Fatboybakes' Fattening Favourites

Have to blog this before I forget. One of my greatest regrets is not having mastered a Chinese dialect, or Mandarin. Not more than 3 minutes ago, I just had this painful conversation with an overenthusiastic telemarketeer, trying to sell me THE BUFFET CLUB card. I understood him perfectly; my regret stems from the fact that I have no ability to give a witty or snide retort. When I used to work up north, (in Alor Setar), where everyone speaks hokkien, I get really jittery in coffee shops, because I never know how much I'm supposed to pay, when they say it in hokkien, when it comes to payment, so I always give big notes, so I get change. Anyway, I wonder where these telemarketeers get their database of names from and what criteria do they impose. I suspect its by weight. I remember recently divulging my weight to the questionnaire in a newly opened gym, a glitzy looking one in the vicinity of sri hartamas. They must have sold my info to the buffet club, or WHY else would the

I much prefer this cover, compared with the ones we get here. I'm not even sure which scene the cover we get here refers to, whereas, this cover is quite obvious. Anyway, contrary to my original resolution NOT to read the book until it was like 50% discounted, (and I'm not talking pirated copies), a good friend lent me his, and fuelled my curiosity by dropping hints, in bits and pieces, as to what was happening. Patience not being my foremost virtue, I succumbed, big time, and was soon displaying all the usual "don't disturb me or get killed" traits when i'm firmly entrenched in a book. I kinda dread the fact that the next book will be the last. Strange thing for me, when reading serial novels, or even the odd individual one, when you grown fond of the characters, etc etc. It's far worse for Harry Potter, because you can actually visualise the characters in your mind, thanks (or no thanks) to the movies. I can imagine every grimace or eye roll by Ro

Wednesday noon is the zenith of the week's chart, I guess. If Monday starts on the Y axis on "HORRID", then wednesday is when the graph takes a turn for the better, as we head towards "TGIF". But I guess mathematically, its wrong, coz if the graph was a V shape, and it changed gradient on wednesday afternoon, it would mean we're headed back up to "HORRID". Am i making sense? Much like when you hit 35. I've been told repeatedly, by my father, that after 35, we're officially ageing. I believe it. Injuries are so much easier to come by, and take so much longer to recover from. Late nights.....my goodness, talk about late nights. Last saturday I had some friends over for dinner, and we didn't end till 3am. It wasn't physically strenous, per se, it's not like we were shaking our booty or gyrating to pulsating music. Far from it. It was a civilised sit around the table, chit chat with a few bottles of wine. But boy, did i pay the pric

My life is quite routine, in a good way. Monday is mall night, Tuesday is family dinner, Wednesday is dinner with the in-laws, Thursday is wild card, Friday is home group, Saturdays are inevitably taken up by wedding dinners, dinners with other adults without kids, dinner with the discount card (that's the only time wife and I go "dating" together, when one of us eats for free, because we were suckered into buying those hotel prestige cards), dinners with adults with kids. I never really appreciated the routine, in fact, a few years ago i was almost bemoaning the fact that my life was so routine, until a series of events, crises, to be more precise, such as the death of a cousin and father's heart attack, threw the routine into complete disarray, and i thought to myself, I can't wait for life to get back to its routine. And since then, I've never really complained about routine. So, as a matter of routine, Friday night is usually another bake night, for my hom

a dear dear friend residing in sydney asked if a blog was about oneself. actually, up to now, i myself have no real idea of what blog means, and the word certainly doesnt exist in my 1975 edition of the Oxford Dictionary. anyway, thankfully, like blogs, we have online dictionaries, so the definition of blog is [drum roll..........] Main Entry: weblog Part of Speech: noun Definition: a personal Web site that provides updated headlines and news articles of other sites that are of interest to the user, also may include journal entries, commentaries and recommendations compiled by the user; also written web log, Weblog; also called blog oh, and in response to my molten choc cakes, there have already been 2 requests for the recipe. that's quite good, considering only 5 people know of this site....or thereabouts. ingredients: (i dont have my book with me, so i'm doing this off the cuff). 180gm butter, 250 gm dark chocolate, 1 cup caster sugar - Group 1 1 cup almond meal (that'

For those of you who know me better, you'd know that Tuesday is bake day, coz that's when my sister, brother in law and nephews and niece come home for family dinner. So, it's the one day in the week where I am guaranteed a captive audience, and guinea pigs for new experimentation. I've dabbled in quite a few recipes ever since starting this Tuesday bake thing, starting with the easy ones, like tiramisu (which actually requires no baking), profiteroles and eclairs, cheese cakes, (got to work on this one. my sister doesn't like those rich chilled cheese cakes, but prefers the lighter spongier baked variety, as do I, actually, but haven't gotten around to trying, because cheese cakes are so heavy for a tuesday night dessert), lemon meringue pie, orange poppy seed cake, durian poppy seed cake, lemon tarts, marble cake, triple berry pie, apple pie, lemon & apple sour cream cake, chocolate truffle cake, and of course, my supposed piece de resistance, with other f

Every friday, like obedient sheep in a flock, we observe the meeting together of what we call our "cell" group, or home group. The latter sounds warmer, I suppose, whereas the former these days has a distinctive negative connotation. Cell? A certain organisation with initials A - Q spring to mind, and those cells certainly aren't meeting to plan picnics. Shallow as it may sound, one of my little "joys" of this friday gathering is being able to experiment with different types of grub to serve my fellow home groupers, (sounds like a kind of coral fish now). Last friday, we had apple pie. If I may say so myself, it was rather good. Okay, the original recipe is actually from a cookbook by local pastry chef, Alex Goh. I kinda modified it a bit; well, in keeping with the url of the blog, here's the recipe: Sift and chuck 2 cups of flour, ½ cup of icing sugar into the bowl of a food processor. Chop into blocks 150gm cold butter, straight from the fridge. Let t

Women have it easy. In the body pump class, when doing the chest exercises, the instructor tells us to keep it at the bra line...... well, easy if you do have a bra line. what about us testosterone filled macho men??? anyway, i was rudely reminded of a little incident, which i had clean forgotten, and by who of all people? an ex pastor. apparently, there was a time, where the folds of my flesh were so abundant....i dropped a pen, accidentally, down the front of my chest ....(hmm, this is getting a bit graphic), and thought i lost it, only to find it popped out later, through them generous folds of flesh, when i was changing. get my drift? why did i even share this with people is beyond me. there's a truckload of people leaving for holidays tonight. and to all the ends of the earth as well. london, sydney, korea....young people these days are so mobile. in our time, an overseas trip is like a long voyage, that one plans years ahead, with columbian precision. we scrimp, and

dont you just love it when you've had the monday off, so you're lulled into thinking tuesday is actually monday, (when you get to work), and then realise, by thursday, hey, friday is tomorrow. why was i off on monday? well, there must be something in the air, akin to pollen, that makes people want to germinate, or repopulate, or pollinate, around this time of the year, coz there are like weddings galore. its like navigating through an asteroid field....you're bound to hit one. weddings are costly affairs, not just for those intending to pollinate, but for those attending as well. alas, usually with the odd tipple or two, i become exceedingly receptive to wedding invites, almost to the shameless point of begging for one. but when reality sinks in, i wonder, oh no, me and my big mouth, whyyyyyy on earth did i say yes. which brings me back to why i had to take monday off. because, there was this wedding in singapore, on sunday. i had originally intended to drive the fu

In order to scratch an itch, i had to check out what all this blogging is about, and its not like i'm bogged down with tons of work, so why not? i'm not sure if i'm comfortable baring my soul for all and sundry to read. so i won't. and is my life really interesting enough that others would want to READ? remains to be seen. until the next posting.....