Working
for an international organization means that most of the people I work with are
not in the same time zone as I am – no matter what time zone that happens to
be. Since this is true for all of us, we are used to doing most of our work via
email and other electronic communication. Sometimes, though, there’s no
substitute for having an actual conversation. And since booking a meeting room,
or just crossing paths at the water cooler, isn’t an option, we schedule
conference calls. I average a couple a month, ratcheting up to at least one
every week when we’re coming up to a project deadline or a conference.
I
kind of hated being in Missouri for most work-related things, mainly because I felt
like I woke up every morning running behind all the Australasians and Europeans
who’d already put in most or all of a working day, even though I got up at 6am.
But for conference calls it was excellent; I rarely ever had to schedule one
outside of normal business hours, and if I did, it usually meant 6am, when I
was already up anyway. (Still in pjs and not necessarily coherent, but
upright.)
Now
I’m in Australia and (other than the New Zealanders) pretty much the first one
up, organizationally speaking. This has some significant perks, including
getting virtually no emails on Mondays. However, when it comes to conference
calls, it means that by the time most of the northern hemisphere is online, I’m
thinking about wrapping up work for the day, if not going to bed. And a
conference call at 9pm can really mess up plans for a relaxing evening of
flopping on the couch with your spouse and watching reruns of Lewis so you can geek-spot
Oxford locales. There aren’t many alternatives, though, when you’ve got people
phoning in from three continents and you want to make sure it’s not anyone’s
middle of the night.
The
other day I had a one-on-one conference call with my project manager who’s
based in Germany; since it was just the two of us, he offered to come in a bit
early so that we could complete the call before dinnertime in Canberra. We did
manage that; but only just: I hung up at 6:15, about 15 minutes before we
usually eat dinner, with not a shred of prep done. Luckily, just in case, I had
planned a dinner based around leftovers, fancied up with one of my favorite
standby ingredients: frozen puff pastry.
Savory
puff pies
This
isn’t so much a recipe as an opportunistic scavenge; I had a good-sized piece
each of leftover chicken and steak in the fridge, neither of which was big
enough to feed 3 of us but each of which was more than enough for one, if you get
my drift. So here’s what I did:
- Turned on the oven to preheat at 200C/400F.
- Took 2 sheets of puff pastry out of the freezer to thaw.
- Chopped and sautéed about a dozen good-sized mushrooms in butter, seasoning with salt & pepper as I stirred.
- Chopped up chicken and steak into bite-sized pieces and put in separate medium-sized mixing bowls.
- Divided cooked mushrooms between these bowls.
- Added a healthy dollop of Greek yogurt to each bowl, then stirred to combine everything.
- Lined a large baking tray with parchment, and placed one now-thawed pastry sheet on parchment.
- Piled chicken filling on one-half of one pastry sheet; folded sheet over, then crimped around the sides with a fork.
- Placed other thawed sheet on baking tray, and repeated step 8 with steak filling.
- Pierced pastry parcels with a fork, and brushed with beaten egg for a shiny crust (optional).
- Placed in oven and cooked for 20-30 minutes or until pastry was golden and the kitchen smelled like dinner.
- While puff pies were cooking, prepped and cooked vegetables to serve alongside. (I used green beans, as you can see.
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