Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Since the last post...

I have been watching Monk like crazy. I'm up to Season 8 now, almost the end of the series. After 12 years, will Mr Monk finally catch his wife's murderer? (I know he will. The last two episodes are called Mr Monk and the End.)

In the kitchen, I've been making things like mad. Panna cotta, Chicken and spinach lasagne, Chocolate Mousse, Jam Biscuits, Chocolate Cookies and Norwegian Cinnamon Buns. In the space of a month to boot. I'm grateful to E for eating up everything =P It's such a boost to know that your creations did not fail and is being hungrily devoured.

It's currently the Easter holidays here. For the first time in the 2+ years I've been here I finally realised how quiet the city is during the Easter weekend (Good Friday til Easter Monday). Previously I've always been holed up in IH or busy with other things to go out. But this year, living outside and with no food in the fridge, I had to go out to eat. Well, an empty city and closed restaurants greeted me. Thank goodness for Chinese restaurants. Even the supermarkets were closed!! For some reason, I suddenly wanted to bake the Norwegian Cinnamon Buns on Good Friday, as I was walking home. I knew I had everything I need in the pantry to make the buns, except for BUTTER. All the way home, I was moaning "butter, butter" until an exasperated boyfriend told me to shut up and said he'd walk me to the Indian convenience store to see if it was open and had butter. Well, it was open and had butter, so when he got back from his gaming session that night, there were two trays of cinnamon buns ready to be baked =D

Currently I'm eying the Strawberry Charlotte and Strawberry Mirror Cake recipes. But they're really complicated and time-consuming, so I'll just leave it to a very special occasion before I make it.

I'm into photography lately. To be more specific, Lomography. It's a style of photography whereby the photos look "old-style", for the lack of words. Google it and you'll understand. There are basically two ways to achieve the lomo effect. The first is to just Photoshop your photos. The second is to buy a cheap lomo camera and take the photo. Now when I mean cheap lomo cam, it's really cheap. Cheap to the point that the photographers themselves don't even hesitate to crack open, drill, tape, paint and do other horrific stuff to the camera. Well, I got myself one after some research. And at the same time, got two friends to get it as well =P I'm interested in the "panorama" effects that can be achieved with the camera - a panorama in lomo terms is many pictures taken overlapped to create a huge scenery or panorama. When printed out it's going to be massive. Like 5 feet massive if you want =D

Well anyway, back to my assignments and Monk.