Sunday Cookout Afterthought

I have been on a cooking frenzy for the past 2 days, showcasing my food creation in my blog as well as facebook. This is due to my new digital camera acquisition (Panasonic Lumix DMC-FP1) kudos to Panasonic Viera 3D competition. The FP1 have serve me well this past 2 days in documenting my food creation. I'm slowly getting the hang in operating it.

It's time to pay my final respect to my trusty old PSP camera that had been assisting me in recording my trials and tribulations in cooking for the past few years. I also want to take the opportunity to thanks readers that enjoy my post despite my irregular updates.  

Saturday Cookout Afterthought

It had been months since I last update the cookfreak blog as working life (as an IT professional) had taken a toll in both my mental and physical well-being that I took a 3 month sabbatical from work and cooking (including blogging as well).

With current economic situations and inflation, it take one to wonder how one can appreciate the things around you and the things you do in life. I have friends everyday telling me how "sian" they are with their life even those well-to-do friends showing signs of weariness due to stress. Even now, I do not have any answer to this never-ending rat race that seem to entwine everyone including myself.

But one thing I know for sure is my passion for food and cooking never wanes despite all this. As my friends always made fun of me that - "I live to eat" not like them - "eat to live". Truth to their words, I constantly re-invent ways of cooking common cuisine as well as complex one in an economical way everyone can enjoy. I will be sharing in coming post on how one can roast and grill chicken/fish with toaster oven without the need to purchase expensive conventional oven.

Saturday Cookout Afterthought

I give advice to my friend's mum over Live Messenger on how to go about using the microwave to cook marinated chicken. As reported by my friend, the outcome was pretty successful. However, he commented it seem so tedious and difficult despite the process of using a microwave to cook the marinated chicken is pretty effortless and simple. I cannot comprehend why so many people perceive cooking as tedious and complex.  

I have a friend that say why you can effortless cook dishes that seem so complex and tedious. Well I have my fair share of failure and this saturday cookout is a failure despite it aesthetic appearance. My dutch rendition of Stampot is too dry and the pan fried skewered bacon wrapped dory fish isn't crispy enough. It would be ideal if it is deep fried.
 
Even in failure, you can learn what could be done to improve the failed recipe. As I always say no one is born a cook, it is only whether you have a heart to cook. 

Saturday Cooking Spree Afterthought

While cooking is a chore for most, cooking really bring me a lot of pleasure if compared to other types of hobbies. The sight of seeing the person you cook for enjoying the fruits of your labor is priceless. I would always go the extra miles to made a particular recipe or dish more flavorful or appealing as cooking for someone you know is very personal.

The same cannot be said for restaurant as every dish or recipe are subject to economy of scale and chef in the restaurant are subjected to cooking for many clientele at a single night as a result it might lack a personal touch. This is just a general statement as there is still a lot of great restaurants and hawkers out there serving great food even go to extra miles to customise to your taste. I know a few restaurant that go the extra miles to customise the dish to your preference.

I didn't cook much this Saturday as I plan to go on foodie trek with my friend in Chinatown district. However, I whip up a fast brunch peri peri winglet, ham mesculin salad, garlic potato soup accompanied with toasted garlic french bread for my mother before I moved out. There is a few hit and miss in this Saturday foodie trek which I will post later.

Belated Cooking Spree Afterthought

Despite suffering from flu doesn't impede my spirit to cook, as I need to clear some of the offer food items that I stock up during to Hari Raya Holidays as I can't resist.those huge discount given out by the major supermarkets. For this week, I decided to whip a quick & easy Butter Chicken, Butter Garlic Naan Bread accompanied by Dory Fish Herb Nuggets with Salad to satiate my craving for buttery curry.

So far, most of my recipes are highly influence by the weekly food product discounts offered by the supermarkets.  This is the only way you can enjoy good food while the savings from the discount is transfer to you directly as supermarket have tendency to mark up the price many folds in order to earn profit from the general consumer. Sometimes, I even go to the extent to purchase quick sale products from supermarket as the discount given is half of it actual price due to the product is nearing expiry. For example, a low fat mozzarella 1kg cost $19.90 but after quick sale the price is half to $9.90, Therefore, you can enjoy some of those relatively expensive food products without the need to break your piggy bank.

However, not all quick sale products I will consider as products like eggs, milk and sauces tend to go bad as it's near end of shelf life as I encountered before milk curds in those quick sale milk.Those quick sale product that I've normally purchase are cheese, crackers or honey as it is known fact some cheese are known to age for many years and still consumable, while honey being high in sugar content basically doesn't turn bad if it fully seal airtight and crackers if you consume immediately doesn't poise any health risk. I hope this small nugget of cost saving advice prove usefully for those who want a taste of epicurean while avoid burning a hole in your pocket.

Hari Raya Cooking Spree Afterthought

Seeking solace in cooking different kinds of cuisine is the only remaining simple pleasure I could afford nowadays with everything go up like nobody business. This Hari Raya holiday cookout was a bit of a rush as I need to juggle between a few cuisine all within the same day - Lok Lok Hotpot (for my friend coming over), Le Grand Sandwich (as lunch for my mum) and Chicken Korma (for my workday lunch).

Overall, I enjoyed the cooking experience immensely except for the internal family strife happened yesterday that mired any of the little joy I've collected over the holidays. I don't intend to air dirty linens here as I believe everyone more or less have their own that they wish they can bleach away with Clorox. This is Life and family strife bound to happen. Life is really tiring (for myself I don't imply those who read this blog lol) nowadays with constant tussle in the corporate world and struggles to make ends meet to let alone let family strife to erode away your last haven of happiness. I hope my current feeling of moodiness will subside soon as life still needs to go on. I will still continue to cook more exotic cuisine as "Food is the chicken soup for the soul".  

Saturday Cooking Spree Afterthought

With recession still in the loom, restaurant and foodcourt have been busy giving out promotions to retain customers but little effort  improving or maintaining the food quality and taste. Most of them is either busy cutting down food proportion or doing marketing to mislead general consumer that their food had improve but when you go to any of the restaurant and order their so called improved menu, you be won't surprised you don't get what they advertised.

I tried many newly open eateries and restaurants at Orchard ION but the food quality and taste doesn't not really live up to the franchise in Japan. There are a lot of food bloggers out there blogging on ION's restaurant and eateries so I won't dwell further in it. Cooking in home is not an arduous task as one believe. There are fast and easy way to cook without sweating. Microwave oven is one cooking device that can cut down cooking time as you can pre-cook certain food items and heat them up before serving and the person who consume it will believe you just cook it.

Cleaning is the next dreadful task one would shun cooking at home as seeing all the cooking utensil piling in the sink will enough to turn you off (even for "sex" lol). If you're skillful enough, you can cater some of the cleaning in certain time slot during the period of cooking like steaming or simmering which got long period of inactivity that doesn't need your personal attention. By the time the dish is ready, you have nothing much to clean and lot of times to enjoy your fruit of labor. The next dread is you do not want to stuck with the same food all day long, this can be easily resolve by rehashing the same ingredient with different style of cooking or serve it differently with rice or noodles.

I hope my cooking afterthought is enough to prompt those newbies in cooking to continue on. As in the long run, you will find the food you cook will even supersede those serve in eateries or restaurants at a fraction of the cost.
 

Food Blog Stolen!!!!

I'm happy if people enjoy the recipe I posted on the blog and I don't mind if they post my recipe on their blog with due credits. What I'm most piss off with is someone lay claim to the blog that isn't their and cook up some lame description just to get them listed in blogs search engine like Technorati.

Being new to blogosphere, I never expect my humble food blog being stolen by an individual who lay claims - "It is a food blog where im blogging all my cooking experiences eversince i transformed into a homamaker.." in Technorati. Cry out loud "homamaker", what is that? The description posted by this fraudster in Technorati is no where close to the reason why I setup this food blog.

The reason for this food blog conception is I'm sick of the usual fanfare foods serve in local Singapore restaurants, food courts and hawker centers and I would like to have something cheap, refreshing and easy cooking without any sweat. I hope this fraudster (priyadilip) whoever you're, please lay your hands off my blog and others, if you still have some sense of dignity and passion for food and cooking. ndw7qv8jfc

Blog Abandon?! Maybe? Maybe not!

It been been more than a year since I last post in this cooking/food blog. Recently, I been thinking is this blog going to be one of those millions of blogs whereby the new blogger that started many postings with zest and end with abandonment due to lack of interest or drive. These thoughts had got me to post again as I do not want this blog to fall in this category.

Many things had happened during this period had left me burnout and depress. Life really have more downs than ups that even those strong will eventually fall, the optimist will become pessimist eventually. While those issues might look superficial to others, but the actual person who is going through it have the hardest hit. It is hard to juggle life, work, study and family as a single. I always admired those can do it single-handedly with ease.

Being single in Singapore is more of curse as Government does not acknowledge your contributions as Singles don't get much incentives when comes to rebates, taxes and housing rebate. Where is the "equality" in the National Pledge that was read out with fervour by every Singaporean. Is all this for show or "wayang" to give people false sense of belonging? I think the top honcho in the Singapore government have the answer for it.

I had a friend who is single working in education sector always being "arrow" for those ardous tasks. This had left my friend drain, burn-out as there seem to be no light at the end of the tunnel as he is the only single in the school. He is left with no choice but to leave this profession. I'm in similar predicament as my friend however, unlike him being a worrywort and concious of the impact of my actions have on my family members. I couldn't take the leap like him. Until now it is still eating me up, I still feel so lost without any sense of direction what I want to do with my life just like a living corpse.

However, my interest in cooking still remains as it is the only hobby that still keeping me sane. I hope to find strength to post a few more entries.