Sunday, January 27, 2008

the locomotion

i truly wonder why the female gender has a tendency to spill over their troubles onto other people. well it is kind of like having your pants poured with iced water. oh well not really. but the point is, it is like those mini fengshui fountains you may have in your house that spills water from one level to another. but this time, instead of the good fengshui water, you get the water that pours down from a hurricane's storm. so to those guys out there who share the same fate, i truly feel for you...

on a lighter note, with my mum going away to KL, i have been given the opportunity to flaunt my culinary skills (since i don't have girls coming over to my house begging me to cook for them). i was rather proud of myself having made my 'sunshine toasts' this morning, well on saturday morning at least. simple to make and of course, simply delicious! here's a picture of them:


they're only nice when eaten while the bread is hot and toasted. i ate them when they were no longer hot though. a tad soggy but still tasted good. have i got your mouths watery?

anyways i still gotta wait till my brother gets back from thailand. and now i'm stuck in the airport with nothing to do but this.

Monday, January 21, 2008

cooking tips

do you put your soy sauce in your egg mixture before frying it, or do you add your soy sauce after you fry your eggs?

do you coil your earphones around your ipod, or do you 'orbit' your ipod around your earphones so that it the earphones are coiled up?

i tend to neither add soy sauce before frying nor after frying. and have no preference to how i'd like my earphones coiled. weird.

anyways, about the eggs, if you want to have them scrambled, you must first know how to make those scrambled eggs. scrambled eggs (those good ones) are generally not fully cooked. meaning that the egg proteins are not fully coagulated (or for those who are mentally challenged, it means to turn into a solid mass or to curdle as the protein structure changes). just like those eggs that you get from buying your big breakfast at macdonalds, i bet you are wondering how you could actually make them so delicious. right?

firstly, adding ingredients to your egg mixture will slow down the cooking of the eggs. you have impurities in your egg mixture which prevents quick coagulation of the protein. one way to best slow down the cooking process is to add ingredients a couple of seconds after pouring your egg mixture into your frying pan. and do make sure it is on low heat. say you wanted to add milk, what you can do is to pour the milk into the frying pan (lightly oiled) after having your egg mixture poured into the pan.

the above process 'shocks' the cooking, thus slowing down the rate at which the egg protein coagulate. and it doesn't just stop there. continue to stir, yes stir, the mixture in the frying pan so that you wont allow the protein to coagulate quickly. and of course, depending on your culinary skills, your eggs could turn out excellent, or equivalent to either a 20 year old yogurt or the rocks at the beach.

Monday, January 14, 2008

incubus, live in singapore

yes and indeed. after all these while. they might have missed us, a tiny red dot just off the southern tip of the malaysian peninsular. and as any die hard incubus fan, i just had to get the tickets.

actually to be honest i knew of their tour when a good friend of mine told me all about it quite some time back. i was pretty much excited when i heard about it. but well it had to be at fort canning, not that i don't like the venue, but i'd rather have the concert in a concert hall where i can choose good seats near the front. i wont even mind the deafening sounds from the speakers and amps.

i would really appreciate it if they'd play some songs from make yourself and morning view, of course morning view being my favourite album by incubus. maybe they'll play make yourself, nice to know you, pardon me, just a phase and all that. but i guess they'd be playing mostly from light grenades and a crow left of the murder.

and for those of you who don't already know, what are you waiting for. incubus, live in singapore. 7th of march 2008, fort canning park. tickets are out a long long time ago. get it in february and it'll be a bit more expensive.

see you there.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

a craze swept wave

time and time again i see hordes of customers lining up to purchase their favourite doughnuts, or donuts as what most of you would know it by. it leave me wondering when, and where did the whole craze sprout out from. of course i couldn't be bothered researching it, but my hunches would say that it would have probably started with japan. or maybe one of the asian countries.

one of the reasons doughnuts became so popular is because we singaporeans are not exposed to a spread of fancy doughnuts that the americans indulge in every single day of their lives. also credit must be given to the advertisements and publicity. but this cannot solely be credited to one company alone. just like the bubble tea craze, many other doughnut-copy-companies are coming out of nowhere with their fanciful names and trademark recipes. its no wonder why singaporeans are so spoilt for choice.

it made me think again. doughnuts were actually introduced to this country more than a decade ago. for those of you who are at least my age or older, you would have remembered dunkin donuts. dunkin donuts were like the in-thing of the 1990s here, at least for me i guess. i still remembered gorging down those strawberry cream doughnuts, chocolate coated, rainbow rice and honey glazed. however, nowadays, we have cheese, kaya and whatever you may think of. to me, they appear scary and very experimental but has seem to struck a chord with the masses.

myself, although a food junkie, i'm not particularly crazy over doughnuts. so far, my doughnut count since the craze started still lingered at 1. i realise how very unhealthy those o-shaped deep fried dough buns are, plus all the added ingredients on the top that contributes to you slow demise. i've been constantly reminding others how unhealthy these things are, and of course, are as unhealthy as your favourite hawker food.

and of course you don't eat your hawker food that often, why should you eat these miniature life buoys as often? the queues don't seem to get any shorter and the fanaticism for doughnuts never seem to die. i guess i'll never know what it will take to level the situation.

then again, i'm still a fan of the bubble tea, but if you think about it, doughnuts are like cliche.