Cooking Diary: Vegetarian Dishes

My first go at this. The idea was to make three vegetarian dishes with different flavours and textures. It ended up ok, but the flavour balance could be better...

Cooking Diary: Sweet and Sour Fish

I tried making my own version of the sweet and sour a few weeks ago, which didn't turn out well. This time I followed a recipe and changed it (as I like to) and it came out really yummy!

When the impossible becomes possible...

Two things happened tonight.

(1) I unlocked my door with my house key, took off my shoes, walked up to my room, and my key was gone. I've just spent a good fifteen minutes looking for it and no luck yet....

[Spoiler below]

(2) I watched ice sink. In the sea. With so much momentum that it crushed metal whilst sinking.

Now I'm generally pretty good at suspending disbelief when watching films. You want me to believe that in a few years we'll have this amazing technology that'll allow us to do all this amazing stuff, fine. But sinking ice went a bit too far.

Having said that, G.I. Joe was a pretty damn good action flick. It has all the good hallmarks of a great action movie: gunfire, explosions, missiles, fighter jets, martial arts, futuristic technology, a car chase, stolen warheads, great ideas that just mysteriously find their way into people's heads at the perfect time, an ugly evil mad scientist, a foxy villainess, and a ridiculously hot male lead.

Ok so it was clichéd, with an unoriginal plot and nonexistent subplots, cheesy script-writing that made me flinch (including the mandatory love story brutally inserted where it didn't belong), and the aforementioned sinking ice kinda killed the last twenty minutes of the movie for me whilst I was inwardly rofl-ing. But hey, I'm almost 26 now and I've seen my fair share of action movies in my time; and there's only so many ways you can make gunfire and explosions entertaining. I can forgive an action film for giving up some artistic qualities for more bangs and booms.

Let's be honest here, we go to see action flicks for the visual effects, and this movie certainly has enough of those to make it worthwhile seeing on the big screen. My recommendation? See it if you're in the mood for mindless destruction.

Edit: I see people argue that there was metal in the ice which made it sink. All fine and well, except that the ice exploded into a thousand pieces not all of which had metal in it. They all readily sank to the bottom.

Ideally multicultural

Multiculturalism. Embracing different cultures, a melting-pot of peoples from varied backgrounds living together in harmony, sharing traditions and identities. It's great, isn't it?

Well I'm not so sure.

In my perfect world, we would all be respectful of our fellow humans, irrespective of whatever social groupings they may belong to; irrespective of their ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, spirituality. The underlying belief would be social liberalism and upon that foundation we are free to be whoever we wish to be. Multiculturalism is inherent and ubiquitous in this ideal society, and because it is so commonplace, it would not exist as the political concept it currently is.

The very fact that our government feels the need to promote multiculturalism highlights a weakness in the fabric of our society. It seems to me that this word was invented because we are afraid that, should without it, we would find ourselves assimilating with popular culture. That we would degenerate into monoculturalism, the monoculturalism which breeds intolerance and grows into discrimination.

And let's be honest, there's a basis to this belief. The story from New Zealand that I posted last week highlights the reluctance of society to accept new cultures or practices.

Even I baulked at the thought of cooking and eating dog, and here I am sitting at my computer pretending that I'm open-minded!

Truth is, our perceptions are shaped by the dominant culture with which we spend our childhood and formative years. It is then that we learn what is "socially acceptable" or otherwise, and often we carry these restrictive etiquettes with us as we grow older.

I believe that as a society, we will never break free of these moulds if we continue to educate our children to follow the same social norms. Surely the better alternative should be to teach them to embrace and respect alternative cultures? Perhaps then they would be able to teach that to their children, and multiculturalism as a policy would no longer be necessary.

Cooking Diary: Prawn Wontons and Steamed Fish Fillets

Wow... my blog's turned into just a cooking diary! Will promise to return to posting more relevant stuff soon!

Cooking Diary: Seafood Paella

Here's my second attempt at a paella.



It wasn't too bad actually!

Cooking Diary: Tong Yuen

I'm gonna start taking some pictures of my food! Today I tried making tong yuen (glutinous rice balls in sweet soup) - it was alright but making them into nice round balls that don't burst is actually quite tough. Could definitely be improved! Nevertheless, here's a pic :)