You never know what kind of pancakes you’re going to get in this household. It all depends on the mood of the pancake maker. Some days, we get beautiful fluffy specimens, and other days… Well; let’s not talk about those too much.
Today’s reward for getting out of my snuggle-buggle duvet-land was pretty good. When quizzed on what the chef had done differently, this was the reply:
An egg and some baking soda.
Yeah, that’s as precise as he ever gets. I sometimes wonder about his bench work.
The only way I can tolerate eating breakfast is to switch things around regularly. A 4 or 5 day stretch of cereal and milk can put me off the stuff for months. Even peanut butter on oatcakes is not immune to this quirk¹ of mine. And toast is particularly susceptible to this immense hatred of routine. Even marmite can’t save the day everyday.
So it’s up to a very wide range of spreads to save the day. And here I present my latest spread of choice: black sesame spread/cream. 黒 kuro) ゴマ (goma) クリーム (kurimu) as diligently copied from the packet (should I ever crave it and need to get it from rakuten or some such internet heaven).
I must say I wasn’t terribly heartened when I first opened the pot. Greeted by an oily black paste, most people may have instantly dumped it in the bin. We², on the other hand, seek out the most disgusting looking things to eat, for we know that the worse it looks, the more heavenly the taste³. This particular black sesame spread was no exception. The name is no misnomer. It really is a cream; smooth and with a luscious lingering creamy sensation on the tongue. It’s similar to, but a lot smoother and richer, than the chinese black sesame cream dessert (the name of which has momentarily escaped me). And at 140g, we’ll finish the pot before I get sick of it!
¹ Quirk, fussiness, no need to quibble over words, is there?
² Not the royal; including the P in this one. As he hands me some yoghurt that’s gone out of date… And he complains that his stomach’s been dicky.
³ The converse is sometimes true. The number of times I’ve biten into some absolutely gorgeous wagashi and started choking from the dryness or blandness is … umm… now up to two.
French Toast
An attempt to recreate the French Toast that my Grandma used to make for us when we were little kiddies. I’m pretty sure she didn’t use milk (almost everyone else in my family is lactose-intolerant), and it never took her very long to make. But I can’t remember how she made it at all, except that she used eggs and sugar, and fried it in a pan. And the bread was always white plastic¹ bread. OK, so it probably can’t be called “French” toast, but it’s a close approximation. The spices were added to fit our current tastebuds. I’m pretty sure Grandma didn’t even touch cinnamon in her lifetime. Nutmeg, on the other hand, was well-loved in our family, but eaten as preserved shredded fruit (buah pala²) and never used as a spice (although I’m sure my mother had a jar of nutmeg powder for her annual Christmas fruitcake).
¹ aka Supermarket sliced bread. Plastic because of the way it springs back when you press it.
² Our favourite thing on arrival in Penang would be to acquire the local speciality: nutmeg aka buah pala. My preference was for the sweet shredded pickled nutmeg. This could kick off an entire post reminiscing about the “unusual” and “exotic” food items of my childhood, but let’s leave that for another day.
My dearest blog,
My sincerest apologies for not staying in touch. Here’s a cute photo that the P-man took on the first day of 2009 to make up for things. The subject in view is a noren of one of the many images¹ from the collection of Ando/Utagawa Hiroshige‘s ukiyo-e for One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (名所江戸百景 Meisho Edo Hyakkei; go here for a collection of images with English captions). The story goes that he created all these works of art for a travel guide of sorts to Tokyo.
If my dearest blog had been around back in [year so long ago that I can’t remember], I’d have posted about a rather ukiyo-e style painting that I’d seen at the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, which put me in mind of something that I couldn’t quite place my finger on. It was a copy of this very “Sudden Squall Over Shin-Ohashi Bridge and Atake” ukiyo-e, but in Van Gogh’s rather more vivid and saturated colours, and with some poorly copied calligraphy around the edges. I guess copyright hadn’t been conceptualised yet. Or maybe it was one of those Creative Commons Share-Alike Attribution type thingies.
At any rate, I’m glad we finally put the noren up. Now the heat stays in the living room instead of escaping to the kitchen, and I can sit happily warm on my armchair and write notes to my blog.
Happy 2009, my dear blog!
曉
P.S. I haven’t forgotten the 30GB of photos from 2008 that I meant to put on you. I just can’t face the curation process.
¹ Great Bridge; Sudden Squall Over Shin-Ohashi Bridge and Atake (名所江戸百景;大はしあたけの夕立).
Not just for wars past, but also those ongoing .
Have been uploading more photos of Alaska. This one reminded me of Scotland; to be more precise, the Isle of Skye but with more trees. There’s something about slightly damp (misty, if you want to be romantic about it) weather that brings out the drama of coastlines. Sure, the clear blues and greens of tropical or Mediterranean waters can be stunning, but it takes a good haar to make my heart skip a beat.
It’s the evening of the 3rd of November, 2008. And like every other night, I’ve been browsing several news sites and my 1000++ RSS items. And for the past year, all these websites have been peppered with articles about and references to the 2008 US Election. Without intending to, I have decided which candidate I most agree with, which Californian propositions I’d vote for, and even have some passing recognition of the names of candidates for Congress. I even know where my nearest polling stations would be, if I were a US citizen, thanks to Google Maps.
So it was something of a surprise when P informed me this evening that one of his colleagues (let’s call him/her X) is quite unlikely to go to the polls tomorrow because X is feeling uninformed and isn’t sure that s/he cares about the whole thing anyway. And it made me a little sad that as a non-voter, I cared more about X’s country’s elections than X. I’m not even sure it’s voter apathy that X suffers from. I think it might be a case of toomuchballotsitis. Aside from having to decide which pair of presidential candidate and running mate are more suited to office, the usual suspects for Congress, Senate and State Assembly, a Californian voter has to decide on 11 separate propositions, some more obscure than others. I can almost understand a non-wonk/wonkette would throw his/her hands up in despair. It makes you want to toss a coin and be done with it. But it seems in the case of some, it leads to apathy-like symptoms.
X’s diagnosis came a bit too late for us to help, but the least we can do is to ensure that X makes it to the polling station. The rest is up to X.
Oof! My plans for a quiet weekend sorting through the thousands of Alaska photos was scuppered by way too many good things happening. A normal blogger would probably devote several posts to these, but I’m lazy and will present them as a Top [relevant number] List.
Naturally, no. 5 on the list was the absolute best thing all week, and makes me wish more of our friends would come over and see us here (hint, hint) and see that we moan and groan about LA, but have found ways to have an amazing time in this crazy place.
¹ I thought P and I were the only ones in the whole audience who hadn’t seen the movie, but Sam Bean of Iron & Wine confessed to the same sin. Anyone else in the whole world not seen the movie? Anyone?
We spent a glorious fortnight in the state of “gold stars on a field of blue” aka The Last Frontier aka The Land of the Midnight Sun aka Sarah Palin’s homeland aka Alaska. We saw way too many cool things and had way too much fun and took way too many photos. While my brain continues to process the highlights of our experience, have a gander at the ever-growing obligatory Flickr set of Alaska pics. And to follow, a “Top 10 Stuff Wot We Did On Our Hols” post in the near future.
Could not let 08-08-08 pass by without posting something, so here’s a little LaLaLand garden update.
The brinjal/aubergine/eggplant has borne some beautiful fruit, of which this is one (the plant in its infancy). There are a couple of wee ones tucked away behind it, and a weird bendy one somewhere in the dense vegetation.
The Thai dragon chilli plant is still doing well and over-producing chilies. I think it’s time to give some away instead of just freezing them. Unfortunately, we had to stop eating Thai chillies because P has discovered they result in a really nasty reaction.
Two basil plants (Genovese and sweet) are growing like mad. I’m afraid they’ll bolt and we’ll lose them again, just like last year.
The beans I put in succumbed to mildew and died. 😦
Strawberries are slowly producing small fruit. I suspect I’m not watering the pots enough.
Herb-wise, I also now have some Italian parsley, English thyme and French thyme. The garlic chives are going crazy, possibly recovering from the constant sprinkling my neighbour’s dog was giving it in spring.
And tomatoes, oh my tomatoes! The roma plant that grew like crazy last year has peaked and died. The San Marenzo gave us a killer crop, which we had to perform an emergency harvest on. It is also now dying (must save with more nutrients). The cherry tomato plant cropped 2 cuties, one of which was gobbled by a passing bird (or something else). And there’s a new roma that’s doing ok, but also suffering from nutrient loss.
The critical thing to do this year is have a word with the landlord about the sprinklers. Water is being wasted on the sidewalk, and it makes me sad. I had a few countermeasures, but they keep getting moved or bumped away. I may build a small trellis around each sprinkler to keep the water in the soil. On the plus side, they only come on 3-4 times a week no, so less water is being wasted. Hurrah! (In fact, the reason I grew tomatoes at all was to try not to let all that sprinkler water go to waste growing weeds!)
In all, the LaLa garden is doing well despite my lack of attention. Here’s to more happy harvests!
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