To inspire the baker i know is hidden somewhere inside of me.

Somewhere. I don't know where. But I will conjure her up!!

I think we need to spice up this blog a bit.

Ha. Puns.

Buns!

My mom is teaching me how to cook better. Because I'm 27 and still cannot cook well enough to feed a family or myself and herself. (Grammar?)

Here are some simple tips she gave me.

1) buy some instant curry haha
2) Fry up some red onions (they are apparently more flavorful than the sweet vidalias that I like. No I'm not being rebellious) in some coconut oil or olive oil.
3) Add some meat if you're a meat eater.
4) Add some veggies like carrots or ladies fingers or cauliflower cos those are nice in curries.
5) Put in the curry sauce. Simmer till the meat/veggies are done.


Now for some flavorful semi-briyani rice:

1) Wash basmati rice or jasmine if you prefer.
2) Put equal amount of water in (we like our rice al dente!) eg. 1 cup water to 1 cup rice. Soak rice for half an hour before if brown rice. I just made up that number. Who knows, experiment yourself.
3) Add in a pinch of turmeric (or saffron, lovely saffron), some bunga cengkih/anise, a stick of cinnamon, a few cloves, i say 5 cloves should be plenty, I hate taking a bite of rice and crunching on a bitter clove :(. Some cardamon, I think 3 pods. I think some ppl add mustard seeds but don't quote me on that.
4) Press start on the rice cooker. Hahahaha. Or just steam it gently on the stovetop in a cast iron pan cos then the heat is more even and won't burn the bottom so easily. Unless you're korean and like to eat the burnt bottom bits. Alliteration!

I'm procrastinating while trying to study. Can you tell?

Goodness Cookies

When I was little and all the world was warm and good and felt like wind with spring on it, fresh muddy puddles,  and forever, I remember sitting at my grandmother's kitchen table eating cookies.  She possessed a fascinatingly forever-full jar of the most perfect sugar cookies a little person could ever want, and would sweep me up on her soft comfy lap and read me the day's comics while I devoured my small bounty of cookies.  All the while crumbling them over the news paper in the proud tradition of cookie-monster. 

After the very last visit to her house, every few years I would ask if I could make sugar cookies, and my mother or cousin or friends and I would pour over the old Betty Crocker cook book diligently folding and cutting flour and milk, and vanilla into dough, letting set, rolling and cutting shapes.  The first few attempts brought back a small amount of the warm and good I had remembered.  But as I got older, the world got bigger and colder and more finite.  Each subsequent attempt held less of the original.  I tried to make them again a couple of days ago, and caught myself swearing over strands of errant hair falling in my eyes and smudges of flour sneaking into corners of the kitchen I hadn't remembered being in.  In frustration, I sat down and glowered over the mess I had made, resenting it for it's lack of inherent goodness and inability to conjure in me the infinite feeling that the world was always new and anything was possible.  Deciding that the cookie experience was ruined for me, I instead finished making them for a friend who had been having a mortally bad and soul crushing year. 

Mixing flour, sugar, and cream, I thought how I hoped the following days would get better for him.  Rolling the dough, I imagined one or two good things that would show him that the world could somehow be a good place and still contain the past few of months of bitterness and anger.  Cutting the dough in ridiculous shapes of exotic animals, I envisioned my friend remembering himself and pushing away the monsters, larger than oceans, that I saw behind his eyes as shadows when he talked.  Waiting for them to bake, I kept thinking about all of the goodness and warmth and strength I knew he possessed but had forgotten in his grief, and hoped he would some day find it again.  I realized that the faith I had that he would come back to the world again as some semblance of the person I remembered was infinite.  The potential of who he would be and the good things he would be capable of, were what I thought about as I put the cookies in a small tupperware box and left to deliver them.   I then realized I felt those things that I had missed for so long.  I had tried to give in the cookies the warmth, goodness, spring, and possibility I once knew, and realized what I felt was love.  That, finally, was the secret of the goodness cookies that I hadn't been able to recapture.  And then it was gone, evaporated into the air like so much steam from too hot tea, and the world was cold and cloudy and I had nothing, but an empty tupperware box that used to hold cookies, an impossibly messy, flour covered kitchen, and more studying to catch up on than I had hours for in the next several decades. 

Tears

Wah... I haven't baked anything in many moons

T.T
:'( 

(I can do asian and western style emoticons. Way to go.)

How come my co-author is not failing?
(A) Too perfect in baking skill?
(B) Too lazy to bake?
(C) Too lazy to write?

My guess is (C)

^.^

(^'.')>  

I eat glass like it's my job.

like cookie monster chowing down on the cookies.

Except fail. I have not even made these. I just lust after them. Like a fat couch potato lusting over the fake plastic steamy food advertised on tv. 

http://www.redshallotkitchen.com/2012/06/glass-potato-chips.html

http://www.instructables.com/id/Glass-Potato-Chips/?ALLSTEPS

Expiration Dates

I have yet another failure to report... this time it was a cheesecake.

Learning from past failures,

I remembered to use a waterbath, not to mix too much, not to open the oven too early.

It turned out SO nice except for one thing

My graham cracker crust tasted like cardboard.

Apparently graham crackers have expiration dates

And mine were expired for 15 months

Who knew graham crackers expired?

But I suppose everything has an expiration date.

Be it graham crackers or relationships,

Nothing is forever. Not even diamonds.

All things must someday expire

Expiration is an important part of life.

While we may selfishly want to extend the life of certain ingredients,

(or force some to expire prematurely)

we know that it is best to accept their expiration date

Or else, you might end up baking a delicious cheesecake

but with a crust made of bland routines and the ghosts of old memories.

Heart Health

I only have one recipe that I think is perfect. My chocolate chip cookie recipe. Unfortunately, I seem to only bake them for an unrequited love. My most recent batch made me think how similar these two things are — cookies and crushes. On the surface they seem so harmless and wonderful, but they are actually composed almost entirely of elements that cause heart problems. I know this fact, yet I can't help but to sample a couple, maybe a few more... maybe bake another batch?... stupid

Oh but what is the difference between my special cookie recipe and a regular recipe for heart disaster?

 The only substantive difference between a conventional recipe (of mutual interest) and my recipe (the one-sided) is that you must slightly burn the butter in the latter. You can't simply melt butter. No. No. Melting is for lucky bastards following the conventional recipe. You must toil. You must make the butter suffer. It must be burned and tormented so that the sweet milk solids and innocent salt particles inside the butter transform into something darker. Something slightly bitter. But you wouldn't know that the butter has been burnt from tasting the end product. In fact, when the cookies are baked, they taste better and somehow more pure. 

But you can't eat these things forever. You either have to muster up incredible amounts of willpower to stop eating this shit, or you can continue to stuff yourself, like the oaf you are, until the inevitable heart attack sets you straight. My method of choice has been and continues to be Heart Attack for the win.

 I need to find a more sustainable baked good. The kind that doesn't try to kill you.

I suppose this isn't a failed bake in the literal sense, but I think it works as a metaphor. So it fits in the blog's overall theme of failure and sadness :)

P.S. Happy Birthday, Blog. You are now 1 year old.