funny tricks of time

it's only been one day in camp, but it already feels like a week. on monday we had parade, so today's off, and tomorrow's hari raya off, then i'll be back in camp on thursday through sunday.

today i was inspired to make a bread pudding again. i used a recipe from the culinary institute of america.
instead of using bread cubes and pouring butter over them, i used croissants instead. this saves me the trouble of melting and cooling butter, and eventually having to wash up more.
the custard mixture. this one's simple; no heating involved, no tempering involved, just simple blending of the ingredients together.
繁体的“愛”和简体的“爱”有什么不同？简体的没有心了。i never understand why some characters got simplified. some of them are so much more elegant when left untouched.

on other news, desperate housewives and ugly betty are back!

making the effort

the dinner with lendl at spageddies. bleah my camera flash was too powerful so many people blinked. and wingtai hides.
clara's send-off at the airport. lalala i'm expecting UK postcards and chocolates. there were so many people flying off too... but everyone will be back, and everything will be back to normal, like how a yo-yo flies away but always returns, right?

it's been such a long day, from waking up to find the bread dough in a disastrous state, to the late-night send-off. i can't help but feel a little sadness, now that more and more of us are moving away from each other.
a giant saga seed for you (found at terminal 3).

粉红阳光

last sunday there was amanda's farewell party. though i didn't get to try my own ugly cake in the end, i did get to eat many nice things. meeting shanghui and ruolin again was nice too.

this week there was parade rehearsal, and a dead, rotting cat on the road. oh yes, i intend to use the tuition money to completely change my wardrobe, if that's possible. i'll call it project: change wardrobe (projCW) or something.

today, i had a very nice dinner at food republic. teppanyaki, just like i ate it in sec1, and never ate it again. i had a fun night walking around shopping for new things in my wardrobe.

i made a nice banana bread using a le cordon bleu recipe.
on the other hand, i completely and utterly failed in making a simple white wheat bread. no photos here; it'll just be so offensive to me.

have you known a love so great, so great you want the two to stay together?

风和日丽

some photos from the class picnic last week.
this is the sara lee chocolate pound cake that beejuan bought, slathered with peanut butter. i think it's perversely delicious. thank god for healthier snacks like the biscotti in the box too.
picnic! in the middle of a park beside the swan lake, on two plastic sheets, like trash bags... the weather was nice; no sun, no rain, just gentle breezes.
scrabble! haven't played that in ages. we played 'snakes and ladders' too; after moving round and round the lower rungs, i finally climbed straight to the top and won.
i almost, almost, caught a photo of the swans forming a heart-shape. but they moved away =( anyway, you would think that a pair of swans in the lake is highly romantic, but you would soon hear them grunting and decide it's not so pretty anymore.
not a bad turnout for the class picnic. 9/25. it's really a good turnout already. (plus weiyang left earlier, so it's actually 10/25.)

now, photos of the ugly cake that i'm bringing to amanda's farewell party. it was supposed to be a nice-looking layered cake, but no, the cake layers turned out too hideous for cutting, and the icing too runny. so i couldnt' do anything but slap the layers together and spread icing over it in childlike, messy fashion. i think it can replace the ugly cake at nydc.
the batters were made with the high ratio method, which combines the butter, sugar and flour together before adding the eggs, instead of creaming the butter and sugar first. the yellow butter cake puffed like crazy in the oven, and i realised it was not just the top doming, but it pulled the entire cake upwards so that there was a huge void underneath the cake. don't know what kind of cake-acrobatics that was. in short, it was... ugly.
clearly, cake decorating is not my strong suit. but it will have to do. i have no time to make anything else for the farewell party.

cutthroat/breakneck

this was a week of nothing. i just ate manhattan fish market with weijie and kenneth for dinner last night. met PC and all the sergeants there too. i watched wall.e too; it's so sweet.

downloading casper to find back the childhood tv memories. i know i have the videotape somewhere; it's either too deeply hidden, or it's all mouldy already.

and watch raw emotions crumble people up. like rubbing fresh yeast into a bowl of bread flour.

no talking keep shopping

made the banana cream pie from the american book again with weijie. this time, we did a proper blind bake ie. using parchment and rice to weigh the dough down. cooked a pastry cream again, but this one was like condensed milk, as someone pointed out. topped the pie with a little whipped cream for more fatty goodness.
then we made some buttermilk corn muffins, recipe from the desperate housewives cookbook. i bought this box of cornmeal from cold storage (can't be found at ntuc), and was very excited to use it. however, the muffins turned out big and, unfortunately, not so tasty. think they have to coupled with jam/butter/chilli for taste. (and i think the last photo looks like muffin-land, like teletubby-land.)

perhaps the best bake of the day was the chocolate guinness cake from nigella's feast. this was an interesting way of making cake batter; instead of mixing ingredients in the mixer, the stuff are gradually added together in a simmering pan of guinness. believe me when i say the batter is dangerously eatable - it's almost like a drinkable sauce! and when you send the batter into the oven, you just keep getting wafts of either alcoholic smells or seductively dark chocolate scents. and better yet is the cream cheese icing. however, i didn't manage to whip it to spreading consistency, so it flowed over the sides, but that made a cute presentation too. it was also like the foamy top of a glass of guinness, as nigella described.

made the sunshine cookies from the betty crocker cookie book, with wingtai helping me cut out the cookies. these came out of the oven very soft and tender, but upon cooling would harden into crunchy cookies. nice. then we made chocolate cookies from my martha book. indeed, today was a debut for nigella's feast and my martha book.

then we made an apple pie, from the american book again. today's pie dough was very well done. in fact, i think it came out of a mistake: while adding water to the dough, i ended up folding/kneading it a lot to get it to come together. i think this sort of contributed to some considerable amount of lamination, which is why if you look closely on the cut-outs, you can see some layers, much like puff pastry when it is baked. i really love the crust.

and just for breakfast, i made the molasses oatmeal loaf from linda collister's quick breads. this was a really dense loaf.

旁人話我看起你居然揀你
別理世間這麼勢利　明日變成戀愛傳奇
覓個辦法做個預算每分每刻每日都於一起
但是你我都欠見地　情人就似好的知己
但若你有別的女子也許我都永不會知從何管起
無時候陪你　這一生不夠十個星期真可交給你
但我有餘下半日　仍是愛著你
(from 天之驕女)
now i'll never have to bang the icebox to get the ice cubes to fall out.

chic lit

i finally got to try the swensen's ice cream mooncake, but by then most of the flavours were sold out. it's so sad, the drizzle in the evening; can't see the moon tonight. ha, i managed to borrow the devil wears prada.

覓個辦法做個預算每分每刻每日都於一起

共婵娟

說真的

容祖兒

說分手　卻還是再復合
但最傷人的話　卻都已說過了

會突然　就不知該說甚麼
而每一個微笑　也不能再一樣了

有太多的分分合合
太多的傷口難癒合
我們該怎麼回到當初那樣呢

我想著想著人也瘦了
我想著想著夜都深了
我不想再想了
不如就算了

我想著想著淚都乾了
我想著想著天又亮了
我不想再想了
這一次說真的算了

會突然　就不知該說甚麼
而每一個微笑　也不能再一樣了

有太多的分分合合
太多的傷口難癒合
我們該怎麼回到當初那樣呢

我想著想著人也瘦了
我想著想著夜都深了
我不想再想了
不如就算了

我想著想著淚都乾了
我想著想著天又亮了
我不想再想了
這一次說真的算了

不如就算了
不如就算了
算了
算了
說真的

我想著想著人也瘦了
我想著想著夜都深了
我不想再想了
不如就算了

我想著想著淚都乾了
我想著想著天又亮了
我不想再想了
這一次說真的

算了

happy 中秋节 now, though the full moon will only come the next night.

regale

i am in a happy mood.

first, random photos from last sunday's bake with weijie.
this is my table laid out with all the stuff we used for the two cookies we made for outfield. i really love using the gold medal flour. think i'm going to be a complete convert to that.
a cute stack of sandy brown sugar. someday i want to try making a sand castle, like the sentosa competition kind.
the betty crocker oatmeal cookies, studded with white chocolate. bleah, i don't like the white chocolate, but if i don't use it it won't go away. incidentally, weijie used two of these cookies and managed to exchange for a free egg tart from the auntie at the egg tart shop >.< the double whammy chocolate pudding from ages ago was still not finished, so i decided to put it into a glass cup, top it with (manually) whipped cream and cocoa. so pretty, like a foaming glass of beer!
this is the meringue that i made weijie manually whip up. i think some things are better done by machine. the meringue took a long time to reach firm peaks, but after a while still softened back to a sticky sludge.
this is the cream biscuit, from another betty crocker recipe, beautifully designed by weijie with a chocolate heart.

anyhow, the cookies didn't last outfield. the cream biscuits became soft, and the oatmeal cookies crumbled up. nevertheless, there was much much food that we brought outfield (because it's the last, or rather, their last). so this outfield was ATEC; i shot enemies, got dripped, and looked at stars using the night vision thingy.

yesterday was a rainy day, and we were all rushing around settling stores. somehow, doing so makes it feel so final, like i've finished what i was tasked to do from the day i went to 41SAR.

today was the class picnic at botanic gardens, so last night i made a batch of wholemeal almond raisin biscotti.
managed to make the dough in record time. i didn't know how much butter i had at home, so i chose to make this; there's no butter involved. and i'm still on my way to finish using sonya's wholemeal flour. just whisked the eggs with vanilla, and stirred in the rest of the ingredients.
biscotti! they turned softer by today morning, partly because i left them in the open overnight to cool. and today was a gloomy and cold morning. luckily it was just nice at the botanic gardens. there was no sun, and very little rain. we sat in the middle of a big field eating good food and having pleasant conversations, bree-style. there were two swan in the lake nearby and i took many photos of them. beejuan had a polaroid camera which is way cool, albeit way retro.

have you heard a swan song? i think it just sounds like grunting.