sporadic ramblings

Everyone supposedly has a favourite roast chicken recipe. I gotta admit - I don't. I like to experiment with different things. This time it was Satay roast chicken, stuffed with rice and vegetables. Bar the fact that it needed more salt and sugar, it turned out rather nice.



I marinated the chicken in a variety of different spices - cumin, lemongrass, coriander, fennel, sugar, and salt.


Ohh, and what's this?



Looks like toothpicks had trouble staying in place. Hee hee.

Now for the "stuffing". I've never been a fan of conventional stuffing. I don't know what it is - the mushiness? Maybe the breadcrumbs. I don't like breadcrumbs. Anyway here's a little twist on stuffing - rice! The rice needs to be cooked beforehand, then I sliced up some mushrooms, onions, cherry tomatoes, and mixed it all in a bowl before stuffing the chicken.



Oh boy, I'm starting to REALLY love cooking.
Edit: Credits to Darren the evo man for "inspiration", so he says. Should I make this blink? ;)

I made cupcakes today! I've had a sudden urge to make cupcakes for a week now and I've finally done it. I made Devil's food chocolate cupcakes with a chocolate buttercream frosting, and little sugar flowers perched on top. Aren't they pretty?



Honestly though, they didn't turn out as I expected. Firstly, I think I burnt the cupcakes a bit (what would we all do without frosting to cover up boo-boos like that? hehe). Then, after going through all the trouble of driving out to Vic Park and getting piping bags and tips, my piping turned out to be a disaster, so I gave up, and smeared the frosting on top as you normally would.

I was planning to bring some into work on Monday, but seeing as the QA failed, it's just not acceptable and I'm not going to. Julia isn't going to be pleased. Hehe. Here's one for you Julia, I can assure you it looks better than it tastes!



I had envisioned it to look a little bit more like these delectable looking ones.

I made the BEST warm chicken salad for dinner this evening. The dressing I made consisted of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, seeded mustard, sugar, and japanese mayonnaise. I kept some of the dressing for drizzling over the greens, and tossed the chicken pieces in the remaining portion, added some cracked pepper, a secret spice mixture and a touch of love before pan frying it. I bought some really beautiful baby cos lettuce, cut up some red onion, a little bit of celery, sliced some hard boiled eggs, put the warm chicken pieces over my greens and added some bacon to top it all off. It all turned out so so nice, but I didn't measure anything so I will probably have trouble making it taste the same. Oh well.

Happy dinners make a happy spk. :)

Taa-daa!!

I received a letter via snail mail this evening, amongst my pile of bills. It was from a pal from primary school. I squealed like a child at Christmas, as if I had received the best present on earth. What has e-mail done to the human race?

Nothing beats hand-written snail mail from someone you haven't seen in years and you feel as though there's a whole century worth of stuff you want to find out about them. Life, love, work, play. Especially when they send photos. There is this unexplainable sense of appreciation when someone takes time out of their busy schedule to write you a letter in the middle of the night.
It's just a pity no one writes letters by hand anymore. But I'm just about to write one now. Sit tight Janet, and thanks muchly! :)

I didn't make it to work today. We had a rather interesting event that was happening at home I just couldn't miss. We got burgled! Yes, burgled!

Here's the story...

I was getting ready to go to work in the morning, when I realised that one of the drawers in my room was opened. It was strange coz I never open that drawer. I didn't think much of it and continued to get dressed. As I was going downstairs, I noticed that ALL the drawers downstairs were open. Then I got scared, woke everyone up and we all went downstairs to check it out.

They didn't take much...just some cash in a little pouch.
They also took my laptop bag and ditched it in the park across my house when they realised my laptop wasn't in it. I had taken my laptop in to the Sony centre to get fixed the weekend prior. That was lucky.

They might have taken our bunch of house keys and garage/gate controls as well, so we had to get all our locks changed, as well as garage/gate control frequencies changed.

I rang the police before 8am, but they only arrived at 12:30pm,and got some finger printing done with the powder and the brushes. It was interesting to watch. We have a proper alarm system that's fully monitored as well, but we normally only normally turn it on when we leave the house. We were all sleeping when it happened, but now that this has happened, we'll be arming downstairs + perimeter doors/windows when we're sleeping, or even when nobody's downstairs. It's funny what it takes to make you aware - we're on the verge of paranoia at the moment.

It was such a hassle of a day.