Just when I thought the last time I had "Bird Food" was just a while ago, it dawned on me that 3 years have already flown by.
Wow. How time passes!
So anyway, during my last trip back in June 2014, I decided to pack more seeds and nuts back to QQland.
This time round, my mix is:
Walnuts
Cashew Nuts
Pumpkin Seeds
Almonds
Wolfberries
I did away with black sesame seeds as they have a tendency to get stuck in between you teeth and really ugly when you smile. I added wolfberries for its health benefits and also the fact that there was a special offer.
No pine nuts nor sunflower seeds as there was no stock that day.
As usual, all of them are unsalted with the exception of the pumpkin seeds.
The wolfberries are quite nice but I made the mistake of buying too much which made the entire mix tasted off. It didn't help that they have a tendency to clump together and so you can imagine when I bit into a big chunk of it.
p.s. Yeah. It was the same tupperware, I used the last time round. Still good and tight sealed as ever.
I continued to use room temperature water as I still think "cold water" in any recipe refers to unheated water. Otherwise, they would have specified refrigerated water or spell out the temperature to which the water should be, which I find is a tad overboard.
It's a cooking recipe. Not a science laboratory experiment, mind you.
And no. I am not going to use a pipette or burette to get the mug (not measuring beaker) to fill up to 1/3.
Next, I pop the mug with the egg (unbroken yolk) into the NukeBox on high for 60 seconds.
I started the countdown as I nervously watched the mug spun nonchalantly on the carousel.
50 seconds, just a tad short of the full minute, there was a loud POP!
I was thinking "oh great!", we have another eggplosion (term courtesy of Desiree).
I was suprised to see that the microwave was clean with no mess. I picked up to see the mug, half expecting to see nothing (and thus begin the mystery of the disappearing egg).
But no.
There it was, sitting nicely and almost pretty.
It wasn't completely cooked as there is still about 10 to 15% of the albumen still in its uncooked transparent form.
I let it sit for another minute to let it cooked in the heated water. I don't want to pop it back in again, lest I risked the real eggplosion.
Skimmed off the uncooked portion of the egg, throw it on a toast, leaf of lettuce, sauce as a "glue" to prevent the egg from sliding all over the place, a dash of mushrooms in truffle oil, sliced tomato for garnishing, take a photo et voila! Hipster meal!
Having my fair share of *ahem* experimenting with the microwave oven, I have come to learn never to put an egg in the microwave without first poking a hole in the yolk.
Hence, I got curious with this recipe that specifically says to keep the yolk intact.
So. Step 1. I got ready the slice of bread and lather it with a layer of mayo. Didn't have lettuce in my crisper and so I guess the end product would turn out slightly different. *shrugs*
Step 2. Egg. Checked. Mug with 1/3 full of water. Checked.
Step 3: Break egg carefully into cup WITHOUT breaking the yolk. Checked.
Step 4: Into the microwave on high for 1 minute. By the way, that's my Vietnamese coffee brewing on top.
Eh. How come the picture in the recipe is a Jupiter planet, mine is Saturn? Here's the problem. The transparent liquid in the middle is water or uncooked egg white?
Well, the recipe DID say that it is permissible to pop it back into the microwave to nuke it for an additional 10 secs to have it a little bit more cooked.
I was thinking heck lah..... a bit more cooked better lah. What is another 10 extra seconds on top of that 10 extra seconds?
Was doing my grocery shopping when I spotted these at the snack section.
Lay's, a subsidiary of Pepsico offered some unusual flavours to tempt the local palates.
Hot & Sour Fish Soup flavour. Errr..... I have heard of Fish & Chips but never would I have imagined that it would turned out to be like this.
Numb & Spicy Hot Pot translated to human language is 麻辣火锅 flavour where they added Sichuan peppercorn to the condiment spices.
So verdict? Frankly speaking, they are quite yummy (imma MSG junkie) but I couldn't tell the flavours apart. The whole snack was so loaded with condiments that my tongue went under local anesthesia.
There is something about the local folks here and their utmost hatred for the seat belt.
In the past, drivers would only buckle up when they get onto the highway as non-compliance warrants a hefty fine if caught. However, once you are off the highway, the traffic police turn a blind eye, even though the traffic rules stipulate that seat belt be fastened as long as you are on the road, regardless if it is highway or local.
Problem is when modern cars, the car will ding ding ding all the way as long as your seat belt is not fastened.
So one of the genius chauffeurs in the company car fleet decided to go buy a spare buckle to plug in, just so that the ding dings will go away.
It all started when I stumbled onto this youtube recipe (at the bottom of this entry).
Big Mac is one thing. Rice cooker is another.
But Big Mac and rice cooker together? And with fries, nuggets and diet coke??
WUD??
I took the bait, line and sinker of curiosity as I set out yesterday to McDonald's (they don't deliver to my place coz too far. Dammit!)
So here are my observations as I go through the process.
1. Rice - 1 cup i.e. this is a meal for 2 persons with a little bit extra. If you are going to cook for more people, you will need to do this twice coz most home rice cookers are not big enough to fit more than 1 Big Mac and nuggets.
As for the water level, it will have to be less as you will be topping it up with diet coke later on.
2. French Fries - After washing the rice and leaving the required water as mentioned earlier, it's time to add in the fries. The fries will also act as a buffer to prevent the bottom bun of the Big Mac from soaking up too much water and become too soggy.
3. Big Mac & McNuggets - Add in the burger and the nuggets. You may wanna add the nugget sauce, Sweet-n-Sour/Barbeque/Curry to add a little more taste to your soon-to-be very very confused palate.
4. Diet Coke - Important to note. It has to be diet coke as the sugar in regular coke will caramelise under the intense cooker heat. Don't worry about the rice ending up too sweet coz it won't. Aspartame, the artificial sweetener, breaks down under high heat which is why you don't see them in zero-sugar confectionery (for diabetics).
Do not dunk the entire cup of diet coke into the cooker. Add just enough to cook the rice to your desired firmness. A little bit of trial and error is required here.
Drink the rest of the diet coke. It's refreshing. No?
The picture above is the end result when the rice cooker is done cooking.
As you can see the cheese, together will all the yummy juices has seeped and flowed into the rice.
With the spatula, mashed up the rice, breaking up the buns and the nuggets for a more even spread.
An interesting thing is that the battered skin of the nuggets falls off as soon as the spatula disturbs it. What's underneath isn't the "pink slime" that has been the talk of the internet lately. It is just a white piece of meat like as if it is a fillet of chicken breast. (See below for a close up).
The rice is mildly sweet with the remnants of the aspartme from the diet coke and a slight hint of the sweet and sour sauce.
The rice requires you to slowly chew as the flavours do take awhile to coax it out.
Verdict? Surprisingly not too bad and it was a joy to see the conservative, unadventurous AND boring folks cringe and turn up their noses.
Meh.
p.s. Oh and you will have to flip a coin to decide who gets the pickle slice.
Was on my way to another sales call yesterday when I saw this car pulled up alongside at the traffic lights.
Oh. My. Gawd.
Barney's in da house and driving a what I believed to be a Mercedes Benz CLK.
WALAU EH!!!
This has certainly replaced the No.1 ranking of most awful gaudy car I have ever seen. The last disaster I saw was a Lambourghini Coutach in a Datsun-Pickup-Truck Blue at Havelock Road many years back.
I am sure you can still spot these trucks in Pulau Ubin, Desaru and/or other more laid-back towns in the region.
p.s. I wonder if anyone has a better photo of the pick-up truck blue that I am talking about. The one I managed to find on the web is a tad small. Would prefer a larger image to illustrate the point better.
I was recently on a grueling business trip to GuiLin and LiuZhou by bus. The return leg from LiuZhou was a whopping 700 km bus journey (12-hour bus journey).
Now, when we mentioned bus, the following image comes to mind:
The usual Economy Class like seats with the symbolic gesture of a 5-degree recline.
Some of us who had taken the luxury coaches up to Kuala Lumpur would be familar with this:
Well, if the first were to be Economy Class, then surely this one would be Business Class. Wider seat, better recline and even a pop-up footrest to boot.
For me during this trip, I ish lagi best. I have the SQ Suites!!
Ladies and Gentlemen, I show you the Sleeper Bus!
Fully lie-flat beds on the bus. The only interesting thing is that you are required to remove your shoes prior to boarding which brought about a problem which otherwise was a really comfortable bus ride.
My neighbour has smelly feet. It was obviously a rather bad problem that the person in question voluntarily wrapped plastic bags around his feet.
Ewwww.......
Image Credits: http://atlasairportsedan.com; JomNaikBas! @ Photo Crew via http://lh3.ggpht.com
Decided to do Mee Rebus while I am at home for the Labour Day holiday.
True to my usual habit, I have too much stuff on it that I can't see the noodles and the gravy. Haha.
For the expats who return home, we all have a certain food that we die die must eat when we come back.
Mine happens to be Mee Rebus and a curry pok to add to the finish touch.
My first ever Mee Rebus was in 1984 when I was in the canteen of Swiss Cottage Secondary School after my technical classes. That was when the school was still in the Dunearn Road campus. Once was all it took to get me hooked to this delicious little dish. Yum.
I love Sunday mornings. My bio-clock doesn't allow me to wake up late (unless of course got cheong session the night before *coughcough*). When the sun is up, I am up which explains why I sleep with the curtains opened.
Sunday morning is a time where the whole place is quiet. People sleeping in on their day of rest. No cars on the street meaning no traffic, meaning no blaring horns that the trigger-happy Taobaolanders are so fond of. Factories are done for the week and so are the construction going on in the neighbourhood.
So anyway, I decided to whip up something from the kitchen for a kick-back style breakfast. Egg tuna mayo on toast and a couple of half-boiled eggs.
As I slowly eat, my laptop is playing an episode of 楚留香 drama circa 1979. I have been chasing these old Hong Kong serials of late. Perhaps, it is a way for me to catch up on missed childhood as I wasn't allowed to watch TV during my Primary and Secondary School days. I still remember the agony of listening to my classmates talked about the shows the night before and I haven't a clue.
So anyway, I am 6 episodes away from completing this serial which I supposed will be done by today.
Next on my To-Watch list. 银剑杀手沈胜衣. Also circa 1979.
This recipe was taught to me by my ex-colleague's father who used to run a Hainanese chicken rice stall at Tiong Bahru Market.
On a typical day, Uncle Phua would cook the rice in the morning and then store the cooked rice in the plastic thermal bucket. As his stall was small, he didn't have the luxury of having one of those huge rice cooker to keep the rice warm.
With the rice sitting in the bucket over a period of time, oil from the rice will start seeping to the bottom, rendering the rice too oily to be sold.
Not wanting to waste food, Uncle Phua will take the unsaleable rice and fry them. The oil in the rice itself is enough and so there is nothing more to add to the fried rice except your condiments of choice.
I did a batch over the weekend for 6 people but only 4-1/2 people showed up. That 1/2 being a girl who eats like a sparrow.
Fortunately, the fried rice proved yummy enough that the entire pan was emptied at the end of the meal. :)
My housemate came home one day with the above purchase thinking that it would be a new weapon to sian more xmms.
Aiyoh.... so cute, can?
And so I decided to give it a test drive to see how it goes.
It looked promising when I first put the egg in. An important tip here is to crack the egg into a bowl first before pouring the content into the frying pan.
Cracking the egg directly into the pan not only risk having bits of egg shell falling in but also not giving you the chance to burst any air bubbles that may be already inside the egg, thus ruining a perfectly beautiful egg.
Also, with the egg in the bowl first, it would allow you to have a better chance of getting the yolk smack in the middle, which as you can see in the above attempt, I ish bobo shooter.
Verdict?
Fail.
First off, our gas cooker is too big or rather the pan is too small, that even the fire at the lowest setting is too high for the egg. Coupled with the fact that the flower is small (thus the frying pan is deep), the top part of the egg cannot be cooked without the bottom getting burnt.
Flipping the egg over-easy isn't possible either and so it's an egg that is burnt on one side and undercooked on the other.
Actually, this isn't something new as I showed him the way I do my Sian XMM Sunny Side Up.
Ideally, bell pepper would have been best coz of the petal cross-sectional shape but at the time when we were messing around with the frying pan, the onion was the closest I could find in our fridge.
The tip here is to get a big onion, as big as you can find. Get the ring at the equator so that you do not have to have a ring that would be too thick i.e. too deep that you end up in the same situation as the flower frying pan where the bottom is burnt and the top undercooked.
Why thickness is important, one may ask? Well, you need enough volume space inside the ring to content the egg, thus avoiding a spill. A cheat would be to scrape off the excess outside the ring should the egg spill over.
The good thing about using bell pepper or onion or even hollowed-out tomato is that you are working this on a frying pan i.e. extra space allowing you to flip the egg, for an easy-over, if it so happened that your ring is too small and too deep.
One thing to note is NOT to move the ring/egg when you flip over as it will break the yolk and ruin the flower pattern. Let it cook for a while before thinking of sliding your spatula under.
Brought all the necessary ingredients on Saturday and thought I get up early on Sunday to make a French Toast Breakfast.
I think I need to tweak my batter mix as the French toast turned out a tad soft with a hint of soggy. So I left the toasts in the frying pan a little longer to "dry up" the bread which led me to the next problem.
Yes, I got rid of the "soft" problem but the bread is a bit more charred now. I don't think it was a case of burnt toast but more likely due to the caramelisation of the sugar in my batter mix. In any case, it points deduction in the visual presentation section.
Still, the breakfast turned out yummy but I thought it would be better had I have more eggs in the batter to settle the "soft" problem.
Right now it's a ratio of 4 eggs to 1 cup of milk. I made 9 pieces of toasts for myself and my housemate with plenty of batter unused to the extend of being wasteful.
Next time perhaps, I'd try 3 eggs to 1/2 cup of milk for 2 to 3 persons.
p.s. It was disappointing not to be able to find maple syrup in Taobaoland. I used Australian honey as an alternative. It was a case of no fish, prawn also good.
Being in Taobaoland, there are a lot of stuff that you won't find available, especially food stuff that are not familiar to the Taobaolanders.
I decided to whip up a batch of homemade Cheez Whiz for the burger shop in my neighbour in the hope for them to have new items on the menu like Mac-N-Cheese, Philly Cheese Steak, Cheese Fries, Cheese Nachos, just to name a few.
I did the first batch and while it was still pretty tasty, there was a hint of an odd taste in there which I couldn't pinpoint.
Last Sunday, I decided to tweak my recipe and voila! Success!
Here's how to make it JayWalk Style.
Cheese Singles - 3 packs (adds up to roughly about 500g)
Carnation Evaporated Milk - 1 can (410g)
Worcestershire Sauce - 2 teaspoons
French's Mustard - 1/4 teaspoon
Butter - 1 small slab (roughly equivalent to about 3 to 4 Airline Packs)
Cognac - Generous splashes
Optional (Adjust to your own personal preference)
Tabasco Sauce
Vinegar
Pepper
Salt
Margarine (instead of butter)
Dunk everything into a pot on medium heat and stir until all the cheese melted into a gooey pot. Transfer into a tupperware and refrigerate.
To serve, just scoop out whatever you need and microwave it on medium heat until everything is gooey again.
I returned to Taobaoland after the Lunar New Year and we have a new housemate.
Meet Haku, the 5-month old Husky. This puppy is already up to my mid-thigh with a big appetite to match.
He confirm will mega fail as a guard dog as he is very good nature and friendly to everybody. Even strangers.
He loves my tennis balls which might as well let him have them since I don't play tennis anymore. Now if only I can get him to return the ball instead of slobbering all over it.
The great thing with a good-tempered dog is that he is a very quiet. It's been two days since I am back, I haven't heard him bark once. No woof, no yelp, no growl. Nada. Zilch. Nothing.
The occasional whining when we lock him up in the bathroom last night while we clean up his MEGA POO POO, so lovingly left for us in the living room.
We need to toilet train this fella. Need to get lotsa bleach to mop the floors.
Haiz.
p.s. Just to kachow him, we called him Saku sometimes...... that's condom in Ta1wanese. Haha.
p.p.s. Hmm.... maybe I should nicknamed him Condom Dog for future blog entries. Haha....
Perhaps it is most unfortunate to have this entry position right above my earlier entry which is about turtles.
So before I begin, I would like to go on HTC Wildfire phone to give you a perspective of the eggs' size but somehow the picture just didn't tell a convincing story, even with a can of Coke next to it. *shrugs*
* Took another shot and hopefully shows the size better. (See right).
The eggs were bought out of curiosity due to their tiny size.
I have to use 6 of them to make a decent half-boiled egg breakfast. I was told that some of these eggs have two yolks in the already super cramped interior but I personally have not had to chance to see one myself.
In all, my verdict of my 6-egg breakfast is
Sibeh Waste Time.
Apparently, 6 eggs don't really enough "egg" in it to fulfill a decent egg's content.
It's winter time over at my side of the world and the mercury is now around somewhere between 10 and 15 degrees Celsius.
As gloomy as winter sounds, we have very nice sunshine during the day and it is no wonder that the turtles have all decided to come out of the water to catch the rays.
The picture was taken in my office where we have a fountain pond with turtles and fishes.
It was a day after lunch when I got back to the office when I see them in such an amusing formation.
I didn't start plurking about this until slightly later which explains why there aren't any plurks from 1 to 37 of P230.
It was a hare-brained idea hatched late last year. It was originally meant to be a countdown for my return to Singapore on Christmas Eve 2010 and I reckoned that I was going to be able to cleared 230km on the treadmill before I board the plane home.
Lo and behold, one disruption after another from business trips to work to unfavourable weather to travelling, I finally completed the Project of 230 km on 08 Sep 2011. Almost a year later.
During this one year (almost), I learned a few things from my past related plurks.
Cold weather running is more siong than warm humid weather conditions. The cold temperature really make your heart pump all that blood in order for you to maintain your body temperature. Initially, I thought the warm and humid weather is worse as it hinders proper breathing. I was wrong, the condition of the cardio takes precedence over your pulmonary.
My fitness need to be continuously maintained and I backslide to zero pretty quickly to the extent whenever there is a disruption that I sometimes feel that all my previous mileage didn't count for anything at all.
I "nearly died" twice. I am a 7% drama queen.
Polar Heart Rate monitor sucks monkey balls. Will never buy another one evar.
Being in Taobaoland, there are a lot of stuff that you won't find available, especially food stuff that are not familiar to the Taobaolanders.
Cheese Singles - 3 packs (adds up to roughly about 500g)
Perhaps it is most unfortunate to have this entry position right above my earlier entry which is about turtles.
