NOMs

One more midterm left and I think I survived alright. Feeling remarkably unstressed about school, which is far more important.

A variety of food photo gathered over the month:

 Roasting squash, which I must admit I'm not very good at.

 Avocado toast is the breakfast of champions (y). Super filling and good contrast in texture.

酸菜鱼 (pickled vegetables fish, or 'sour fish' as I call it).
First time making it from scratch as I now am a proud owner of a pickling jar. The broth turned out alright (would be better if I had fish stock), but the actual fish pieces were bland because of my fear of overcooking the fish meat. Hopefully it'll be more flavourful as leftovers.

Vermillion

Haven't had a nice view of the sunset in ages, thanks to tall buildings that block the view in virtually every direction. 

You win some and lose some by living downtown. 

Lots of the buildings have full glass facades, which really sucks in term of building science, but do make for a pretty picture reflecting the sunset. 

unami

Sometime ago I read on the internet about cooking mushrooms in butter and seasoning it with soy sauce. Yesterday I tried that and it was so fucking delicious.

Okay I added rosemary too, which made it all the better. Be good with some garlic too.
It's a simple and quick dish too, especially if you buy pre-sliced mushrooms. Takes < 5mins to come together. In fact I went and bought 2 more boxes of mushrooms today just so I don't have to run out of this.

In other news, persimmons are also an autumn fruit. Think their season just started now that we're ending the apple season. 

Yes this is the mushroom tray, complementary colours ftw.

The Garden of Words

I'm pretty late to this but Shinkai's latest movie was great. It's my new standard for visual quality now, the opening screen can honestly be mistaken for a filtered photograph.



Everything, and especially the mundane things, are animated so beautifully. The whole movie is just beautiful, of course this includes the soundtrack.

I made the mistake of watching this dubbed and I must say the english voice acting is really annoying. Both main characters just sound a lot more whiny in english, smh. This could just be I'm use to hearing japanese for animes though.

[spoilers]

The ending was satisfying too. If 5cm's ending was more bitter than sweet, then this ending was more sweet than bitter. The progression from Takao's confession to him yelling at Yukari to her finally speaking out to the parting and then when he left the shoes at the pavilion was so perfect. It goes to show that their relationship was a success despite not ending up together.

cardamon

More tea photos, because of Parkinson's Law (work expands to fill the allotted time).

I really appreciate the ritual of making tea, it forces you to slow down and be mindful of the act you're currently performing. I would definitely feel overwhelmed with school without this act of slowing down. (And this is coming from a week without midterms, but then I just schedule all the extracurriculars now ha..ha...)

Grinding spices for first try at making masala chai.
To be honest it turned out lackluster. Going to try using evapourated milk and a higher tea leaf to water ratio next time to intensify the flavour.

First and second steep of Zhong Shu Hu oolong (slowly making my way through the Tea From Taiwan samples).
Very, very floral, and somewhat sweet. The floral does transform from a high note to a deeper note as the infusions progress.

fish

A cup of random shou pu er, cold weather calls for darker teas.

This is not a particularly good tea, tasted rather earthy. Might have detected a hint of fish and then mushroom. One day I'll make an order here and try the good stuff.

stolen days you don’t give back

Although I'm not 100% happy with Apple's direction with the iPhone 6 (here's hoping my 4S lasts forever, actually, I didn't like 4S' shape when it first came out either haha), free U2 album is a nice touch.

This is my favourite song from it.