0 The Culmination

I'm kind of excited and happy and relieved to finally submit my thesis. After 10 months, I have learnt so much and killed so much. 3 days more but I have et to write my discussion section.

Anyhow, the more important thing is that the most massive haul of online grocery shopping has finally arrived at the doorstep! Well not exactly because I had to personally collect it from the post-office. Loving ALL the stuff. From the vanilla COCONUT macaroons to the "cheezy" kale krunch chips to the spirulina granola which I thought would be like oat bran kind porridge, but nevermind, it's darn tasty. The JEM almond butter was kind of below my expectations though. It tasted between a cross of gula melaka and kaya, a bit of almond flavour but not really there. I think I'll stick to the traditional almond butters like Woodstock or Artisana but it makes a nice drizzly topping nonetheless. Have yet to open the macadamia nut butter and raw cacao butter and cacao nibs!

Oh yes, the most awesome sammich for lunch: Gardenia bread with pesto, salmon + barely there wiggly sunny side-up egg whites, cherry tomatoes and sprinkles of KALE KRUNCH. Made complete with a whole october sun plum and a guilty indulgence of a crumble of vanilla almond macaroon.

Nearly a year's worth of hard work summarized into 36x40 inches. In less than 48 hours time.

Within the hour's wait for printing, I spawned an ingenuous idea to hop over to Kith cafe for dinner. Torned between the choice of pasta or sandwich, I choose the latter - Grilled eggplant sandwich with spinach, brie, white truffle oil on multigrain bread. While I enjoyed the sandwich at that moment, on hindsight I now think it was a seriously overpriced and underwhelming sandwich. giant steaks of eggplant had so much potential; unfortunately it was undergrilled and tough. One of my two slices of bread was beyond toasted and thus dry. They could be more generous with the spinach and tomato slices too, although they were generous with chunks of creamy brie. This is the reason why I seldom eat out. Maybe I should have stuck with the king prawn linguine and be less angsty about the less than worthy meal.

1 Fragments of thoughts

I want to experiment with sous vide - eggs, salmon, chicken breast.

I want to whip up a mean white wine seafood pasta (shrimp, scallops etc.).
[Yesterday's squid ink pasta with cod and tobiko in Chreese sauce was nothing short of awesome, but it's not counted, because after all, it's from a package.]

I want to have a laid-back brunch - ricotta pancakes at Skyvve, blueberry pancakes at Rider's cafe, Californian at Wild Honey.

I want to eat cake - strawberry shortcake from Flor.

I want to enjoy nature - Punggol Waterfront.

I want to do photostories - Nikon 7000.

I want to do everything but study for tomorrow's test, Thursday's Immunology, look at the Scratch program, continue writing my essay which I have not touched for 6 weeks or so, do lab report.

For breakfast, I had the last of my steel cutters baked (~1 tbsp), added protein powder and a ball of chocolate spread 3/4 way through, topped with Carman's oats and amaranth muesli. As always, leave the best to the last; scrape around the edges, moving inwards, so that eventually you'll end up with a dark semi-solid, semi-liquid orb of viscous matter - dark, rich bitter warm chocolate that sensuously coats your tongue as you imbibe.

Today I bought wholemeal ciabatta from Cedele and had a tuna 'wich, half with garlic piccanti and the other half with beetroot chutney. Somehow, both tasted similar - vineargy and oniony. Doesn't that defeat the purpose of garlic and beetroot?

I got back two major assignments today - Heritage essay and com sci tutorials. Both were done well, I say. But in return, I get slapped with two CAs this week.

Bye and off to study.

2 Shaken but sober

It's about time I do a proper post; I haven't written a decent one since I arrived two-and-a-half weeks ago.

Today was a harrowing day. It started off on the wrong foot: while opening the shelf to get breakfast, I knocked a container containing muesli over, and its contents came spilling out as it hit the table. It wouldn't have been so bad if it was just the table, but my camera case was just lying at the damned spot and thus was covered in muesli chalk. More cleaning up, I hate. I soothed my annoyed soul with my daily fix of creamy banana oats & peanut butter, then went for the departmental welcome at Strand, then to the welcome fair at Barbican Centre. I had no intention of signing up for any society whatsoever, but went there just to accompany Charlene, and hopefully get freebies (I ended up with a useful cloth tote bag, some post-its and a kilo worth of flyers).

All was well until the time I decided to leave the fair. I was directed to the exit ("go up turn left," instructed the security guard). I went up onto the second floor but only God knows why I did not turn left, but right instead. I followed a fire exit sign (the universal green man running) which led to a door. Pushing it opened, I was greeted by a vast, empty, dark stairwell. Another door stood at the opposite end. The dingy atmosphere and absence of people should have set alarm bells ringing in my head. Perhaps I was deaf; as I walked towards the second set of doors which I presumed was the real exit, the first set of doors slammed behind me. Horror of horrors: the second set of doors was firmly locked and when I returned to the first set  of doors, a sign above it read, "exit only, no re-entry" - or something along that line. I was locked up in the stairwell! I panicked a little, but not as much as the situation should have called for. I started rattling and banging the door as hard as I could, praying to God that someone would hear the banging above the din of music, chatter and white noise of the welcome fair. About 3 minutes passed. I continued banging on the doors. Now, I really begin to panic and thoughts of having to spend the night in the basement, and even dying in this basement with no one to find my body (how very dramatic) came to my mind. Just at this instant, a KCLSU student voice drifted over from the other side of the door, "hello, is someone there?" I nearly cried out in relief. Soon enough, the doors opened and she asked me how I got in there because apparently the alarm should set off when the fire escape doors were opened. I was pretty traumatized that I didn't bother explaining my situation and didn't thank her as much as I should; I just wanted to escape from that area into open air.

I had my packed lunch of tuna & spinach sandwich on a bench at Beech Gardens, just outside the Barbican Centre. I wolfed it down, unlike my usual "slow food" style, trauma still reigning over me. After I finally calmed down, I set off on my ?-mile-long walk to Dover Apts, with a planned stop at Borough Market along the way. (To save on transport, I have been walking to all walkable destinations, which is nearly everywhere.)

I shall cut the long story short and move on to the second traumatic incident of the day. I had just bought a twin pack of rainbow trout from Marks&Spencer and as I went into Tk Maxx just opposite the road, the store alarm started beeping. This shouldn't be much of a cause for alarm under usual circumstances. But this was not any normal circumstance; I almost stole a grapefruit from M&S for 65 pence but returned it to the shelve at the last minute. It was like God's warning to me, God's eyes on me. The security guard came over and opened up my shopping bag. I told him I just walked into the store, and came over from M&S. He took out my fish and removed the scanner bar tag. That was all. I was so shaken I couldn't shop properly (I was looking out for a sling bag).

Finally, I went back to Dover, feet sore from the walking. Pasta was on my mind for dinner. Since I had four rainbow trout fillets which would give 8 servings and they had the expiry date of 27 Sep, I thought I had better start using them now. As much as love fish, I haven't much experience cooking them. I removed one large fillet with the intention of slicing them into two, so that I could just cook one-half and save the other half for tomorrow. However, I then realized the trout still had the skin on on the other side and tried as I could, it was impossible to slice vertically through the skin, at least not with my small paring knife. I gave up and decided to steam the whole darn trout, despite the trout being larger than my mini travel-sized steamer (I compensated by curling the trout at the tail-end). The next problem was I didn't know how long to steam it for. 15 minutes? 20 minutes? I knew the end-point was when the fish starts to flake. Still, as a first-timer, it was hard to tell. The last problem was that even after 15 minutes of so, the trout flesh remained rather pink. I thought the flesh was supposed to turn white? Ok, maybe it's like salmon, with pink flesh, I reasoned. I let it steam a while more - better to have rubbery over-cooked fish then suffer from food poisoning from raw fish) - then served it with wholewheat Tesco fusili. I didn't do any seasonings, just pure steamed fish, and it was certainly one of the best meals so far. Sure, it was a little firm for my liking, but I daresay my rainbow trout turned out pretty well :).  The day ended off well after all the incidents.

0 Tuna mash-up toastie

Remember the black bean oat burgers I made almost two weeks ago? I had forgotten about the leftover black beans which had been languishing in the far corner of the fridge until I spotted the container today. Although canned beans last only 3 days in the fridge once opened, I didn't detect any fishy smell with the 2-week beans and decided to quickly use them. Don't look at me like that, haven't you had expired food before too?

Enter my tuna mash-up toastie. With black beans in the mix, it follows logically a classic southern style with avocado. Bell pepper and corn would be great too, but that would make a complete salad of its own already.



Tuna Mash-Up Toastie

Yield: 1 toastie

Ingredients

• 1 slice frozen Ezekiel bread, toasted


• 1/5 ripe avocado, cubed


• 3 tbsp canned tuna in olive oil


• 3 tbsp canned black beans, rinsed and drained


• 1 tbsp pumpkin & almond chutney (Pert's Pantry)


• Goats cheese, grated.

Directions

1. Toast bread.


2. Meanwhile, mash the remaining ingredients (except cheese) in a bowl.


3. When bread is done, spread evenly onto bread and topped with grated cheese.

It was a great sammich and I haven't had any stomach pains - yet!