marble

Usually there's some time of the day where Bath teases us with rays of sunshine:

promenade

Woodlots are really nice places to photograph in, there's so much texture and details to play with. These are from Sham Castle Down.

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The purpose of this excursion is to visit the Museum of Bath Architecture, they have a architectural photography exhibit on right now. The entrance to the museum reminds me a lot of this set of photos in Charleston.

flip

Some unsuccessful cooking experiments: because I know enough to not cook with a beginner's diligence but don't know enough to actually not pay attention to recipe instructions.
aka I deserved it, blah.

 soda farl, which is a thinner soda bread cooked on the stovetop

Mistake: not adjusting the quantity of buttermilk to account for varying thickness between mine and Joe's. I think it would actually turn out well if I used all the buttermilk and added some milk as needed. Right now it's very dense and chewy, which is in the right direction of how I like my breads. Also need to half to halved portion (so ¼ of the recipe quantity) since it's so filling. Might try shaping it into rectangles so the shape is more appropriate for sandwiches.

手抓饼

Another flatbread that I ruined by rolling it too thin, I'm quite the idiot to make the same mistake twice. One out of the batch of four was thicker than the rest, and accordingly it was more chewy and flaky. I used too high of heat and not enough steam, which creates the chewy texture. 

I recently watched a lot of Chinese food documentaries (舌尖上的中国，and one about 顺得 and 中山 each), and there's a lot of emphasis on 火候 which is heat level. Admittedly it's not a factor that I've given a lot of thought to, in fact I just cook everything on the highest heat level. That is very very wrong and I'll be paying more attention to this. It is difficult with an unresponsive electric stove, which means it's all the more important to use an appropriate heat level. Another related piece of knowledge I learned from /u/mthmchris on /r/cooking is that responsiveness is the actual reason why gas stove is preferable over electric for stir frying, and not because gas stove have higher heat output.

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Brussel sprout salad has evolved into a hash in order to clean up my fridge before leaving for Edinburgh:

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I have a new favourite from Bertinet Bakery: cinnamon buns. It's a layered but yeasted dough (my guess) that's the perfect level of chewy and flakey. I much prefer this texture to a laminated pastry that shatters when you bite into it.

I need to eat lots of good pastry as a benchmark for when I start making them hue hue.

tape

Wheeeee quality time with sketchup
and by quality I mean make the model the first time in a stupid yet time consuming way and then re-make it again (hopefully) correctly.

swipe

I've finally come up with a satisfactory way to constrain purchasing lip products! It's really simple, one per color per finish. Of course the new year resolution of one purchase per year applies on top. Thinking of getting Bite's astrology series for virgo as this year's quota if I like the shade, too bad they seem to sell out fast.

So far I have these in the UK with me:

There's a couple (two Mamond lippies?) that I bought on Taobao that will be added whenever I get my hands on them. I also have a ton of prospective brick & rust and brown & nude products.

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It's nice to have a giant Easter break, there's time to make posts about cosmetics :D
But in reality I ought to start on my dissertation's literature review if I want to travel during the summer D:

soak

I'm so happy with this lemon curd, it's absolutely delicious with some clotted cream sandwiched between rich tea cookies:

I'll probably make an icebox cake version of this to bring to a potluck.

The lemon curd is very easy to make...if you have a citrus juicer of some kind. It's no fun squeezing lemons by hand, the yield is quite pitiful especially since I had little lemons. I was also cautious and made it over a double boiler, which took about 15min of constant stirring before thickening enough, compared to the recipe guideline of 5-10min. However, the end result is so worth it. Seriously how did it take over 20 years of my life to taste lemon curd?

I'm glad that I found this (and a couple of others) whole egg recipe. I did add the higher end of the recommended amount of butter to make up for the richness missing from additional yolks. Too bad custards don't seem to work with whole eggs, although I did discover that Bird's custard powder is just glorified corn starch... but I'll probably stick to panna cotta as my go-to summer dessert to take advantage of the good dairy here.

coat

First salad meals of 2018! I have so many salad recipes saved that it warrants its own folder in Instapaper. Although it's still a little chilly to eat room temperature food, but I am looking forward to mild English summers.

Roasted cauliflower salad with skhug and lemony yogurt sauce

I only have a tiny mortar and pestle instead of a food processor, so my skhug was moreso ground garlic and chilli with spices, and then just added some leftover herbs from other recipes in along with other ingredients. Lucky that cauliflowers sold here comes with a lot of the greens, its a self contained salad haha.

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 Warm brussel sprout salad

Brussel sprouts are kinda like pasta: there exists a perfect al dente texture past which is no good.

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Charred beet salad

This is my favourite out of the three, very easy to assemble if the beets are bought pre-cooked. It's surprisingly that there's not much of a price difference between buying raw beets loose and pre-cooked packaged beets. Although radicchio is pricy and the amount of herbs make this salad not super cost effective. Oh wells, it is tasty so I'll probably make it again. A good trick from this recipe is to mix salty cheese (feta in this case) into yoghurt to make an easy creamy dressing.

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Bonus stuffed pepper, which is actually really easy to make now that I'm familiar with the recipe (previous iteration).