june iphoneography

He just wants to lock you away.



I left my lips behind.



Seeking refuge in the shadows.

mama's famous cabbage rice

No amount of words can adequately describe how much I miss my mum's homecooked comfort food. So I will occasionally try to replicate some of her signature dishes just to have a taste of home, one of which is her famous cabbage rice - 高丽菜饭 (pronounced as koh-lay-cai-peng in hokkien). It is a dish that can be eaten on its own when you're feeling lazy due to the simplicity of the cooking method and the many chunky bits of goodness mixed in with the rice, or you can accompany it with one or two extra side dishes if you have time to whip them up.

After learning from a couple of past failed attempts because I always managed to either forget to boil the cabbage or to leave out the seasoning entirely and so on, I finally got it quite close to Mum's standard in the last attempt even though I decided to do away with adding the chicken stock and chicken pieces. I have outlined below the full recipe that I managed to come up with after a phone call to Mum to clarify on some of the little details such as "do I need to boil the cabbage first?" and incorporating all the lessons learnt from the past few experiments.

Ingredients (serves three):
- two cups of rice
- two cloves of garlic finely chopped
- half a head of cabbage
- six or seven dried shitake mushrooms
- a handful of dried shrimps
- two chinese sausages
- cooking oil
- sesame oil
- salt
- ground white pepper
- spring onions for garnishing (optional)
- chicken stock (optional)
- chicken pieces approximately 2cm x 2cm, marinated in chinese wine and light soy sauce for at least 30min (I didn't add chicken this time but it's highly recommended you add the chicken as it significantly adds to the flavour)



Wash the cabbage and cut into big slices approximately 6cm x 2cm. Place them in a pot filled with water to cover all of the leaves and let it boil until soft. Soak the dried shrimps and shitake mushrooms in hot water until soft. Slice the already soft shitake mushrooms and the chinese sausages.



Put the rice in the rice cooker and set it to cook. If you want it to be more flavourful, you can replace the water with chicken stock although I find this makes it too salty for my liking. You can probably experiment with a mixture of water and stock.

Add a tablespoon of cooking oil to a deep frying pan or wok on medium heat. Add in the garlic when the pan is hot and stir fry until slightly brown.

(Additional step I did away with: add in the chicken and stir fry until the meat is about 90% cooked.)

Add in the dried shrimps and chinese sausages and stir fry for about 1min. Then add in the mushrooms and the boiled cabbage and stir fry for another 1min. Add a pinch of salt and some ground white pepper to taste.

By this time, the rice in the rice cooker should be about half cooked. Add the entire pan of the stir fried mix into the rice cooker on top of the rice. Drizzle some sesame oil over it and leave it to cook. When the rice is cooked, stir up the contents to mix all of them in evenly. Cover the rice cooker and leave it for a minute or two. It should look like the below. Ready to serve. ^^v

my next new toy will be a pen

I see more and more friends around me flaunting their new GFs (I'm talking about the Panasonic Lumix GF series of cameras here) around and after seeing all their sample pictures and having a recent discussion with a colleague's husband on the micro four thirds system (a mirrorless interchangeable lens system created by Olympus and Panasonic that gave rise to a whole new phenomenon of pocket-sized dSLR-type cameras), I'm truly impressed, and itching to get my hands on one too.

I devoted my Queen's Birthday public holiday to researching on this technology and comparing the Lumix series with the PEN series from Olympus. Well, since I already own 2 compact digicams, a dSLR, an analogue SLR, an analogue Diana F+, an iPhone camera, and up to very recently a Polaroid camera, the gadget specs become secondary to its aesthetics in my quest to add another expensive toy to the ever growing wishlist. Olympus wins hands down for me as in addition to having comparable photo quality to those taken with the GF, its vast range of retro-looking accessories I can get to dress my next new PEN toy with left me drooling with desire. I'm a sucker for retro stuff. I mean, just look at the line-up below! They all look so cool!



So I have about slightly less than half a year left to save up for this big buy to stuff into my own Christmas sock.

impulse buys that burnt a big hole in my pocket

Shoes from GlamRockChic: the Heart and Soul peep toe shootie in both black and beige. I bought them because I love the heart shape cut-outs.



Jackets from Bardot because there was a mega sale going on when I stepped in!
- full leather cropped biker jacket
- cream coloured military jacket with a fold-back collar and a suede texture
- charcoal knit boyfriend blazer



Dresses from Victoria's Secret because there is a summer dress clearance sale on now!
- deep aubergine drop-waist dress with slightly off the shoulder sleeves
- black knot-front babydoll dress with leopard prints
- camouflage print twisted-front tube dress
- uniform navy embellished open-back dress





I checked out two items at ASOS and am still trying to decide whether or not to check the other dozen items in the 'saved for later' basket. These are all from the outlet clearance <£30 category with free international shipping.

- one shoulder black cotton dress by Religion featuring a wrap-around three row eyelet panel with laced up segments and asymmetric pleating to the waist.

- a tunic top by Traffic People featuring a scooped neckline, short batwing sleeves and an open back with tie detailing in a longline style with a ruched gathered hem.



And other non sale items I got from Myer simply because the dresses looked too flattering when I tried them on.

- a black and white abstract print dress from Cue
- a one shoulder dress from Review
(The pic in the middle shows me wearing the Cue dress - I've worn it twice now!)



I blame this excessive spendings on the work stress I've had to face lately - retail therapy urgently required. >.<