Inner Solace

January

Got quite a bit done this month. Pretty pleased.

Fauxtography

Started 365 again. Going well so far.  Not exactly inspirational photos, but there was a little experimentation going on with the tripod, 2x teleconverter, and remote shutter release which is better than no tinkering at all.

Also experimenting with mobile post-processing on the iPhone and iPad.  Interesting with mixed results thus far.  Bit hard though since you can’t easily calibrate the display.  Also learning more about post-proc in Lightroom and Photoshop.  Trying to graduate from using presets that I don’t understand the construction of…

Also also, bought a new lens (post to come).  I didn’t mean to.  But the price I got it at was ~$100 less than what the market price has been for the last few months.  I don’t regret the purchase yet, but it’s a near thing…

Food

More ice-creams (lime and cardamom yoghurt, and a delicious chocolate.  I have more plans for my ice-cream maker which I need to pace out a bit lest I gain too much weight. -_-

Made a clone of the Giuseppe Corica apple strudel[1] that I’ve been telling myself I’d do for years.  Seriously, I win at strudel (post to come).  I love GC, but I love my rendition of their strudels.  The difficult thing now will be deciding if I can be bothered dropping $18.50 for one of theirs, or spending the time to make one of mine.

Made yee sang from scratch.  Much easier than expected.  But need sharper knife for slicing the fish.  Also, a julienne peeler like Marcus suggested would be a good idea.  My knife skills are not so refined that I can julienne quickly (and evenly), and while the food processor is fast, it mushes it up a bit.

Fountain Pens

Decided I need to hand-write more otherwise my hands will be permanently stuck in the hands-on-keyboard position.  So I bought a new paper diary/planner.

Also gave my favourite fountain pen a little TLC with some maintenance.  Decided that while I loved it dearly, I wanted to branch out into a (Japanese) fine nib.

Bought two new Pilot fine nib pens, one classic, one with a clear demonstrator body.  And also a Parker 51 clone for giggles to replace my dad’s old Parker 51 that broke ages ago.

Obtained two Sheaffer Touchdowns of unknown model, and my dad’s old Parker 61.

Learning how to maintain all of these properly.  And also learning to repair Touchdowns.  This has been pretty educational and kind of neat.  I was just waiting on parts to come in, and now all I need is to buy some shellac and I can finish this off.

Arty

It’s been ages since I’ve drawn or painted anything either.  I don’t have the time or the space for acrylics, and I lack the talent for oils and pastels, but I’ve pulled out my Pentel Aquash[2] and watercolours and started tinkering again.  Once I get the hang of using the brush, I may even pull out my Aquarelles and put the two together.

Musical

I borrow my sister’s instruments from time to time, usually my mum’s old classical guitar, but I’ve been listening to more Jake Shimabukuro again, and then there were those videos of that adorable little boy who played Jason Mraz’ I’m Yours, and then that video of Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt doing What Are You Doing New Years Eve?… So this time I borrowed the uke.

I’ve learned the chords for Puff the Magic Dragon and a couple other songs.  It’s not much, but it’s definitely progress.  I may even start the piano again, but one step at a time.

Garden

The shiso seedling I sprouted is still a seedling.  But I guess this is better than it not having sprouted at all but it isn’t growing any bigger.  I suck at shiso.  I might have to give the seeds to someone else to try and sprout for me next season and then get it off them again when they’re seedlings.  If only they sold shiso seedlings in Perth. *tear*

[1] These strudels are famous. So famous that people (mainly Asians it seems) will cart them as carry-on luggage to give as gifts to friends/family/business associates overseas.  It’s like what people do for Krispy Kreme’s when they fly in from over east, except that GC strudels are actually worth the effort.

[2] “Why not just use regular brushes?” I hear you ask.  Well, it’s more convenient for spontaneous bits of watercolouring without having to have a jar of water nearby.  I can just pick up the brush, crack open the box of watercolours and away I go.  Convenient for getting myself back into bits of painting without having to break all my supplies out of the store room.

Apple Crumble and Lime Cardamom Frozen Yoghurt

Repost of {005} to accompany the recipe requested by theresalighton. :)

Warning, there’s a lot of approximation and ‘ish’ going on here. I was a bit lazy but I did use scales to make sure I had general proportions right.

Apple Crumble

Ingredients:

• 3 medium apples, peeled, cored, quartered and roughly sliced
• 1-ish tsp of ground cinnamon
• 1-ish tsp of cornflour
• 90g butter, cubed
• 100g plain flour (ish)
• 80g rolled oats
• 80g sugar

Method:

1. Preheat oven to around 200C.
2. Combine the cornflour and ground cinnamon and toss the apples through it. Place in an medium-ish oven-safe dish.
3. Combine the flour and sugar and mix well.
4. Rub the butter into the flour/sugar mixture cubes at a time until it resembles breadcrumbs.  Add more flour if the dough is too wet/not crumbly enough.  Mix in the rolled oats towards the end because they don’t rub in as easily.
5. Top the apples with the crumbly mixture.
6. Bake for 30-40min or until the crumble is golden and looks like it might have some crunch to it.

Note: If you’re slack like I was last night, you can use a food processor (or Thermomix) to just whizz this up.  Add the oats towards the end so you don’t obliterate them entirely. The texture will be more dense and less crumbs, but if you spread it on top of the apples it still comes out about right, if less attractive.

I also use a deep dish so you end up with a thick layer of crumble on top of the apples so it’s like slacker apple pie.  A larger shallow dish will probably end up with a more crisp crumble. YMMV.

Lime & Cardamom Frozen Yoghurt

Adapted from Jeni Britton’s Lime & Cardamom Yogurt recipe. Couldn’t find a proper link, but if you Google it there’s a video.

Ingredients:

• 500g Greek yoghurt
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup lime juice (about 3 limes)
• zest of one lime
• 7g gelatin
• 2 tsp ground cardamom
• 3/4 cup whipping cream (ish)

Method:

1. Pre-prep: Stick the Greek yoghurt in a muslin cloth (or as I discovered, a fine sieve) over a bowl in the fridge to drain over night. Greek yoghurt is thick, but it does have a lot of extra water.
2. The next morning/day, add gelatin to 2 tbs of lime juice in a small bowl. Stir and set aside.
3. In a small pot, combine the remaining lime juice with the sugar and heat on the stove at medium until the sugar dissolves. Remove from heat.
4. Whisk in the gelatin/lime.
5. Combine the yoghurt, zest and cardamom in a bowl and mix well.
6. Whisk in the gelatin/sugar/lime mixture.
7. Refrigerate until cool (it will have a softish yoghurt pudding texture). If it’s too set, let it warm up a little on the counter-top.
8. Turn it into ice-cream using your desired method.

Makes almost 1L of mixture which churns up to just over 1L of frozen yoghurt.

Note: If you don’t have an ice-cream churn, you can spread it into a shallow container and take it out periodically to blend and re-freeze until it’s set. Or you can freeze the mixture into an ice-cube tray and throw those into a blender when you want to.  It might not be as smooth as if you used a churn, but y’know.

Sweetness Note: I used a 1/2 cup of sugar and that creates a pretty tart frozen yoghurt.  I don’t mind it, but it might be a bit strong for others. You can bump up the sugar to 2/3 cup or to taste depending on how sweet you like things.

Cream Note: I had about 1/4 cup of thickened cream left and mixed that in with some whipping cream. The consistency was pretty good. But I will never use more thickened cream than whipping cream because the fat content makes the ice-cream too hard. :/