I finally found this video again.

When I first saw it back in 2010, I thought he's SO right.
At least it applies to me (not only in creativity, but in many
cases of my life - with or without my real effort), but I know
this doesn't necessarily apply to others.

I loved my mom's ikan pepes. She used averrhoa bilimbi
and they makes her ikan pepes so special. I miss Indonesia
a lot at the moment, especially the food (of course, my son
would say, only food in my head lol). Looking at what I
have in the fridge, I decided to do my own take on ikan 
pepes for lunch..



... and failed shamelessly! lol I don't know - either I used
too much lime (as substitute for the bilimbis) or my tongue
hasn't been able to taste everything right. I could taste the
hotness of the chilli, although it was not as hot as I expected
using two chilis, but I couldn't taste the sourness at all - only
the bitterness (the last rice cakes I ate yesterday was also
bitter instead of sweet). Weird!

But at least I had some fun with my kitchen waste while I
was waiting for the fish to cook ;-)

Sick on holiday - arghh!! The summer flu has caught me.
Again, I cannot smell and can only barely taste anything.
Thus, when I made some rice (cup)cakes yesterday (well,
it started as a rice noodle experiment and ended up in
strawberry rice cakes), I thought they were not so sweet,
but my son told me that they're very sweet o.O



The rice cakes are more an Asian style of cakes - steamed.

I used the following ingredients, but I'm going to vary a bit,
to make the cakes less sticky (and also perhaps less sweet)
next time (if ever ;-) as I'm not such a sweet tooth actually).
For 8 cups.

150 g wholemeal rice flour
50 g starch (mine was a mixture of rice/corn/tapioca)
1 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
200 ml hot water (or 250 ml? - I forgot..)
2 Tbsp sugar

Mixed everything up and wait for half an hour.
Add one egg (size L). Mixed again.

Prepare a steamer (I used a similar setup as here, but used
the steamer basket of my pressure cooker instead of the
bamboo steamer). Arrange the muffin cups in the steamer.
Fill in 1 Tbsp dough in each cup. Steam them for around
5 minutes. Cut strawberries in half and arrange two halves
in each cup. Cover the strawberries with dough. Eventually
sprinkle with some coconut rasps. Steam again for another
15 minutes.

Taste better, when the strawberries are still warm (but then
the cake is also stickier...).

It feels like I'm having my first holiday in years. When I was
self (and at the same time part time) employed, I couldn't
really switch my head off of business even in my free time.
How liberating it is to work in a 9-to-5 for a change (though
guess what I dreamed about at night of my first holiday lol)!



On my last day before the holiday, I could finally enjoy
walking home again without my head spinning around what
to do next, but simply observing the wild plants growing
along the way and took a few home for an arrangement
(first I wanted to put them together with the peony from
the garden, but they are so lovely on their own).

Yesterday I finally work in my poor, neglected garden
and also the plants on the windowsill got some attentions.
How bourgeois I became to take a holiday only to spend
time in the garden? A side-effect of the 9-to-5 job? :-P
No, normally when I got home from work I'd cook and
dine with my son. But this week he was on camp with his
class, so that I could work in the garden until it got dark.



Remember the violas I planted back in 2009? I collected
the seeds, but they keep sowing themselves and even took
over the flower box, where the strawberry used to grow
(there is still one strawberry plant left, tiny and almost non-
existent among the violas). It's interesting to see, that I got
new hybrids (the one above reminds me of a dalmatian ;-)).



Also, some flowers changed their colors. When they were
just blooming, they're partially white or yellow. Within the
next days, the white parts would turn into light purple like
in the picture above. Again the next days they'd turn darker
as you can see on that tiny bit on bottom left. Since I never
change the soil in the box, I wonder, either it's because the
soil has become so acidic now..?



I'm looking forward to see my Japanese hydrangea blooming.

In the past weeks I've been eating much more meat than
I usually did. Although one bad experience with a butcher
weeks ago reminded me that it's time to reduce it again,
somehow I couldn't stop carving for meat dishes. Yet, I
am no longer willing to buy anything from that butcher
anymore. I need an alternative.

I remember, my grandma used to have vegetarian days and
eat fake meat dishes. As I was more a vegetarian than I am
now, I used to taste them too and I had to say, I liked fake
meat.


top: before and after cooking the dough
below: fake chicken in murgh badami style


After watching some videos and reading some posts about
homemade seitan, I finally tried to make my own to cook
murgh badami (or rather a murgh badami inspired dish). I
start with wheat gluten, instead of flour - it saved me time
(and water).

My homemade seitan was too chewy, especially the bigger
pieces. The smaller pieces was better (although my son was
still not convinced - he's rather a real meat lover). I need to
do some experiments to improve the texture. Isn't cooking
fun? :-)