Nights in Seoul

I’ll pass on the Korean dramas and Kpop and while I can see the effects of the Korean glass-skin routine, at the end of a long day at work, it still feels like I moisturised with beef drippings.

But Korean food - yes, give me the food.

This is our third in as many months, and there are three staple proteins you can rely on - fried chicken, boiled/steamed pork belly and beef. The fried chicken is common enough and at this point, I wouldn’t order it if I was eating by myself. I don’t like the sauces and glazes which always tend to be on the sweet side; a reminder of the 1st time I had fried chicken and waffles and thought of it as an abomination.

But fried chicken and fries - shoe-string and slightly sweetish - is your filler before tackling the pork and the beef. Their pork belly is served cold which I know turns some people off, but the fat is firm and gelatinous-like with a dab of seasoning on top. You eat it like you would with Peking duck, tucked inside a lettuce leaf, or a cabbage and even shiso.

But the main star was the beef - Galbi Jjim - beef short rib (with a bone so long, it could’ve been a forearm), two bones arranged on the plate with the meat cut in precise pieces. You sort of wonder how they’d prepared it, braised long enough that it’s fork tender, but still firm enough to be cut the way they did.

Seoul Night
Fort St, Auckland Central

Meat

I was late to the party, so now I’m currently catching up with the NBC show Hannibal which you can watch on ‘Netflix’. Never really bothered to watch it until now partly because just by looking at Mads Mikkelsen, I didn’t think the role suited him. But it actually does because if you put aside the Silence of the Lambs film and Anthony Hopkins, it’s a totally different uhm, monster. Haven’t read the book so I’m not sure what age Dr. Lecter is, but having him in a much younger body presents a different physicality, perspective and taste.

Whereas I’m sure Hopkin’s Hannibal would be satisfied with proper China, heirloom cutlery and conservative French cooking techniques, Mikkelsen’s is something you might have at a purposely hushed Michelin starred New York restaurant. It’s the theatrics that can sometimes be off-putting in this show which extends to murders so stylised that you begin to suspect, the show’s set stylist probably also does the food.

And the food! The parade of meat- prepped, cooked, styled and given as much airtime as the murders themselves (the victims after all, have a very close connection with the meat) - has given me a craving.

Don’t normally eat a lot of beef but when we ordered our meats when the 2nd lockdown started, I thought what the hell, let’s get 2 kilos of prime eye fillet (which is also known as beef tenderloin and filet mignon).

Two kilos is actually a whole lot of meat- was able to divide it into three generous portions/meals. I’ve been craving Bistek Tagalog & Beef Salpicao so I decided to do both.

Used two heads of garlic and nearly 40 grams of butter. Fried the beef in three batches- didn't even need to cook them that long. I added two large white onions and dried shiitake mushrooms which I didn't mix in with the beef. Cut up a large potato into medallions and deep fried them- this is what dad did when he made his Bistek Tagalog, though at the last minute, I changed my mind about adding lemon juice because the thing is, it’s never really the same as calamansi.

My only complaint and reminder? Use high-end butter, preferably French. You’d want to taste that creamy, buttery note that melds with the Kikkoman..oh well, there’s two more portions to go.

It's that kind of day

Obsessed with furikake

From a Google search:

What is furikake? Furikake, or furikake seasoning, refers to a range of dried, normally mixed seasonings made especially for sprinkling on top of rice. As a unique type of Japanese seasoning furikake comes in a wide range of flavours, including wasabi furikake (with dried wasabi as a main ingredient), nori komi furikake (containing tiny pieces of seasoned nori seaweed), shiso furikake (made from seasoned, dried, and crushed red perilla leaves), and salmon furikake (with dried salmon crumbs). Furikake may also contain dried omelette pieces, roasted sesame seeds, bonito fish flakes, and even matcha green tea on occasion.

I’m going to be sprinkling Furikake on everything now:
1. Furikake chicken wings
2. Furikake popcorn
3. Furikake crumbed salmon
4. Furikake dumplings (you stuff the dumplings with them along with prawn)
5. Furikake potato chips

Charred with a hint of soy

We had Saturday dinner at Daisy Chang in Howick. Small menu, the usual South-Asian suspects and from the photos it was hard to tell how big the portions were, because certainly, wasn’t $10 for four dumplings too much? At the night markets you could get 15 for $5.

But I like looking (discretely) around the moment I enter a restaurant, and I happened to see two baos being brought out of the kitchen and even at 15 feet I could see that they were huge. From that, we were able to make a determination that two items would be sufficient. We all ordered fried chicken (I wanted squid but they’d run out) and baos (I picked pork belly). For sides, we had the charred cauliflower stems and fries.

Charring is another big trend and there is something about it that lends vegetables, a perfect foil to their freshness especially when the only seasoning is salt and paper and a modest dressing of hoisin. I would happily be charring all my vegetables except that cauliflower stems or even broccolini are rarely available in the supermarkets. You either hunted them down at Farmer’s markets or grow your own.

I remembered that I still had the Chines broccoli that Berta gathered from the week back as well as half a kilo of pork belly leftover from the week’s previous dinner so I whipped up a dish that could happily be included in Daisy Chang’s menu. The Chinese broccoli were a bit limp now, but they still had crunch, and a bit of peppery bite reminiscent of arugula. To lighten the hint bitterness, a splosh of lemon juice before serving.

Since they were just a handful, I got savoy cabbage which I haven’t had a chance to cook until now, in about 50 grams of butter and sea salt and they’re now my favourite cabbage.

Food jag

See how stupid the English language is? If a crying jag means a period of uncontrolled crying or coughing, then you’d think that a food or eating jag would mean a period of uncontrolled eating right? Apparently not. A food jag means the practice of eating just one food over time. For instance, a child may only want to eat boiled potatoes for every meal. Okay.

Using it anyway for what I think it means.

Maybe its the relentless work load, or the exhaustion of waiting and catching for the bus, but everyone knows that sometimes, the easiest palliative is food. Eat whatever you want. Comfort yourself.

Thursday
It started with Spam, fried eggs and rice for Thursday dinner. Fried the Spam pieces the way my nephew Matt likes them- crispy , and it works, making the saltiness stand out.

Friday
We went to the Auckland Night Markets for the 1st time since the lockdown. I had my usual Korean two-meat dish with glass-noodles but it wasn’t on par with how they used to make it, perhaps because the cook sans her usual two helpers, was also fielding orders and serving them instead of focusing on the dishes. Then we stumbled onto an American couple selling traditional American desserts- pumpkin and pecan pie by the slice, giant, red-velvet whoopie pies and a chocolate cake aptly named blacked-out cake.

I got a slice of pecan pie and a whoopie pie to go.

Saturday
We were supposed to do roast chicken with plain rice and steamed broccoli for Saturday dinner but ended up at the bakery in Manurewa run by the most affable Vietnamese people you’ll ever meet who also happen to have a perchance of making fresh fries every time you order. The fried chicken- a Tasty Chicken franchise- was also just coming out of the fryer so we had that too and make it two thigh pieces please!

Sated at 3pm, we decided that having roast-chicken for dinner was too much so that was cancelled (the chicken was later cut-up and made into adobo).

But it’s always weird to skip dinner so at 9pm, we decided to pick up a large, $10 thin-crust New York style pizza from Pizza Hut and who was I NOT to order a side of 8 chicken wings?

Sunday
And on Sunday was our third year attendance of the fabled Nicoll’s Rib Dinner- eat all you can ribs and sides (I just stick to the meat of course), in a gorgeous early 20th century restored boarding-house and hosted by the most interesting person you’ll ever meet, B, who also asked me to make dessert for next year’s dinner.

Burp.

Weekend eats (wings and brownies)

Nothing is more satisfying in cooking than implementing a tweak and to see it work, and following a recipe to have it turn out exactly as the recipe intended it to be.

Pizza-Hut styled spicy chicken wings
Chicken wings are my go to every weekend and I’ve done them hundreds of ways in every flavour imaginable, but my standard (or preference) is still the way fast-food establishments- specifically Pizza Hut- does them, which is wings that obviously have a starchy coating, but cooked in a steamed environment that melds that coating with the chicken skin and meat. And to savour that melded sumptuousness, you need to clamp on the wing on one end with your teeth, and pull it out on the other- a clean stripping that leaves you with clean bones you can stack nicely on your plate.

I remembered that I had done this before- coating my wings with flour- but did not do the steaming part; so this time, after dredging the wings in a plain flour and cornstarch mixture, stacking them on an oven tray, I covered and sealed the whole thing in foil. Into the oven it went at 180 degrees for about 40 minutes. Took them out, removed the excess liquid some of which I mixed with the buffalo sauce (butter and sriracha), coated them in the sauce and put them back in.

Now, this would’ve been a near-perfect turn-out save for one tiny thing- I should’ve covered the wings wth the foil and steam-baked it about 20 minutes more (after which you can take off the foil and change the oven setting to grill).

But it was damn near perfect so not complaining.

Butterscotch brownies
I’m always shocked at the amount of sugar that goes into baking cakes, pastries and desserts. But when I cut the amount down, I’m disappointed at the taste; I can immediately tell it’s really not the same.

So this time, following this recipe by Melissa Clarke, I decided to be faithful to the ingredient amounts to achieve what Melissa describes as brownies as sweet as candy and almost (with) enough dark brown sugar to make your teeth ache. But not quite.

RECIPE HERE.

Brownies are probably one of the 1st things I’ve ever attempted cooking as a child and I can remember the results of those attempts which clearly showed that the outcome always depends on your ingredients- we never really had quality flour back then and as for the butter, it was such a luxury that we made ours last. To use 225 grams in one go back then would’ve meant a walloping from my mother.

But in this recipe, it’s all in-two sticks of butter, chocolate, organic pecans and 2 1/4 cups of brown sugar, packed in.

The result is exactly what Melissa described; chewy, candy-like with more of that molasses kind of sweetness, and decadently oily from all that butter.

(photos taken by the Lumix G9, with a Lumix G 25mm F1.7 lens)

Be extra

Added compound dark chocolate and pecans

More extras

Four tablespoons of chocolate Baileys mixed with espresso

Use a bigger pan

This was a 9x7 inch baking pan and clearly not big enough

Candy-like

Sunday eats

I like oatmeal cookies and I like raisins = oatmeal raisin cookies.

This recipe is from here; and I was wanting chewy which is why when I find myself on Queen Street in Auckland’s CBD, I always buy a couple of Mrs. Higgins Rum Raisin cookies which sadly, they don’t seem to make anymore (I also love Rum Raisin ice cream).

But portioning the dough is tricky as I don’t have enough cookie-making experience to know what constitutes a ‘tablespoon of dough’ which doesn’t make sense when dough is neither a liquid nor a powder. And portion is crucial to this recipe especially when you need to refrigerate the dough for a bit so that it doesn’t flatten out really quickly in the oven; and that it bakes for only 12-15 minutes at 170, leaving a centre that’s supposed to be the chewy part. But I had to do what I had to do and the dry stickiness of the dough actually made it easier to form uniform shaped balls.

The dough did bake within the prescribed 12-15 minute period but I extended it a bit to like 20. I also switched the two trays because even if the partition was exactly in the middle, the lower tray cooked faster.

Was it what I expected? Not really. I could taste what seemed like baking soda (even if I had used only a teaspoon). The centre was chewy yes, but not as gooey rich as I hoped.

I may do this again, but will find another recipe.

(photos taken by the Lumix G9, with a Lumix G 25mm F1.7 lens)

What's your beef?

I should have asked my aunt (Amelita) about this but asking someone where they got their beef is not a question that pops up in your head everyday, so….Anyhow, when I studied at the UP, I stayed at my aunt’s house in the weekends and the meals she made, same as my dad’s, were amazing- restaurant quality.

One day, she made what I remember to be beefsteak Tagalog- beef strips cooked in garlic and soy-sauce with a tangy tinge of sourness from kalamansi.

But this beef was different- it came from Australia, brought to the house by my aunt's former household help who married an Australian. It was tender, not from cooking, but from the quality of the beef itself. And it was buttery but not in a way that was cloyingly rich.

I don’t think we’ve ever had that beef dish ever again and to this day, I still keep looking for it. I’ve been to Australia of course and had steak from the usual best places in Sydney and Melbourne, but nope- not the same. New Zealand boasts some of the best beef in the world as well, but nope- haven’t found anything that came close and I’ve tried every cut and every specialist type from angus to wagyu (though not anything above a marble score of 5 of course).

I’ve suspected that maybe, the secret was the way that it was cooked- that I probably haven’t mastered the best way to cook beef, or worse, I’ve been cooking my beef wrong- it’s possible.

Anyhow, the beef cut above is a boneless rib roast or something and it’s just from the supermarket. It looks small-ish in the photo but it’s about 1.5kilos which is good enough for two meals. Like I said, having had more than my usual allotment of beef during the lockdown contributed to my higher cholesterol reading so I shouldn’t really be having it, but I’m lessening my portions.

It’s a tough cut so one portion would go into a usual beef stew and the other portion might be a slow-cooker pulled beef one for a tortilla night.

Monday

Back to oatmeal
Got my blood-test results and my cholesterol is a bit elevated- which I knew- but not as high as I thought it would be without medication, which I had stopped as a test.

And the culprit? Food of course- it always is. During the lockdown in an effort to have variety, we’ve had more red meat than we’ve ever had in a long time. And chips- like potato chips- a bagful nearly every week for over a month.

So it’s back to medication (statins) and perhaps, way less of the meat. Like everyone else, I had my oatmeal-in-the-morning run before it was put aside with ever shifting diets and preferences which currently, has me eating nothing until lunch.

The question is, does it work? The answer- I don’t really know. I exercise regularly; I take heaps of supplements and I still don’t know. This is why I rely on regular blood-tests and doctors; the blood-work is a more accurate and definitive picture of the state of your body.

On one hand, I get terribly hungry now before 10am and I don’t think I would’ve lasted until noon without eating something, so oatmeal it is instead of a biscuit.

Arroz Caldo
Rain this whole week is projected which started yesterday, but it looks like it won’t hardly make a difference to the drought situation; the ‘rain’ is a fine mist, like a watery veil that damply caresses your face. But rain always means some humidity and less of the biting fall coldness (winter doesn't officially start until the last week of June apparently) so it’s good.

Made arroz caldo from two large breast chicken pieces and a small cupful of the Jasmine rice we just bought. We don’t have patis- patis and kalamansi juice make an arroz caldo- so I chopped up anchovy fillets instead. What I got was a delicious creamy umaminess that’s more of a risotto if that makes sense. A dash of sesame oil and half of a lemon for a springy sourness made it perfect.

Max fail

How difficult is it to make fried chicken right? But trying this very popular recipe made me remember that I’ve never been really successful at making bone-in fried chicken. I’ve made tons of chicken karage, Korean inspired chicken-wings and chicken-wings/nibbles of every conceivable flavour, but have yet to achieve no-nonsense, really good bone-in fried chicken. I’ve followed the steps to the letter and it’s still pollo no bueno…

On one hand, maybe I don’t need to- I’m perfectly happy with KFC chicken and I’ll just stick to that.

Marinate overnight

Boil in some aromatics

Season again & put in the fridge

Deep fried it but...

Not what I was hoping for

I had to put it in the oven to cook further

One good thing though in making a side dish that should go with the chicken is discovering a fast and tasty way to cook kale. In everyday Philippine cooking, there seems to be just two ways to cook vegetables- boiling them (or adding them to stock) or ‘gisa’ (sautee) with tomatoes, garlic and onions and I picked the latter. Kale is tough and fast cooking actually translates to about 30 to 40 minutes of simmering the leaves in a broth until it softens to the texture of wilted spinach. I’ve done laing with silverbeet/chard twice now and I might do the next one with kale.

When you eat once a day...

..you obviously look forward to dinner.. and I do. I even plan 5 days ahead, having already absorbed what everyone’s like and dislikes are- no yolky dishes; chicken should be boneless (which I now prefer after nearly choking on a small bone); carbs are limited to potatoes and rice; fried stuff only once every fortnight; frozen vegetables cooked in butter.

There aren’t enough fresh vegetables though which I can count with two hands- carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, silverbeet, cabbage, tomatoes, cucumber, lettuce- and none of which are as interesting as splendidly bitter ampalaya or the weed-like papait; the perfect foil to beef and pork; fresh malunggay leaves to go with your free-range chicken; steamed okra for grilled bangus; camote and kangkong for pork-ribs sinigang; or spider beans cooked with tausi beans, tofu and asado pork-belly.

Ayyyyy…anyways, here’s what I plan to make in the next couple of days

Chicken Max's style

There’s a version of this at the Capitol Building eatery in Lingayen and I nearly had it every-day. Using the leg and thigh- the best part because you have equal parts fat and red meat- it’s aggressively seasoned and fried in a style that crisps the skin as well as partly though the meat.

Nutella Banana Bread

Everybody’s making banana bread so why not? Recipe from the NYTimes.

Cinnamon Rolls

My sister Doyet has perfected this, now it’s my turn to try it out. Recipe from the NYTimes.

Mason jar ice cream

That’s right, no fancy ice-cream makers required. Recipe from the NYTimes.

Basic shortbread

It’s basic alright- didn't realise how basic it was until I looked up the recipe. In some British cookbook published in the early 20th century, classic shortbread contains just three ingredients, flour ("dried and sieved"), butter ("squeezed free of all water") and sugar ("fine caster").

I got the recipe from the NYTimes Food of course and this is the recipe by Melissa Clark:

240 grams all-purpose flour (2 cups)
36 grams rice flour (1/4 cup)
62 grams sugar (1/4 cup), more as needed
2 grams fine sea salt (1/2 teaspoon)
16 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 cup), melted and cooled

• Heat oven to 350 degrees. Line an 8-inch square pan with parchment paper.

• In a bowl, whisk together the flours, sugar and salt. Stir in the butter. Press dough evenly into the bottom of the prepared pan. Bake until golden brown, 40 to 45 minutes. Sprinkle evenly with sugar while warm and slice; cool completely.

As most basic recipes, there are a million variations but I stuck to this one and It turned out to be what I expected it to be.

Baking notes:
1. Is there a way to ‘properly’ melt butter? I melted mine in the microwave but I felt that it ‘cooked’ it- does that affect the final product? It wasn’t as buttery as Melissa promised it was going to be.
2. Don’t over-bake it- stick to the allotted 30-40 minutes. I was looking for that golden surface, but look at the edges. If they’ve browned, alas, it has been over-cooked.
3. The right-sized pan makes the difference in how it cooks (obviously the cooking area). Could you believe I’ve only just now started to actually measure my pans??? I plan to go to the stores to buy pans and make sure I check the sizes first.

Today: Blah

You get those days when you just can’t be bothered. Thank God it’s a Friday- a short day- and I felt that I was on a hot seat, unable to be on it for more than 30 minutes at a time between more Zoom meetings, phone-calls, emails.

I tell myself, walking outside the deck to catch some sun, or going upstairs to bother Sam, contemplating on getting another espresso, or scooping some Indian Aloo Bhujia with my fingers out of the snack jar that 2pm was just within reach. Thank God I hadn’t opted out of my 37.5 for 40. There are some things that extra money can’t buy like a few hours of peace.

When 2pm came, I went straight to bed feeling I could use a nap, took off my Apple watch and thought of putting my phone on silent but then decided against it just in case my boss rang- fine, this one concession. He didn't but I couldn’t sleep anyway. Got out of bed at 4pm, made rice and wondered if ordering for KFC delivery two days in advance was stupid.

I kept checking my watch; in the past, I would get a text message 15 minutes before it was due to arrive with a tracking link for the delivery.

4:55; 4:59. I felt a twinge of irritation and worry. The delivery must have been fucked. Thank God I saved the order confirmation. Soup packets for dinner then?

And then a ping- the chicken was on its way.

YAY.

Essential adobo

While I was prepping pork-scotch for the barbecue (on Tuesday) and chicken for a chicken piccata (today), I had some leftovers from both. I sliced the pork and chicken in small slices; threw in garlic, diced white onions; whole peppercorns and bay-leaves. Normally as I’ve seen it done growing up, you only put in vinegar (no water) and would add the soy-sauce when the meat has braised and you can see it frying in its own fat.

And this is why the adobe is such a great dish because the way it’s cooked is not bound by a single set of rules. It’s totally up to you and how you want to make it. I’ve seen versions where the meat are seared first; or the meat taken out, sauce reduced and then broiled under a hot grill. People have used apple cider vinegar, white white vinegar, apple juice and citrus juice. You can do adobong puti (one of my favourites best eaten cold with cold rice or adobong dilaw- brightly yellow with turmeric and tempered with coconut milk (which I don’t like because it sort of tastes ‘malansa’). You can just use chicken, or just pork or both.

You can change your mind midway and make it into laing (which I’ve done with silverbeet which I’ll be doing again) or you can throw in several tablespoonfuls of fish paste to make into binagoongan for which I only use pork-belly. And it lasts forever- the small pot I made today is good for two servings which will be lunch tomorrow.

Once we finally find a goddamned freezer, I’m going to cook a big batch and freeze it.

Day 31: Anzac Day

It’s one of those holidays I politely celebrate by sleeping in or watching the festivities on the news. It’s by accident and choice that you live in New Zealand, but its history will never really be a part of you. Mary & Sam had grandfathers who fought in the 1st and 2nd world wars and they have the medals & memorabilia stored somewhere. My Tatay lived through the second-world war and my dad was born in 1942 in Japanese occupied Manila and all I have are stories that I don’t actually remember anymore.

But we all forgot that the stand-in-your-driveway commemoration that was asked of all New Zealanders early this morning and not that tMary & Sam would wake up for it anyway.

I would’ve if the two white people in the house led the way but we all got up at 10am which is the usual for a Saturday.

I decided to make Anzac biscuits though which is strange because I’ve never liked their inherent hardness. They’re similar to gingersnap cookies with that tough outer surface that gives way to a crumbly inside. I got the recipe from an email by Farro Foods which called for:

1 cup rolled oats
¾ cup desiccated coconut
1 cup flour (or use 1 cup almond meal and ½ cup gluten free cornflour)
¾ cup brown sugar
125g butter
2 Tbsp golden syrup
½ tsp baking soda
2 Tbsp boiling water
¾ cup cranberries, chopped dried apricots (soaked in hot water for 5 mins and drained) or chocolate chunks

I didn't have desiccated coconut, golden syrup and cranberries/apricots so I substituted them with crushed pecans, maple syrup and sultanas respectively in the same quantities. The rolled oats I used also had raspberry bits and coconut in it. You can find the full recipe here.

I ended up with nine balls of dough which I later realised was a mistake- the recipe called for balls the size of walnuts and in my mind walnuts were nearly the size of golf-balls 😂. With the cooking time estimated at 15-18 minutes, I thought that the large cookies would burn at the edges before the centres cooked.

But they didn’t- they were a bit crumbly though even after they’ve cooled, and were not at all, like the commercial store-bought Anzac cookies. And I think that 125 grams of butter was a lot and contributed to the cookie being a tad too moist/oily.

Day 30

So I pretty much gave up having a leave day because it is what it is. It would’ve been easier if you could go away- not that I leave my gadgets at home which I don’t- but it would’ve been easier to step away from the screen to do something else.

I did finish painting the cupboard doors in the garage which was on our bigger things-to-do; did laundry, planned dinner, and still finished heaps of work. But I never have issues with work or chores- it’s when I saw an online ad for Gordon & Harris (an art-supplies shop) that there was that faint spark of wanting to do something creative. But $29 for a 59ml tube of (Golden brand) acrylic paint? Uhm, okay.

I would think that it’s kinda pricey so says the person who buys $250 jeans. But maybe it’s like the kind of advice offered to you when you’re struggling to clean out your closet: throw out the stuff you’ve never worn because chances are, you’ll never wear them again.

So the essential question is, should I give up on art? If you’ve never really found the time for it, then maybe it’s not for you.

But cooking is, for sure. We just had home-made carrot and potato soup tonight and grilled chicken-nibbles, nothing worth photographing really, but I made pansit sotanghon yesterday and this is what it looks like. Funny thing is, Pacific Islanders call it ‘chopsuey’ and it’s just vermicelli cooked in stock (or water) and seasoned with dark soy-sauce. My dad would turn in his grave if he was served this- the gold standard of how he made the sotanghon of our dreams is one that has chicken and chicken liver, fatty pork, prawns and black fungus mushroom and NO fucking celery. Yup- i hate the taste of celery in pansit (we’ve swapped out the celery with coriander which is actually more off-putting for most people).

I can’t remember if Pacific Island vermicelli/chopsuey has ginger- didn't put any in this one- but it’s harder to get that fuller flavour (I used chicken cubes as well) that you’d only get with chicken meat and pork-fat.

But once the starch breaks down (I often make the mistake of undercooking it) and the noodles absorb the fat (I used rice-bran oil) and the soy which has caramelised a bit, it doesn’t taste too bad.

Day 26: The virus won't kill businesses; a lack of solid business sense will

PS: the woman who owns the pastry shop emailed back (I emailed them to say I was disappointed) to ask why (I have a feeling she probably doesn’t know how much the courier was asking) and she was really nice!! She didn’t really have to email, but just wanted to express her frustration about obviously, why these things are happening.

And we should get it really, shouldn’t we? There’s so much being asked from all of us, that to be aggravated over something as trivial as cake is really not worth it in the scheme of things.

---

I scammed, well not really. Thought I had it good buying not one but two birthday cakes for Wednesday and it turns out that it was too good to be true. Ordered them, got an update they were in production and then someone rings me clarifying if I knew that the courier cost wasn’t quite correct. How much is it, I ask the person on the phone who sounded Filipino. When he told me the cost, I couldn't help myself.

“A hundred and twenty fucking dollars for a $67 cake??” I replied trying not to scream. “I’m cancelling it ’ I said without even waiting for his reply and hung up.

I just hate the pretentiousness of CBD establishments and their stupid nonsensical zoning delivery areas- uhm, sorry but your address is out of our zone. Bitch, you’re only 20 kilometres away, but you know what, if this is how you do business at a time when you NEED business, good luck.

I would have paid a $100 for the cake, but not the other way around.

It’s a shame, but I did hear rave reviews for this French pastry shop.

Day 25: The true essentials

It’s day 25- this is what worked and what didn’t.

Creating your own stash

I wish I was that clever, but I don’t think I’m organised enough to create a vegetable garden, but for people who can- you should. Rip off those lovely useless flowers and now is the time to be self-sufficient and sustainable

No to processed food

I don’t think I could go back to cereals. Had one box of Nutri-Grain and there’s still heaps of it left. I really don’t eat anything until after lunch, and when I do, I go for proteins and some bit of carbs. I also discovered that I’m not lactose intolerant after all- either that, or I can now tolerate milk. But milk- UHT milk- stock up on it if you can, or always have at least a month’s supply of it.

Canned anything

I think that when we start eating our canned food at least for us, that’s it- the situation outside and our situation would probably be at a level that can be described as critical. We never even opened a single can. The idea of canned spaghetti on toast is amusing yes, but not palatable. I cooked everyday with fresh and frozen stuff- and we ate well.

Spice up your life

Basically, for a cook who has a bit of an extensive repertoire but only working with three spices is pretty much like Meryl Street acting in a movie with two of the worst actors in the biz whoever these may be. This also ensures that even if you have chicken three times a week, they will always taste remarkably different. So start organising and putting together a really good spice and condiment stash.

Pasta isn't what it's touted to be

Sure if you don’t mind getting fat. My problem with pasta is that the stuff that makes it palatable to most people is not healthy. I wouldn’t mind pasta dressed with just anchovies and chilli, or with garlic and olive oil, but people generally expect cheese, creams and butter. Over 25 days, we’ve had pasta only twice.

Buy a freezer

If you can find one- every freezer under 300 litres and under $500 is motherfucking sold out. Our main purchases in-store and online was for proteins because we had limited freezer space. Just imagine what I could put in a freezer- ice creams!- which I could only buy once because the motherfucking tub was too big!

Don't buy fresh produce online unless you're motherfucking rich

I have money to spare but I don’t want to be scammed with over-priced fresh produce. Our food waste is primarily fresh produce so I spend more time prioritising how and when I cook them.

Stock up on coffee!

Which I did- whole beans, pods and instant.

Day 24: Saturday

..and because food is never far away from my mind, I did some baking today. Nothing really complicated or expensive- I didn't even have to buy anything special because I have all the ingredients in the pantry.

It’s a simple lemon cake with a sugary-lemony drizzle; the recipe is from the NY Times of course which you can find here.