I don’t need drugs when I can shop. Even if I’m lying on a hospital bed, I’d rather get on a wheelchair and wheel my pathetic self into a shopping gallery than lie there like a vegetable being drip-fed morphine.

So… -twiddles thumbs in awkward silence-
You see, the thing here is, I’m a spendthrift. And I’m not just saying this as a joke. I’m typing this out as I would come clean at confession, or at an alcohol rehab group session. Indeed, this is serious shizzle.

I haven’t blogged very much or made very much in the kitchen lately because yes - the same ol boring reason - I’m busy working and yes, I’m busy spending all that hard-earned cash away. There’s just something about being in a tiny city that drains your cash away and mentally, I WANT to drain that money out of myself. It’s ridiculous. Material girl, you say? Totally! Kiwi bird? Not quite as I’m not really into bling but gosh, if it’s something in my style, I totally gotta have it. And I’ll spend days, hours (maybe even weeks if I’m unfortunate to wait that long) obsessing about it to no end.

It sorta goes like this (well, my spending philosophy) — money ain’t that pretty but what money can buy, is pretty damn pretty.

Adverts work on me. Flash me one, and it’ll work like banana bread (the way it tempts me, it’s like drawing Diva to real good freshly baked banana bread or getting my cocker spaniel Fifi to do a roll for a doggie treat - I will beg). Normally, the situation is one where I’m completely broke because I’ve splashed out to extremities on beauty products (blame my Gramma for my fascination with tiny pots of wonder potions), shoes and alcohol, oh yes and a lot of fruit.

This time round, far from the land of cheap booze, I splash out weekly in ridiculous amounts on cosmetics (I’ve trimmed back on beauty products as I’m just trying to use up everything I’ve got now — besides, too much of something is never good for you), still shoes no doubt about it and clothes. The heat mucks me about and the first thing I think of is, new clothes - I gotta have new stuff to put on me that don’t make me think I’m still in England waiting to welcome my favourite Autumn season. Why cosmetics? Well, everything is cheaper here so why not! And MAC keeps releasing these awesome collections week after week and of course, I patiently wait for a specific collection to be released here (takes about a few weeks after England), reserve the specific item, hop to the store (like I said, I work in town — it’s just next door, it’s bloody temptation I tell you!) and end up spending more than I bargained for because of these crazy sales, promotions and special packages. It’s gay!

Now we come to the next point of discussion - shoes. I gotta have ‘em. I can’t live without shoes. If I’m not in well-made or good-looking enough shoes, I’m plagued by odd withdrawal symptoms. Guys, you may or may not get this, but it’s all true. I find myself twiddling my thumbs and pulling at my fingers (a very strange habit) if I’m not in heels or if I’m not one up taller than the people around me. Maybe it’s a vertically challenged sorta thing but I ain’t short. I just take pride in dressing up what happens to lie South as well as what lies North, I suppose? It completes me…dammit it does. And there’s something about the way shoes look that strikes such a chord in my heart. Just this month, I’ve purchased 4 pairs of shoes and thrown out 2. Not cool.

Dee from ChoosandChews told me to go ahead and splash out on a pair of Choos. I have been planning to get my first pair at 21 and then work my way up my favourite designers with a time break of 2 years in between — it’s a recovery period because, like I said, I splash out almost every week on things I need, don’t need, want, think I kinda want, etc. It’s insane. I must be the most un-environmental friendly person even if I recycle and reuse just cause I consume (not just in terms of food) so ridiculously much. I haven’t exactly gotten a pair of Choos but I’ve just rewarded myself this morning with a new pair of shoes from 9West. A pair of black lace-up Oxford booties with a 4 inch heel. OH JOY! The world’s all spinning round right again and I see the light.

My sister’s sat at Marmalade Pantry with her gal pals right now, a few metres away from where I’m sat at in my candle shop and we’re both mulling over how we are so cash-strapped. Attempting to plan a much-needed holiday to somewhere close - Taiwan, is so very difficult when you’re like us. And we’re not spoilt rich kids or mathematically-disinclined airheads. Also, I do feel oppressive guilt from having to leech on my parents, especially my Dad. Right now, I gotta work my problem-solving and cash-saving skills as best as I can if we intend to get our arses out of the town for a 5D4N trip to consumer-land aka Taipei. But what am I to do when I’ve just spent on a pair of shoes, am currently saving up to purchase a Vivienne Westwood necklace (next up I’ll get the bloody Vivienne Westwood Ebury bag - this woman’s my true love I tell you) and have to have something to fund my mother’s birthday!!! Independence - you crave it and find it so hard to achieve financial independence.

With all this on my mind - I know it’s not a reason to stop me from foodifying my life - but it’s terribly distracting. So I hope I haven’t lost my fellow readers and by golly, I pray not with this awful rant. If you’re wondering what’s with the post picture, it’s work from photographer Paco Peregrin inspired by Aya Kato. Aya Kato is a genius. I recently bought a gelaskin for my Macbook with Kato’s illustration. Very swanky. And yes, I know, very much a part of consumerism. Gee. And also very much like me - just gotta have every damn thing around me: line, curves, colour, vintage, frills, goth, etc. A conglomoration of everything I adore.

Firstly, this is the only award I can remember as well as I can that I have yet to thank and blog about (and haha, I ain’t up there trying to win the Grammies but I will try to win the hearts of my adored fans, JOKES! — Ann, this is totally for you — I’m trying to be beguiling ;D ). I have short-term memory — honestly, I do and so anything that’s not been written down on my virtual Macbook post-its or on the real-life neon-coloured post-its, I will not remember. No one knows the reason for this odd occurrence that only happened after I stopped taking these crazy Efamol memory oil pill thingies in high school. It seems my wonderful memory just suddenly decided to crash down to nada thereafter. Maybe the exams caused the brain to take quite a big kick in the gut, resulting in some sort of partial meltdown.

A big thank you to Shari from Whisk: a food blog for my YUM-YUM blog award. Shari runs Whisk Wednesdays and I absolutely love to have a peek at her Tuesdays with Dorie posts. Shari really knows how to cook and she takes such great pictures, it’s illegal! So sweet to receive this award as even though this blog’s been around for some time now, it’s still pretty new in that it was never really read by the public. I’m awfully touched that the food blogosphere is such a comforting, friendly and encouraging virtual environment and am always inspired by the fellow foodies around me. I mean, seriously, it’s quite hard to find fellow wide-eyed-with-love-for-the-sake-of-food types in this country where everyone’s stick thin and fashion/weight-conscious.

I know I should be forwarding the award to another 5 blogs. This is such a toughie and don’t be mistaken, I’m not that much of a selfish cow but I honestly can’t decide. Ever since I started doing a more intensive foodbloggo-hopping, I’ve got to see more of the blogs around and about. Blimey, are there some amazing shit out there. And I’m so inspired by what these people create. Each blog is so unique and so sincere it’s hard to really categorize them into good, bad, yummy that sorta thing. There isn’t any clean way to put them into groups or discern good from bad because they’re all equally good and equally different!

All that aside, some of you may be wondering what exactly is happening with me (and if you aren’t, feel free to hop off to another blog. So much more to see, so little time!) and thanks for those of you who have been worrying about my milk issue. I honestly do not know what’s going down in the gastro-area. I reckon I’m just unused to the milk found in Singapore (Australian cow’s milk is what the family drinks and low-fat but unskimmed at that) and so I’m officially on So Good soymilk, though I find it terribly difficult to cut out snacks that have some sort of milk and cream ingredient in them. Someone who’s skilled in lactose-free snacking help me please! I’m desperate!!!

I’m officially out of the office although I will have 2 days of conferences in August and a meeting in September. Call me lucky for being able to be free from the chains of a cubicle but mind you, I’m not yet 21 thus my young bones need space to roam about like a free-range chicken. LOL. Currently, I’m working at a shop called Flaming Queen that sells luxury candles from the States, France, London and Germany. It’s located at Palais Renaissance that holds DKNY, Valentino, Mumbai Se and some other labels and specialty shops. So far, it’s been pretty interesting having to remember the scents of different candles and diffusers of different brands and makes and I am really quite enjoying working there. It’s something different, a little more relaxed and I like being around these gorgeous smells. My pet peeve is stink. I can do dirt but odours just make me cry/faint/breakdown/that sorta thing. And so yea, working in town still gives me yet another reason to totter about in heels without feeling overdressed. Thank goodness for fashion. Without these heels, I’m nothing!

However, of late, I’m merely a moving object in heels, summery but smart clothes, Raybans and an empty wallet. Did I mention my wallet’s slowly tearing apart from age (it’s lasted me 3 years) and the card pockets are all ripping at the sides too. I do have a lot of cards but I suppose I don’t have a lot of money. The irony. Indeed I’ve spent too much on all my new shoes and new clothes. Damn this consumerism!

So what do I think when I see all these businesswomen tottering about in front of me with their gorgeous heels but uber-obvious VPL/VThongL and clothes labels sticking out from the collars of their tops? I think: ‘move bitch, get outa the way. get outa the way, bitch! get outa the way!’ and I feel miles better. And what happens when these gorgeous bitches are lamp-post skinny and svelte? I imagine a huge tornado sweeping through the city and console myself that I won’t be swept away so easily.

God, am I bitter or what?

Put bag down. Remove groceries from shopping bags and place onto appropriate shelves of pantry. Open fridge. Arrange selected ingredients into a neat row on island top. Recipe. This wasn’t in the least robotic movement but rather quick chop-chop actions executed with precision — a race against time!

After some weekend shopping in town and an iced tea with a book whilst waiting for Mum’s Japanese lesson to end, I was all geared up for some intensive kitchen affair. Let’s just say I devoted about 5 hours in the kitchen today to prepare pudding and the best Sunday roast I could ever offer all in the spirit of the blessed Sunday. To add to that, I’m officially off my office attachment and this breath of fresh air (not that I didn’t enjoy the overall experience in the office and meeting my fellow colleagues) has suddenly infused my muscles with more energy and I don’t feel the least tired after dishing up, cleaning up, washing up. Pimm’s and iced lemon tea was a fantastic idea as well — bet that really gave me quite the energy boost for the afternoon. Roast dinner was pretty good. I think I might’ve outdone myself, this time round cooking the carrots under the chicken to cook in the chicken’s onion, garlic, lemon and rosemary-infused juices. The cajun-spiced roast potatoes were just beautiful, considering I used U.S Russet potatoes and the roast vegetables were all nicely golden-brown and sweet from the over-onion-age. The gravy was made from all the leftover scrapings off the roasting tray, white wine, Worcestershire sauce, freshly ground black pepper and some cornflour.

Well, what comes next you would know is something green. I think right about now, someone would be just bouncing off the walls wanting to tell me to stop this matcha obsession. Gee. You’re totally right. I mean like how much of my life can this humble green powder actually take up? Plenty; and only a wally brain would want to forsake this lovely ingredient.

It seems that matcha is no longer the rave. To me, (since green tea has always been around in this country and Japanese influence since before independence - hey, we were under the Japanese Occupation) it’s less a rave now but more evidently a part of our lives and culture. You see O-cha shops everywhere offering green tea lattes, matcha ice cream and beautifully presented sweets and puds (this I can’t resist). Ceremony-grade matcha and tea ceremony equipment seem to be readily available. Everyone on the street talks about it — sometimes in one of those wide-eyed, amazed fashion and sometimes in that motherly you-should-eat-your-greens,-it’s-good-for-your-health way.

I’m still on the lookout for a near-authentic Japanese teahouse so I can pick up some tips and proper skills (not to forget I need to return to a Chinese teahouse to brush up on my amateur tea-making skills — gosh am I so lacking). While that has yet to happen, I spend my time basking in the fact that I can enjoy matcha and green tea and all my other favourite teas to maximum satisfaction. Ever since there was that Daring Bakers’ Opera Cake event, I was so tempted to try my hand at it. Of course, I didn’t have much time to spare for an opera cake — what with the joconde, buttercream, ganache, sponge and glaze layers. It is a lovely French sweet I’d love to stuff my face with; a solitary affair, preferably in the dark and soundproof room but when it comes to making it, I would really give a word of warning that my lazy ass will never agree to such culinary commitment.

On that note, my white chocolate ganache failed as well. Let’s just say I’d blasted the radio and got a little carried away with my whisk and singing as I rocked my lungs out to the sounds of 3 Doors Down to the point where my heavy cream started to split and curdle like there was no tomorrow. God, it was beautiful. The ganache was such a mess I had no choice but to title it ‘White Chocolate Cream’ or would ‘White Chocolate Melty Mush’ be more apt?

Because I was a little strapped for time and I knew I wouldn’t have the patience to stand about all day in the kitchen taking care of cake layers and cream layers, etc. I decided to stick to a sponge layer and “ganache” (lol, I giggle) and a simple plum wine glaze. That chopped things up easy peasy for me and didn’t require much brainwork. In fact, if you’ve stuck with my blog long enough, you realize when it comes to cooking, strangely I hate to think much. It’s awful how lazy I get when it comes to cooking and blimey, I call myself a food-lover and ultimate baking fan. The horror, the horror (of my true personality, that is).

This recipe is quite a mess as I’ve taken bits from Kevin’s Green Tea and White Chocolate Opera Cake recipe. I drooled over this quite a bit and really fancied having a slice of it myself. I’m afraid I haven’t really done this recipe justice but the results weren’t too bad. All the flavours were great. The sponge cake could definitely have been a little less rubbery and fluffier but heck, pudding definitely wasn’t the star of the show tonight. The plum wine glaze was good. Sexy. You couldn’t really taste much of it since I only used 2 tablespoons of it (didn’t want to mislead people into thinking I drink in the day — although I did) but the smell of it as you stirred the warm cream was nose-orgasmic, would that be the word? Anyway, there was always Mum’s frozen Daifukus after the cake to sweep up whatever bits were found wanting and sweeten up the tastebuds the right way up. No biggie.

Matcha Layer Cake
Ingredients

3 large egg whites (room temperature)
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1 cup almonds (ground)
1 cup icing sugar (sifted)
1 tablespoon matcha
3 large eggs
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tablespoon unsalted butter (melted and cooled)
green tea sprinkles, for garnishing

(directions are taken from Kevin’s Closet Cooking blog)
Line a 12 1/2 inch by 15 1/2 inch jelly roll pan with parchment and grease it with butter.
Beat the egg whites in a bowl until they form soft peaks.
Add the sugar and beat until the peaks are stiff and glossy.
Beat the almonds, icing sugar, matcha and eggs in another bowl until light and voluminous.
Add the flour and beat until the flour is just combined.
Fold the meringue into the almond mixture.
Fold in the butter.
Pour the batter into the pan.
Bake in a preheated 425F oven until lightly browned and just springy to the touch, about 5-9 minutes.
Run a knife along the edges to loosen the cake form the pan.
Cover the cake with parchment paper, flip and unmold the cake.
Peel of the parchments paper flip and cover the cake while it cools.

White Chocolate Cream
Ingredients

180ml heavy cream
120ml heavy/whipping cream
2 tbs butter
7 oz/200g white chocolate, chopped

Place chopped chocolate in a heatproof bowl.
Heat heavy cream and butter in a heavy-based saucepan on low heat until it just starts to boil. You can tell when it starts to bubble around the edges of the pan. Remove from heat and pour over the chocolate. Leave for 30 seconds then use a wire whisk to whisk till smooth. Set aside to cool a little.
Save half of this mixture for the glaze.
Whisk 120ml cream till it forms stiff peaks then fold into cool ganache mixture.

**don’t know if this will work for you — mine pretty much turned into tasty mush LOL. I don’t usually make such terrible mistakes. Man. Blame the rocker in me. Jokes.

Plum Wine Glaze
Ingredients

White Chocolate Cream mixture
2 tbs umeshu/plum wine

Whisk ingredients together and set aside.

Sugar Syrup
Ingredients

1/4 cup golden caster sugar
1/4 cup boiling water

Dissolve sugar in water. Set aside. This will be used atop sponge layers when assembling the cake.

For instructions on assembling the cake, please click on the link above before the recipe which will take you to Kevin’s blog for better directions. Mine was a very haphazard, freeze and slab on freeze and slab on event. Not exactly a method with finesse.

No matter. I’m still in a fine mood and I’m off to watch the telly. It’s the beginning of another week tomorrow but I’m pretty excited to begin work at The Flaming Queen. Selling candles at Palais Renaissance — gosh that’s well luxurious!

store-bought Hanami Dango saves a failed Homemade Dango Day

I’m about 2 months half away from my 21^st birthday and the angsty, emo and spotty 14 year old kid feels lightyears away – to think on her is to almost stand back and observe a whole different person. I reckon I can empathize with how David felt in David Copperfield, being haunted by the ghost child who was both one and the same David, and yet a totally separate and distinct being from himself.

Being stuck in an office hasn’t just affected my mood, my sleeping patterns, geez! – my diet; it has given me plenty of time to think and to try and keep up with myself. But I ain’t moving forward. In fact, I’m nostalgic pondering on my teenage years when I was so into fashion and drawing. Now that I have the time to catch up with the world around me, (God no! Not current affairs. I read fashion magazines, NME and The Economist at the most but not newspapers), I’ve become rather melancholic that I let my first dream slip away without a fight. Ah. The days of wanting to get into fashion school. The days of hoping, crying, worrying and bargaining with God. Of course, that hasn’t vanished from my life since I do hope, cry, worry and bargain with God many a time on some other sort of ordeal. And I do have hope that in the future, I will one day get back on the fast train and see what I can do with myself.

I can’t ride a bike but I sure can get back on track if I try (I’m a little lacking in confidence when I say this but boy do I hope it holds some truth). Then, I’m quite certain it’ll feel like riding a bike again and I’ll remember the tricks of my trade and pick it up swiftly. Besides, I haven’t stocked up on all those VOGUE & noi.se magazines, the Unseen Vogue photobook and shoes for nothing – they’re my visual reminders as to what I hold close to my heart, apart from food and literature! I suppose it’s one reason why I occasionally stroll into an art shop and purchase paper, pencils, Germany-made pencil sharpeners and good quality charcoal; why I have sudden spurts of fashion illustrating moments; why I get plagued by weeks of granite covered hands and fingers (of course I do forget about this for a while and it seems like a hobby but I’ve never let it go completely); why I’m now holding on very tightly, quite viciously to the admiration I have for world renown punk/cult designers Vivienne Westwood, Gareth Pugh and Jun Takahashi.

Somehow I believe dreams don’t just vanish or fade away. They turn into something else. Its morphing makes you stronger and I pray to God it helps you see clearer what exactly is the thing you are truly aiming for. These are some of the dreams I’ve held on tight to for so long — some I’ve let go, some I hope to pick up again and some I still won’t fucking let go even if you were to grab me by the neck (if I had balls I would’ve said balls) with an iron fist.

1. Become a fashion designer; start my own label and shop, then take the world by storm.
2. Become a rockstar; have a whole room with a see-and-don’t-touch collection of Fender guitars.
3. Open a patisserie/bakery/ café with the girlfriends from home and show everyone that women really have beauty and brains (not me – the other girls do) — at this point, Sam & I kinda did run a baking business DIVANA and it brought and still brings us much joy, it’s wicked! We thought of renaming it since it didn’t give Sam any credit at all. Our next choice was SAMSON & DELILAH but the connotations didn’t quite coincide with our image.
4. Let myself loose as an eccentric, insane, abstract, punk/rock, surrealist painter with no money for clothes, food, publicity and socializing since it’ll all be spent on rent for a cluttered, grimy apartment/studio, canvases, brushes and paints.
5. Become the greatest Southeast Asian-born female novelist of all time! (lol…someone tell me to stop building castles in the air?) and have my name remembered even after death by people outside the family bloodline. (I mean like, don’t you think that’d be just ridiculously awesome?)
6. Join a real fashion magazine that deals with the real, serious shit as a fashion writer. Talk about fashion for a few years then ascend the ladder as a journalist and shoot that shit.
7. Become a band manager and join the coolest kids of the club on tours and gigs; really, I just wanna have a cool pen, funky shoes and be seen rushing here, there, everywhere with a mobile phone, a notepad and plan events, gigs and interviews. Oh yes, I would like to own a massive Mac desktop as well to go with the whole planning-important-PR woman image. JOKES.
8. Turn into a hippie world traveler and travel the world for food and culture.
9. Open my dream restaurant/bar/brasserie that deals with tired yuppie clients – soothing them with delicious plates of food, glasses of tasty but punch-packing drinks and tempting them with the Chocolate Hour (what’s that? I ain’t telling lest someone steals my idea). Oh yea, and sourcing for musicians to guest play once in a while, not to mention it would guest star some of my precious musician friends out there.
10. This was dreamt up ages ago, but I once hoped to have loads of money just lying around and I’d donate that to building a new and architecturally impressive art museum for Singapore that would showcase some of the most sought-after art pieces in the world and of course, local masterpieces.

sweet adzuki bean filling is absolutely dreamy - God bless Isetan.

You must be wondering now, what does all this have anything at all to do with The Sugar Bar? I reckon that’s exactly it. The Sugar Bar itself was too, kind of like a dream for me. Think - a young kid, completely clueless about the internet, dreaming day and night about opening and running a café. I’m glad for small steps because I take them each day in hope that one of my dreams or that one by one, my dreams will come true.

I’ve craved Hanami dango for a while now and although it isn’t the hanami season at this point of time and there certainly aren’t sakura flowers blossoming in my garden (it’s too hot and humid for that – if you’d like to know I have loads of papaya and guavas just shooting off the trees), I think having hanami dango is apt for the hope that’s blossoming in my heart.

Don’t you get those days where you suddenly puff up with joy and pride and think, by golly, I could surely conquer all my fears and do the impossible! Well, although I’m mostly stuck in a three-walled cubicle for now, I’m all puffed up and ready to take on the next step.

What’s my new motto? Eat, sleep and be merry? Haha. You jest.

unsteamed & deformed dango that went all weird after steaming - it was a laugh!

I’d say it’d be : Dream; Have dango then conquer the world with a dango stick! (because like it or not, we’re always stronger and more capable than we think we are – thank Baz Lurhman for this).

My sticks of dango have been bought from Japanese sweet sellers. I’ve, however, put up pictures of my self-attempted ones which look a lot less voluptuous. They were failures actually as I didn’t quite get the dough right and it turned into a mess when I steamed them. But no worries! We all had a great laugh about it in the kitchen. My heels were sore from standing up for 3 hours slaving away and I ended the whole session with a joking ‘I hate my life’ but there’s always the sweet shop to run out to to get dango so that’s cool! Besides, after taking the piss out of my own dango, Clarissa decided to step in and make Sesame Milk Pudding so I suppose pud is sorted and I ain’t got nothing to worry about. Actually, I reckon some of you may be thinking - my culinary skills? They’ve been hitting the down/low recently. Haha!

Well then, my fellow friends, what have you been dreaming about lately (and any kitchen disasters too)? Care to join me in a Dango Tribute (failure or no)?

*p/s: I haven’t put up the recipe as I will only put it up as soon as I master it completely! Patience, I suppose is key. A note to any interested dango-makers, the dango should be skewered in this order: green, white, then pink.