Photo : To equal or not to equal

Not a big fan of artificial sweetners, however I do drink diet sodas just for their weird taste. When it comes to coffee, its a big no-no for me. I love my brown sugar in my kopi susu (milk coffee)

Cheese Cheese and more Cheese!

One of my greatest weaknesses are cheeses and happily one friday afternoon visited the cheese shop to get a couple of matured varieties. My favorites are stiltons and picodon.

Photo Story : Snobbery of the cupcake

Location : Chin Mei Chin Confectionary, Katong, Singapore
Notes : This place does not welcome photography. The owner does not like cameras or any form of publicity. So blog photographers beware, be nice and say its just for your own collection.

Tart de fruite - Raw and Vegan

Here's a recipe I love and quite easy to make.

Its raw and vegan, the crust is made up with nuts


Tart Crust
2.5 cup almond
3/4 cup pitted medjool dates (you can get them from mustafa supermarket, singapore or health food stores)

In a blender, mix all the ingredients until it is coarse and combined in a doughy texture. Press the mixture into 3 inch tart crust. Refrigerate until firm (about 1-2 hours)

Filling
1 cup raw cashews (soaked 4 hours)
1 cup coconut meat
1/2 cup agave syrup
2 tablespoon vanilla extract

In blender, till smooth. Refrigerate to set (2 hours). It will form firm creamy texture.


For serving
Fill the cream filling to the tart shell, top with fresh fruits, serve immediately.

FireFly Mission Durian Party in July 2008

It's the annual durian season in Singapore and its time for any full-blooded Singaporean to go durian-crazy.

Su, a friend kindly donated 3 car loads of durians from her family's organic farm in Johor Bahru. It's my first organic durian tasting. With this amazing amount of durians, I practiced my durian selection skills and incredibly, gotten quite good at choosing ripe durians ; opening more than a few dozen durians like a regular durian seller. It was an unusually hot season in Malaysia and durians were dropping well, like durians at the organic farm. In the end we had tons of leftovers, my hands and body were still smelling like durians even after 3 days.

Another couple kindly hosted their place for our durian party. Volunteers and supporters of FireFly Mission were invited in appreciation for their help in recent Cyclone Nargis, Myanmar project.

Visit the website FireFly Mission , it's a humanitarian mission by a group of Buddhist having projects in Myanmar, India, Thailand. They always need help as form of volunteers and funding for their on-going projects. 100% of all donations go towards the projects with volunteers personally flying over on their own expenses to the villages over-seeing the missions. You can view their photos here.





I can't believe how they filled their cars with durians, this was half emptied before I had the chance to photograph it


The drivers hard at work transfering the durians


CH gleaming at this bitter sweet durian


My durian taste better than yours, discussing what a good durian should taste like.


Newspapers and durians seem to go hand in hand at many durian parties


Durian Processing area


We gotten so organised with different sections of durian openers and durian processors


Amazingly with three car loads of durians, they managed to clear Singapore customs without a big hassle


Still struggling to open a large amount of leftover organic durians, most of us with a belly full of durians gave up. This is what was left.

A Study of mini pumpkins

Mini pumpkins use to be quite popular during the Chinese New Year, often use as decorations and form of worship offerings. Unforunately they tend not to taste sweet otherwise they would make good sized pumpkin pudding.

When Food Photographers get together

.... They irritate the hell out of me




This was taken at a Flickr Food photographer's outing at Old Airport Road Food Center (Singapore)

Part of my camera collection

Beside from my passion for food, comes my camera collection.



Old 1960s camera that is part of my collection.



Collection of Bolsey Cameras which spans 1940s-1950s

My favorite childhood softdrink

KickaPoo in glass bottles seem to taste better than the ones in plastic bottles and aluminium cans. Maybe its the nostalgia, maybe glass keep better sodas. You don't get to see them in Singapore anymore.

Still Life Study : Spices

In a fish market of Lombok Indonesia

From a trip to Bali and Lombok

Dolphins slaughtered for meat in a Lombok Fish Market. The meat is traditionally eaten by the locals. While I was there, the dead dolphins were left over in the hot morning for a few hours, I was wondering why they were laying dead there.

I had missed out on the butchering while snapping photos of the other parts of the market. Can't imagine how dolphin meat taste like, its not usual for fisherman to feed on them as dolphins get caught in their nets following schools of fishes.

Eggs and Condiments

A typical breakfast or afternoon tea at the coffeeshop often have this.
Gone are the old coffeeshops with great coffee (where they roast their own beans), soft boiled eggs and charcoal grilled bread.

Raw Vegan Food at California

Leaf Cuisine Cafe in Los Angeles Culver City that serves Raw Vegan Food
website : www.leafcuisine.com

After spending time in Central America in April where there is hardly any vegan food, I was delighted to be eating vegetarian food again, a great little raw food outlet, Leaf Cafe serves decent portions, it feels like a regular good cafe with none of that foo foo fashion types which you see at other raw food restaurants. The raw food portions were large and rather filling. Me and my friends shared a few dishes. The smoothies filled us up immediately and we took takeways after that. There were a few disappointing dishes like the chilled soups each of us had, just lacked the flavors and more like blended vegetable pulp. Overall most of the dishes were pretty good and decent.




Raw California Maki, my favorite dish at the cafe with intense flavors. Fillings of Nuts, tomato, carrots and wakame seaweed. Yummy



Raw-torilla with nut cream, a little disappointed with this, perhaps some redesigning of the recipe. Basically cabbage with nuts, sprouts and avocado slices arranged together, it is more like a salad than a torilla.




Raw-lasagne with rich avocado, sprouts and dehydrated tomatos, I was already filled up with the rest of my dishes, but was delicious and I had doggy bagged it for breakfast.