Nights of Baking Fetish

Yeah yeah~! It's true...2 nights in a row.

First night, it was cookies.

Second night, it was chocolate cake and brownies.

All turned out ok...but the fun part is actually the baking process...and when people tell me it's pretty edible. HAHA~!

Home Improvement

Well, not really...

But halfway through scavenging through whatever's left of my on-the-verge-of-turning-mouldy packet of grapes, I suddenly remembered something that my housemate always does while doing the same thing.

Most of us have this problem when we're washing our grapes. There's that white layer of stuff (presumably nothing healthy at all) covering the grapes. So even if we don't die from it, it still makes the grapes taste weird. But I think no one is really THAT health-conscious nor hardworking to go clean it one by one.

I've tried that (washing it one by one), peeling off the skin, aerate water (with a gadget) with the grapes in it, and using some liquid wash (similar to our detergent...just that it's for vegetables). All of them work to a certain extent, but of course there are downsides to each of it.

Now, I remembered seeing Samantha (my housemate) using some white powder to clean her grapes. (At first I thought it was some icing to go with the grapes. ) Anyway, the powder turned out to be flour instead, something most of us have in our kitchen.

So I finally decided to try her method instead. (I got fed up with cleaning the grapes one by one, that's why.)

Before "flour treatment"

After "flour treatment"

Conclusion:

Hey, it DID work~! Quite effectively too~!

Might be using this method after this, just some flour and water does wonders on the grapes...hehe.

Fruits & Vegetables

Today's the 4th day of Chinese New Year, and coincidentally the day where everyone in my house decided to go get some shopping done. Not for clothes, not for sundries, but for fresh fruits and vegetables where it's dirt cheap in Fenham. Sudden thought of eating healthy after the weekend binge

So off we went, taking Stagecoach No. 40 from John Dobson Street to Stanhope Street. Was kinda disappointed to see the wholesale store. Thought it'd look more impressive than that. But then again, the saying of not judging the book by its cover soon struck me.

IT WAS CRAZY!!!

There were loads of stuff to get from the shop and they're all in bulk and damn cheap. Like a box of bananas, for example, costs only 1.50 pounds and there's like 123 bananas inside. Normally it costs about 1 pound for 2 to 3 bananas in Grainger Market or Tesco/Morrisons. So the 4 of us started choosing what we want and accumulating them in one corner of the store. We're totally absorbed in "shopping" that we forgot something VERY important.

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Samantha: Eh...so how much money do you have with you?

Muse, Jesmine & I: *Silence*

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After some quick calculations, each of us only had about 12 pounds average. Luckily the stuff we took still cost less than that, but we still have to save money for the taxi fare back home. (Which costed us 6.70 pounds) So we stopped buying and paid for everything.

It's not until we got everything in the house that we realised how much we bought.

Note: Pictures below might be disturbing to some individuals.

Part of the "loot" back from the store...only PART of it...

All those for....

My portion...

Guess all these would last me quite some time...

Take a guess...

So, what's the red thing on that piece of bread?

1. Tomato sauce
   
2. Sausage
   
3. Capsicum

And the answer is..............

*drum roll cue*

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3. Capsicum!!!

Its been baked in the oven together with oil and surprisingly, it's kinda sweet. Loved it!

Can be eaten just by itself or together with some french loaf or bread. Kinda addictive though...

Bon Appétit

(Credits: Bread and capsicum courtesy of Emily )

Huat Kueh for CNY!

Found this recipe online for huat kueh which I've been craving for, so I decided to try it out since the materials were readily available at home. Improvised on it a little, experimented a little and, VOILA~! Huat Kueh~!

The texture's quite good, but it tastes like something is missing...

Gonna call up my "Sifu" to see which secret ingredient 'X' was left out. HAHA~!

Another few sizes of the same batch of huat kueh...

(Didn't have enough mould of the same size, that's why.)

The two smaller ones a bit squashed, coz the steamer's lid constricted the "bursting" of the kueh. What to do...*sigh*...limited resources what...