our

Hmm...this argument is worth considering? Although I've never wanted to get back together with any of my ex.

The manga is pretty brutal @_@ my heart feels heavy after reading it ah. While I think the ending is the "best" resolution, it still sucks seeing them not get back together. Overall, the story is really good, and more importantly concise.

Reminds me of this song:

tophat

A series of crumble topped summer stone fruits:

 cooked peaches

 cooked apricots

grilled peaches

raw plums

To be honest...the fruits themselves all pretty much suck. Except for the peaches when they're super duper ripe, they all taste bland af. Bad fruits are not something a crumble can rescue "orz At the very least, these were an exercise in plating.

Tangyuan ii

I don't think I'll ever have a separate food blog, so the least I can do is organize the food posts here better. Introducing the cooking notes tag, and I'll try to link previous iterations from now on.

Tangyuan i

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Coconut sweet potato filling, TIL sweet potato is also referred to as 地瓜

Followed the recipe pretty much exactly as written and accordingly was rewarded with a dream of a dough, both to work with (no stickiness!) and super Q. Yeah I see why Q is such a textural goal for so many asian food.

Going to try one more batch as I made too much filling, but I'm gonna pre-emptively say that this dough isn't optimal for making filled tangyuan. The optimal texture for workability isn't the optimal texture for closing the dough around the filling. I think the most Q dough is quite a dry dough, kinda like udon (not that I've made udon yet, but I believe every word out of culinary goddess Amanda's mouth). Whereas other videos on making filled tangyuan show a very soft dough. Perhaps I should stick to inside-out tangyuan as the recipe originally intended for, and just use the 摇 (dip-and-roll) method for filled tangyuan.

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In case you didn't click on the two previous links and have not witnessed the greatness of Amanda, definitely do! She's like the Jacque Peppin of (mostly) asian food. Her videos have very clear instructions, and covers a wide breadth of dishes. Love her so much *u*

Switch Girl

Quite a wholesome shoo manga. Nika's off side and her fam is hilarious xD On a more serious note, a rhetorical question: Why is this genre of shojo mangas defined by having a meddlesome lead girl? Because every cynical cat-person, yours truly included, wants to be proven wrong in their cynicism. They we, want someone to demonstrate that they care way beyond reasonable limits. Basically to inspire hope, which we want despite how much anxiety and heartache it brings. It's the lesser of the two evils compared to living without attachments.

It's obvious...and cheesy af...written out like this, but it took me reading n shojo mangas over like a decade to fully realize, and admit to myself xD

curl

my boy is a genius

burst

Warm salads & a bruschetta for the cool weather:

 OG potato salad, UK version with samphire instead of basil

 Spring lentil salad with honey dressing

I put off making this for the longest time as the recipe didn't sound that interesting to me. I was very wrong and love how this tastes. Too bad the snap peas are past their season now :(

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Roasted grape, soft cheese and walnut bruschetta from Polpo Cookbook

I thought I was smart selecting black grapes since they'll look better in photos. I was very wrong, the contrast in the first photo is a nightmare, especially since I don't have the latest Adobe camera raw that's compatible with my camera. It took an ugly curve adjustment to make it look presentable.

patch

A rare event of me venturing outside:

A flowers themed exhibit at the Victoria Art Gallery. One day I'll pick up embroidery and knitting / crocheting (Y)

Then pre-emptively celebrating the end of dissertation writing...so close yet so far away ;_;

Raphael Restaurant: tl;dr = texture is perfect, flavour is normal