I know, this pumpkin/squash thing is getting REALLY ANNOYING isnt’ it! However, today’s dish concentrates more on the meat (or in this case, fish) rather than the squash..this is something that I had always wanted to try out but had always been way too lazy.

Miso-encrusted salmon with mashed pumpkin and herbed cauliflower

2 good slab of salmon
miso paste

1/4 pumpkin, cubed
cumin,cinnamon,paprika

cauliflower
dollop of butter
mixed herbs

Arrange the salmon on a baking tray
Spread a thin layer of miso paste on the fish, skin-side up.
Don’t worry about the smoothness,spikes add to the ‘character’

This needs to go in the oven at 220 for 15 minutes, depending on how over-cooked you like your fish and how thick your salmon is
Boil the cubed pumpkin until soft, around 5-10 minutes

When done, sieve the pumpkin to get rid of excess liquid…pumpkin retains water, so this move is nessacary.Make sure most of the water have been removed - about 100ml!

Mash it up with a potato masher, or in the words of malaysians, Ramly Burger press.
Season with paprika,cumin and cinnamon. This gives it a curry-like flavour.

Panfry the cauliflower with butter and herbs.
When cauliflower has slightly browned, put the lid on, this will ’sweat’ the cauliflower slightly and continue to cook it.
Keep the heat on for 5 minutes.

Back to the salmon, please remember to remove it from the oven after 10-15 minutes
Plate and serve up with a slice of lemon and a grind of pepper

I love love the taste of miso paste with salmon! Its a copycat and less-delicious version of nobu’s black cod miso,but seriously tasty irregardless of the wrong color and wrong fish. The squeeze of lemon goes deliciously well with the cauliflower as well, working hand in hand with the fish to achieve a good flavoursome dish. The pumpkin could do with a swirl of cream to make it creamier and nicer, but it’ll do finely :).

Enjoy.

We had officially gone OD on autumn veggies! After two solid days of pumpkin, I bacon decided that we needed a change and I served butternut squash instead - or what bacon calls penis squash…cause it looks like this:

hehe.

I had always wanted to try it, because it looks funny and I quite like the name, sounds like it tastes faintly like butter.I don’t think we have it in Malaysia, but I had definately seen it in Fresno with other cute-sounding vegs like spaghetti squash ect.And this is now part of my food adventure that I set out at the start of the year - welcome to the world of squashes! It definately has a very nice flavour, and I was impressed with the soft orange flesh inside, sweeter and tastier than my jack-o-lantern.

Stuffed Butternut squash with peppered steak

1 butternut squash, sliced half
mushrooms, whole
rosemary
mixed pepper seasoning
slab of good sirloin steak

Remove the seeds and other fibrous flesh from the concave inside the halved butternut
Marinate the butternut squash halves with rosemary,honey and olive oil
Roast in oven for 45mins. 1 hour will provide a nicely burnt edge to the squash
Sautee mushrooms with butter and a splash of balsamic vineger
Marinate steaks and panfry to taste - I prefer mine rare.
Remove squash,plate. Stuff mushrooms into the concave.
Serve with steak. No sauce required

today@8am…

Halloween used to signify the beginning of autumn for me. Somehow, in Fresno, Halloween is also the day that you’d notice the seasons have changed. Those going out dressing like hookers would be freezing their tails off, and you can barely keep warm in your costumes without a coat. BUT, it would still be warm enough. It’s around halloween as well when you lose an hour, turning the clocks back to daylight savings.

Those of you who have been reading this blog for some time would probably have heard before that I love halloween. My first (and last, due to my age) trick or treating trip was when I was 19, and it was heaven on earth for a sweet tooth like me ;). It also introduced me to Reeses’ peanut butter cups…the most heavenly and dastardly candy on earth (sen hon would agree) .Of course, growing up in Malaysia, if I were to walk around with a pumpkin on 31st October and in costume, everyone would be calling the cops rather than showering me with candy.

The English do not celebrate Halloween like the Americans do, which is a damn shame if you ask me. Everyone should celebrate halloween! It’s great! I love the color orange!Oops, secret out now… So, with the lack of halloween spirit means no more costumes for me to go to work in - but with today dipping down to 1c (WTF WTF WTF!!) there is no point putting on costumes unless you’re in a hot dog suit. Yummm…hot dog…The only trick or treaters I got last year was some jailbait mini hoochie mamas whose costume was to try to look like their trashy mother. Oh…shush.

This year I decided that I would try to celebrate Halloween adult-styled.Yep, no more pumpkin carving, but we’re eating it instead! I’ve bought a hugeass pumpkin carving-style and we are going to eat it instead of carving it up and letting it rot.

Roast pumpkin wedge with salmon

1/2 pumpkin - depending on size, 1/4 produces 2 wedge
honey to glaze
sea salt & cracked pepper
sprinkle of herb - rosemary’s great

Roast in oven on 200c for 1 hour.
Glaze with honey
Serve with grilled salmon, topped with a squeeze of lemon

After a whole pointless summer waiting for my parents to visit and endless aborted plans made and abandoned due to job instability…

We’re heading back next year for Chinese New Year. I can’t wait for it - and it being cny, I also know I am going to get pretty peeved at the family getting on my nerves. Not to mention having to actually DISTRIBUTE ang pow. BLEAH. The worst part is I know those cynical ones will be expecting a HUGE angpow as oh, I am afterall suppossedly 7 times richer than anyone else.

we *heart* our bosses as they had allowed us three weeks off! WOO!

Heading back for this…

and this…

that is me!!!

My strangely rounded table. Ergonomically friendly and all that crap. On the left is my favourite picture going into Perhentian. Hmm..

Squeeze me! I just randomly bounce it around. Having this at work makes me feel horrible when I have my weekly mcdonalds or bacon butty.

My daily food and drink. And you thought I was kidding about the flask

I took a picture of the exterior as well,but it was frankly such a hugeass building, it would be revealing too much ;).

I am really starting to enjoy this job, if you can’t tell yet. Fair enough, this may not be dream job,but it is extremely challenging and enriching as well. It contributes to my personal growth as well by introducing me to many aspects of the adult money world that I had always insisted on not knowing.. I now know the best mortgage deals, best credit cards, home insurance…list goes on. I feel that whatever I do here is adding value and appreciated, rather than being given a token salary for me to sit on my ass all day and chat. HOWEVER, I do miss chatting, but really, I couldn’t go through my working career chatting on msn all day can I?

it’s so silent.

Blame it on the job folks. Even my monday-night ranting tv has today turned into a banking related show. HOW INTERESTING. Don’t think you’d want to read about that. Ah…I think it’s just switched to black/white racism in America - starring Jesse Jackson vs. Barack Obama (??).Rarrrr…no commentary here. No one will think you’re stupid if you shut up.

Nope,not been anywhere interesting lately. I get home, slump in bed. Weekends have been, strangely enough, spent cleaning and shopping. I’ve started getting antsy with the non-existence of my furniture. I am forseeing that trips to IKEA are required. The problem is, I can’t seem to find anywhere that sells furniture!!!! WTF!! Its either IKEA or my local pine furniture shop. Like the abundant rubberwood furnitures in Malaysia.

A few pics taken randomly around the house..

this is for drey. meet mr. hairy duck.

Don’t we all wish we were frogs some days? My new tshirt from Zara

My 2-week-old handbag from ALDO. Problem with working ‘hard’ in an office near to town is that when friday hits,you’re desparate for a hit like your regular junkie. Drinking over lunch is not the best idea - I hit the shops. I am now also making near-daily trips before work to the supermarket to buy fruits. Yes, FRUITS. I had graduated from choc bar shopping to fruit shopping.

Home made laksa by yours truly. Made from lemon pepper smoked mackerel - it was the only type they had.

My Wal-bum. Pictures on the wall! Brilliant. Do you spot you?

Lately I seem to be running into a writers’ block. I’ve got ideas, all surrounded by the need to take pictures. With the turning weather, honestly, I really do NOT feel like going out to take pictures. All I seem to do when I get back is eat, clean, bathe and watch tv in bed. I love the concept of tv in bed; my old room was too tiny and all I could afford when I was a student in Fresno was a 13inch tv.

Tonight’s choice of tv show is China’s missing children. It explores the illegal trade of child trafficking in this one-child country, voluntary and kidnapped. Strangely enough, children in China are actually a topic very close to my heart. I have been searching high and low for a charity to belong to, something that I feel strongly enough. I wanted to ’save the turtles’, but of course, am unable to send a local Malaysian cheque. I then turned to look for a charity to help children’s education in China, but strangely enough cannot find one that penetrates deep China where it is most needed.

I digress.

Some child trafficking are done with the parents’ consent , some are kidnapped and sold on to childless couples desparate for a child to love. Some are sold as cheap labour. And some, according to the wifes’ tale that I grew up with, are groomed to be petty thiefs or to beg on the streets. For the purposes of this blog, I am only going to discuss parents who had knowingly sold their children. This is definately not something new in China, who for centuries, the peasants have sold their children to richer families as child servant or betrothed thier pre pubescent daughters as future wifes and mistresses of the local landlord. Anyone who had ever watched an olden style TVB drama would know what I am talking about. Parents who are so improvished, they willingly sell their children out of love, to enable them to lead a better life. Or not?

I am of course, not a mother, nor am I even half motherly. I can love my cat, and that’s probably all I am capable of now. Therefore, I make no claim to understanding how parents feel when giving their children away. But I have actually know of children who had been sold by their mothers. No, they were not kidnapped, they were ‘given away’ by their parents for a price. A very lucrative price. And of course, boys fetch a much higher price than the girls.

Whether morally it is right or wrong, the sold children that I have personally witnessed is now leading a much, much better life than it would have been possible with their birth parents. One came from a poor family already burdened with 7 children. Another came from an illicit affair between a drug addict and an underage girl.

They are now very loved by their ‘adopted’ parents. The big difference between a purchased child and an adopted child boils down to legality. With a purchased child, if an agreement is made before the child is born, it is entirely possible to get the buyers’ names on the birth certificate, thus the child never knowing that they have been adopted. Ignorace is bliss? The way the Malaysian government works does not help as well, passport applications for under-21s require the birth father’s signature, and the child will only receive Malaysian citizenship if the father is Malaysian.

I am frankly torn between this moral dillema of child trade. In a perfect world, we would all be able to reproduce a mini-me if we should choose to, but this world is far from perfect. No, I am not planning to have a baby now nor am I planning to buy one. Is it right to buy a child, if not for anything to at least give it a better life than the birth parents can ever dream of? Is it right to hide from your children that they are not blood and flesh, but were purchased for a price? Will they really be happier knowing that their birth parents had sold them for cold hard cash?

Seeing how much their ‘adopted’ parents love them, seeing them being showered with gifts and toys I feel that they have been very lucky indeed. But as I watch them grow into teenagers, I am not sure how long have their doting parents got until the children finally finds out that they have been purchased.

Walking into Subway at 8.40am. Half asleep, hoping to be waken up by the lovely smells

Requested for a Breakfast sub, to be greeted by a a really old piece of sub roll, two miserly strip of bacon and something round that looks like it couldve come from an egg in another life.

Splash of ketchup, shoved into the oven.Weird

Coffee.

Little bugger asked for £3.78. Advertised price was £2.78. Prick

Got to desk, sandwich is so throughly toasted it was blackened. Filling completely tasteless. I see bacon, but it sure taste like rubberband.

Coffee? What coffee? That little prick gave me HOT MILK.

Who the F has HOT MILK for breakfast?!?!?!?!

I knew I shouldve stuck to Sausage & Egg McMuffin for breakky. Serves me right for trying to be healthy.

The word immigrant conjures up images of kebab shop workers, corner shop owners, asylum seekers and the array of people fleeing their home countries seeking better economic opportunities (mostly) and escaping political persecution.

I watched a show on channel 4 tonight; Immigrants: an inconvinient truth. This show seeked to layer the immigrants in the UK by their various nationality. Some of the more controversial questions asked are why are immigrants from India more sucessful then those from the neighbouring Pakistan and Bangaladesh. It also question the sanity of a nanny state that resulted in 48% of refugee Somalians not actively seeking for work. An excellent (and annoying) example was a woman from Somali who had been in the UK for 15 years, but had never worked. She is also indigant at the £33k a year in benefits that she receives; believing that she deserves more. A person who has never worked nor paid taxes in the UK.

Another illustrates a single Zimbabwean woman with two children who are assigned a council home within 2 months of applying, versus an english family of 4 who throughout the 7 year that they have been waiting on the council housing list had seen their position on the list get lower and lower (??!!) whilst the immigrants around them are given priority because they do not already have their own homes nor hold a job.

Then another immigrant group - the Zimbabweans. Almost half of them are in employment in the health services either as nurses, technicans and doctors. The Polish, who had replaced the Portugese in warehouses, factories and farms around the UK, working longer hours than the average UK citizen. Due to the rural locations of these jobs, indigenious English are a little more than peeved to see population of their village swell with these hard working workers, rarely considering that these are minimum wage jobs that the average UK citizen refuses, as being on benefits and all that nanny state shit brings in more dough than slaving 10 hours in the field picking cabbages.

Watching the show made me realize that me, even though I am not Polish nor Pakistani, am an immigrant. Not for any of the usual reasons, my relocation and seemingly immigration here seemed to be more by force than anything else. True, my standard of shopping had increased whilst my work week had been cut from a 45 hours week to a 35 hour week. I still dream of moving to Perhentian and making Mars bar milkshakes for a living, screw Aldo and Topshop.

But an unlikely immigrant I am. Unlikely because the impression of immigrants here are that they do not speak english , do not contribute to the British society and are mostly doing menial jobs. Due to the fact that I am earning a little higher than the UK average salary, I actually pay a much larger amount of income taxes and national insurance. As I am ‘on my journey to immigration’, I am not entittled to any benefits whatsoever, even though I had paid more than my fair share of taxes compared to those comming from a refugee state.

I know I might just sound extremely cruel, but I am not. I believe in granting asylum status to people are in dire need. However, granting asylum comes with a price. The government needs to ensure that the refugees are properly trained and are in work, however menial. Help should not be given to lazy people - help should only be given to those that genuinely needs it. The papers over the weekend tells of about 90% of people who are in benefits are actually lying about the state fo their condition.

I know of at least one person like that. The government is under the impression that she is extremely sick with backache and is unable to work. She is therefore on benefits, a nice 2 bedroom house for her and her cat. She spends her days just lazing at home and going to the pub and drinking. And yes, she can walk, run, sit, squat. My tax money; into her pockets; into the pub. This disgust me.

Anyway, this has kinda turned into more like a rant, which was not what I wanted it to be to start of with. I wanted to emphatize with my great grandparents, who travelled from China to Malaysia and set up a tiny fishing outlet. I wanted to compare their journey and the political and social changes that they encountered in order to make a better life for their family. With no nanny state to feed them, they had made a life for themselves, a house (ableit on stilts) and children who grew up to buy houses made out of bricks and mortar. Three, four generation down the line, I am making the same move further west. But am I? I have the freedom of movement, I earn sufficient money to enable me to go home to visit, enable me to buy all sort of delish food and dress in an ever changing wardrobe.

But for me, even though I seem to be the unlikely immigrant to this apparently Great Britain, I have not yet decided to stay for good. With the amount of immigrants flooding this great country, I had also realised that I am one of the lucky ones. Maybe its because of the kiasu (scared to die) chinese work ethic that always have to be bigger, better and faster. Chinese restaurant car parks always looks like a Mercedes Benz car dealer - which I am also guilty of, but thats because the A series was a great compromise between me and bacon!

I am thankful of my parents forcing education on me. I am thankful of leading the alternate cushy road to immigration. Most of all, I am thankful that I am luckier than shitloads of other people desperately seeking a better life abroad.