Experimenting with recipes

My first ever cookbook was this massive book called the 'All Colour Cookbook'. It is a fabulous book! It has over 300 recipes with illustrated instructions and colour pictures of all the dishes. I cannot remember the number of times I have poured over it, picturing the recipes I would make and what a perfect meal would be. It was, back then, the most comprehensive and inexhaustible cookbook I had seen. And thinking about how heavy it is, I am surprised to say that it has managed to make its way from Maldives to Australia.

I never thought of actually cooking it until my Dad one day decided to try out 'Queen of Puddings'. It had seemed to be the most complicated recipe we had ever seen. My Dad did most of the cooking, and he managed to get a lot of it wrong. I vaguely remember him forgetting to strain the orange zest and the meringue fell flat. The second time he made it, it didn't quite turn out well either. I think it was the meringue again.

My Dad's struggle with this recipe gave me a bit of inspiration to get this recipe right. The best thing about making Queen of Puddings was when I mix the milk, orange zest and butter together, it has an exquisite smell. As simple as it sounds, to this day, I always take a moment to take a deep breath and smell it.

I knew I had mastered the Queen of Puddings when I saw the meringue standing up in magnificent peaks. I sometimes still mess up the meringue, but have come a long way from those days when I would be whipping and whipping the egg whites and wonder why nothing was happening (half the time, it was because I put in too much sugar too soon).

This book has given me many failed recipes, including Floating Island, which to this day, my cousin calls Sinking Island. Not only did I not get the meringue to peak, but made the milk to curd while making the custard. At least I think that was what it was. The custard had little grainy bits in it. The second time I made it, I got the beautiful chunks of meringue needed but my Mom had to try and salvage the custard by adding some custard powder.

The best was the Surprise Souffle my uncle and I attempted to make. Neither of us had any idea what a souffle was, and made it in a cake tin! It tasted fine, but it was definietly not a souffle. More like a savory mushroom cake.

A few years on from numerous cooking mistakes, I am still ploughing on with new recipes. From the three hour chocolate tart and a white chocolate tart which had the most awful too sweet taste in the filling when I tasted it while making it. I was super nervous as well, because I was making this to take it to a dinner party, but somehow turned out really well. People kept commenting on how good it was and when I finally tasted it, I surprised myself. I still cannot figure out how that had happened.

Tough Teddy

My family is pretty big...and the great thing about my numerous cousins is that we all get along like friends. Living away from home, one of the things I miss is hanging out with my family. But I still get to keep in touch with them a lot, over the internet. In fact, I only started really talking to one of my cousins on msn.

He is quite a few years older than me. I cannot remember exactly how much. Probably about four or five years. When I was younger, we never really spend any time together. I usually hung around with his younger brothers and cousins who were closer to my age.

I think I started talking to him on msn when he was studying in Philippines. Or even maybe earlier, when he was in Sri Lanka. He was bored, I was bored and I was surprised to find out that we actually had conversation topics that we could continue over for more than just five minutes.
I think of him as a Teddy bear. A tough Teddy bear. He is fairly big and broad and sometimes has this expression on his face that would not be out of place on a security guard out side the Presidential Palace.

But I think he is a massive softie on the inside. He would probably kill me when he sees me next for writing that about him and God knows that I have done a few things that has gotten me into trouble with him. But for all the seriousness he poses, he calls me all sorts of sweet pet names, such as 'Pumpkin (which I think i was a bit indignant about at first), 'Cupcake' and 'Cutie'. Not something you would expect from a person who looks like a mild version of the Incredible Hulk (minus the green of course).

His life long ambition and dream seems to be (apart from working in a Victoria's Secret store) to see me gain some weight. He claimed that my last blog entry, the one about anorexia, was a great 'self-analysis' and the amount of food he expects me to eat is enormous! Once at a family dinner, he got all the desserts, served them to me himself so he could control the portion sizes and was sitting there next to me just to make sure I ate it all.

The best memory I have of him was when we went shopping the last time I was back at home. It was so much fun just browsing around the shops with him. He would make funny comments about things and we had fun paying each other out. Unfortunately, I had to leave a little bit earlier than I had expected to and I told him I needed to get home asap, so he said 'Yeah, we'll get a taxi.'
I told him that we would probably get to my place faster if we walked because it was only a few minutes away anyway. And I just started walking at full speed. And I kept seeing my cousin behind me, struggling to keep up. He kept saying 'I should have come in my jogging shoes!'. This was a guy, who was twice my size and trained at the army, and was complaining that I was going too fast!

Honestly, such a softie...

An assignment I actually enjoyed doing..

I have been preparing for a massive presentation for uni during the last few weeks. It was, one of the more enjoyable presentations I have done in a while. Not only did it include role playing, it also required us of script writing and dressing up. Doing this group assignment was quite fun (not something I can say for the majority of the group assignments). The topic we chose, anorexia nervosa, was also very interesting.

Generally, I wouldn't have a clue what those girls suffering from anorexia goes through, but being a girl, I can somewhat relate to the weight issues and the need to look the best. But at the same time, I was shocked by the extent of malnutrition they go into. Anorexia can kill you. And it can be associated with things like substance abuse, depression or anxiety disorder. It can easily be a plea for attention or a reaction to pressure from others (the ballet dancer who suffers from bulimia in Centerstage is an example).

Knowing all this, I was particularly horrified when I overheard a girl talking to her friend. I was standing behind her on the escalator, so it was a bit hard not to eavesdrop. She was telling her friends how she had suffered from anorexia with an air of almost boasting about it. She said something like 'I was totally anorexic and all, but I am now fine!'. This girl would've barely been 15 years and she was just going on about anorexia as if it had been a temper tantrum she chucked in front of her parents. Maybe that was what it is, but she didn't sound like she regretted having anorexia. There was no words of warning to her friends about it either. Meanwhile, all I could think of was the girl who went into a coma because her body couldn't handle her jogging for a few miles because she was so malnourished and weak.

There are success stories too. Clearly this girl I overheard talking about anorexia was fine, since she was on her way to the beach. And she didn't look too skinny either. People who realize that they are at risk, get help and are motivated to get better do win the fight against anorexia.

That's what our assignment was supposed to be; help people (we focused on girls from around 16 to 18 years) with anorexia get better, or at least try and prevent relapse using group therapy.

One of the things I came across while looking up treatments for anorexia was that focusing on other aspects of beauty, such as make-up and hairstyling, was helpful, so it distracted them from body size and things like that. And I thought it would be good idea to include a session in our group therapy where the girls would be taught about makeup tips and all. However, that idea was pretty much slammed by our tutor, saying that focusing on the outer beauty, especially with a group of girls who have an obsession with that was not such a good idea. Which is quite true.

However, I am not going to pretend for a minute that 'inner beauty' is all that matters in the society. Looking good and outer beauty is an issue as well. And ignoring it doesn't solve anything. In an idealistic society, yes, it could work.

I thought the view of outer beauty could be challenged and not fall for the conformations that media asks us to. We tackled that problem with having a session that helped the girls view the media critically. Because media is a huge issue when it comes to things such as what people should look like.

Doing this assignment was an eye opener for all of us. And every time I forgot to have lunch (yes, that did happen sometimes) I would feel a bit guilty.

My experience with Austen

Jane Austen is probably one of the greatest literature writers. Her books are classic and timeless and gives us insight to the society she lived in back then. However, I fail to find her books fascinating.

It started with 'Emma'. I had heard about Austen and her wonders, I knew I should attempt to read some of her books, mainly because I was a bookworm and because my knowledge of Classics was pretty limited. And I had just watched 'Clueless' and I thought it couldn't be that hard. Wrong. The book failed to grip me. I found it a chore to read it...half the reason I picked up the book was because I felt I had to, in order to advance my reading status. Nevertheless, I eventually gave up on it.

'Pride and Prejudice' came along and it was actually worse than 'Emma'. I first started reading it, but I got so frustrated with the mindset of these women! All they talked about was getting married! And their money!! Was this all they did? Probably... maybe I shouldn't judge their lifestyle and actually try and appreciate what I was learning from this. It didn't happen. I gave up.

Eventually the movie came up (the latest version with Kiera Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen in it) so I decided to watch this. I did watch the whole movie and feeling somewhat inspired by this, I thought I would start to read the book again. To this day, I still cannot remember whether I actually finished reading that book.

I am now ploughing my way through 'Sense and Sensibility'. I have also, in the meantime, finished about reading three other books (I have a habit of reading a couple of books at the same time) and I still haven't managed to get through 'Sense and Sensibility'. To make it worse, one of my friends compared me to Marianne Dashwood! Apparently, I remind her of this character who is this lovelorn girl. I wasn't happy. Similar to 'Pride and Prejudice', if not worse, I still find the talk about their fortunes, yearly earnings and getting their daughters hitched off to some gentlemen unsettling and quite boring.

I loved the writings of the Bronte sisters, couldn't put down Elizabeth Gaskell's 'Wives and Daughters' and Oscar Wilde's 'The Picture of Dorian Grey' fascinated to me. Jane Austen doesn't. Despite my perseverance with her books, I still haven't finished reading any.
I might have luck with 'Sense and Sensibility' yet...

Beginner..

I have had a friend who has been blogging for the last couple of years, and she has asked me to make a blog so that we can keep more in touch. I have thought about blogging and wondered about what I would write and whether people would find my doings interesting.

My inspiration to start a blog came from the movie Julie & Julia. I saw that Julia had a specific theme and purpose for her blog, not just random scribblings of her day, so I thought I would do the same.

I decided that there was no way I would be going through a cookbook (despite liking to think myself as bit of a foodie) and writing a food blog, so another challenge was again; what do I write?

Then, not so long ago, I was filling in an application for a job, one of the questions was 'What are your passions?' and that got me thinking. What are passions? Can I count my hobbies such as reading, cooking, and my interest in traveling as passions? So I thought I would write a blog about hobbies and how I am getting through them. There will be no 'Oh, I have a cold' postings (I do enough of that in my journal) and I would like my blog to be a cheerful representation of me.
I have no idea whether I am on the right track for blogging, but I guess I will learn...