When The Cold Bug Strikes

stomatitis

I was down with colds for about week or two and the stomatitis on my inner cheeks made it even worse. Stomatitis can be very painful because it makes food ingestion such an agony which is of course not good when you're sick, you have to nourish yourself with food and heaps and heaps of liquid because nothing beats water therapy. I guess the sudden temperature drop and cold bug I caught from our household was the culprit along with my not so strong immune system which of course I often attribute to age. When you live in a household with people, you catch whatever pathogens and cold bug they have especially when they're about to heal, the virus jumps to another unarmed or should I say next person with a weak immune system. I just recovered from colds few days ago and found a home remedy for my stomatitis by mixing equal parts of water and  hydrogen peroxide, an automatic antibacterial gargle which not only reduced the swelling and pain but hastened the healing process in the absence of an antibacterial/mouthwash. How come I never knew that before? Gargling with hot water mixed with salt did not help neither maybe it's 'cuz I have a small lesion inside my mouth. Anyways, I'm glad the inflammation is somewhat gone as I feel a whole lot better now. I also had tons of ginger ale with honeybee, an excellent natural antibiotic. 

Moving on, I have been busy learning new things. I've been using mug cake recipes to make one of those easy bake cup cakes for my niece's packed lunch which I have the recipe below. I used an electric/convection oven for this by the way so I don't know how it will work for conventional ovens. 

Basic Moist Cupcake Recipe 

(Makes 3 tiny cupcakes)

• 5 Tbsp. Flour
• 1/8 tsp. baking powder 
• 4 Tbsp. Sugar
• 3 Tbsp. Milk
• 3 Tbsp. Canola Oil
• 1 Egg
• 1/2 tsp. Vanilla Extract
• 1/2 Tbsp. Matcha or Purple Yam powder (optional for flavor)
• Chocolate Chips (topping; add as you please)

-Mix wet ingredients first, add in sugar. Set aside.

-Sift all dry ingredients together then mix with wet ingredients. 

-Preheat oven at 200•C (10mins)

-Bake for 18-25mins. toothpick checks in between.

my version of Bento featuring my home-baked 
Ube/purple yam cupcake.

Bento 🍱

I have been stoked watching Japanese ASMR food videos on YouTube lately and thought I want to make my own Bento meals someday and so I did. An ASMR video by the way is often a no talk cooking/food making video wherein you won't hear anything but the clanking of kitchen utensils, sound of a gas burner being switched on, water pouring, clattering of grains etc. It's just so satisfying to watch really. Here are some of my favorite Japanese YouTubers who does ASMR food making vids just to site a few. 

JunsKitchen - This guy surely love cats like I do. He's got excellent plating skills and is very fluent in English. 

Cook Kafemaru - She's got awesome Bento meal and dessert ideas. I like her video editing style as well, simple & very straightforward

Peaceful Cuisine - This guy is a professional Chef obviously. I love the way he presents his cooking videos, very clean and precise. 

Warm & Fuzzy

Feeling cold? Snuggle with
a CAT-O! `

Baby it's cold outside 🎶

The sudden cold is making a lot of people sick with flu and other airborne diseases that’s why I make sure I drink a lot of tea and keep myself warm these days. I’m glad I have a cat who not only bright up my day but is serving a great purpose, keeping me warm during cold and gloomy days. Humans are great source of warmth for animals that’s why they love to snuggle with us during cold days, little did most people know, animals can be very warm too that a heating bag is no longer required lol. Owning a cat have a lot of perks, aside from they are warm enough for you not be in a hypothermia state during cold and freezing days, their purring calms you down (good for the nervous system) and is also known to repair broken bones. I can deal with cold days, I just hate rainy days because it keeps people indoors geez. I just hate anything extreme, I prefer somewhere in between, not too hot, not too cold and just enough to keep living beings comfortably thrive.

rainbow cookie; cookie monster inspired oreo cookies 
& cream

Moving on, I have been pretty busy re-inventing cookie flavors and I just find it kind of challenging where to buy extracts/food essence other than online. Not that I don’t know how to make them because all it takes is vodka and whatever flavor you want such as vanilla beans, mint leaves, etcetera to come up with any food essence of your choice, It’s just that it takes some time before they can be usable. Anyways, I’m still interested in DIY-ing them because it’s always fun to create something from scratch. I know it’s easier to make cookies using one of those cake mix you can just pick up from supermarkets, but, I think it’s such a lazy thing to do.

Speaking of cookies, I tried making one of those rainbow colored cookies the other day by tediously dividing my cookie dough, adding in few drops of food color, vanilla extract, patiently cutting them into strips, twisting all my technicolor dough together and walah! Rainbow cookies from scratch. Last night, I tried to channel cookie monster by adding little drops of blue food color and tossing in chopped Oreo cookies to my dough. If it goes well then I’ll sell more of them. I just love how ‘cookie monster’ blue it turned out (snicker) it was so cute. I hope to find myself a bubblegum extract someday because it seems better ‘bubblegum flavoured’ than vanilla because of how vibrant the color turned out. I just love making cookies, such an excellent de-stressing activity kinda like crafting. So, what to do when you’re cold?? Keep moving. As for me, I immensely enjoy warm a cup of anything, a coffee, ginger tea or chocolate! And oh it’s best paired with home-baked cookies. 

NYE to 2018!

Happy New Year! 

2018 is the year of the brown earth dog and is predicted to be  a good year in all respects according to Chinese horoscope. As for me, I always believe in hard work and life is what we always make it, stroke of luck is just a plus. I thank God I got to welcome the new year with my family for the first time again in many years after being on MIA (missing in action) mostly during the holidays because of work. I don’t really have any new year’s resolution as it’s always que sera sera (what will be, will be) for me. I just hope this year will be better than the rest like what I always say. 2017 was my travel year because I was auspicious to travel abroad twice last year unlike the previous years since I usually only travel once a year or during my sister and I’s birthday. I also ventured into the food business before the year ended which I was really thankful about. 

our NYE dining hall set up 🎉

oven mitts 

Moving on, I spent my new year’s eve at home with my sibs and niece and as usual we set up our little buffet corner. I  even added a colorful happy new year banner to spice things up a bit or add that quirky vibe. We did not splurge on food since new year will just go by anyways, we just prepared gifts for ourselves for our little NYE exchange gift thingy. To stay awake, albeit it’s difficult not to, we had a Thai horror movie marathon for hours. I’m also happy this time around my cat is home to welcome 2018 unlike last Christmas day since he went missing. It’s a peaceful NYE where I’m at because fireworks isn’t really encouraged (I know no matter how boring it sounds) for safety reasons but nevertheless there were still fireworks come 12 midnight lol. I mean, what’s welcoming the new year without those spectacular and colorful fireworks in the air eh? And as usual we decked our dining table with ornaments from Christmas eve, a clever and cost effective way to recycle and just twitched it a bit by changing the way the table napkins were folded. We also had a little candle light dinner same
as Christmas eve just for fun. Anyways, please check out the video I made below👇🏼  regarding how we decorated our dining hall for new year's eve. Then, minutes before 12MN we gathered at the balcony to watch the fireworks display outside and opened gifts afterwards (I got an oven mitts from my sissy yay!). Let me just share that I accidentally burned a patch of skin on my pinky finger the other day while baking cookies because I still do not have any oven mitts since I usually make cookies before using a skillet geez. Going back, I did not sleep until around 3PM because I had coffee to stay awake in welcoming 2018.

To wrap up this bloggie I only have one song in mind in welcoming 2018 ‘Auld Lang Syne’ (Old Long since), a Scots poem written by Robert Burns in 1788 and became a traditional folk song which is about remembering long-standing friendship and good old days which is very fitting for new year’s eve. 

DIY New Year's Eve table setting