Please play this video at a low volume to set the ambience
All set and ready to go. Story time!
In the cool darkness of the night, I sat on the terrace facing the garden. The sound of the stream flowing and the wind blowing gently through the wind chimes was soothing. Sad and lonely even.
Sitting on the terrace on a full moon night always brought back memories of her.
She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, yet she seemed unattainable. I was a simple archer and she was a palace maid. Nevertheless, the opportunity arose for me to win her hand in marriage and with my simple archery skills I had her, but all too soon she slipped through my fingers.
If only I did not let the fame and popularity get to my head, then she would not have to experience the fear and anxiety of the pill falling into the wrong hands. It's too late now. She's gone and it was my own folly that brought it about.
On full moon nights like this I wonder is she thinks of me or even remembers me. Will lighting up these lanterns help her so see me down here?
Chang'e I miss you.
Hey everyone! I know this story is a little bit sad and solemn but it's my interpretation of what a sequel of the story of the moon lady would be. This is the original story (The story of Chang'e and Hou Yi) which I'm referring too (original story) This is a story about the mid autumn moon festival
Happy Mid Autumn Festival everyone!
Eat lots of moon cake with Chinese tea and light up some lanterns!
I don't pray to the moon lady (Chang'e) it's just a folklore which accompanies the festival for me
Enjoy!
Here's a picture of a pretty mooncake from Chorus Hotel~
Hello everyone! Getting into the groove of uni life. It's been hectic but I am loving it! My excitement cannot be contained!
In celebration of my first day of class and many more to come, I shall cook up some lotus root soup for dinner.
I love all kinds of clear soups. I think one of my favorite is pinto bean soup(the clear one) Other than chinese soups I love 'tong sui' which is usually warm sweet soup. As weird as that sounds, I promise that its not weird. It's really nice and it's my form of comfort food.
Okay, I've gotta nerd it out! Let me know what's your favorite comfort food!
I'm not a vegetarian but I do go vegetarian for one week in a month (sometimes I eat meat during that week because I'm not that disciplined but mostly veggies are eaten)
I don't do this for health reasons. I'm healthy-ish and have no allergies to dairy or gluten product. It's just an excuse for me to eat more veggies because, have I ever mentioned that I love veggies? I LOVE THEM!
However, vegetarian food available in Malaysia has imitation meat which contains a lot of flavoring and additives to give it a similar taste of meat.Not to mention can sometime be very overpriced.
No offense to vegetarians, but I'm honestly and sincerely confused as to why you eat imitation meat? Could someone please enlighten this poor uncultured soul?
Moving on, so I usually eat tofu and eggs to sub proteins but recently, I came across a bag of dried soya beans. I bought it thinking I would make soya milk (which I will) but it's really rather a lot of soya beans.
And then it hit me! I could use soya beans as a protein substitute as well! Thus this blog post was born (fanfares and grand music!)
To use dry soya beans, you need to re-hydrate them by soaking them for 8 hours at least. I just soaked them overnight. Pop them into a bowl with enough water to cover two times the amount of soya beans and say goodnight.
The next day, your soya beans should look like the one on the right (double the size). The one on the left is a dry bean.
I wanted to use these beans as minced meat so i gave them a little roast in the over for about 10 minutes to get that chewy meat texture
Pop them into a grinder and.....
Voila! soya bean pulp. Now go and do what ever you want with it. Search for recipe's using soy bean pulp or okara.
I think I'll use this to make okara cookies next time!
I really have an insane craving for mac and cheese now but I only have healthy food with me. Hence, I will have a healthy dinner TOMORROW! (Procrastinators unite!)
So, my hands smell like garlic and I find that rather yucky but at least I won't have to cut garlic for a long time. Why ?
The trick for cooking which I use to reduce my cooking time is to pre-chop my garlic and store them in cooking oil then put it in the fridge.
It's completely safe! I have been doing this for the whole of my previous semester and I did not have any stomach discomfort nor did Sienna. (My ex-roomie and the person with the lacy purple scarf)
After all you only need two things: Garlic and oil (prefably not olive because you can't heat olive oil too much or it will be bad for your health.) I used vegetable oil(Palm oil, I think.)
How I did it?
Crush and peel garlic
Chop garlic finely
Put in an air tight glass jar (or clean old pasta sauce bottles)
Fill jar with oil till you cover the garlic
Put in fridge
As you can see the oil solidifies. This is completely normal and a good thing! Reason?
You can now control the amount of oil you use without accidentally pouring out too much into the pan while cooking.
You also get Garlic infuse oil. How do we use it now that we have a jar full of garlic in oil? (and garlic smelling hands)
Grab a spoon
Scoop out the amount of oil garlic mixture
Drop into warm pan
Fry garlic till golden brown
Stir fry vegetable/meat or
Put the oil and fried garlic into a bowl and add in some soy sauce for a simple dressing
Me wrapping the wontons (Mother dearest prepared everything, I just wrapped the wontons)
The funny story starts here.
Before I was requested to wrap wontons, I was chatting with a friend when I told him:
Me: Hey I have to go wrap some WANTONS. brb
Friend: Wrap wantons? What?
Noun: A sexually immodest or promiscuous woman
???
And of course when I came back I had the laugh of my life although I'm not really sure he found it funny.
Anyway, I explained to him what i meant and that in Cantonese we pronounce is as "wan tan" like "Wan tan mee."
Gosh! Imagine what he must have been thinking while I was wrapping wontons clueless-ly!!
Asia running around the red-light district like a maniac and wrapping clothes around immodest women while screaming at them: REPENT AND DRESS MODESTLY!!
Then dashing on to the next woman and leaving a trail of havoc in my wake! So much fun and excitement!
Haha! I wish for adventure and excitement in my life so I can only dream about it for now. I hope you had a good laugh with this post! :D
Do let me know if you've ever encountered funny moments from a misunderstanding. Spread the laughter ;)
This is going to be my first meal plan ever. Join in my quest to healthier and convenient eating. If you're too busy to do it yourself you could use mine but I eat a lot of food (especially veggies) that people dislike.
Tada! So this is my meal plan for lunches
Avocado Tuna pasta salad with grapes!
And an up close
It probably doesn't look particularly nice now but I can assure you, it was really tasty. What's more, it was so easy to make! What's not to love? :)
The only hard part was waiting for lunch time to come (I prepared this before going to work) :D
Leave me a comment on how you like your pasta. See next post!
Remember those times when your friend asks you "What do you want to eat?" And you immediately hate them for asking you something which you yourself haven't the foggiest idea?
When I mention "meal planning", you're probably thinking of housewife duties (no sandwich jokes please). In fact, meal planning, will help you answering that dreaded question.
Man, go make your own sandwich.
Even more so if you plan to prepare your own meals because if you're anything like me, you'll find yourself standing by the stove for 30 minutes and still unsure of what to cook.
So why meal planning?
3 Benefits of meal
planning
·Saves time
oNo more standing in
front of that stove for 30 minutes thinking of what to cook for dinner.
oNo more walking around
the food aisle wondering which ingredient to buy
·Saves money
oNo more finding you have
to run out to Tesco/Coldstorage/Ben's/etc..)
oNo more buying
ingredients which you will find in your fridge weeks later in the process of
decomposing
·Need to shed some pounds/kg?
oPlanning out what you’re
going to eat within the week can help you count and cut unnecessary calories
oEasily monitor what
kinds of food we eat to maintain a balanced diet.
Still think meal planning is for sissy people? Then join me for the next blog post on my weekly meal plans to have a glimpse of the benefits without having to do the actual work yourself :D
