From the makers of 26 things, a day in the life project for 29 February. What a neat coincidence. The aim:
do something you’ve never done before and/or always wanted to do - and photograph it! One photo an hour for as long as you’re awake during this leap day
I’m on vacation in Chicago, and I stayed at home. I documented it all in the full flickr set. Summary:
I’d promised to make the family fried rice for many many visits now, and finally I got round to it. It’s a good thing that I don’t tend to go out when I visit. Fried rice traditionally is a way of using up leftovers so there’s a lot of flexibility about what goes into it.
cook the rice the day before or in the morning and let cool
dice chicken, cook and set aside
in a hot frying pan or wok, sauté mange tout beans until just tender
add beaten eggs and lightly scramble
add rice, add a splash of water if too dry
return chicken to pan and heat through
season with soy sauce, salt and a touch of sugar
via mefi, an interesting and simple to make optical illusion.
Instructions: stare at the black dot, don’t look elsewhere. After 20 seconds the image will shift. If you don’t shift your gaze it will appear to be in colour, but as soon as you look somewhere else it goes back to black and white.
I read a recent boing boing post about a diagram on how to cook chicken. The commenters pointed out that it was a mind map. And so true. Mind maps have been used to graphically present semantic information in a non-linear fashion.
I use it a lot in presentations. On one page it shows information in a easy to digest format that may take 5 or 6 (or more) slides full of bullet points. And how many of us have been guilty about using too many bullet points in too many slides? Anyway I went into the office today and gave a little update for the Chicago staff and I made a few mind maps.
I helped Gram make breaded pork chops. She uses regular pork chops, nothing fancy. I did all the prep work — dip in flour, then egg then what she calls crackermeal which turns out to be crackers that have been ground finely. The chops are then shallow fried. I don’t know what seasoning she puts in but they’re very yummy and never ever dry. It’s an art.
The thing today was we went shopping. I hate shopping, but today was productive. Car wanted some bookshelves and I wanted socks, so we have target places to go. So here’s what we bought:
car wash — no, not the car wash itself (though that would have been profitable) but one cycle at the car wash place. It’s different from what I’m used to. We had to get out of the car, the workers cleaned inside, stuck it inside the tunnel where the belt took the car through, and we picked it up the other side
wii games — Harry Potter and Transformers. For me of course
a 24-pen pack of colourful sharpies — so I can attempt more doodles
blank dvds — $20 for 100, a good bargain
Age of Empires games — not for me cos they were PC only, grr
bookshelves for the basement — actually a double storage cabinet with shelves and doors
6 pairs of socks — with discount coupons they came to under $5
2 pairs of work trousers for Car
Chicago Bears crocs for me, I’m such a tourist
a bag of mix’n'match sweets … oh okay, candy
And then we got chocolate milkshake from oberweis. I didn’t get a picture because: we took drive-thru and were moving in the car; I was too busy eating the shake. Oh yes, so thick that I needed a spoon. Very yummy.
One of the best things about being in the US is having access to Pandora again. In fact, I deliberately didn’t bring my external hard disk cos I knew I’ll have lots of music at my fingertips here. Yes, I know I can access pandora using other methods but it didn’t seem worth the trouble.
Anyway, first thing this morning after getting online is setting up a few new personal stations. I added one for the music from Once, let’s see what it brings me.
Why yes, I know that bionicles are meant for 7-16 year olds and I’m … not 7-16. But I got these, and they were fun to make!!! The blue one is Takadox and the red one is Kalmah. Hee.
I photoshopped them against a vaguely threatening robot computer evil face background I found on google images. The shadows are photoshopped too.
A long day of meetings today. I was sitting looking outside, day-dreaming, thinking about stuff other than work. And then my colleague’s crystal decoration caught my eye. It perfectly caught the reflections of the buildings outside.
This is actually leftover from a Japanese restaurant meal but the subject is too interesting to pass up.
Grilled tuna head. Grilled fish heads are a big part of Japanese cuisine, because they use so much fish for sashimi there’s always the head remaining. Salmon head is very filling, hamachi head is very good. This is the first time I tried tuna head. There’s a surprising amount of very tender flesh, anyone who’s tried fish cheeks will know the degree of tenderness. Usually I’m scared of eating fish cos of the small spine bones but with head, the bone is so large it’s impossible to choke on it.
The way the gill bone is served here makes the whole dish look rather like salmon steak actually.
I had a whole mozzarella ball in my fridge so I thought I’d try this Jamie recipe for a simple baked pasta dish. I made the sauce yesterday and the rest of the dish today.
for the sauce
sweat 3 cloves of garlic and half an onion until soft
add a can of chopped tomatoes and a can of water
add seasoning — the recipe calls for chili which I usually don’t have, nor do i use often; but I did add a dash of tabasco, some worcestershire sauce and Italian seasoning
simmer until the sauce thickens
blitz slightly, just enough to break the tomato pieces but not so that the sauce ends up being a paste
for the dish
cook pasta according to package instructions
drain and toss with half the sauce
arrange half the pasta at the bottom of an oven dish
spread over half the remaining sauce
slice up the mozzarella and arrange over the sauce
add the rest of the pasta, the rest of the sauce and the last pieces of cheese
bake at 200°C for 20mins
There’s supposed to be liberal amounts of parmesan sprinkled in with the mozzarella but I, um, don’t like parmesan. Yes, really.
I finished the 10km race in 1.36, which is very slow but I don’t care.
It was cold, but I didn’t want to leave anything with the bag drop cos of the long queues at the end of the race at the pickup point. So I went out in shorts and a fleece sweater. The sweater went round my waist as soon as the race started and stayed there till I got home, so it was kinda pointless.
I ran the first 2.5km, which I thought was pretty good. The next 5km was walk-uphill-run-downhill. The last 2.5km was mostly walking. There were whole families, kids, and a couple of disabled athletes, it was pretty relaxed.
I found a Japanese kimono dolls origami kit at the bottom of a drawer. This must be at least 10 years old, the way they look so at home at the very bottom of the drawer.
So I thought I’d give it a go, knowing full well I’ll make a mess and it’ll look like crap. No shred of artistic creativity. Just as well that the instructions are illustrated cos I couldn’t make heads or tails of the Japanese. Also, very nice of them to enclose a sample. Took me forever to get it done, including looking for glue in my rarely opened stationery drawer.
The one on the left is my attempt; the one on the right is what it should look like.
I bought this small desktop clock in a tiny curio / antique shop in Switzerland. Was probably in Zurich itself but could be any of the towns, can’t really remember. I couldn’t exactly not have a Swiss-made clock at home now could I. What caught my eye was the overall design of the clock, but also the intricate patterns on the face. The needles are actually pretty fragile, and there’s no glass or anything to protect them.
This is the macro view from above. I know I should be playing around with the macro setting more often, may be I’ll start a study of small things at home. hmm.
I love sharpies. mmmm. They’re colourful enough to disguise my poor drawing skills. Well, it’s only a doodle, not supposed to be the Next Big Turner Prize.
After work I went to the park where I queued up for almost 2 hours, shuffling slowing in a never-ending snake-like line. The purpose was to get my marathon race kit. Yes yes yes, i’m running the 10km not the marathon but this is what the event is called. The kit comprises: a T-shirt, baggage tag, coloured bag for baggage, race magazines, a souvenir coin and most importantly, my race number label and the timer chip. The timer chip is the black widget at the bottom there.
Race this Sunday. Have to get up at at 5.30am for a 6.40am start. Wish me luck.
One of my 101.1001 tasks is to learn flash. I guess it’s like photoshop and illustrator, the basics are straightforward to learn, once you grasp the toolbar system and understand the concept of layers and timeline. But with such a complex program, to get any good takes a long time.So I followed an informative video that shows how to create a simple animation with falling text effects in flash. Okay, people who know flash will laugh at how kindergarten-level it is but hey, I gotta start somewhere. Anyway it was fun.(link, in case the embed code didn’t work.)embedded by Embedded Video
My previous batch of beet eggs ran out around Christmas and I haven’t had time to make some more. So I took this opportunity during thing-a-day to make a fresh batch.
I hard-boiled 6 medium sized eggs and peeled them. Then I opened a jar of pickled beets, poured the juice in a pan and arranged the beets with the eggs. To the juice I added 150ml cider vinegar and half that in volume of sugar. Dissolved the sugar and simmered for 10mins. Once done I immediately poured the hot liquid over the eggs and closed the jar. Now I have to wait at least a week.
These eggs are delicious. Perfect with a salad or on a sandwich. I can’t believe I’m so addicted to them. Here’s an old pic of the purple eggs on a salad of peppers, tomatoes, avocado and some of the beets.
Weekend means more cooking. This recipe is adapted from orangette who adapted it from the absolutely fantastic casa moro cookbook. I actually have the first moro cookbook, and it looks like I should get the second one too.
Pumpkin and squashes are high on my favourites list. Creamy soup, roasted as side dishes or as a substitute for mashed potato, there’s nothing that beats the chill of winter than a warming, welcoming squash dish. The tahini adds a touch of arabia to the proceedings, and lifts it up beyond just a warm pumpkin salad.
for the salad
Peel a whole butternut and dice into 1-1.5″ pieces
Season with olive oil, minced garlic, salt & pepper and mixed spice — the recipe calls for allspice but I didn’t have that
Roast at 200° for 25mins or until soft
At the last 5mins or so chuck in a can of drained chickpeas to warm them up
for the tahini dressing
Whisk together 2tbsp tahini, 2tbsp lemon juice, finely minced garlic and sea salt
Add water to dilute
Add oilve oil and whisk to a thick consistency
Season to taste
I found it still too lemony so I added a few drops of sesame oil for balance
assembly
After removing from the oven, cool the squash to warm temperature
The recipe uses red onions but I don’t eat onions, so I added celery chopped into small bits for the crunchiness
Toss vegetables in tahini and serve
