old-fashioned oven cooking – normally in the form of lasagne. So, today, I invited myself over to my brother’s house for a Come Dine With Me-type meal.

Come Dine with Me is a show which has five amateur chefs competing against each other by each hosting a dinner party for the other guests. Most people secretly love the show and I must admit watching it is quite entertaining because you get the drama of a reality program but you get the cooking side too. What’s not to love about that combination? So, this was Come Dine With Pat only he had to do the entertaining for me. Ha ha.

Actually it was a lot of fun preparing our simple lunch – only something simple garlic bread, lasagne, salad finished off with my zucchini and chocolate chip cookies. All cooked from scratch. What made it really funny was we had the fam from back home in Oz online at the same time so it was kind of like we were broadcasting a cooking show. Hilarious.

Unfortunately I forgot to take pics of how the cookies turned out but here they are in preparation. Mmm … tasty 🙂 :

The meal was a great success and we seriously over-ate. There’s just something about the combo of garlic bread and lasagne that just calls for double serves. And we’d made such a gigantic lasagne that we had enough for about 3 more meals each from the leftovers. Great result.