Thursday, November 11, 2004
HAPPY DEEPAVALI!
--- I ---
I wonder by my troth
Did I create
A sweet success
Or an uncooked failure
???
My parents and my brother have gone on down to the John Little sale at the Singapore Expo, leaving me at home, as usual. It is always my own free will to stay at home, than to go out and wander aimlessly about. For I often have many things to settle, the chances of which I have been denied while at camp.
Therefore lunch is left for me to settle. I tell Mother that I shall go outside to eat. Eventually she calls me to the kitchen to tell me that she has cooked rice. She takes out a packet of pre-packed spare ribs from the freezer and tells me to use the microwave to heat it back. She says that I can have cabbage to go along, which she puts into the steamer with the rice.
Which means I have to prepare the lunch myself.
About 2pm, I take out the spare ribs from the freezer. I cut open the packet to take the meat out. It is so icily cold that my hands turn numb almost immediately. I place the meat onto a plate and into the microwave oven it goes. The packet's instructions state medium to high heat, but in order to ensure that the meat thaws and gets cooked, I switch to high heat instead, settling for 9 minutes of cooking rather than the stated 8.
I prepare the cabbage, adding sesame oil and oyster sauce. There are crackling and popping sounds from the microwave. For a moment, I fear something might explode. I look inside the oven: the sauce is bubbling away, threatening to overflow the rather shallow plate. A piece of meat which could not fit into the plate completely during its frozen state has now dropped onto the grille. I stop the microwave, open the door and attempt to use chopsticks to pick the food back into the plate. Too soft; it slips through the chopsticks and instead drops under the grille. Shit. Now I have to get another chopstick to jack up the grille so that I can pick up the fallen piece of meat. I lift the grille much too high, and the plate slides backwards, nearly dropping off the grille. Shit again! I don't have much luck with the piece of pork either: it keeps slipping off the chopsticks as it is very soft (and possibly tender).
Finally I get it back to where it ought to belong, and resume the microwave. When the food has been cooked, I take it out to the table. The cooked meat looks pathetically jaundiced. Then again, there are dark shades of brown at some parts of the meat. Are they uncooked? I cannot tell anything because the picture on the packaging shows rich, red meat, and now I've got meat with two different colours, none of which resemble the sample. Anyway I'm not enthusiastic about re-cooking the whole thing again, lest it creates another unforeseen disaster and the whole thing has to be ditched away.
What the heck, just eat it.
Perhaps I shall lunch out in future; I can't even handle simply-cooked food.
--- II ---
While surfing the net for complete scores of ABBA songs, I discover, on the ABBA Official Site, that the conductor scores of "Mamma Mia" are in the process of being released for sale. Which means I can actually acquire and read them! However, I have to download via Noteheads; they don't have a version for Sibelius. I'm considering writing to them to request a version for Sibelius, or the least they can do is to print out everything, bind the scores and sell as a book, which I'd appreciate even greatly, for I am using a 56K modem.
¶ 11/11/2004 07:35:00 pm --- I ---
I wonder by my troth
Did I create
A sweet success
Or an uncooked failure
???
My parents and my brother have gone on down to the John Little sale at the Singapore Expo, leaving me at home, as usual. It is always my own free will to stay at home, than to go out and wander aimlessly about. For I often have many things to settle, the chances of which I have been denied while at camp.
Therefore lunch is left for me to settle. I tell Mother that I shall go outside to eat. Eventually she calls me to the kitchen to tell me that she has cooked rice. She takes out a packet of pre-packed spare ribs from the freezer and tells me to use the microwave to heat it back. She says that I can have cabbage to go along, which she puts into the steamer with the rice.
Which means I have to prepare the lunch myself.
About 2pm, I take out the spare ribs from the freezer. I cut open the packet to take the meat out. It is so icily cold that my hands turn numb almost immediately. I place the meat onto a plate and into the microwave oven it goes. The packet's instructions state medium to high heat, but in order to ensure that the meat thaws and gets cooked, I switch to high heat instead, settling for 9 minutes of cooking rather than the stated 8.
I prepare the cabbage, adding sesame oil and oyster sauce. There are crackling and popping sounds from the microwave. For a moment, I fear something might explode. I look inside the oven: the sauce is bubbling away, threatening to overflow the rather shallow plate. A piece of meat which could not fit into the plate completely during its frozen state has now dropped onto the grille. I stop the microwave, open the door and attempt to use chopsticks to pick the food back into the plate. Too soft; it slips through the chopsticks and instead drops under the grille. Shit. Now I have to get another chopstick to jack up the grille so that I can pick up the fallen piece of meat. I lift the grille much too high, and the plate slides backwards, nearly dropping off the grille. Shit again! I don't have much luck with the piece of pork either: it keeps slipping off the chopsticks as it is very soft (and possibly tender).
Finally I get it back to where it ought to belong, and resume the microwave. When the food has been cooked, I take it out to the table. The cooked meat looks pathetically jaundiced. Then again, there are dark shades of brown at some parts of the meat. Are they uncooked? I cannot tell anything because the picture on the packaging shows rich, red meat, and now I've got meat with two different colours, none of which resemble the sample. Anyway I'm not enthusiastic about re-cooking the whole thing again, lest it creates another unforeseen disaster and the whole thing has to be ditched away.
What the heck, just eat it.
Perhaps I shall lunch out in future; I can't even handle simply-cooked food.
--- II ---
While surfing the net for complete scores of ABBA songs, I discover, on the ABBA Official Site, that the conductor scores of "Mamma Mia" are in the process of being released for sale. Which means I can actually acquire and read them! However, I have to download via Noteheads; they don't have a version for Sibelius. I'm considering writing to them to request a version for Sibelius, or the least they can do is to print out everything, bind the scores and sell as a book, which I'd appreciate even greatly, for I am using a 56K modem.
