Photowalk: Carpenter Street

Yesterday I went photowalking with a friend (who has a new DSLR!), and Carpenter Street was our subject. It was a pretty short photowalk, about an hour plus, and when I got home, there were approximately 200 plus photos, but I felt only 20 were really upload-worthy, and here they are:

And of course, food is so much a part of our culture, that it also becomes part of the routine. Dinner was at Gourmet Sausage, which is located at Brighton Square. The first is a picture of the eponymous dish, 'Gourmet Sausage', and the second is their 'Ultimate Burger'.

And that's it for this blogpost. This one was pretty photo-heavy, so I'm keeping the words short this time around. Cheers, people!

Transit of Venus: epic fail!

Last Saturday (6th June), the transit of Venus took place. What is the transit of Venus, you ask? For those of you who are too lazy to Google, here, I've taken a little excerpt from Wikipedia for your reading pleasure:

"A transit of Venus takes place when the planet Venus passes directly between the Sun and Earth (or another planet), becoming visible against (and hence obscuring a small portion of) the solar disk. During a transit, Venus can be seen from Earth as a small black disk moving across the face of the Sun. (...) Transits of Venus are amongst the rarest of predictable astronomical phenomena. They occur in a pattern that generally repeats every 243 years, with pairs of transits eight years apart separated by long gaps of 121.5 years and 105.5 years. (...) The last transit of Venus was on 5 and 6 June 2012, and was the last Venus transit of the 21st century; the prior transit took place on 8 June 2004. (...) The next transits of Venus will be December 10-11, 2117, and in December 2125." (adapted from this Wikipedia article)

So there you have it. Apparently a very historical moment for all of us. And I tried to capture the event with my camera. Which of course, resulted in an epic fail, as I am not in possession of special lenses for capturing once-in-a-lifetime events up high in the sky. Here are the 'epic fail' pictures of the transit of Venus:

Just a globe of out-of-focus light in the sky, you say? Precisely. Epic Fail.

On the bright side (pun intended), there are plenty of lovely images (successful ones at that) available on the world wide web, for your leisurely viewing pleasure. But what's the fun in that?

Cheers people, and here's to more epic fails!

Upwards Part 1

Somewhere last year, around the month of May (I think), I accidentally drowned my trusty mobile sidekick (long story). I was quite heartbroken because I had grown really attached to that little lump of metal, and we'd gone through quite a few major life events together. You can read the blogpost I'd written all the way back in July 2008 when I first got it here. Anyway, I decided to replace my trusty mobile sidekick with a new, more high tech one. My new sidekick's a Galaxy SII, and I got it last July, back when it was the newest, fastest, most awe-inducing gadget on the market. I've been very happy with it so far, almost proud at times, and it's very rarely not within an easy arm's reach.

One of the biggest perks of having a smartphone is its photo-taking abilities, and the photography apps that come with it. I have a few pet subjects I like taking pictures of, such as food (I take a lot of food pictures), my fingernails (I've been painting them a different shade each week, but sometimes I change shades fortnightly if I really like the current shade), nature stuff like flowers and textures and stuff like that. There's also the random shots that might make me crack up but have everyone else scratching their heads and looking around for an explanation. But one of my faves is taking pictures of the sky. Not necessarily the sky, but it's a series of shots I describe as "upwards". I think we spend so much time being consumed by what's around us, that sometimes we just forget to look up. (I like looking down at the ground too, but for purposes of this blogpost we'll just focus on looking up.)

Here are some of my fave shots, which I've previously uploaded on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Figured I've got enough to start collecting them in a series. So this is "Upwards Part 1":

I'm a little bit frustrated with the color representation; these pictures look so much better on my mobile, but I'm guessing it's because of the Galaxy SII's Super AMOLED Plus display, which makes everything look heaps more pretty. They're still quite pretty here, but I feel they could be sharper and more brilliant, but oh well, that's what my Pentax is for.

More pictures to come in the future! We've only just begun, my trusty mobile sidekick and I! Cheers, y'all!

Mushi pan!

I first learnt about mushi pan and what it was about a month or two ago, and I was immediately intrigued. I think it started out with the urge to bake simple muffins, but all of them required baking, which would be inconvenient, so I was looking for a cake that could be steamed rather than baked. I did my research by visiting several blogs and some cooking websites, and took note of the main ingredients (the 'common' ones that would appear in each recipe).

Mushi pan is a Japanese steamed cake and draws comparisons to steamed puddings, and is typically eaten as a snack (and is really popular with children). I was pretty grossed out at the thought of pudding, because I don't like the texture of soggy bread, but I thought it sounded too good to pass up, and this evening I finally decided to give it a go. All went well until I realized I couldn't locate the baking powder in the kitchen, and I left the bowl of dry ingredients in my bedroom (don't ask) and went out for dinner. I managed to grab a small container of baking powder from the supermarket, and eagerly anticipated the amazing cakes and cookies and yummy food stuff I would be able to whip up with the magic of baking powder.

Until I got home and discovered cockroaches and insects in my bowl of dry ingredients which I had stupidly left uncovered in my bedroom. I threw the ingredients away (don't worry, I don't use tainted ingredients!), but was enough of a klutz to drop them all over my bathroom floor.

All distractions aside, I finally got around to whipping up a new batch of mushi pan batter. It's really very simple, just a matter of assembling everything you need into one bowl (or two, as some of the other blogs instructed, but I'm lazy and cleaning up's a mess with the water problem we've been facing for almost 2 months now). I didn't measure the ingredients, and I just added however much sugar or flour or milk or cocoa powder I thought I needed. And an egg. And about a teaspoon plus of baking powder. And some splashes of water, because the original batter ended up quite thick and gritty. I added enough water to make the consistency of the batter smoother, more silky, slightly thicker than pancake mix. Then spooned the batter until it filled about three quarters of the mould (grease it with some oil or margarine or butter if you want an easier removal of the mushi pan from the mould when it's cooked).

I had a pot filled with water on the boil while I was mixing the batter and scooping it into the mould. When the bubbles are rolling furiously, I put the mould into the pot (on top of a little bowl so it wouldn't overturn in the water, just in case and all), covered it, and turned the fire down to small. Left the mushi pan steaming away for 15 minutes like the other blogs recommended, feeling rather nervous the entire time because I didn't know if my mushi pan would 'work'. At first it looked like it wouldn't set, the batter was that thin. But it did! And it didn't really need 15 minutes because the mould I used was really small and shallow. The second batch I put in to steam (same batter, but small mould and I ended up with more batter so had to try to finish most of it up) was pretty much ready in about 5 minutes, but then again, that's because of the size and depth of the mould I was using, so a bigger/deeper mould or ramekin would logically require more steaming time. The second batch kinda poofed up a bit, whereas the first batch remained quite flat and actually split a bit. I'm not sure if it's because of the difference in steaming time or amount of heat (kinda forgot to lower the heat with the second batch). I stuck a wooden skewer into the mushi pan to make sure they were thoroughly cooked; they came out clean, so now I know all I need is 5 minutes if I'm using the same mould.

I was so chuffed when I took them out of the mould. They were so smooth, brown and beautiful! Look at them! Wouldn't you be happy, too? They tasted great too; not too sweet (next time I'll try using condensed milk like some of the other blogs/websites suggested), and the cocoa powder (I used Milo) gave it a nice richness. The texture was beautiful, too. I was rather worried because the mushi pan looked like soggy bread (which I run away from) when I first took them out of the mould, but it was probably brought about by the condensation of the steam, and inside it was dry and fluffy and like eating a light sponge cake!

I've got some matcha and I'm thinking of whipping up matcha mushi pan the next time I try this. I think it'll be really good, and I'll try sprinkling some matcha over the top of the mushi pan when they're done (I sprinkled some Milo powder over the top of the mushi pan this time). This is definitely something that's staying in my culinary repertoire as they're really really very simple to make, and they would make a good last-minute oh-no-friends-have-dropped-by-and-we-have-nothing-to-eat snack, or even as presents, especially if you wrap them up all pretty and cute.

And besides, everybody likes cake.

Give it a go, people, and cheers!