Dark Chocolate Cheesecake; Palate Palette

Good things come in small packages:

Vanilla bean cheesecake and dark chocolate topping


Wondermilk cupcakes (portions of a Generous Stranger Birthday Boy's birthday cupcakecake: he wanted to share the love, and no one says no to birthday cake and spreading of love, so we obliged. Happy birthday and gratitude to YOU, stranger boy!)


Other good things that also come in small packages:
Tiffany blue boxes
Breathmints
Espresso shots
Lollipops
Babies

The fervour with which I believe in this adage may have something to do with the fact that I am five foot nothing. MAYBE. Just saying.

I Heart Food in Books

I'm on the verge of getting sick again (what is up with you, immune system?!) and so (shock, horror) do not feel like eating nor looking at pictures of food. Let us not go into the details but suffice to say I have an extremely queasy stomach today. I will instead rely on thinking about imaginary food, which somehow manages to fill the unimaginary void in my stomach when I don't feel like eating in reality.

I found a post on Jezebel (and have since lost the link and am too lazy to google it, I apologize for my Monday Morning Laziness) about food in literature. I believe the exact title of the article was Screw the Plot: What's for Lunch?

I wouldn't go so far as screwing the plot because I'm picky enough about the books that I like and immediately and on principle reject formulaic writing, predictable plots, characters with the complexity and emotional ranges of two by four planks of wood, and Annoying Writing Styles in General, which means by definition I loathe, abhor and detest most genres, including chick lit, romance and mystery novels (yes it is EXTREMELY difficult for me to find books that I actually enjoy, let alone love), but I DO love reading about food.

And in honor of this food in literature idea I have compiled a list of the All Time Yummiest Food References in Literature (albeit most of said "literature" is actually children's books. Maybe as a child I was less picky about plot and so focused more on food? Or maybe I had a particularly hungry childhood, could be either) In My Opinion.

10. Enid Blyton's Midnight Feasts, in either the Malory Towers OR the St. Clare's series. Both boarding schools seemed to have ridiculous late night food orgies. Sausages and condensed milk and pot pies and tinned pineapples and tinned sardines and ginger beer! At midnight!

9. Ms. Trunchbull's ginormous special chocolate cake in Roald Dahl's Matilda, that she forced Bruce Bogtrotter to scarf down in front of the entire school because he dared to steal a slice of it, causing him to go into a chocolate cake coma

8. J.K. Rowlings' Hogwarts dinners. All of them. Plus anything Mrs. Weasley cooked, with butterbeer to wash it down

7. Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I want to eat the entire factory. Minus the Oompa Loompas, because they creeped me out, and also minus Willy Wonka, because I don't want him to Veruca Salt my ass for being greedy

6. Louise Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy tomato sandwiches with mayonnaise. So simple and yet so yummy sounding that I used to make myself tomato-mayo sandwiches whenever I wanted to read the book, and I don't even LIKE mayonnaise

5. Hot butter on toast for tea in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, preferably to be eaten while one is warming one's feet by the fire in one's flouncy 19 century dress

4. ALL the campfire/stakeout food in Blyton's Famous Five series: sausages and ginger beer and hard boiled eggs and squashed Mars Bars and treacle pudding

3. Turkish Delight in C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. FYI for those who have never eaten it: Turkish Delight tastes like rose water crap. But I still wanted to eat it SO BADLY when the White Witch offered it to Edmund and I totally would have sold out my siblings as well just to try some

2. Assorted food in Enid Blyton's Faraway Tree series: Google buns (sticky buns with a warm, juicy middle), Toffee Shocks (toffees that would get bigger as you sucked on them and would eventually explode in your mouth, thus shocking you), Pop Biscuits (digestive type biscuits that would secrete honey with each bite) and Hot and Cold Delights (candy that would get hot and then cold and then hot and then cold and which I imagined to be some kind of bipolar ice cream bar)

1. AND THE BEST FOOD DESCRIPTION EVER: The Land of Goodies from the Faraway Tree (Blyton again). A completely 100% edible land full of candy houses and lollipop flowers and rivers of caramel and ice cream trees? CLEARLY THE WINNER.

Bulgogi & Kimchi, Asia Cafe, Subang

In my extended family (maternal side), one's character is measured by the amount of spicy food one is able to consume without tearing up or or gasping for air or crying for water or milk or any liquid in the general vicinity that will be able to extinguish the raging fire in one's mouth.

Yes, we are unrelenting and unapologetic masochists who employ stringent and restrictive culinary litmus tests to judge people.

My late grandfather's invariable response to any of his grandchildren's "but that's too spicy!" wails would be to immediately dump more of the said spicy food on our plates and glare at us while we ate it. As a result of this, I grew up with a high spice tolerance and disdain for people who can't eat anything pedas.

And then one day 10 years later at university while poking around on the hunt for something to eat, I discovered this random smelly jar of spicy looking red goo in the apartment fridge, courtesy of my Korean roommate's mother... and thus began my love affair with the Amazing Kimchi, which, I found, was miraculously both spicy and salty. Aka pretty much both things that I look for separately, in food that I like: but that in kimchi, were combined into ONE!

I really only ordered the Bulgogi so that the Korean man at the food court wouldn't think I was completely insane for ordering two plates of kimchi.

And yes, I am aware that I just penned an ode to fermented spicy cabbage. I'm sorry, I'm hungry. And I used to steal my roommate's kimchi all the time. Sorry for that too. Actually no I'm not it was totally worth it. And my grandfather would have been so proud of me and my spicy food stealing ways.

Cuppacakes; Wondermilk

I am all of a sudden sick sick sick and I hate it. I can even pinpoint the early symptoms and when they began, though how they became a full blown fever and cold in such a short period of time is beyond me. Apparently there's a flu bug going around at work, and (appropriately enough) work germs are hyper-productive and efficient.

First I started just sneezing uncontrollably; an hour later I started to become ridiculously hey-everyone-see-the-liquid-steadily-drip-out-of-my-nose sniffly; and an hour after that my throat started to join the discomfort party, only to convince the other partygoers to transform said party into a full out pain carnival.

So now I am bed-ridden and disgusting and ingesting this extremely untasty drug cocktail twice a day.

And the definitive kicker and ultimate confirmation that I really am sick (other than the tell-tale green phlegm): I can't even eat my cupcakes. Noooo! Everything tastes like cardboard and I can't smell anything. Stupid flu. You can take away my sense of taste and smell but you will never take away my eyes (umm now that I've said that and tempted fate please do not blind me seeing as--see what I did there?!--I'm practically legally blind anyway) and I can still look at them. And they are so pretty. Thank you goosey! I'm sure they taste delicious to someone who can actually taste. As much as I hate being sick, having cakes brought to my door almost makes up for it.

I Heart Pink

Am totally in love with the new calculator I bought, primarily because it is pink and white and the buttons are small, round and shiny and look like pink skittles. I would take a picture of it but I'm waiting for a blackberry upgrade (at the start of next month) so the picture will have to hold up as well.

So far the count of Pink Things at My Work Place is up to:

pink pencil holder

pink mousepad

pink (Marcus Aurelius) Ipod(omous)

pink waterbottle

pink notepad

pink pashmina

... and the pink skittle calculator

I am aware that some people may consider the pink explosion on my desk to reek of cutesy unprofessionalism. I am also aware that those people suck because colours, even the traditionally feminine ones, should not be mutually exclusive to work ethic and intelligence. Also I am totally not a cutesy kind of person at all and just happen to really like the diluted version of red so really I'm just proving all these people wrong. Unfortunately the bright things on my desk really make me want to eat skittles and pink cakes. Which isn't very professional. Damn you, backfired plan!

Chocolates Cakes; Delicious, Coffee Bean

Just realized, when looking through my pictures over the last month, that I have been ingesting an abundance of chocolate desserts. Maybe my stomach was trying to convey to me, via appetite preferences (ie the only way my stomach communicates with me... other than ferocious growling soliloquies during weekday afternoons that I pointedly ignore because no, Stomach, I will not feed you post-lunch and pre-dinner; the Body in which you reside is supposed to be doing work then, not eating at random hours) its gut feeling (pun intended) that Obama was going to become the first black* president of the United States.

Good on you, tummy. To celebrate your fortune telling abilities we shall consume more chocolate! I realize this whole post may sound and seem horribly racist. It's not. Obama won, I'm happy about said win, and also I like chocolate.

Chocolate Banana Cake from Delicious. And it WAS. It was thick and creamy and banana-flavoured and fudgey all at the same time.

Royal Chocolate Cake, Coffee Bean. Light and airy, with unexpected and secret crunchy layer of the chocolate cereal variety. I approve. I like finding textural surprises in my mouth.

* - Biracial, technically. If the dude keeps insisting that he identifies as black, which he does, I will respect his wishes and refer to him as black. But, Mr. President-Elect, I feel compelled to point out anyway that you are biracial. Assuming, of course, that race is even really anything but an arbitrary social construct and remnant of some archaic divide-and-rule alienate-the-Other power play as well as an internal manifestation of the human being's need to collate, collect, group and label ourselves and others for easy identification and simplistic understanding, which I totally think it is.

But I digress. Besides (back to the biracial topic), in order to correctly predict a biracial presidential win, my stomach should have gotten cravings for... what? Oreos? Marble cake? White and dark chocolate layered cake? Bounty chocolate bars? Evidently my cravings have not reached that level of sophistication.

Fresh Cream Fruit Cake; Bakerlyn, Brunei

Strawberries and grapes and kiwis and mangoes and cream, oh my!

This cake is perfection. All angelic creaminess and blooming airiness and melt-in-your-mouth innocuous milky whiteness, punctuated with rainbow bursts of fruit flavour. In my imaginary land where this cake is the world, everything is fresh and everything is beautiful and everything is pure, there are green meadows with blue skies with fluffy clouds in it, and little fleecy lambs are prancing around singing Blake's Songs of Innocence.

I shit you not, I have dreams about this cake.

Umi, please send? Pleasepleasepleaseplease? I have traversed high and low in KL and I haven't found anything close to this cakey gloriousness.

I DO NOT HEART Victoria Beckham

Arrrrggghhhggghhhhhhh she beat me to it! Victoria Beckham is on the cover of Vogue India wearing a wedding sari! Arrrggghghghghh!!!

I'm jealous. I see no evidence of naan or papadums, nor does she look like she's rocking out to bhangra music and hanging with a Bollywood dance posse, but still! The sari and maangtika are gorgeous.

It's very fitting that Deepavali weekend is coming up. Sometimes I totally wish I was Indian.

Root Beer Float; Delicious

One of the many perks of being an adult (almost on par with the Main Perk, which is the beloved Pay Check) is that I can now consume fizzy drinks whenever I choose.

Yes people, it is sadly and shockingly true: I am a product of one of those families that did not (still DOES not, actually) stock fizzy drinks in the refrigerator. And growing up, I was never allowed to order Coke or any carbonated variation thereof whenever we ate out at restaurants. Even though I crave sugar like crack and this craving started when I was still a wee tyke.

As a result of this fizzy drink prohibition, I grew up intensely jealous of people who got to drink Coke and have ice cream floats whenever they wanted. Ice Cream Float Nights became much anticipated and awaited rare celebratory events (wait, you think I'm being hyperbolic? I'm not. We used ice cream floats to toast joyous and special occasions. Like New Year's Eve) whenever my mom DID buy a liter of Coke that was to be shared between four sugar-deprived siblings, none of whom really wanted to share this coveted elixir of joy.

But now I'm an adult and can drink Coke whenever I want! Yes! Independence! Freedom! Fizzy!


And now it is my little brother who laments the fact that he can't drink Coke whenever he wants, forcing him to question the injustice within the parental system. I sympathize, but ultimately: too bad, buddy.

You can look forward to the Freedom of the Fizzy when YOU become an adult and join me in the adult world (please take your time, I like you as a kid). We'll toast your adulthood with a Coke ice cream float.

I Heart Geek(cake)s

I promise I do more at work than troll the internet for pictures of cakes, but the combination of only having ten more days of work to go before I leave for my new job, the slow motion free fall rollercoaster that is the Kuala Lumpur Composite Index, and the impending gloom over the financial markets somehow makes it difficult for me to muster enthusiasm and productivity.

Also I found a photo of a Super Mario wedding cake, and, well, the result of the clicking around that followed that discovery is this collection of cakes that only a nerd would love. Geekcakes! This is for you, gooseypanties.

All three of those cakes are wedding cakes. Umm. Yeah. Good luck with the marriage guys. (I am KIDDING, nerd apologists)

Linux the Penguin

Blue the Apple Cake (I wonder if it IS apple cake! Because that would be so fitting)

OPTIMUS PRIME (at first I was like huh, a fire truck, what's the biggie)

The desktop cake cousin of Abah's laptop, front and back view


And my favourite... Rubik's Cube Cake!