Recalling

The weather of July-August of 3 yesteryears were so cold just like tonight! Brr… water is so cold that the effect still lingers on my hand although it is dry now. Tis the DRY SEASON now, when the days will be filled with only hot sun rays and there will be no rain at all. According to Time and Date site it is 77 °F which is 25 degree celcius at this dead hour in the night! No wonder i feel like i’m in an air-con room!

I remember when i went for my one month adaptation program in Malang before entering Uni, i hated bathing so much! Because the water is cold no matter what time of the day, and it’s coldest in the nights. People in Malang rarely install heater in their bathrooms, they are used to the cold water. *BRR*

During my Uni’s orientation nights were the worst moments of that period. Because we had to be in Uni at 5am, that taking baths wasn’t something i look forward! I had to do some stint of exercises in the bathroom when drenching myself- eg: jumping up and down as if i had hot-coal under my feet with my mouth shut tight trying not to shout aloud!
My teeth will be chattering musically too.

Hate the cold season, the days are so hot and dry, the nights are so cold and dry.
It makes your face so dry that it peels.
People with sinusitis suffers the most, because of the everyday weather transition.

2008 juniors came and the malaysian orientation officially starts tmr. Hehhehe… bad time for them. My direct juniors are very scheming and mean direct-seniors to them.

Sigh~ this is my 3rd night having sleepless night. 3 days ago i had for a cup coffee and that ruin my sleeping pattern! Mind you i’ve not been consuming coffee for the pass 5 months, which is ever since my 4th semester started. Miraculously, i survive throughout the exam period without any sort of caffeine form breverages.

Here are three nice links to an interesting post, a artful site and a wonderful blog to feast your eyes on:

The oldest Femle body builder that looks oohlala! Her body still looks so gooD, unwrinkled at all!

Felice Varini- a Swiss artist who’s painting and designs of artwork on structures and buildings that can be only viewed at a certain angle, if anywhere else the picture will be distorted

Erica Lyn Photography on weddings are simply beautiful and she captures the moments! I feel delighted looking at her work.

Tom Yum

It’s been nearly 5 months since i attempted cooking. Got to say it rust la… anyway i’m never satisfied with all the outcomes of my tom yum. Irks me that i cannot create the flavour that i am craving for, and that memory of it is so far away. But then since i have friends who likes it and request for it, i’m more than happy to cook it

Previously, i’ve not used seafood for tom yum, this time my friends and i did… ! The broth was great! the paste was wonderful but we had so many ingredients that everything was altered. LOL! Greediness indeed. My fault indeed because i got this motto “It’s okay to put more“! Plus i don’t put exact amount of ingredient that is actually needed, i just dump all ingredients to my own accordance and if it taste nice, then i know it’s all good!

I used some new techniques for this time recipe:

1) Devein Shrimp and use the shells to make the broth

2) using dried tom yum herbs
haven’t quite decided whether i like it or not. Cost Rp 9600 for a box at Lai-Lai grocery store.

The pot i had is too small to contained all the ingredients that we had to use a kuali too.

Pot 1- boiling the seafood

Pot 2 boling the vege and the other frozen food

I had lots of help in preparing this meal that you can consider that i didn’t even cook it at all.. lol! Takes 3 cooks to make a pot of gold. IronChef did most of the cleaning and un-shelling, Kuthuk did most of the cutting and washing, last but not least i did most of the dumping! LOL!! I SATPA (gagal)I giler wei!!

Cleaning sotong has never been this hassling! I’ve seen my mom cleaning squids like a breeze, but those squids we bought was definitely something wrong! IronChef and i were fooled that the squid was fresh as it didn’t smell in the ice, but when cleaning it the ammonia was freaking strong!! I’ve never (watch my mom) prepared a squid with such BO of ammonia before! Thinking it maybe the squid ink that was emitting such stench that we went ahead and cooked it. WRONG MOVE!

The squid smelt so bad after cooking, that none will dare put it in their mouth. The ammonia waif is an enough sign of danger! We discarded the squid but the soup was contanimated, so we added so many Maggi tom yum cubes that the many of us found the soup rather salty though rich and flavorful.

One of our squid, the poor thing, was caught before it could digest the baby ikan merah and was suppose to be eaten by us (superstitiously and nonsensically the squid smelt bad because it did not die a willing death that with such grudge it emitted such foul odour!) IronChef though it was squid egg at first because non of us have seen it before. Anyway, thankfully we slice the squid into half to clean it thoroughly, if not we could not have found that piece of disintegrated fish.

Urm.. at the right of the sotong, that the inside part that IronChef squeeze out from the squid! After rinsing it a couple of times, the stickiness was still in the sotong that we sliced it into half. That sticky and slimy white thing looks like ejaculation to me… EEW!! We don’t know what is that at all!! I’m thinking it is squid’s sperm! YUCKS!

Anyhow, the squid really spoiled the whole outcome of the tom yum =(  If not we need not have to modify the soup with so many tom yum cubes!

This is a pot of gold Tom Yum dish because it has so rich in taste and ingredients- RP 100k meal for about 8-9 people!