Oats with rice

Quaker Oats has introduced "oats for rice" for some time. It's a form of processed oats that makes it possible for us to just mix the oats with uncooked rice and cook it together with our rice. I've been wanting to try it out, but never seemed to find it in supermarkets. Then recently I found it in the rice section of a supermarket. Turns out that I had been looking in the wrong place... I was looking at the oats section!

Here's the package:

Poured into a container:

The oats are more puffed up than normal rolled oats, I guess because they have been pre-cooked with a bit of moisture.

After cooking (the recommended ratio of rice to oats is 2:1)

After being cooked, the rice-oats mixture has the fragrance of oats if you smell it, but there is no taste of oats when eating it (or if there is, then it's very slight). I guess it's a good way for people who hate the taste of oats to get oats into their diet. I don't really need it though... since I have discovered overnight oats not too long ago... and soaking rolled oats in chocolate milk (half cup oats with one cup milk) tastes great to me!

Hour of dawn

This week's theme is dawn. Come on... just last month we were given twilight and before that we already had sky. I didn't want to take the same photos again, so I tried to take a photo of something in the dawn light instead.

It was harder than I thought... even when it was light enough outside to see and move about inside my room, I couldn't take a photo of my clock (the photo turned out totally black). So I settled for a photo of my clock on the windowsill.

It wasn't very bright for 7+ in the morning... partly it's because we are in the "winter" months, and also, it has been raining frequently lately. So there were probably a lot of dark clouds too!

I took this photo on Monday morning... I was going to replace it with a better photo if I could get one. Looks like that didn't happen.

Achievement unlocked!

Today I managed to lock myself out of my work computer. How? Well, I'm still pretty much confused about that...

My company requires us to change our password rather frequently. Since I joined, I have needed to change my password every month, so in four and a half years, that's fifty-four passwords! Okay, maybe a little less... because the password expires in 30 days if not mistaken, and if it expires during a weekend, you don't need to change it until you come back to work on Monday. And I never change it before it expires, because I don't want to think up a new password too often.

(Note: recently they have changed the password validity to three months. Yay!)

Anyway, I have come up with a system that rotates the number of times I type a letter, so that I can use the "same" password for some time, just by repeating some of the letters more than others (that's all I can tell you!). It has worked fine up till now... immediately after changing to a new password, I might type the previous one by mistake, but hey, that happens to everyone! Then I would just type in the correct one instead.

But today somehow that didn't work out. I logged in to my laptop when I reached the office in the morning. Then, after locking my laptop to go somewhere, I got back to my laptop and typed in the wrong password. And somehow I simply could not recall the password that I was currently using.

After trying a number of combinations that I might have used as my password recently, my laptop locked me out. So I had to go to the IT desk and ask them to reset my password for me. (they said the lock-out was for 30 minutes, so I expect I could have tried more combinations after that :P ) When I told them, "I managed to lock myself out of my laptop", one of the guys there said, "wow, achievement". lol

So they reset my password and I made a new one. However that's not the end of the story... after lunch I got back to my desk and typed in my password without thinking. It wasn't the new one that I had just set, and I do suspect it was the old one that I did not manage to recall earlier. Well, too late! I guess that's one of the things that's harder to recall when you're thinking too hard.

The inner child

When driving home, the car in front of mine had a couple of cushions in the rear window. The cushions had a picture of a bear walking (jauntily, not like an old bear) with a walking stick. But as the top of the cushion curves away from me (like cushions do), I couldn't see the top of the bear's head! I did so want to see the bear's face, its eyes! So frustrating.

In line with people calling some problems "first world problems", I think I'll call this "inner child problems".

Anyway, this isn't the reason why I wanted to write this post.

I went to Longwan after work to buy some groceries. (and had the new char kuey teow meletup there... which was pretty good but unfortunately only had one prawn... lots of kerang though. For RM4 I guess it's reasonable) This is my receipt from Longwan:

Did you notice the most expensive item? Here it is!

Even though it's not a Bulbasaur or a Charmander or a Squirtle... nor a St... (I wonder what that's supposed to be... Staryu?) But I didn't see other types of Pokemon there... they only had this Dragonite (in case you're wondering what it is), and a few types of Pikachu. All the Pikachu didn't look so nice though. This isn't the first time I've seen the Dragonite; on my previous visit to Longwan I had seen it too, but exercised more self-control and did not buy it. Also because it was packed up with a cable tie and I couldn't open the packet to check whether it really did look nice.

But today I looked over it for some time... and chose the nicest one that I could see. It really looks cute!

Again (like with Clefairy), I checked Bulbapedia and read the description of Dragonite. It matches too! Just that the colour of the eyes are black instead of greyish-green, and the wings are blue instead of teal. (close enough...) Maybe this one is from a different manufacturer... it has a price tag (that you can see in the photo) and a CE label (also seen in the photo) that says "made in China". My Squirtle and Clefairy don't have those.

Anyway, just for fun, here's how my Pikachu and my Dragonite look like side by side.

It's actually pretty funny, considering that Pikachu is supposed to be 1ft 4in tall, and Dragonite is supposed to be 7ft3in tall!

An old bottle

This week's theme is old. I was short on ideas, and yesterday I suddenly thought of taking a photo of the bus stop on the road out from my place. (they have cleared the road construction stuff that was previously in front of the bus stop... so it suddenly caught my eye) However this morning the traffic was too smooth for me too take a photo (haha, have you ever heard of people saying traffic is too smooth? :P ) I thought I could stop the car on my way home and snap that photo... however it started to rain pretty heavily on my way home. So I gave up on that idea...

However, the rain gave me another idea which was this:

Rain X, the invisible windshield wiper (as advertised). I bought it years ago (you can see how the writing and label are faded), and have been applying it every time I felt my windshield was no longer repelling water very effectively. Recently there has quite often been heavy rain, so I am glad that I renewed the Rain X application not too long ago!

Favourite books

Some time ago, the topic of books came up during a lunch chat. One of the guys, who obviously is not a reader, asked, "So what's your favourite book?" Bad question. It's hard to pinpoint a favourite book when there are so many that you really like! When I hesitated, he amended his question, "What book would you read again?". Worse question! There are so many books that I would like to read again, even if they have no chance to be elected my favourite(s).

One of the books that I absolutely love is Parce Que Je T'aime, which I have raved about at the end of this post. I guess it could be my favourite, if I really had to choose just one. However, now I believe I have found a worthy rival!

I've read two of Jeffrey Deaver's books before, Speaking in Tongues and The Blue Nowhere. The first was pretty normal, run-of-the-mill good. The second one was better, with more interesting twists and turns in the plot.

But now the third one, The October List, takes the cake. It is amazing. The story is told in reverse, with the final chapter first. Reading it was frustrating as I did not get the head or tail of it... however I kept wanting to continue, hoping that the next few pages would shed light onto then puzzling things that I had just read.

I started reading the book on Thursday night, and a several pages in, I knew it was a mistake. I couldn't finish it that night and I was not going to have time to continue on Friday... Anyway, that is why I finished reading it today.

As the book went on, some of my questions were answered, but some other questions remained, and additional questions popped up. Even after reading chapter 2 (that's the second last chapter, just so we understand each other here), I was still confused about some of the things that had happened. But after reading chapter 1 (the last chapter that wraps up the book) I do believe all my questions are answered. Now I'm gonna read the book backwards (as in story forwards) instead...to see whether there are any mysteries that I missed, and to savour the ingenuity of how it is written.

And you know where I got this book? From the book exchange that is held on Beach Street every third Sunday of the month (I've only been there once though :P ). I'd say it was worth exchanging for a book that I didn't even want to read again!

Edit, 14th January, aka the day after: So I re-read the book from back to front...and yeah, it is wonderfully plotted. Discovered a few more dropped hints. Found one mistake though... there was a nickname used a little too early, earlier than it had been given. But then... with a book written that well, I guess that could be forgiven. However it does take away from the perfectness of the book.

Cold as ice

The theme for this week is cold. I guess this looks cold enough.

The past few days it's been raining quite heavily. I can't help thinking that it would have been great if the "rain" theme had come this week instead!

Learning how to sear

In my quest to make a better lamb dish (and finishing off the second piece of chop that I had bought, since the first chop was badly grilled - it was a bit tough), I decided to try out this recipe for roasted lamb chops. Even though it called for searing the lamb in a pan and then putting it into the oven to cook - something that I would usually not do!

Searing is simple: just put the meat into a pan until the sides are nicely browned, right? Well, like I said, this is a quest to make a better lamb dish. And since I love lamb, I did not want to hurt the lamb just because I might have a slightly wrong definition of searing.

So I searched, and The Kitchn (the same place where I got the lamb recipe) came to the rescue again, with an article called How To Sear Meat Properly. Yes, that's exactly what I need.

Before reading that article, I was all prepared to go and grill my meat in my non-stick frying pan (with or without a bit of olive oil). And I always try to pull my meat off the pan whenever it sticks. Revelation from The Kitchn:

Meat needs a few minutes of uninterrupted contact to properly sear — it will actually stick to the bottom of the pan at first and then release naturally when seared.

*Gasp*

I just tried that out, and I am utterly amazed that it's perfectly true. What have I been doing to my meat all these years?

I didn't shake the skillet (or in my case, pot... more on that later), but I just pushed it with my tongs to see whether it was still stuck (I am very happy that I bought a pair of tongs when I saw them at the market; I know I can achieve the same with chopsticks, but they are harder to handle and I have to make sure the ends are aligned...anyway, I prefer tongs for this)

And I discovered something that is not mentioned in the article: If you are using a skillet that cannot fit all your meat in one go, you have to deglaze the pot before you put in the second batch of meat. As mentioned earlier, I used a pot instead of a skillet, because when it comes to stainless steel, that's all I've got. After the first piece of meat (which stuck and unstuck itself most beautifully), the second piece did not stick, and the glaze from the first piece of meat was getting burnt. To save it, I quickly removed that second piece of meat, and deglazed the pot with water, then started the searing process all over again for the second piece of meat. As a result, the previously-untouched side of meat was seared nicely, while the other side (which was unsuccessfully seared the first time) remained not-so-browned. Lesson learnt!

Note: The article actually does not mention deglazing the pan... but it is in the photos. Deglazing is putting some wine/broth/water (I used water all the way) into the hot pan and scraping the glaze off into the liquid. Then the liquid is used as sauce.

Oops... looks like the last two paragraphs were unnecessary... the article doesn't mention these two things, but it is described at the end of the recipe. Seems that I skipped reading the end, because the beginning of the recipe was so similar to the article itself! But I'll leave the paragraphs anyway... firstly because I've already written them, and secondly because you might not read the recipe to the end either.

After all that, you might want to see how my recipe turned out.

I used shimeji mushrooms instead of button mushrooms, because they didn't have button mushrooms at the market.

You can't see the meat in the photo above, so I pushed the mushrooms aside and took another photo.

The sauce was very good, but unfortunately some parts of the meat remained a little tough. Less tough then when I grilled it, though. Maybe I need to roast it longer...and the fact that I used shoulder chops might have something to do with it too...

Anyway, this tasted good, so maybe I can still try it out in future. Maybe cook it in the slow cooker instead of roasting...

Disrupted routine

After years of playing at 10am to 12pm on Saturdays, my badminton session is suddenly moved an hour early this month, because of court availability (or unavailability). So today I woke up an hour earlier, had my breakfast an hour earlier, came home an hour earlier, and had my lunch an hour earlier. Now as I sit down for a rest and go online, I look at the clock and am confused, how come it's still so early?

Prophecy coming true

At the end of 2016 I hoped that the end of 2017 would not bring a similar theme. But it did...up to the theme running for two weeks. I think there's no plan to change either; maybe the two-week theme is not for the person setting it to go on vacation, but for the people taking the photos to be on vacation!

Anyway, as prophesized, you are getting a similar picture. However, it might not be such a bad thing after all... I was quite happy looking back at last year's picture and seeing the things I had noted down on my calendar (your version is blurred, the original version is not :P ).

So there you go, 2017 in review.