Whipped cream and a side of apple cake; Antipodean

Apparently Antipodean, new cute little cafe in Bangsar, has amazing coffee. I wouldn't know, similar to the way in which I don't know how to properly pronounce Antipodean (because of this, Goosey and I put different em-PHA-ses on the different syl-LA-bles at alternate times when pronouncing Antipodean, because, law of averages, we must be getting it right at least one of the times: "Do you want to eat at AN-tipodean?" "Hmm An-TI-podean, what would I have there?" "The Anti-PO-dean breakfast set?" "That sounds promising, Antipo-DE-an it is." "Jom, Antipode-AN!").

Coffee is a drug, and I treat it as such, by only having it when I need it, and not for pleasure. (I didn't say coffee was a RECREATIONAL drug. Those, you would have for pleasure, when you most certainly do NOT need it.)

I know a lot about coffee because I am not a morning person, and require hot, bitter, liquid caffeine to wake my brain up in the a.m. I am also not an after-lunch person, because not being a morning person means you're a night person, which thus means that you probably stayed up late the night before, didn't get enough sleep, and will start to wilt by lunch. This past week has required me to wake up at 7am every morning (thanks a lot, training) and I've been more dependent than usual on coffee.

I also know a lot about drugs because the Goose has finally managed to persuade me to start watching The Wire which is a gritty police show about the war on drugs, or, as Goosey calls it, The Greatest TV Show Ever. My taste in TV shows tends to run towards the more humorous (Community!) or entertaining yet emotional (Grey's Anatomy) or materialistic but dealing with issues I can identify with (Sex and the City, always a classic, even though I started watching it when I was neither having sex nor in a city nor mature enough to identify with any of the issues), and it was difficult to get into at first (I do not understand gang slang at ALL) and shockingly real (total lack of stereotypically good looking Hollywood stars, everyone is normal looking. Which is ironically not normal at all for an American TV show) but... I kinda like it. Also I am now sort of an expert on inner city drug trade gang dynamics.






To cut a superfluous story short, I didn't have coffee at Antipodean, and had apple cake with a generous serving of my recreational drug of choice, whipped cream. Gives me intense pleasure and I definitely don't need it, but you can (metaphorically) pry my love for whipped cream from my cold dead heart after you gun me down in a drug related The Wire-type shooting.

Spicy Beef Macaroni; Fat Spoon

After being afflicted, for the better part of 10 days (yes, you read right, count it and weep... On my behalf, because that is how truly ineffective my immune system is) with a cough, cold and fever, which manifested itself in the form of neverending phlegm (in my nose AND my throat! In various colours and consistencies! My blog doesn't know the MEANING of TMI!) I have finally, thankfully recovered (somewhat. Enough, anyway).

I hate being sick. Schlepping about the apartment in my jammies and not being at work was fun for about three hours until I went through an entire box of tissues in those three hours, trying to expel all the phlegm from my various (facial, I should clarify) orifices (orifii?). It blows (pun intended) not being able to taste food and, my personal pet peeve, being told not to do this or that "because you're sick!" (Goosey is a prime offender of this. He also called me a masochist because I wanted to have fun and have a life despite being sick. I'm not a masochist! I'm a champion man), because I hateeee not being able to do things and then having those restrictions pointed out to me (I haz authority issues).







Goosey Offender trying not to look offensive

So this past week has rendered me somewhat of a soup expert: oxtail, mushroom, a unique (euphemism) version of chicken soup from the mamak downstairs, but I have to say the winner, hands down, was the spicy beef macaroni soup from Fat Spoon. So spicy it both cleared out my nose, and was able to evoke a reaction from my sick, deadened taste buds. YUM. The picture does not do it justice, for it just looks like a bowl of tabasco sauce (also spicy but not as yummy).







I also had cucur udang. I could not taste a thing, of course, but I still ate all of it. What did I tell you? CHAMPION.

I Love Baking

Hooray! Hooray! My gloriously feminine and shockingly pink baking apron arrived in the mail today!

Little bit suppressed 1950's housewife, little bit Barbie Stepford wife, little bit Bree from Desperate Housewives (who is, by the way, my favourite character on the show for the entire two seasons that I could be bothered to follow their increasingly absurd storylines), and a whole lot more interesting than baking in my regular clothes which inevitably get soaked and splashed and stained... I present to you my new kitchen armour. Sadly, there is no baking accessory that can keep me from getting flour in my ears and batter on my hair, which always happens when I bake, for the same inexplicable reasons I get food all over my clothes when I eat, but I think it would be a lot more bearable having flour ears and batter hair if I were wearing this.



I do bake on and off and when I feel the rare urge to get domestic, but I've decided (Umi, you would be so proud) to make a concerted effort to cook more. Also, I found these amaaaaazing things which may or not have fueled my decision to onward my quest to domestic goddessism.

1. iPodch recipe apps. They are GENIUS. GENIUS! So simple to use, to easy to scroll through the millions upon bajillions of recipes, with ratings and fellow cooking buddy reviews (call me an elitist, but I don't use any recipes with less than 100 reviews and less than a 4-star rating) and the AllRecipe app even has a recipe spinner! That you can shake and that will reveal what magical food item you should make! Like an 8-ball, for your tummy.


2. Robot Salt & Pepper Shakers: all the shaking fun of regular salt and pepper shakers (if you're the kind of person who finds fun in shaking out salt and pepper; I don't judge, whatever floats your boat man) but in robot form! I don't particularly like robots, but I DO like animating and giving personalities and names to otherwise inanimate objects. Saltrino 5000 and Robotimus 6000. At. Your. Flavouring. Service. *robot voice*

http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/kitchen/cf87/

3. Ninjabread Men Cookie Cutters! A cookie cutter so cute, not even the resident Ninja Man in my life could fail to appreciate it (although he doesn't like cookies, and even ninja-shaped cookies may not entice him to develop a sweet tooth. So... hmmm. In any case, these are awesome. I could even burn my cookies black and it wouldn't look like a mistake. It would look like a ninja suit. [I don't know what ninja outfits are called, but I'm sure there's a name for them.])

http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/kitchen/e55a/

4. Not Boring Toaster. With capacity to produce toast bearing messages, like "Bite Me", that may prove useful to bleary-eyed zombies waking up in the morning with giant hangovers and too little sleep. You know, in case brain of the bleary-eyed zombie has not started functioning and bleary-eyed zombie doesn't know what else to do with his or her toast. I haven't quite deciphered what secret message the crazy-eyed toast face is trying to convey, but I can imagine trying to decipher said message would be quite entertaining while one sips coffee and generally tries to wake up. Existentialist message: "We're ALL Crazy Like Toast Face"? Ode to Laziness: "You Are Loco Like Your Toast Face For Waking Up So Early This Morning"? Sympathetic Understanding for the over-worked corporate drone: "You Think YOUR Job Drives You Crazy? Toast Face Looks Like This ALL The Time!"? The possibilities, and secret messages, are endless.


http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/kitchen/e76f/images/

5. Virginia Woolf Tea Towel. Though my kitchen makes do with a regular, non-literary inspired kain buruk, one could always use a bit of pizzazz by way of bookishness in one's kitchen. It would also be ironic that a key feminist text is emblazoned on a teatowel which belongs in a kitchen. Much like a woman would be expected to belong, if you weren't a feminist and still held such outdated beliefs. Trippy.

http://www.theliterarygiftcompany.com/virginia-woolf-a-room-of-ones-own-teatowel-1355-p.asp

6. I totally saved the best for last. I will be getting my hands on these suckers one day (hopefully soon, but not in the next few weeks, for I have gone overboard with the internet purchases and must rest my credit card and the weary company mailman who keeps delivering boxes of random internet purchases to my desk at work). YUMBOT CUPCAKE HOLDERS! Regular paper cupcake liners are a thing of the PAST. The robots have come to take over my baked goods, and I, for one, welcome our new cupcake overlords. Could be quite distressing eating their little cupcake brains, unless you are robot savvy like me and know that robots don't have brains and therefore eating the cupcakes in their heads won't actually hurt them. Would also not be distressing at all if you weren't like me and didn't try to anthropomorphize anything that is cute.
http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/kitchen/e559/