ayonecan-cook

Today is sweet potato day. I've just made some sweet potato cinnamon rolls that are the moistest, softest, cushiony-est, sweet potatoe-iest buns I've ever made. This recipe is one that I concocted. There was a lot of vacillating between cake, buns or onde-onde.  But finally ...a decision. And more importantly ....action. And these rolls are here to stay. You just have to make them. Have to make them. Have to make them. I used Japanese Sweet Potatoes....the purple skinned kind. The smooth inside kind,   the yellow inside kind,  the non fibrous kind...yes I did. Things may turn out differently if you were to use a different kind ~  I know you know that ~ I'm just saying ~ :) The large proportion of grated sweet potatoes gave the buns so much flavour, moistness ans richness. I'm so soo pleased. It was a hit at home. You must try. I must declare too that those sweet potatoes were steamed, drained and sat in my fridge for the longest time. Like a week. Or more? I mus...

I craned my neck to look at the translucent sheet of rice paper rain that H had pointed out to me. It was pummeling the ground, before us, a few meters away. Within seconds I heard it drench our black Hyundai as we entered its realm. I ducked. It sounded like a Niagara. But I felt the eerie-ness of a clenched fist, at first knocking then spreading its fingers, softly, on top of my head. Have you ever felt that? Juxtapositions of weather never fail to fascinate me ....nature's abrupt seperateness of downpour and clearness existing within meters of each other...side by side, face to face, meeting up, merging, yet apart, clear on one side, grey on the other, dry over here and wet over there. How cool is that? That happened a few days ago. And it has nothing to do with these spring rolls. I just had to tell you. Because the past month has been a sort of tropical winter. Wet and gloomy most times yet smouldering in between. And my enthusiasm towards cooking or baking have shifted accord...

I'm not much of a drink person. I'm more of an eat person. So spoonfuls of Nestle's Everyday Milk Powder, cod liver oil, Wood's Peppermint Cough Syrup and Milo from the tin/bottle were weird combinations of snacks for my mid-afternoon-after-school indulgences before I resumed frolicking aka wrestling aka as punching matches with my brother or careering down the tarred, bumpy and sandy road on our nailed together four wheeled sled/plank. Those were the muted turquoise, mint and tangerine vintage-coloured years of my childhood. I want it back. NOW. Back to the future........comes Milo Dinosaur. I first heard of this concoction when N the man returned home from Singapore and gushed about it several years ago. I gave a glazed smile and the Milo dinosaur slipped into a small fissure of my brain. Then yesterday H and I found ourselves wandering into a food court like lost and aimless souls. I sashayed over to the drinks counter and my eyes fell upon the printed out price of ...

Here's a fictional bau story and a true recipe. A Bau Story ~ (or skip it) ~ It's hard to picture bau on a plate and Dad on a chair together, face to face. But curry was a different matter altogether. He had to have it everyday. Like water. Especially a fish curry. So if Mom asked (which she would do almost everyday) what she should cook with this or that, accompanied by a plagued and tired look on her face, Dad would simply answer "curry" without flinching, without looking, without thinking. You would think that that would be the end of Mom's problems. But no. That was her problem. Was that why she left him? We often wondered. Because right after she did she abandoned curry and went for bau. Bau this, bau that, it was bau, bau, bau.  Finally, exasperated, Janna asked her one day after school  "What's with the bau Mom? "  "This is the one thing your father hated. Bau. And I hated all that curry. Everyday. To cook, to eat, to cook, to eat. Why d...

I love Aglio Olio... I love colours and... I love Pinterest. Why didn't anyone tell me that Pinterest could be so addictive? To the point of ridiculousness. Yours truly now needs a neck brace. And a good spanking. Oh and I love presents. J had given me these from her travels to Italy and Spain recently. How sweet ~ as sweet as the presents.....rainbow coloured pasta and a delicious looking red pesto sauce in a cute little jar. The pasta colours were all natural :) I'll use the pesto sauce tomorrow but for today I was craving some Aglio Olio.....my favourite way to cook pasta...forever. A, my sis, had also given me an enchanting kitty dish cloth  she had bought in Perth ...and which I'll never use as a dish cloth of course. I never use presents in a way that will make them wear out. I like keeping them like little treasures for important 'little moments'...... unless they are to be eaten of course. N the girl had also given me a stack of beautiful Japanese plates a...

We went to the BIG BAD WOLF book sale ! N the man, N the woman and R the man At MAEPS in Serdang. .....We arrived. We queued. We hounded. We hunted. These were what I snared. Thirty eight books with a total damage of RM415. NICE! Ten of them were hard cover cookbooks, nineteen were novels and the rest were what-nots. :PPP All books were at 75-95 per cent discounts. Al novels were a mere 8 ringgit each, hardcovers were 20-25 ringgit each and the rest were pure cheap as well.  N the man snared a stack, N the woman snared a stack and R the man snared a stack. But I snared the mostest . Need I say more? Don't be too jealous. I'm going a-huntin' again. Bulls eye! YUM!.... Look at those cookbooks :))) WOO HOO ! I snared the mostest. :)

I used to spy these gems at Chinese grocery shops. They were sold amoung many other kinds of biscuits which were stored and displayed in gigantic glass jars with push-down galvanized caps, usually placed strategically at the open end of the shop and were sold by the catty.  Apart form Iced Gems we also had our local 'Oreos', our local Chocolate Bourbons, our local custard creams and our local Jammie Dodgers.....all being delicious legacies left behind by our then colonial masters.  KGB (not the Russian kind) manufactures these biscuits locally today, packs them in large square tins and places them on supermarket shelves. The only thing that's missing in them are Iced Gems and loads of flavour.  So this post was inspired by what I saw at Molliemakes . I now vehemently and officially declare Molliemakes as my number one craft magazine. Trust me ~ However, it wasn't as simple as getting the weighing scale out and dusting off the flour.  I found a (only) recipe for it fr...