Solitude

Solitude, originally uploaded by Ms_evinrude.

Avocado Feature!

I don't know why, but before last December, I always thought avocados were bad tasting. Maybe it's the colour of the buttery flesh. Or maybe it was the fact that avocados were always on advertisements featuring facial washes. But ever since I got down to try avocados late last year, I've grown to like it. A lot. Salads, crepe rolls, guacamole... and there's milkshake and something I call a yogurt blend because I don't know what else to call it. In the recipe for the pasta salad, I used only half the avocado, and the other half of it went into this. Of course you can use a whole avocado, but when I do, I'll skip the banana, simply because it'll be a little to thick to drink. But of course you can still eat it with a spoon like this yogurt blend. With granola no less.

Avocado and Banana Milkshake

Ingredients
1/2 avocado
1 large, ripe banana
2 tbsp honey
250ml milk

- Peel and cut both the avocado and banana into smaller pieces (it's not totally necessary, but it helps my blender work less).
- Put all ingredients into a blender and whiz away!
- Serve.

Avocado Yogurt Blend

Ingredients
1 avocado
150ml yogurt (I used the peach and mango flavoured yogurt in cups)
2 tbsp honey
100ml milk

- Cut, pit and peel the avocado. Cut the flesh into smaller pieces.
- Add all ingredients into a blender and blend till smooth.
- Serve in a cup/bowl with granola.

Note: These are really rich and filling, so normally I'll just have them as breakfast, alone. For the yogurt blend, you can add less milk if you like it thicker but this works just right for me.

Show-and-Tell

Harlow~

I thought I wanted to introduce, to the however many (or few) people who read my blog, my house parrot. A new family member (he's my uncle's actually, and my uncle lives with us), together with 2 cockatiels, he's quite adorable and, at times, a pain the ass (he bites me when I don't have food for him, it's a long long story). He's about 4 months old, the size of a small chicken and is trying to learn how to speak. Right now he says "harlow", an incomplete "how are you" and mimics the sound "doudou" made when car doors are opened with remote-control keys.

While trying to type this out, I was thinking how long it had been since I posted something non-food related. Apparently, since late February or early March, 99.999% of what I've been blogging about were somehow edible and occasionally, caused much distress for some of my friends (you know who you are!) who drop by. But you know, sooner or later, you get to eat something that I make. Let that be of utmost comfort whenever you feel tortured at 2am in the morning and feel hungry from visiting my humble blog.

I Heart

If I give you my heart, would you promise to keep it safe?
And not eat it?

Perpetual Quest

Pasta Salad with Honey-Wasabi-Mayo Dressing

A woman can never be too thin. Well, at least to herself. There's always that extra bit of flab on the arms. And the thighs. Not forgetting the tummy. So, the one battle that a woman, or girl, has to fight constantly is to keep off that extra pound or inch or dress size. (Maybe there's another one at the annual GSS.) To do so, we turn to diets (yeah, I think it's more popular than the exercise way). Atkins, low-fat, low-carb, vegetarian, soup-and-vege, 1000-calorie, two-apples-and-one-granola-bar, one-cup-of-Milo-a-day, ... the list is endless! Then there's this one thing that's almost indispensable in a diet menu: salads. (Aha! We're finally at our main topic.) So we gnaw away at leaves of Iceberg while the others enjoy their burger. It's not easy being female, okay? Except maybe when you're the much hated envied don't-ever-put-on-weight-whatever-you-eat kind.

That said, salads are not dreadful. I love salads! Well, this is Salady speaking. I love packing salads to school and to work. They're easy: one bowl kinda food and you can prepare them the night before and just grab the box when you're heading out. They're versatile: sick of mayo? Use a vinaigrette. Change one ingredient and you'll have a different salad. And they're health. Just remember not to drown your greens in a bottle on mayonnaise. So, given my LOVE for salads, how can I not be excited about this?

I made this pasta salad for a barbecue with my friends the other day and it was quite well received. I don't know if any of them didn't like wasabi but they seemed to like the dressing a lot. I love wasabi so I tend to add quite a lot of it whenever I have the chance because it gives an extra kick to an otherwise okay-only dressing. If you're worried about your wasabi tolerance or perhaps intolerance, add a little wasabi at a time and taste-test to your liking. The honey actually tones down the wasabi a bit and rounds up the flavour of the dressing. At most, you can skip the wasabi, but that isn't all that special already.

Pasta Salad with Honey-Wasabi-Mayonnaise Dressing

Ingredients
50g dried pasta (I used wholewheat fusilli in small spirals and this in large spirals)
1 egg
100g cherry tomatoes (about 8?)
1/2 avocado (I used the other 1/2 for a milkshake)

Dressing
1/2 tbsp mayonnaise
1/2 tbsp sour cream
1 tsp honey
1/2 tsp wasabi (I used 1 tsp)
Salt and pepper
Mixed Italian herbs (optional)

- For the dressing, mix all the ingredients in a small bowl and let the tastes develop. Refrigerate till ready to use.
Boil a pot of water. Upon hitting boiling point, add 1 tsp of salt and pasta. Cook till al dente.
- Drain cooked pasta and toss with 1/2 tbsp olive oil and a pinch of salt and dried herbs if desired. Refrigerate.
- Cook the egg in a pot of water over medium heat. When water boils, remove from heat, cover the pot and allow to cook further for 15 mins.
- Cool the egg under running water, shell and dice. Half the tomatoes.
- Cut the avocado, remove pit, peel and dice (read how to). Do this just before serving as avocados brown if left in contact with the air for too long.
- To serve, toss pasta, vegetables and egg with dressing. Sprinkle with pine nuts if desired. I think walnuts will do too.

Enjoy~!

Purple Blood

Cherry Tomatoes or How to Diet and Still Have Midnight Snacks

These are probably the healthiest snacks that I'm ever gonna have. Back when I was in TJ, I used to have cherry tomatoes all the time, for break time, lunch and whatever! Especially during the times we rushed for coursework submission and studied for exams, these tomatoes were a hit among me, my teacher and a few of my friends. They kept me away from junk food and kept me at the pink of my health despite all the late nights, irregular meals and stress. I like my tomatoes slightly on the green side because I don't like mushy tomatoes. They're cheaper than most chips, full of flavour yet much healthier. All you have to do is wash them and they're ready to eat. (The supermarket should employ me as their promoter!) The tomatoes in the photos are halved because I used them in a salad (which I will post about later) and the photos of whole cherry tomatoes weren't worth uploading.

Cheerios~!

Upside Down and Right Side Up

Cherry Upside-Down Cake

Ok, I know I did say that if cherry-filled desserts were to come, it meant the supermarkets were giving great discounts on cherries. But ever since I said that, the price tags of these little red fruits never did come down. I actually baked this cake last Tuesday, with the same cherries that you had seen on the previous cherry-ed post. They were sitting there in the fridge and I just didn't want them to start rotting on me, so I saved them. And put them into the cake. All good things.

I was, at first, struggling to decide what I should do with the cherries. I knew I wanted to put them in some dessert, but I just didn't know what. Flipping through my favourite dessert cookbook, I sieved my through options. Pineapple upside-down cake. Cherry pie? Nope, not enough cherries. Caramel peach (upside-down) cake. Pear upside-down cake. Cherry crumble? Still not enough cherries. Sour cherry cake? My cherries aren't sour! Bleah. Upside down cake!

I baked this in both a mini loaf pan and a mini springform tin. And they did turn out quite well, considering the fact that I kind of came up with the idea myself. Ha. I used my favourite cupcake recipe, which you can find here, from Cupcake Bakeshop. It's easy and versatile, with a nice moist crumb, somewhat like a pound cake. I decreased the amount of sugar quite drastically though, around 80g, because I found it too sweet and still did after the reduction. If I had cherries and were to make this again, I would probably use some orange or even lemon juice and zest to add another dimension to the cake. Other than that, everything was good and I especially like the colour combination.

Cherry Upside-Down Cake

Ingredients
30g butter, melted
2 heaping tbsp soft brown sugar
Cherries, pitted, enough to cover base of your pans*
100g butter, room temperature
120g sugar
2 large eggs
160g all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
120ml milk
Pinch of salt

- Lightly grease and flour the sides of 2 4-inch springform tins and preheat oven to 175 deg C.
- Divide the melted butter evenly between 2 tins and half the brown sugar into each tin.
- Arrange the cherries, stem side up, as many as possible over the sugar mixture.
- Cream butter in the bowl of an electric mixer till smooth, about 1 min.
- Add sugar and beat till pale and fluffy, about 4 mins.
- Meanwhile, sift flour, baking powder and baking soda into a separate bowl.
- Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition, about 30 secs.
- Sift in 1/3 the flour mixture into the egg batter and fold in lightly.
- Add half the milk and mix lightly.
- Repeat the above 2 steps, alternating between flour and milk, ending with the flour mixture. Be sure to stir the batter as little as possible when mixing for the cake to remain light and fluffy.
- Fill the prepared cake tins with batter, about 3/4-full.
- Lightly knock the tins against the table a few times, 3 maybe 4, so that the batter will fill up the gaps between the cherries.
- Bake the cakes for 35 - 45 mins or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.
- Let cool in tin for 30 mins before turning out the cakes.


* The hardest part of baking this cake, I would say, is to pit the cherries. Ok, maybe not the most difficult task, but it was tedious. I used a paper clip, as suggested here, but was struggling at first because the paper clip was a little too soft and pliable. By the time I got the hang of it, there weren't any cherries left. Oh well. And because I didn't have that many cherries, I used whole cherries, pitted, for my circular cake and cut the rest of the cherries in half and lined them up like roof shingles (or fish scales) for the loaf cake. I don't think there was much difference but if you like more cherries with each slice of cake, use whole cherries.

I'm A Happy Girl!

Why? Because my baked mushrooms have brought me a 2nd overall position in 'Does My Blog Look Good In This?' May Edition! I'm wonderfully surprised and absolutely flattered! Head on to Scott's website to take a look at all the other beautiful entries (winners or otherwise)!

Tessellations

What do you think it is?

A Bowl Full of Rubies

Cherries are in season! And food bloggers scattered all over the globe are tempting me with lots of mouth-watering recipes dedicated to these gorgeous ruby-red berries. But cherries aren't exactly cheap in Singapore. Let's see if the supermarkets offer up a bargain for them. You'll know if you see more cherry-filled posts (and desserts of course) here in the near future!

Random Thoughts

What do you do when you're up against some fierce competition?


Do you run away, avoiding all direct competition, so that you will not feel the embarrassment of being defeated? Or, do you stay on, and with all you can and have, whip up some head butting action regardless of winning or losing?