Swine

Pigs. You give (we take) your heart valves to prolong life and in return, many Chinky Asians and Germans make it their mission to master the art of crisp-ing you to perfection. Swine. Let me count the ways I love thee.







Chinky Roast Pork: As handed down through the generations
1 Kg LEAN pork belly (request for young pork)
About 500g salt give or take

1. Squeeze dry pork belly with towel, you want the meat as dry as possible
2. Coat the skin with salt, pack it in, building a salt layer about 1cm thick
3. Roast in Convection oven at 250 Deg C for 60mins
4. Remove salt which should be solidified into a block
5. Back into oven at 250 Deg C for 20 mins to crackle skin
6. Flip belly over to brown meat for 10 mins
7. Cool with skin side up on rack for 10 mins and slice (preferably with butchers knife)

Best served with Tiger brand garlic chilli and cheap beer.

Matthew Barney

While at the National museum for a SIFF screening yesterday, we obtained an information booklet containing the April to June cinema line up. The cover featured a production still of Bjork and Matthew Barney, both dressed in macabre Japanese wedding finery half submerged in water both holding on to knives, wrists limp, looking at each other with great intensity, definately the sort of thing that piques some sort of morbid curiosity.

I have never heard of Matthew Barney till yesterday and all I have to say is, WHICH HOLE DID I CRAWL OUT FROM!? After exploring the website for his Cremaster Cycle (5 Cycles in total) series and reading up on the man, the sculptor, I am, simply blown away. By the beautifully disturbing visuals from the trailer of his cremaster series and because, Matthew Barney named his film after the Cremaster muscle, the muscle that that covers the testis and carries out regulatory mechanisms to promote the production of sperm (Definately promising in my books) Reoccuring themes seem to feature the process of creation, anatomy, mythology, and philosophy. I am excited. Really. Cannot wait to watch all 5 come June along with his collaborative project with Bjork, Drawing Restraint 9. You might want to find out more about him and his work if these 4 screen grabs (personal favourites) from the cremaster trailer are right up your alley.

Mail

Guess what came in the mail today girls? Will deliver this weekend if all our schedules permit a meet up :) Check the colours!

Wednesday Tea

Every Wednesday morning, I have 2 slices of wheat bread and mug of tea. Sister Una persisted in her quest to fix me breakfast since over a year ago and after 6 months of "Can I get you breakfast Josephine?" in a thick Irish accent, hunger triumphed over politeness. I look forward to Wednesday morning tea, because if there is one thing I took away after 2 years in East Sussex, it's the appreciation of the very English mad tea obssession.

Sister Una makes Dilmah Morning Fresh Unblended tea with a generous pour of Meadow Fresh Low Fat Long Life Milk (I know, I peeked into the cupboard and refrigerator), no sugar added, served piping hot in a big blue ikea mug. It is, honestly, the best cup of tea I've had in my life. I have been trying my best to find these 2 items in our local supermarkets but have not been lucky yet. But you know something, I suspect I'll never be able to recreate that cup of Wednesday morning tea even if I get the proportions exactly right. It's one of those conundrums isn't it? Perhaps it was more the the act, place and person that makes it taste as good as it does, and it will be one of the things that I will miss very much when she returns back to Ireland.

Little Pleasures

My mother's goods arrived. We bonded over the usual semi all nighter sorting things out, where I was head slave getting paid in curry puffs (downgrade from the previous shipment where we had brownies and muffins!). Spring collection is always bursting with colour and life. I was so inspired looking at the diffferent fabrics and textures I sketched out 2 tote ideas in bed early this morning. Time to hit the fabric shops and pay YKK auntie a visit again this weekend. It's the little things :)

Basics, it's all about basics

I got inspired by Jen's beautifully frosted cupcakes to do something for kitchenaid round 4. I love looking at creatively frosted creations but can never bring myself to slather on arterial plaque causing agents onto things I make at home. I suppose the rational is, if I'm making it at home, then I'm going to use the best ingredients for nutritional food that doesn't compromise on taste. Simply because I eat so much junk when I'm out and junk actually contributes 50% of my weekly calorie intake. So when I'm at home, it's healthy healthy healthy. However, I find it hard to resist making Nutella self-frosting cupcakes that was all the rage on food websites about a year or two ago.

I have to rework the basic fairy cake base as I am not happy with the texture, hence no recipe. It should be light and fluffy, mine turned out denser than usual today. I'm not sure if it was because I overworked the batter or substituted a third of the plain flour with wholemeal flour. It's all about basics. Always important to master the basic traditional fairy cupcake before one delves into more creative variations to avoid situations like these. I guess I'm impatient like that :)


I put in an extra dollop in the middle along with 4 toasted hazelnuts before adding more batter and swirled nutella for that added decadence!

Soundscape

I treasure and hold on dearly to the times when I can sit and be alone, comfortably.
Somedays I envision a perfect sideshowjo world when I can go about my daily affairs devoid of having to make small talk and needing to speak out of necessity, and in that moment, reclusive and introverted 11 year old Jo comes back for a visit.

Favourite hermit activities include:
1) Packing room, doors locked, campy music galore
2) Sifting through cookbooks scribbling big dreams on notebook
3) Reading in bed, on bus (Motion sickness can be battled!), in cafe, on beach, on plane
4) Daydreaming grand plans for craft
5) Changing Emily's eye colour and putting her out in the sun
6) Rearranging gnomes Nikolai, Wilfred and Peadus on their patch
7) Listening to the whirrrrrr of Rex the sewing machine
8) Lying on bed contemplating the meaning of life, of anything, preferably with Sigur Ros please
9) Quiet weekday meals alone with book
10) Piano, when no one is at home (A rarity)

However, top top top on my list has got to be being plugged in on a fairly long bus ride to night class, listening to stellar tracks. Everything I see takes on a personality, I start to notice the shape of trees, buildings, faces of construction workers, sunlight, shadows, fingers, dirt. Awesome is when I get glimpses of tips of horses' ears when the bus passes the polo club and I'm sitting on the right side, at just the right height. I love it because for that moment I'm completely lost, and the bubble is all mine, and in that instant, emotions and imagination are at their wildest.

"Say Goodbye to the world you thought you lived in" -Mika

Emily Plays Doctor

My mother often tells me of local doctors that are a permanent fixture in the "socialite" circuit and many a luxury watch brand launch events. And I'm sure everyone would have recently read about a local doctor who threw an extremely lavish and expensive dinner for friends. It all just seems extravagant and wrong, to me. To be spending more than a thousand dollars on hair and nails, gowns/suits specially flown in from overseas for every event. Copious amounts of money lavished on primping, and luxury. All this, done with their patient's money. Money that could have come from a heavy loan for that needed heart bypass surgery, or from one's retirement fund for a cataract operation. The reality is, heathcare is still a business afterall, isn't it?

Chiang Mai

Something to looking forward to after the final 2 papers, entrance exam round 2 and a big Amen to the degree number 2! 2 months, just 2 more months Jo. (Alot of 2's going on here. Hmmm)

So to the handful of you, thanks for stopping by, if anyone has been to Chiang Mai, where to go, what to do, what to see, what to eat? So far I've read that one of the must dos is to take cooking classes, and my brother is adament that we take up a class to learn green curry from scratch so cooking class research is underway. Other than that, please do let me know if you have any suggestions, lest the siblings end up riding elephants and getting conned into forking out money to watch yet another cultural show :p

Thanks.

Genes

My brother is almost a whole head taller than me, as well as majority of my cousins as you can see, even my cousin who is 19 is half a head taller! How come I never inherit any of em' supersonic height and metabolic rate genes.
Damn helix!

Easter week: A record of 3 masses on consecutive days, and the same overcast sky at 3pm on Good friday.
A good long weekend nonetheless, and here's what great long weekends are made of.



Back to the grind.

Choice

Ok, I'm being a bit of a melonhead today. After a semi long chat about decisions that have to be put on hold, and the many variables that lie ahead, just when things were taking a turn for the better, somewhat. The dreaded last 2 months have arrived, but, it is the final lap and I think we would both like to know the outcome so that plans can be made and expectations adjusted accordingly. Wouldn't it be nice to be rooted firmly, born and bred in one place and start building a life instead of living in constant flux? Yet the yearning for a life of transience is strong. Ah the bane of globalization, or perhaps, blind ambition.

Thorn

One of the indulgences when I get the paycheck for the month, or two or three, is to head down to the florist near home to pick up some flowers. I am too much of a scrooge to pay for lilies and hence often end up with a bunch of affordable roses. Beggars can't be choosers. As much as I love roses, it completely astounds me how something of such immense beauty has, through evolution, crafted such a vicious defence mechanism. And yet, the rose is often symbolic of the profession of love for most.

It seems like love and pain have some sort of a symbiotic relationship, even in nature.

Thoughts

1) We recently caught The Phantom of the Opera and I must say more and more Singaporeans are actually dressing appropriately for the theatre! There were of course those that wore jeans! sandles! bermudas! but all in all we are definately improving. I wonder if it would help if sistic actually puts down a dress code on the tickets. I will always remember attending a Russian Opera at the Sydney Opera House with my German housemate and he made it a point to put on a suit even though he was a poor student. The caucasian man who sat next to me at the Phantom wore a suit as well. It isn't even about dressing with style or donning expensive outfits, it is simply dressing for the occassion. I hope things will keep on improving now that the residents of Singapore are becoming even more international.

2) I had to watch through an old episode of blogtv at work featuring food bloggers, where they invited KF Seetoh onto the show. He is loud and crass but I do admire his honesty. He was saying how food bloggers these days seem to constitute the yuppie crowd and are people that choose to use fancy phrases like "Oh it was SUBLIME" to describe their food, which makes it seems somewhat pretentious and "Chi Chi". He also made a very good point about blogs becoming too commercialized, which struck a cord with me.

I used to visit this rather popular food blogger's website very frequently because the writing is good, pictures are gorgeous and the site often features hole in the wall eating places. However, of late, the site has become cluttered with ads, even tagging words in the body of the post itself. As innovative and lucrative as it is, it has really put me off visiting the site these days. I suppose it is because I am beginning to find the food reviews suspect and one wonders if it is actually a genuine post or one that is plugging the place in return for protfit. So has the original goal of setting up the blog been corrupted along the way? I suppose one can argue that there's nothing wrong with turning one's interest and passion into a money generating platform right? Interesting. Don't you just love the digital age :p