off the beaten track and into the belly of the dragon

A trip to the dragon kiln (apparently one of only two left in Singapore) this weekend made me wish that I had a clue about photography. If I knew anything about composition the possibilities would, I'm sure, have been endless. In fact, it's really prompted me to try and do something about that and get some formal tuition.

None the less, here are some of the pictures for Sweet Shot Tuesday. Everything on or around the kiln was, of course, brown. Wood, clay, bricks, pottery - so I like that all the photos have a very autumnal feel about them. You can read the clay artists' blog here.

every shade of brown next to the kiln

the surrounding hills seem to be made of rejected pots. they look like giant shells

pots pots pots, as far as the eye could see

very much in the jungle - with the mosquito bites to prove it

old chinese shutters. kinda hoping my husband will go back and get them... and a woodworm guy

classic local coffee cups, at this price I'll have 200 in case I ever open a cafe...

beautiful Peranakan ware

not for sale. probably just as well, a jungle-dwelling antique Singer probably doesn't make life easier

absence makes the heart grow fonder me crazy in the coconut

The received wisdom is to keep busy. Occupy your brain fully enough and you'll start to forget about it. I'm not talking about anything physical, just the grinding, boring deadweight of homesickness. It's something that I've mentioned flippantly in the past but have now come to realise is, truly, a sickness. When I woke up this morning I swear I could have even told you what it tasted like. Here I am, living a charmed life in one of THE great cities in the world - certainly not something that has ever been said about my hometown (!) - but I can't shake the gut feeling that I just shouldn't be 7000 miles away from the simple and mildly humdrum existence where I belong.

I've tried everything over the past six weeks. I've cut out booze, coffee and snacking. I'm taking vitamins, staying hydrated and going to the hairdresser more often. I've swum, run and thrashed tennis balls about. I've gone to museums, festivals and parks. I've read, knitted and crafted. I've written letters, posted photos and skyped. I've cleared my mountain of paperwork and addressed my feckless sleeping habits. I've roasted dinners, baked cakes and built fortresses from sofa cushions. I even resorted to severe retail therapy. I haven't stopped keeping busy.

The end result? 4lb lighter with neat hair and an even neater new swimsuit. Nice, but not things that I really value... those things don't really matter so much where I belong.

Why it's kicked in with such vengence after 18 months I have no idea, but it'll improve, I do know that. And I know how lucky I am to live for a time in this magical place while so many other people have REAL problems (though feeling under pressure to be grateful does, I think, make it worse).

It's pouring with rain today, so I'm planning to opt out of this afternoon altogether; Mummy's on strike. I have an old Disney film for The Boss to watch (more than once if that's what it takes), some wool to wind and a new book that everyone's recommending over and above the movie.

Because maybe the only thing I haven't tried is doing nothing.

Linking in with Yarn Along, not least because it's the friendliest and most supportive linky-thing out there ;0)

cake: the origin of the species

ev·o·lu·tion
[ev-uh-loo-shuhn] noun. change in the gene pool of a population from generation to generation

I have this cake recipe, no in fact, I'd go so far as to say I have the cake recipe. I expect most home cooks have one. It symbolises the purest essence of the art form. It needs no introduction. It's not Orange Cassava Cake, or Simnel Cake, or Lemon Drizzle Cake, or Date and Walnut Cake...

It's just cake.

It was provided by my Granny as the first recipe for my first cook book. It was the recipe my Mum used to teach me the basic principles of baking. It was the cake delivered by emotional parents for my eighth birthday, a month after I started boarding school. It was every birthday cake we ever had before or since. It was the cake that turned my older brother on to baking. It was the recipe that he was looking for on the shelf when he yelled at me for daring to taking my cook book away to university with me. I suspect it's the cake he uses to teach his new wife how to bake.

It's the cake that always welcomes us home from wherever we have been. It's the cake I've made over and over with my wee brother whenever we've run out of other ideas. It's the cake I make for my husband when he just needs cake. It's the cake I've learnt to expect when any of my close family says "I made a cake!". It's the cake I teach my daughter how to bake.

I must have made it a hundred times or more. Every motion is precious and memorable for me. But it does evolve through the generations. Slowly and in the most minute ways; but that's evolution for you. For example, where the recipe instructs 6 tbsp of boiling water, I've always opted not to stop the trickle of water from the kettle between spoonfuls - the inaccurate addition of "a bit extra" water making the cake moister.

While baking this cake together today, The Boss added another intangible detail to the recipe. When I was showing her how to test whether the cake was ready with a skewer, she said "it's like the cake is sick and you're taking it's temperature to see if it's better". I'll never be able to bake this cake again without thinking of that metaphor, and I suspect (and hope) that the image will stay with her forever.

When I was growing up, I had a penchant for coffee-flavoured buttercream icing, and it had to be smoothed on with a spatula and then run over with the tines of a fork in wavy lines. But my daughter prefers to go with Granny's original chocolate icing. With one small modification: in her eyes, real cakes MUST have sprinkles.

It's evolved.

If you don't have a good basic cake recipe, one that defines the very essence of the word cake, please be my guest. It's not big and it's not clever, it's just cake.

cake
no apologies for the imperial measures - that's part of the charm for me. If it matters, please feel free to do the conversion yourself

• 2oz cocoa
• 6tbsp boiling water
• 6oz butter
• 6oz caster sugar
• 6oz self-raising flour
• 2tsp baking powder
• 4 eggs
  

1. line a 7" round cake tin with parchment
2. preheat your oven to 325F
3. mix the cocoa and the water together into a paste in a small bowl
4. cream the butter and the sugar in a mixing bowl
5. sift in the flour and baking powder
6. add the eggs and the cocoa
7. blend
8. bake for 35-40 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean

icing - beat the following together until blended

• 1oz melted plain chocolate
• 6oz icing sugar
• 2oz butter
• 1tbsp milk
• 1tbsp cocoa 

the wee lebowski

The only personal outdoor space in our rented apartment is a patio measuring about 15m by 2m. So narrow that we can hardly fit a table and chair on it, and we certainly can't hoola hoop. Lined on one side with glass windows and on the other with glass balcony panels, we're hesitant even to play bat-and-ball games. About a year ago, a dear friend pointed out that our patio's not much use for, well... anything. Except perhaps a bowling alley.

I must've mumbled something about going to a toy shop to buy some skittles and, being the good thrifty Doric quine that she is, my friend choked on her coffee and told me to wise up and use plastic bottles full of water. She's clever and imaginative and... in Scotland. My friends: I miss them.

Anyway, I'd quite forgotten all about her suggestion until I saw this post by minieco about making ink from old felt tip pens. Coincidentally The Boss had, just the same week, sheepishly coveted some grossly cheap-and-nasty plastic skittles in the supermarket. So I figured that with a bit of judicious bottled drink slurping, we could make coloured bowling pins for (almost) nothing.

Now, minieco's tutorials are always a gauzy haze of rainbow-coloured perfection (just look at those pictures; amazing) and my life is very far removed from that. But here is my haphazard version. The low effort:high fun ratio with this project makes it well worth a try (particularly if you have a hopeless, bowling-alley-shaped patio).

cut off labels and fill with water

dig out any and all scratchy or dried up felt-tip pens and drop in (de-lidded)

the motley crew

the following morning (remove pens with chopsticks!)

tape up the lids with electrical tape

find a ball

(lack of) mooncake curry

It's Chinese Mid-autumn festival. In Singapore it's sometimes called Mooncake festival, or Lantern festival. It's the time of year when children play with paper lanterns and birthday candles (and yet somehow I'm always the cause of any flare up). Someone told me last year that it's a celebration of the roundest full moon of the year. I can't remember who they were or if they were to be trusted. But I'll take that as the inspiration behind the spherical lanterns, round mooncakes and abundance of pomelos.

We went to Chinese Garden to see their lantern display - I think it's one of the biggest on the island. It was classic unashamed Singaporean kitsch. If you've seen this post, you might notice a theme developing - I'm drawn to the kitsch. I wouldn't say I particularly like it, but I can't take my eyes off it. I can't resist the colours. I think it might be the complete antithesis of the essence of me.

The Boss loved the whole evening. It's pretty magical when it starts to get dark. She was, however, disappointed by the absence of mooncakes - this was a strictly lantern-only affair. I reckon the absence of mooncakes was the best bit. Have you ever tried one? Like a REAL one, with the duck egg yolk in the middle that tastes like it was laid sometime around the beginning of last year? Excuse me while I turn away and take a few deep breaths... There's a Glaswegian expression that sums it up perfectly; they gi'e me the pure boak.

There was a really lame Chinese food court set up, with terrible food. I can't stress enough how unusual that is here in Singapore. Delicious, cheap hawker food, within ten paces from wherever you happen to be standing, is a basic human right here. So once we'd got home and plugged a small person's mouth with a large banana, I decided to whip something up out of the fridge/cupboard. It was a risk, but I think I created something worth repeating. It was good at 10pm last night, though to be honest we were too hungry to even taste it. But for a leisurely, solitary, leftovers lunch today, it was droolsomely delicious. Recipe after the photos (all straight out of the camera).

(lack of) mooncake curry

Makes about 4 portions
You can add more or less spice. These quantities made a mild to medium spicy sauce.

• 2 onions, sliced into half moons
• salt
• a thumb of ginger, grated
• 4 cloves of garlic, sliced
• 1 tsp coriander powder
• 1 tsp cumin powder
• 4 tsp medium curry powder
• 3 carrots, cut into large chunks
• 2 potatoes, cut into similiar chunks
• half a head of broccoli
• tin of tomatoes
• 500ml stock
• 1 cup of frozen peas
• 2 tsp garam masala powder
• small carton of coconut milk
• coriander leaves
• slivered almonds

1. fry the onions & ginger in vegetable oil in a big wok 
2. a good pinch on salt helps to stop the onions catching
3. add the garlic once the onions are quite soft
4. stir in the coriander powder, cumin powder and curry powder, and fry for a few minutes
5. add your chopped vegetables, tin of tomatoes and stock (I use a cube)
6. leave to simmer slowly for as long as it takes the carrots and tatties to be cooked (for those who need accuracy, that's precisely one preschooler bedtime. Oh, OK, about 45 minutes... ish)
7. put some basmati rice on (if you cook it the right way my way, it'll take exactly 15 minutes)
8. add the peas and garam masala and cook for another 5 minutes or so to cook the peas through. I read somewhere once that garam masala, being a mixture of ground toasted spices, has already been cooked so you can happily stir it through at the end without worrying about harsh flavours. every day's a school day eh?
9. turn the heat down and stir in the coconut milk and coriander leaves
10. let it warm through and serve on rice with almonds sprinkled on the top - or better, leave in the fridge overnight and eat the next day with warm naan...

Sorry, it has all been eaten - no pictures. But as you can imagine, it looks a lot like a plate of curry. And the best bit? NO MOONCAKE.