give me se7en

there are some days you just want to sit at home and work on something that requires peaceful concentration; that simple and mundane repetition of routine. today... is not one of those days.

i'm trapped at home on a gloomy day, so i'm (forced into) finishing up the rainy-day biscuit dough left over in my deep freeze. it is truly calming, because each quarter of the dough takes me one hour to roll, cut out, re-roll, cut out, re-roll, cut out, re-roll, cut out, and bake.
a lunchbox of kiddy-shaped cookies! just like how a mother would pack for her child to bring to school to share; i'm trying to recall if i brought any to primary school class.

the sourdough starter is still growing; can't wait to use it.

stylings

i'm on a morning revelation. my sourdough starter is slowly seeping into life in the bowl. i'm listening to prokofieff's fifth symphony. beejuan sent us a song by lea salonga. i just checked and she's coming to singapore next year in cinderella. there's even a design-the-glass-shoe contest for - sadly - children only.

quoth yvaine

what do stars do? shine!
but no star can shine with broken heart.

reprobate

chocolate is the fix. i learnt that at sunshine's house on wednesday.

sometimes I find shredding paper very relaxing. the thinner the stack of papers, the louder the sound, and unfortunately for the office people - who must be very irritated by the 'noise' - i like the sound the machine makes when it chews on the paper.

so i choose to feed small stacks so that i can hear the machine chew away. and i move fast so that the machine is continuously fed with paper.

i'm just going to make my sourdough starter (finally) and going to sleep, because i'm so tired.

木头; 木纹

i made martha's buttermilk waffles this morning. the hefty amount of batter required some egg whites to be whipped and then folded in, which further increased the volume of batter.
the result? an overload of waffles. the batter had a very nice cinnamon smell, but the waffles didn't. still, they were plainly nice.

then the baking session with weijie. we made spinach and goat cheese quiche and rustic apple-pear galette - both from the american book. (by the way, i just got the textbook of the culinary institute of america's baking and pastry faculty, baking and pastry: mastering the art and craft. i shall call it the textbook from now on.)

so: the spinach and goat cheese quiche. the goat cheese was bought from carrefour, because ntuc doesn't stock it. so were the sun-dried tomatoes. in short, this pie was expensive!
plucking the spinach leaves and dicing the onions. then the onions are sautéed in oil, and stir-fried with the spinach.
the spinach and onions are spread onto a partially blind baked pie shell. then a custard mixture is poured over everything.
baking the pie. the eggy mixture slowly turns from glistening liquid into a matte, softly-set custard.
quiche! this was really nice; a big slice would be enough for a meal, a small one enough for tea!

then we made a galette. the original recipe was for a peach galette, but we did apples and pears instead. the galette is a free-form pie; the pie dough is rolled onto a flat sheet, fruit is piled in the centre, and the border is folded inwards to finish the pie.
the recipe called for ladyfinger crumbs to be used to abosrb the liquid from the fruit, but i couldn't find any. so i used crushed crackers.
the galette didn't look as appealing as the picture in the book, and frankly i don't know if the base crust was completely baked. in any case, i won't be eating it; it's for weijie's colleagues at the polyclinic.

on to weather news. the sunny afternoon turned unexpectedly gloomy in the evening, culminating in a thunderstorm, through which we sat in front of the computer and played mystery case files.
i just remembered that i haven't finished reading my sister's keeper.

you are old

buttermilk pancakes for breakfast!
my frying pan wasn't cooperating as much today, so the batter turned more and more liquid as i cooked the pancakes; the last few were significantly bigger than the initial ones.

countdown

i'm suddenly watching all the music videos of nice joey songs, and each one is linking to the next: 爱怪物的你, 梦非梦, 还未, 呼天不应, 烟霞, 蜃楼...

it's my birthday soon!

伸懒腰

i'm on a waffle/pancake phase now, and i desperately want to go back to my bread phase, but there're so many waffle/pancake recipes i have to try!
today morning's is four-grain waffles. 'four-grain' because there's plain flour, wholemeal flour, cornmeal and oat flour. the only problem is i used yoghurt in place of the buttermilk and got sour waffles instead, but now i know the correct substitution, after reading how to be a domestic goddess again.

chengwei managed to get me the silver star at the battalion farewell function!
twinkle twinkle lucky star, tell me baby what you are!

botak piccolo

we've actually reached the period of cold weather. just slightly less than one year ago, i received my american book as a present, and began trying to bake cherry pies. that means christmas is coming again.

this week i wasn't able to shake off COS duty easily enough. and that has left an indelible mark on me.

friend requests

martha stewart's oat and whole-wheat waffles! my martha book says this is a fit-to-eat recipe, so it's not fatty.
this is my first time using the waffle maker. i think it's been used only twice. the waffles' are like pancakes; they're so easy to mix into a batter and cook.
pouring the batter onto the heated iron. and the steam! sometimes the batter boils and oozes out so it dirties the waffle maker. the waffles were spongy and eggy, much different from the one you get at the neighbourhood bakery-waffle-stands.
clique dinner tonight!

爱情还给我

met up with the platoon for a steamboat dinner (my third one this week). weijie and i finally found the wooden spoon. the old auntie in the shop inspires me. just one small shop with a refrigerator, a worktop, a mixer, baking utensils, two ovens, a display rack, and she's in business.

i miss everyone!

chocolate chip, blueberry, banana

the frames for the platoon...
sometimes i wish that i could to freeze the picture, and save it from the funny tricks of time.

made nigella's johnnycakes on last sunday. these are pancakes with cornmeal added, so there's a grainy texture.
the pancake batter could be made quite quickly. the slowest part is the actual cooking. because i only had one frying pan, it took me almost 45 minutes to finish cooking all the batter.
my first time making pancakes; i think they turned out quite well. it's cute how the batter spreads viscously onto the pan, and then firms up enough for you to flip it.
keeping the johnnycakes warm in the oven. like i said, the cooking took very long, so it was neccesary to keep the cooked ones warm until serving. besides, once cold, the johnnycakes lose their grainy texture and become tough.
piled up high, drenched with strawberry coulis, and then topped with some (finishing) golden peach jam.

i also made some cakes for the bunk steamboat last sunday.
this is simply the madeira cake from nigella's mother-in-law, which was the second recipe of how to be a domestic goddess that i tested. this time, however, i chose not to take out the big mixer, and used my handheld mixer. (it was completely messy.)
made some royal icing, recipe from the american book. this is quite like a meringue, just that it uses icing sugar. i used lemon juice to turn it a bit fluid for flooding.
it's pretty, isn't it. i love how it flows slowly down the sides, and how it dries into a lustrous shell.

brought the cakes to the steamboat dinner in bunk. ate so much and felt so full. so yes, this week i've begun full-time admin work. some days, it kills, but i think i'm getting better. it's been rainy the past week, and i brought my violin and viola to kill the spare time i had. sunshine was trying to play twinkle twinkle little star and it was so funny! oh and i got my first taste of macaroons on thursday, thanks to weiyang. yesterday i was doing guard duty and i saw a rainbow; it was fiercely ephemeral.

a nameless kid told me that if you just stare at a night sky, you’ll see meteors. last night i didn’t see any; i saw blue stars. don't disappear!

sidereal

today's only a wednesday morning but i'm already exhausted; i'm stealing time to hide here - as in rest room - and write, and have my life back. five people have left the platoon already and i miss them so much now. yes the beds have been re-positioned everywhere, but that has only brought smokers into the bunk; my towel smells like cigarettes. yes there's nights off every day now, but that only blows my wallet.

i'm just tired and looking at sonya's UK life through facebook. waiting for friday. oh but wait saturday's completely lined up with stuff, and so is sunday.

sidereal \sy-DEER-ee-uhl\, adjective:
measured or determined by the daily motion of the stars; of or having to do with the stars or constellations

the eighth of november

if i'm not wrong, it rained every day this week. i've also begun my admin chores, and they're killing me, making me have late meals. just yesterday there was an ORD parade for those leaving this year; everyone was high, everyone was packing.

and i have exactly one more year to ORD.

new figures

a rainy nigella day. today's lunch with wingtai took a good three hours to cook. it was another recipe from nigella bites. pasta and meatballs; luckily the pasta was not made from scratch - i imagine that would take another two hours.
the meatballs made by mashing together minced pork and beef, garlic, oregano, black pepper and egg. the uncooked meatballs smelled quite nice, but it's not very nice to be mashing your fingers through the mixture...
the most interesting item in the recipe was the tomato passata. at first i thought it was just a fanciful name for tomato paste, but there was actually such a thing as passata being sold. turns out, it's just tomato purée.
grinding the garlic and onion in a hand-crank machine. omg it is such a great invention; if you tried to mince garlic by knife, which is what weijie and i did yesterday, you would die trying.
frying the garlic and onions, then pouring in the passata to make the sauce. next, the meatballs were dropped into the sauce to simmer until cooked through.
pasta and meatballs! i've eaten a lot in the past two days. in particular, i've eaten a lot of garlic in the past two days. and although i feel so full, there's some empty feeling inside me.