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In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Snacks, Sweets

APPLE PERSIMMON PIES

Season-transitioning flu… they just love me so. A tender… suffocating love. So listen here’s what I can do. With my energy level slightly above a wheezing squirrel, I’m gonna save any effort on an elaborate sales pitch with delicious stories for you to try this. This being – fry your damn pies and do it this way. I’m not gonna go there… Instead, I’m just gonna give it to you straight, as in bullet point-style. As in STONE-COLD FACTS. Yeah. Because we all believe in science. Right? So eat this because:

11.05.2013

In All recipes, Poultry, Snacks

CHICKEN WINGS ON THE MISSION

Sometime I amaze even myself on how I get inspirations for a post while being locked on top of this self-confined tower. Well, not to deter you from visiting (especially you who owns a white horse) but it’s a tower sitting atop an oppressed world hidden inside a choking cloud of toxic smoke as far as the eyes can see, and guarded by, well not a dragon HA! I wish, but an army of creatures that to say mildly… nobody from your world is going to find it pleasurable to meet. So I mostly sit inside this emotionally distraught and physically demolished little tower of mine, with my greasy hair, rattled temper and… my magic mirror. Yeah, just like Beast’s who got it with me on Groupon. You see, it’s hooked to this fantastical plate-looking thing just outside the window, oh and how marvellous that it even comes with a remote. Like magic I tell you.

My life is but a little fairy tale.

11.01.2013

In All recipes, Got Nothing But Time, Meat, Noodle/Pasta/Rice

THE INCONVENIENT RAGU-TH

I almost couldn’t wait to tell you all about this hysterically inconvenient ragu. I started curating its debut so many weeks ago, impatiently waited for the temperature to drop and the first damn leaf to fall, until everything… every single elements in the atmosphere ready your hearts for the most glorious, madly delicious ragu you have yet to try. I even prepared a number of high-impact vocabularies to describe its entire four hours of making, two of which involves you standing by the stove remorselessly scraping the bottom of the pot in the name of culinary commitment, because I was gonna tell you that there’s no compromise when it comes to what I call the art of harvesting caramel, and you’re going to eat it all up.

The recipe has been sitting in my cue for a week now and I haven’t been able to lift a finger. Well… you know what happened.

10.28.2013

In All recipes, Featured Attractions, Noodle/Pasta/Rice, Techniques

STREAMLINING PASTA

I wholeheartedly thank everyone for their warm regards for Bado. She’d be ecstatic if she knew how much attention she could single handedly bring in. I’ve always knew that she beats buttered biscuits.

…I’m thinking, grief in its pure form is quite harmless, to be handled as a cold that wants nothing more than to run its natural course. Crying in the shower… sniffing her toys, whatever, sooner or later it always does. But unfortunately it’s now mixed with a toxic dose of regrets, guilt and self-blame and becomes a gust of acid rain, dampening every opening of a smile and making the lightest garment feel heavy… and sploosh!, melts me to the ground with it without warning. The cold fact that we’ve failed our baby girl, and the meaninglessness of how all our hearts and efforts meant the opposite, really…, really. Hurts.

I’m sure it all makes no sense what I’m saying… To shut my brain up and spare us both, I started making some pasta that night.

10.24.2013

In All recipes

EMPTY

ON October 21th, 2013

——————————————————

A SLICE OF OUR HEARTS HOLLOWED,
AND IS FOREVER EMPTY.

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In the memory of Bado
2004~2013

10.22.2013

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Sweets, Vegatables

SELL OUT

I recently landed in a couple of situations where I had to articulate the idea of my blog, a sales-pitch so to speak. The effort quickly brought brightened realizations to myself that whatever effort I made to explain the original vision or benchmark that I set out for when I started doing this, is now tainted with contradictions. A derailment, so to speak.

10.19.2013

In All recipes, Noodle/Pasta/Rice, Seafood

SALMON POKE-D YOU. YOU SHOULD POKE BACK

Two weeks ago when I stood in front of the ordering-counter in the most celebrated poke (a Hawaiian appetizer mostly made with raw seafood and other seasonings) joint in Honolulu, I found myself deep, once again, in a familiar dilemma. I could on one hand, dig through the baffling complicatedness for the source of the tuna without certainty on any given answers which would probably result in an ill-informed purchase anyways, or, I could entirely forgo the option of tuna as a food source just as I’ve been doing for quite awhile now. After all, I hadn’t tasted a bite of tuna, raw, cooked or canned for let’s say… almost 3 years.

10.15.2013

In All recipes, Snacks, Sweets, Travel

POST-HAWAII BLUE & COFFEE CRUSTED NUTS

The danger is real. There’s a paradise out there.

You can’t move two steps without hearing old-time tales of unsuspecting wanderers who passed by and never left, got sucked in by that boundless flickering of Pacific blues so wicked that they dared plunging into the terrifying anxiety of a slowed down life. Made home, even a family, grew roots. Their next generation, born-and-raised, has fascinating stories to tell about their unwavering connections to being the children of these captivating islands, seeding ideas inside visitors with a less affirmative mind such as myself who all, at one point or another, fondled the unthinkable… could I live here? Oh you’ll see. Just a split second of carelessness and you too would find yourself romancing the same idea.

Hawaii is that kind of hazard and I barely made it out in one piece.

10.11.2013

In All recipes, Travel

NOTHING EDIBLE BUT…

Kitchen draught alert, due to post-Hawaii blues. All systems rebooting but meanwhile… I seriously think you all should say hello to my new friend – Dude.

Home address: +19° 49′ 44.99″, -155° 59′ 29.94″, Hōlualoa, HI

Bring a seaweed.

10.11.2013

In All recipes, Meat, Noodle/Pasta/Rice, Quick Meals

PRE-DEPARTURE MICROWAVE MADNESS

Despite the level of embarrassment that I’m sure will hit me the moment I get back from Paradise (Tuesday!), I still decided to send this truth out there. The truth that once in a while, on some particular full-moons and/or… the night before a long trip away from home, there’s absolutely no excuse for my primitive behavior. And if that’s the kind of entertainment that delights you, here it goes.

10.07.2013

In All recipes, Dairy, Drinks

THE HOT TRIPLETS

I’m shouting out to you in the middle of the Pacific Ocean!! Warm waves… creamy white sands… waving palm trees… oh wait oops, are you cold there? Don’t say I’m not nice. Here, drink this, what I call the hot triplets. Oh, and it goes with this, the sweet buttah sandwich. Both are mutations from my favorites of Hong Kong’s popular “tea room” culture. Maybe I’ll chat more about it when I get back but right now, I have more important things to get to… See ya!

10.02.2013

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Dairy

(RE)MODEL BAKERY’S ENGLISH MUFFIN

Oh I don’t feel bad telling you this… I don’t. In just 2 days, I will be packing my bikinis, loading up the sunscreens and dragging my waxed legs across the Pacific to the realm where no toxic fume blackens my lungs and shameless line-cutter haunts my footsteps! Aloha~ HAWAII, here I come! Gimme a hug gimme a hug please! Oooh I can almost taste the air of freedom… where real earth should feel like… where I don’t fantasize plotting the murder of anyone… of every day… of every minute… (Hear that? The dude who spitted next to my feet in the restaurant dies-dies-dies so gruesomely it sounds like an unicorn-pony lullaby…). Where I can be the non-mental me again you see?!! Oh please do it now!! Eject me out of China right now! Cannonball me outta here!

09.27.2013