9 posts tagged “cooking”

Let's get the venting out of the way first. Following local news, mixed with news on various reforms (that really REALLY should've been instituted at least a term ago, but playing 'shoulda woulda coulda' is neither here nor there) are various demonstrations that either my fledgling understanding of politics and governance is really shallow, or do people REALLY DON'T UNDERSTAND THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GOVERNMENT MACHINERY/AFFAIRS AND PARTISAN MACHINERY/AFFAIRS?? From Lee Kah Choon having to resign from Gerakan simply because he had the gall to accept the appointment to an arm of the state economic development apparatus, the dissolution of Selangor's MP Wives' Assoc and channeling the funds to the National MP Wives' Assoc as well as further examples of punishing opposition states by rerouting funding meant to them through to federal-level mechanisms instead, gives me no real optimism of all other reform measures being trumpeted right now. How can I? To carry out such reforms requires maturity in thinking, yet our BN politicians are acting like five-year-olds stamping their foot and threatening to bring all their toys home just because their portion of the sandbox got smaller. And it's not like it's even their toys - be that as it may that they may be developed by the BN govt, the key term here is 'GOVERNMENT'. I know 50-odd years of being in power may have blurred the lines, but BN/Alliance != Government. Parties leading the government may come and go, but the civil service remains.

Gah. To be honest, it's not like they haven't done it before. Kelantan and Terengganu are pretty much textbook examples of how the Fed Govt punished state opposition through economic structural barriers. And I never made that much of a fuss simply because I don't live in those states, though I have ties there. So, this venting is really me being selfish.

Protip guys: You want to recapture the electorate, it's not through the creation of moaaaar blogs. I don't give a flying fuck if you have them or not, if you people don't grow up.

---------------------------------

Over at the US, it's Sexual Assault Awareness Month, which means there're some interesting posts being made right now. I didn't pay much attention to it, until this happened: The Open Source Boob Project.The Open Source WHAT Project? Yeah. The original project itself seemed pretty empowering, started by women and participated by women, more than men. Unfortunately the post that started a maelstorm was written by a man who was there, who phrased it in such a privileged white male way that I literally could not continue, the mental slime dripping from the post was so thick.

At Penguicon, we had buttons to give away. There were two small buttons, one for each camp: A green button that said, "YES, you may" and a red button that said "NO, you may not." And anyone who had those buttons on, whether you knew them or not, was someone you could approach and ask: "Excuse me, but may I touch your breasts?

Anyway, this whole kerfuffle happened to take place during this month, which gave more impetus for more people to post about the overall issue, as well as this particular incident: This is a good rundown and list of reaction posts dealing specifically with boob-gate.

A couple of other posts:
Thoughts of Men and Rape - The more I think about it, the more it pisses me off. How pathetic is it that, in our culture, the only thing you have to do to be a good guy is say, "Hey, one of these days I'll write something about rape." Even that sort of vague, empty comment about rape is enough to make you stand out. Because that's already more than most guys seem willing to say or do.

I noticed the same thing when I worked with Take Back the Night years ago. Practically all I had to do was show up, and I was some sort of freaking hero.

(incidentally, it made me compare and contrast with this post by a local blogger: But, is it possible that things can sometimes swing too far to the left? Where the burden of proof on a rape victim just becomes too low for justice to be served?)

Don't be 'That Guy' -

2. Entitlement (part two.)

Related to the first: if you make me think that you're coming from a place of "but as soon as she sees how awesome I am, she will of course see that I am not one of Those Guys and want to reward me", that's entitlement too. This is what a lot of women mean when they derisively say "Nice Guy™" -- because, and sadly to say, a lot of men who say "I'm a feminist!" carry the distinct undercurrent of passive-aggressive "I'm a feminist! I'm one of the Good Guys! So it's totally okay for you to sleep with me, and in fact, you should do so right now and as often as possible."

In more vanity-related news of my life, reading this article You Walk Wrong: It took 4 million years of evolution to perfect the human foot. But we're wrecking it with every step we take, reminded me of the Adidas Kampung, and how much I would like to buy one. But the places I've heard where it is easily available is too out of the way for me, le sigh.

Also, I tried to curl my hair with the rag curl method. It's incredibly kind to your hair, all things being relative, (AND CHEAP!) but my hair's too short and layered for me to properly wind it up, so though it has incredible body today, I also looked like a veritable fright. XD

And this Overheard at NY post cracks me up:

Teen girl #1: Don't read it.
Teen boy: Really?
Teen girl #2: It's so overrated. Everyone's like "Oh my god, Frankenstein is awesome!" but it's not. It isn't. Frankenstein sucks so hard.
Teen girl #1: Victor spends half the book sick and the monster spends half the book spying on a family with a hot Arabian chick.
Teen boy: What about all the torches and Igor and everything?
Teen girl #2: Not there.
Teen boy: For real?
Teen girl #1: Just a lot of a Swiss guy crying and lying on the floor. I even have it in my notes, "Victor says: 'When in doubt, pass out!'" And there's a stick figure giving a thumbs up.

The other day at a supermarket bakery (which has to be one of the most depressing places on earth - stale refined carbs going for cheap!), I was entertaining one of my pet hypotheses for the use of temporal manipulation technology, in the F&B industry. Outlandish flights of fantasy over the use of hypothetical tech is one thing, but I tend to be more interested in the prosaic applications. Anyway, time travelling on a scale larger than an atom may not yet be possible, but the capability to freeze time may be more within reach. (Well, I guess, it's not like I have a degree in theoretical physics or anything). And I was spinning yarn with myself about how it'd be adopted by the F&B industry: for one thing, it beats conventional freezing for freshness. And how at the start it'd be prohibitively expensive tech and it'd only be available at high-end swanky joints, and that's the selling point, how the ingredients would be fresher than fresh. And then of course, the tech would grow to be more and more affordable (in the meantime, the poor or less able to afford could only have staler and staler (is that even grammatically correct) food). And of course, by the time the tech is readily available, there would be a backlash, with the ultra-elite renouncing this tech as being too... whatever (I'm sure they can think of a reason). And there would be a movement back to fresh food, that's not temporally frozen and 'unnatural'. I bet by this time the tech for time travel would eventually arrive, and thus nothing could be fresher than food that was teleported straight from the source! XD

I should stop hanging around supermarket bakeries so much.

Technically speaking, I made an apple and quince pie, if indeed the golden apple at the back there is quince. Heh, heck of a find, and I have TJ's grandma to thank for bringing it over as 'buah tangan' (a small gift one brings when one visits a home). 

Basically, the filling is stewed apples, and this time I didn't burn the pastry (once I've figured out that the new oven doesn't quite bake the surface evenly, so had to rotate the pie 20 mins in). The pastry was still hard to handle though -- I'm such a baking n00b.

Look at how it crumbles at the slightest touch! Oh well, I made custard cream to go with, so all's well!

Great for dessert! No pictures. It's all in my tummy by now.

You need:
- A huge DOLLOP of plain yoghurt. It's up to you, you can start small and add more at the end.
- 1 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder (or Milo, in a pinch)
- 1 tsp honey. (the quest to finish the Gagarra honey my uncle-in-law bought continues!)
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp vanilla powder/essence/extract
- a few drops of lemon flavour (I was afraid to try the juice. There's a reason I barely passed chemistry, people)

MIX IT UP. There ya go.

Am making pastry wtf. Having a new oven, and conquering one's fear of baking does not lead to good, carb-free things, I find.

That said, I may just have added a wee bit too much butter to the pastry but we'll find out tomorrow if that's an offence worthy of me committing suicide.

Work continues, at a more frantic speed, as we realise that the deadline is looming. A publishing date of October doesn't mean we have seven months -- it means we have until May, to be comfortably ready for the nitty gritty technical bits of getting a book printed. More writers are hired to do the writing, and STILL I have to the writing for some of them, because none of them would dare to do the rewrite based on Malay sources. =_=' Oh for crying out loud, you don't even have to write in Malay. And it's newspaper Malay, not Hikayat Dendan Setia. (*saves the rant on the dubious bilingual capability and functional Malay literacy of the people of this country for another day*)

I sort of straddle both worlds (which really means I mangle both languages equally well), and it bemuses me to know people on both sides of the divide, who are essentially frightened (worst case scenario) of communicating in the other language.

Anyway, tomorrow is The Great Apple Pie Experiment. We shall see. At the very least everyone will lie to my face and tell me how enjoyable it will be.

Now where the hell is my Hikayat Dendan Setia... Buying/reading classic literature at the tender age of 12/13 is one heck of a misguided notion let me tell you. It scared me off Shakespeare, and for years all I remember of HKS is the violent birth (lightning! thunder! baby crashing through the floor to the ground unharmed!), which, Adibah Amin tells me in her SPM BM column, a sign of a princely and royal birth. Hardcore.

I was rather giddy about this piece of news in my YCCians work-mailing list, but in the spirit of my previous post, here we go:

In a move that will stun the Muslim world, Sheikh Ali Gomaa, the Grand Mufti of Egypt and one of the highest-ranking Sunni authorities, has said that hymen reconstruction surgery for women who have lost their virginity before marriage is halal (permissible) and that a man has no right to demand proof of a woman's virginity if he cannot provide proof of his own. In addition, the fatwa states that a woman who has had sex before marriage but has sincerely repented is under no obligation to inform her husband of her sexual status.

Grand Mufti: No Proof Needed For Virginity

I better spell 'resuscitate' right.

Things I've learned (general):

• To cook dhall, one must be prepared for the hairy little buggers that come crawling out of the lentils AS SOON AS IT'S SAFE (for them, i.e. once one has been safely purchased and brought out of the store). Am I being merely histrionic? Go buy a cupful, have fun!
• Carbs taste good, no shit.
• I HAVE A WRINKLE! OMG, IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD. I MUST NOW COMMIT SUICIDE. What the hell, world, how the hell am I now *twenty-six*? I'm careening towards middle age, and I haven't yet sold my soul to the High Gods of Corporate World (in exchange for a shitload of money, benefits and years' worth of therapy). Self, you fail!
• I apparently, as you have no doubt noticed, have a talent for drama.
• I actually finished '26 Things', but am much too lazy to post them up. That and relearning CSS is driving me bonkers.
  

Observations (Bali; yes, went on holiday):

• The land is truly, blessedly, gorgeous. For the first time in a long while, walking, even though on the outer courtyards, along the stone paths of the temples, in the middle of the jungle, or on cliffs overlooking the ferocious Indian Ocean, I felt the urge to pray, to meditate. It's so easy to feel like the Divine has touched you there -- I suppose the bigger challenge is to hold on to the feeling when you're back surrounded by concrete and glass and plastic.
• That said, it clearly is a place driven by tourism. Visiting during the low season underscored the desperation, I think. They're not all desperate, that's not really what I mean, but even here (especially here), everyone's looking to hustle.
• I really like looking at all the daily offerings lying about -- another group of people more devout than I! :D
• Package tours are a walletsaver, but the buffet offerings kinda suck. Went to Bali, did not actually have nice, proper Balinese food, teh irony, woecakes etc. Tuna satay is awesome though, and should be encouraged here.
• While I'm mostly bemused and cynical at the incident involving Malaysian govt officials on a trip that was being footed largely by an owner of a construction company and us girls, I'm terribly amused that a night out for Asians TOTALLY, TOTALLY meant karaoke. (more karaoke this weekend -- I intend to slough the mental grime off).
• Pictures on the way, see above, re: site & CSS.
• I AM SO GOING THERE NEXT TIME. I'll do proper shopping and everythin', and actual beach activities! Involving waterskiing, and possibly dolphins! Probably not at the same time, but wouldn't that be awesome? (The dolphins waterskiing, I mean; yes, I'm deranged.)
  

Or, Boy, What On Earth Possessed Me To Start A Blog On A Service So Committed On Creating Its Own Community It Won't Allow Anonymous Comments, i.e., People I Care About Who Can't Be Arsed To Create Another Blog Login ID?

Thus!

I've always wanted to pick up the art of speaking randomly into an empty canyon.

(Am reading a collection of short stories by Dave Eggers. I've begun imprinting on his narrative voice. HELP.)

(reading Pratchett will possibly aggravate the situation.)

(unrelatedly, 500 ml = 500 cc != 500 g. Apparently.)

(there's no such thing as beginner's luck in cooking.)

Thing the first: My cooking skills is so-so, but I can be pretty decent.

Thing the second: I WAS NEVER VERY GOOD IN CHEMISTRY.

Thing the third: As a result, I'm not too good in the experimenting part of cookery yet, beyond the basics. But I generally do fine when I fudge the measurements.

Thing the fourth: WESTERN PEOPLE DON'T KNOW HOW TO USE ASIAN STUFF FOR SHIT.

Thing the fifth: Cleverly, I tend to use Western-based recipes.

Thusly: TOO MUCH SANTAN IN MY 'fusion' PUMPKIN SOUP, and well, refer to the title of this post.

!!!