Sometimes a girl needs pancakes.

Like when her back hurts so badly she has to strap on an ice pack and hope for the best. Or when she thinks about the future in all of its uncertainty and obstacles and doesn’t know how she will make it through. Or when she wonders if she’s enrolled in the right post-graduate degree. And her boyfriend is in a different city. And it’s hot.

Banana pancakes with maple syrup hit the spot. These are delightfully easy, fluffy, and fruity. I made them dairy-free, but the original recipe called for a mixture of whole milk and coconut milk.

Maybe you need pancakes too.

//banana coconut milk pancakes for the soul//

3 bananas, thinly sliced
1 1/2 cups self-raising flour
3/4 cup coconut milk
3/4 cup soy milk (I like Soy Milky brand)
2 eggs
1 T brown sugar

Sift flour into a medium-sized bowl. Add sugar.

In a smaller bowl, whisk eggs into coconut and soy milks, then pour into dry ingredients, stirring until combined. Add banana slices.

Heat a heavy fry-pan over low heat until a little butter sizzles in the pan. Fry batter in large spoonfuls, flipping each pancake when the surface turns bubbly.

Serve warm with maple syrup or honey. Or however you prefer to eat your pancakes. Feel better.

OMG, the Virgin Mary is getting in on the act. Not wanting to be out done by her son, who last week appeared on an iron, Mary has appeared on Bianca Lopez’s pancake. Ms Lopez said “I think it’s God’s way of telling us that the holidays aren’t just about presents.” Hmm, or you are doing a good job with your friggin housework!! OK, I know you want to see her….Daily Mail.

The moment I saw this recipe in Nigella Bites, I knew I would make it some day. I’ve been searching for the recipe ever since and I finally found it here. I made some changes to the recipe, which I absolutely advise you NOT to follow. Yea, just follow the exact recipe, it definitely tastes better. What I did was to add some blueberries into the pancake batter. And my my my… the blueberry flavour totally cover the cheese. I could not even taste any cheese in my pancake even though I had added 50g more than required (another reason might be because I’ve added too much blueberries). I also exclude the strawberries as I’m not a balsamic vinegar fan.

The cottage cheese pancake is absolutely magnificent. It has a mild flavour of cheese and is suitable for breakfast (especially for those who cannot stand having heavy dairy products early in the morning). You can even use low fat cottage cheese to reduce the cheesy taste.

Cottage Cheese Pancake

Ingredients (serve 4):

1 teaspoon best quality vanilla extract

2 cup strawberries, sliced into quarters

2 tablespoons sugar

1/3 cup all purpose flour

1/2 – 1 teaspoon sugar

3 eggs, yolks and whites separated

1 cup cottage cheese

1/2 teaspoon balsamic vinegar

Instructions:

1. Put strawberries into a bowl and sprinkle with balsamic vinegar and sugar. Stir before covering with plastic wrap.

2. Beat the egg yolks with sugar until the colour lighten. Add the vanilla, cottage cheese and flour.

3. In another bowl, whisk the whites until frothy (I guess this means foamy?) with a hand whisk and fold into the cottage cheese mixture (Different for the picture as I’ve added in the blueberry).

4. Heat a smooth griddle or nonstick skillet and dollop the batter onto it. Make cakelets of about 3-4 inches in diameter. Cook for about a minute before flipping them, then cook for another 1 minute (If there are bubbles around the edges of the pancake, then it is ready to be flipped). Repeat until all batter are finished.

5. Turn the strawberries in the ruby syrup they’ve made and squish some pieces with a fork at the same time. Serve them with the hot cheesecakelets.

Apart from the Queen’s Speech, the golden hour on Christmas Day is when that steaming turkey comes out the oven.

But Cardiff’s veggies and vegans share a different story. The nut roast is the classic staple, but it doesn’t give you the same sense of wholesome satisfaction. You can’t baste a nut roast. You can’t pour its own juices over itself. You can’t put your hand right up it and stuff it with oranges.

Instead, making it feels more like baking a slightly unsatisfying fruitcake. You have to roll up your sleeves and get right into a mixing bowl instead of watching it spit in the pan.

Nut Roast. Yum.

So how can you escape these dry recipes? How can vegetarians use a centrepiece that matches a turkey, but without the ethical worries?

Ten million turkeys are slaughtered for Christmas each year in the UK, according to DEFRA. While wild turkeys can live up to 10 years, those in farms are fattened up and killed when they are up to just 26 weeks old – some as young as eight weeks.

So going veggie or vegan, even if just for the day, is a good idea. But you’ll need to be clued up on how to cook something decent first.

Take some tips from Wayne Thomas. The 44-year-old chef from Llanharry runs the Canteen on Clifton Street, one of Cardiff’s only Western-style veggie-friendly restaurants.

The Canteen was set up as a café in 2007, and with unusual menus that change every three weeks, it is a haven for veggies and vegans. Tables for two back straight onto the tiny kitchen in which Wayne and business partner Tony Thomas, 44, do their work.

It feels like being cooked for by your two cheeky middle-aged brothers. The pair don’t bother turning tables, so come the end of service at around 10pm they step out the kitchen, throw their aprons aside and interrogate the guests. Beware if you didn’t finish your gnocchi.

Chef Wayne Thomas demonstrates vegan pasta

This year’s Christmas menu begins tomorrow and mixes restaurant favourites with an alternative Christmas choice.

The new dish is a mushroom pithivier with cashew nuts. It’s a savoury, earthy vegan pie which mixes conventional nut roast flavours with the Britishness and all-round smile factor of a good hearty pie.

If you’re vegan, a good puff pastry is still easy to achieve. Just substitute egg with potato starch to bind the mixture, and if you still want that eggy taste in your dough, try putting in yeast flakes. This small dried foodstuff is a good flavour substitute and is sold by most specialists.

The restaurant is no stranger to weird flavour combinations. Dishes on the Christmas menu include cheese gougères (pastry balls) with spicy cheese and chocolate mole, and Christmas pudding soufflé.

Wayne said: “You do the same thing week after week after week, so it gets incredibly boring. The customers like it. We’ve been called ‘esoteric’ by one fella!

“We do use the name for the dish rather than the anglicised version of it. But it does mean we’ve got names wrong on the menu – people go home and look them up on the web. And we’re not beyond making up the occasional word.”

When Wayne goes home to his carnivore family at Christmas, he takes the back seat cooking the vegetables. But he does like to experiment, he says, and he has even cooked the infamous “tofurkey” – a huge lump of tofu made to taste like meat.

While this sounds about as appealing as a huge lump of tofu, this meat-cheat could go down well as your centrepiece, especially if someone in the house will be eating meat this holiday. Just put the two side by side and join in the fun.

“You get a load of tofu,” he said. “If you’re not vegan, mix it up with a bit of egg. Roll it onto a piece of cling film and put a traditional stuffing in there.

“Roll it over itself, then wrap it up so it’s watertight and poach it for a quarter of an hour to set the proteins. Unwrap it once it cools and you can treat it just like turkey. It goes well with an onion gravy.”

To get a more meaty texture, try using wheat gluten, used to improve the gluten content of British flours. Mix it with water to make a paste called seitan, a great protein source, which you can then mix with the tofu to take off the rubbery edge.

The Canteen on Clifton Street

The Canteen is always making interesting veggie food, and it is not Cardiff’s only decent vegetarian restaurant – but the problem is, many of the city’s full-size eateries run along an Asian-fusion theme. Curries and daals are not the best bet for that big centrepiece on the dinner table.

But if you do fancy an unusual Gujarati snack to start off your feast, take some tips from the family-run Vegetarian Food Studio in Penarth Road.

Wales’ only fully vegetarian Indian restaurant runs as a café in the daytime. Locals buy huge cartons of fried goods like their homemade Bombay Mix and chatter away under cheerful Hindu decorations.

The number of dishes on the menu will top 200 in the new year, and 28-year-old chef Neil Patel, who lives with his wife in Sully, near Barry, won’t be slowing down soon.

He said: “We started with 42 recipes, on a small A5 page. Now our menu is pages and pages long. But people like the old stuff, so we keep it in to please everybody.”

And for a great alternative snack he recommends masala dosa, a rice and lentil pancake that’s vegan-friendly. The mix is a different animal to British styles of cooking, with the starches from the rice, instead of milk or butter, fermenting to make the mix creamy.

Soak rice and black lentils together in water overnight then blend them to a paste in the morning. Leave this to ferment for three days at room temperature. Ladle the mix onto a hot griddle pan just like a normal pancake, and eat on its own or filled with curry or daal.

Canteen on Clifton Street

Vegetarian Food Studio

RECIPE

Mushroom, cashew nut and tarragon pithivier with mushroom, chive and parsley sauce

Originally from the Canteen on Clifton Street

1. Soak the wild mushrooms in a little warm water for 20 minutes. Drain and keep the water aside.
2. Shallow fry the onion in olive oil until pale. Add the chopped button mushrooms, followed by the wild mushrooms, stirring gently.
3. Reduce the water used to soak the mushrooms in a separate pan until syrupy. Add to the mushroom mix, cooking until all moisture has evaporated.
4. Add the herbs and season with salt, pepper and tamari or soy sauce.
5. Allow to cool, then place in a blender and blend. Leave some lumpier bits.
6. Add the breadcrumbs and cashew nuts until you have a filling that is easily mouldable.
7. Roll out the puff pastry until about 1in thick and cut two rounds, the about 6in and the second about 5in across.
8. Take a handful of the filling and mould into a disk about 3in across. Place this onto the 5in pastry, placing the larger one on top and using the egg wash to stick the two halves together. The enclosed pie should resemble a flat-topped hill. Score a pattern in to top, being careful not to cut through the pastry, and cover the whole pie with egg wash.
9. Chill in the fridge for 30 minutes and preheat the oven to 200C.
10. Bake in the oven until golden brown.

2 cups Original Bisquick® mix
1 cup milk
2 eggs

1. Heat griddle or skillet over medium-high heat or electric griddle to 375°F; grease with cooking spray, vegetable oil or shortening. (Surface is ready when a few drops of water sprinkled on it dance and disappear.)

2. Stir all ingredients until blended. Pour by slightly less than 1/4 cupfuls onto hot griddle.

3. Cook until edges are dry. Turn; cook until golden. Note: If you like thin pancakes, use 1 1/2 cups milk.

-

This is the simple and quick recipe that you should be able to find easily on any large Bisquick® container. It is a wonderful recipe to make great Pancakes. So much so that I have seen it reproduced as the favorite pancake recipe in cook books from many companies, including Betty Crocker, as well as others. I must agree as well. This is easy, fast, and tastes great.

German Pancake from Bailey1806
This recipe comes from my mother-in-law and is the sole reason we registered for a cast iron skillet.

Photo by Bailey1806

4 Large Eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 stick butter

Preheat oven to 425.
Melt butter in cast iron skillet over medium heat.
While butter is melting, measure flour and salt, add milk and mix well.
Add eggs one at a time, beating thoroughly after each egg.
Pour mixture into melted butter and cook over medium heat until you can run a spatula around the edges.
Put into preheated oven and bake for 20 minutes, until puffy and golden brown.
Pancake will puff up and shrink slightly when cool.
Sprinkle with powdered sugar and cut into wedges.
We also serve it with syrup.
Option: I made this when a friend came over and she preferred lemon juice on hers. To each her own!

Photo by Bailey1806

Tasty Oven-Baked Pancake from Gracie2762
Source: Kraft

2 cups all-purpose baking mix (Bisquick)
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 cup maple syrup
1-1/2 cups Shredded Cheddar Cheese, divided
1/4 cup cooked crumbled bacon

PREHEAT oven to 400°F. Mix baking mix, eggs, milk and syrup. Stir in half of the cheese.

POUR into 13×9-inch baking dish sprayed with cooking spray.

BAKE 15 min. Top with crumbled bacon and remaining cheese. Bake an additional 5 min. or until pancake is cooked through and cheese is melted. Cut into 8 squares to serve.

Care for a ride?

The trotting of the horses slowly amplified itself as we neared the saddle club; our minds were constantly revolving around the prospective brunch which we were going to have.. yummy, Rider’s Cafe!

Egg’s Benedict – $14.00

Lo and behold. What a sight. If you’re thinking right now if it tastes as good as it looks, you’re wrong. It’s even BETTER! =) The creamy yellow hollandaise sauce was strewn intricately over the ham and slightly toasted English muffin, with the proudly poached egg sandwiched snugly in between. Our lips quivered for it, our taste buds longed for it. Let’s go! As our forks wove swiftly through our brunch, the aroma and fragrance emanated through our noses. Take a whiff. It is that good. There is something about breakfast-brunch which just lightens up our spirits and make us enjoy that serenity in the morning. And the ambience of the place simply enveloped us to just slow down, enjoy the moment, bask in it. The fainty salted ham together with the sweet muffin was accompanied perfectly by the silky yolk of the al-dente poached egg. Very Q! It had a generous serving of breakfast potatoes at the side, which was peppery and gave a refreshing taste with the eggs. The flavours blended together perfectly and our mood lightened. This is yummy. Highly recommended! Best way to begin a lazy saturday morning. Neigh!

Morning Pancakes with Berries Compote – $10.00

Early in the morning, I wouldn’t be surprised if all we were craving for were some morning pancakes with a divine whiff of yumminess. As our cutlery sunk through oh-so-effortlessly through the fluffy pancakes, have some of the berries compote together with it, mix in some of the home-made whipped cream and syrup and there you have it, cloud nine in your mouth! Delish. Forgive my neologism but with this dish, any adjective with positive connotation may well be an understatement! Haha. An excuse for poor vocabulary I know. Whoa and do not forget to spread the butter too! Have it together with a cool icy cup of mocha and a perfect breakfast is born.

The atmosphere was homely-it is non-air conditioned with a sunny hue, the surroundings were cosy and the food was excellent. What more can we ask for? However, one look at the address and it is not uncommon to have the question popping into our minds-where is this place? Well it is rather close to the PIE nearby if you are driving but there isn’t any bus that pops by directly. So you may consider cabbing from the bus stop at say, Coronation Plaza down the road? Walking may not be very ideal, especially today, it was drizzling somewhat. I’m not sure about hitch-hiking.

The surroundings were very scenic, picturesque. Horses roaming around their stables, together with the lush green vegetation; and when I saw the little girl sitting confidently atop the horse together with her family around her, I was so envious! We certainly haven’t rode any horses before, so deprived right? Oops. =)

So all in all, highly recommended! Cheers! =D

Riders Cafe
51 Fairways Drive
Bukit Timah Saddle Club
Tel: 6466 9819

Pancake uses template inheritance to embed content in a root template. This is similar to Rails layouts, but with inherited templates, you can have different content blocks, each having their own default content. Inspiration for this feature has come from Django and Rango which also use an inheritance concept. There’s really not an easy way to explain in words so lets see what it looks like:

# base.html.haml

!!!
%html
  %body
    %h1 Welcome to base
    - content_block :content do
      %p Default Base Content

# foo.html.haml

- inherits_from :base do 

  - content_block :content do
    %p Foo Content

If we had a stack that looked like this:

class FooStack < Pancake::Stacks::Short
  add_root(__FILE__)

  get "/" do
    render :base
  end

  get "/foo" do
    render :foo
  end
end

When we visit the “/” url we’d get output like this:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html>
  <body>
    <h1>Welcome to base</h1>
    <p> Default Base Content </p>
  </body>
</html>

When we visit “/foo” we’d get something like this:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html>
  <body>
    <h1>Welcome to base</h1>
    <p> Foo Content </p>
  </body>
</html>

See how the content block for :content in foo was used when we inherited from :base? It’s got “Foo Content” in the inherited one. Templates in a Pancake Short stack can all use inherited templates. By suppling inherited_from with a template name, the current template will inherit from it. You can supply a different template name on each request, and then inherit from a different template each time if you need to.

That’s cool and all. We can inherit from a different template each time. Pancake will take care of finding the right template when you inherit a stack also, so that if a child stack hasn’t defined it, it will look in the parent stack.

Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to append to the parent content rather than just overwrite it though? Well a Pancake Short stack lets us do that too.

# foo.html.haml

- inherits_from :base do 

  - content_block :content do
    %p Foo Content
    = content_block.super

By calling super on the content block, you’re inserting the content of the parent block inside the child. The output of running that template would look like this:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html>
  <body>
    <h1>Welcome to base</h1>
    <p> Foo Content </p>
    <p> Default Base Content </p>
  </body>
</html>

One of the troubles with an inherited approach though, is that if I have 2 stacks, Foo and, Bar inside a master container stack MyMasterStack, all three of these will inherit from different places. I’ve just added in Pancake version 0.1.26 the ability to specify a stack name and template name in inherits from. So you could have something like this:

- inherits_from UiStack, :base

- content_block :content do
  %p Some content

So we’re inheriting this template from the :base template of the UiStack. Kinda cool, but there’s still a problem. I need prior knowledge that it’s the UiStack that I want to inherit from. That’s ok when it’s your app, but if you write a stack for general consumption you may not be able to make that assumption. Pancake sorts this for you. You can tell Pancake, at a global level, which Stack you’d like to set as the master template stack. By default this is the container stack when using pancake stand alone. If you’re just adding it somewhere else though, you’d start the container stack like this:

MyStack.stackup(:master => true)

This sets the stack as the master which adds the “master” directory as another root for the stack, but also sets the stack to be master of templates. To manually set the stack as master of templates you do this:

  MyStack.before_build_stack do
    Pancake.master_templates = UiStack
  end

This sets the UiStack as the master for the whole pancake graph, which lets us do this:

- inherits_from :default!

- content_block :content do
  %p content for this view

Using the :default! template name, will tell pancake to inherit from the master template stack, in this case UiStack, with the :base template. You can tell it to use a different one but by default, :base is the one that gets used.

By using this mechanism, a collection of different shared stacks can share the same look and feel by inheriting from the global Pancake master templates stack. When writing plugins and shared stacks, you can just set the stack templates to inherit from :default! and everything should just work.

So I’m posting this mostly for the benefit of the people who did not get a chance to see Singapore during their short trip to and from AFA, for those who want to know more about Singapore, and also for those Singaporeans who are expats, and miss home. (Yes, you chun!) Considering that Singapore is the next most proliferant anime hub this side of the english internetz community, it makes sense to know more about Singapore’s people, and its infrastructure and land. I’m not going to delve into the history or its culture. You can find all that on wikipedia or something. I’m more interested in covering the more important aspects… the food, and the shopping!

A typical morning breakfast traditional amongst the Chinese group, you get various forms of deep fried dough, or Chinese doughnut, some with fillings such as red bean paste, or crushed peanut. Served with a side of sweet soy milk. (warm).

A pancake! Very similar to Tayaki, this one contains a delicious chocolate filling.

A typical food court in Singapore. This one is located at Changi Villiage. Changi is where the airport is located, which is the eastern side of Singapore. Each food stall is privately owned, each stall renting from the people that own the entire complex. Typically, the owner of the complex is also the stall that sells beverages. Beverages make the most money in the complex, charging nearly 40% more for their drinks. Everyday, these people toil, day in and day out, while the patrons are local regulars with their own jobs and problems. This kind of cycle has been ongoing since forever.

More of the food court. This particular one is a massive pyramid-type building, with stalls lined all around, and more stalls filling the center.

Just outside the food court is a sort of open restaurant. It’s too early for dinner at the moment. But these kinds of restaurants function exactly as it would a typical asian restaurant, with menus, servers, bus boys, etc. Since Singapore weather is hot and consistent all year around, this type of business is sustainable.

Just outside the food court, you get a nice view of some trees. This is combined with the residential blocks around the area. Nothing really special except it shows what the edges of Singapore are like.

Lots of motorcycles. Purchasing cars are very expensive in Singapore due to import taxes and such. The total is typically TWICE the cost of buying a car in North America – the price of a luxury sports car like a Porche Boxter would get you a crappy Kia in Singapore. Motorcycles are a cheaper alternative. But even though there his a high price luxury for cars, there are still a lot of them in Singapore.

The central area of the food court. The one in pink with the bag is my wife! The photo isn’t clear, but there is a lot of smoke in here. It’s incredibly hot with everyone cooking their food. There is no air conditioning. Couple that with the extreme heat, and you’ve got a recipie for a headache.

A stray cat. Stray cats are a lot more typical in Singapore. They’re like the rats of Singapore so to speak, so as such, there aren’t many rodents around.

They were out of chicken rice, and everything else was either spicy, or unappetizing to me, or it was fish. Mostly fish. I made the mistake of settling for western food, and was also given this strange cakebread. That part isn’t white. It’s green. And that part in the middle isn’t chocolate. It’s bread. I don’t know why it looks like that.

The fries were decent, but the porkchop tasted like nothing. The good thing about it was it was a screaming deal.

Sugar Cane drink. Freshly squeezed! It’s incredibly refreshing and delicious! First time I’ve had one! Doesn’t top the Bandung though.

The back side of the food court. This is not a storage area. These are actually retail shops. It’s a huge reality check of what life is like for these people who share the same 42km wide island with other Singaporeans who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on merchandise. No offense meant by that statement.

Further along outside of the food court, we get to the beach. This is an inlet on this side actually.

Shot from the other side of the inlet. I wish I had brought my DSLR.

Yeah, the effects of a point and shoot just don’t do this area any justice.

Walking further we get to the beach proper. Lots of transport ships and things happen around here, so it’s rarely a peaceful horizon, but the breeze is cool, and the air is clean. The sand is also quite white and fine. It’s very relaxing here compared to the bustling life of Singapore’s downtown life. Many people purposefully travel out here to escape the busy lifestyle once in a while.

No idea how grass is growing out of the sand, but it’s very cool.

Feels like Singapore. Changi Village is situated near the Changi Airport, so every so often, you’ll see an airplane fly across the horizon from behind these trees. Like so:

Switching gears, here I am at one of Singapore’s countless shopping centers. I tell you, there is a shopping mall in some form at virtually every MRT station. MRT is Singapore’s “monorail” transit system (it’s not really a monorail, but it’s the most common descriptive I can think of at the moment. Singapore’s malls are just as proliferant as Singapore’s anime fandom blogging on the internet. I absolutely love shopping in Singapore. This is a shot of a restaurant called Long John Silver’s. Perhaps you’ve got one of these where you come from, but not me. As such, I haven’t had LJS in like, 4 years or something!

One of the many Kopitiam food courts. Kopitiam is sort of a franchise food court. It works similar to the rural food court where stall owners rent the stall from the building owner, but Kopitiam is on a much larger scale, with franchises in malls everywhere. I’m under the impression that Kopitiam also does some sort of quality control on the food they allow.

Watermelons. I’ve never seen a watermelon that’s yellow inside. Never in my entire life. From what I know, these are actually quite commonly found in Malaysia. Unfortunately, these unusually colored melons don’t taste as refreshingly sweet as their red counterparts.

Hand-pulled noodles with chicken cutlet, and a side of chicken broth with egg. I must say that it’s the best chicken cutlet I’ve ever had. Very crispy, not at all made soggy by the noodle sauce. The noodles were just the right consistency with a nice “bounce” to the chew. The savory sauce was just right, not too salty, and not too dry or wet. The veggies were also very fresh and tasty. All this for like, 5 bucks!

Fish soup. Piping hot from the “I sell fish type food products!” stall. It’s interesting how each stall specializes in one thing.

A true traditinal Singaporean breakfast. You can’t say you’ve truly lived in Singapore without having one of these – Kaya Toast (Kaya is like a kind of marmalade) Kopi (Singlish for Coffee!) and half-boiled eggs.

When I mean half-boiled, I mean very runny. Pour some soy sauce on it, stur it up, and drink! Mmmmmm!

Unfortunately, nobody seems to carry Orange Qoo anymore. Grape is an unworthy substitute.

Typical Singaporean mall design – lots of floors up. What I find absolutely incredible is that this used to be a double floor, totally ignored hole in the wall shopping center with a Value Village type of clothing store coupled with a low-end electronics store. Less than 4 years later, it’s now a bustling shopping mall featuring the latest and greatest merchandise, food, and even a two storey upside down xmas tree!

Singaporeans truly amaze me in terms of their constant updating, expanding, and augmenting. Heck, one of the department stores I used to go to (Metro) was torn down, and converted into a gauntlet of specialty boutiques! I couldn’t recognize it anymore – it was like a whole new mall!

zero percent “alcoholicity”. I found this product quite interesting, as what’s inside wasn’t alcohol, or even a beverage…

… but an umbrella. Innovative because you don’t need to place your wet umbrella into an umbrella stand, or hang it on your chair dripping wet. And you don’t have to wrestle and put it into a flimsy wet sleeve either. Just roll up, and put it into the plastic container. Done.

Cute asian products are cute.

This is an arcade “dress up your doll” game, where children can create an avatar, and literally buy clothes for it. The data is stored on the card. Thanks for ruining the young generation, Sega.

A new DJ Max of some sort. The entire thing is touch screen based with a bar that swipes over. There are prompts to tap, slide, and make patterns. I’d say this game is a combination of Project Diva meets Ouendan/EBA.

The latest new LG Chocolate. I believe it’s targetted towards the female market, as the adverts feature runway models. It’s got an ultra-wide screen for you to video capture those ultra-wide cat-walks. Honestly, I think it’s a very slick and sexy phone.

This ends my first post of Singapore. I apologize for my crappy photography, as most of these were taken in the spur of the moment, and mainly to remind me of what to write about. It gives you a general idea of what Singapore is like, but it most certainly doesn’t beat actually being here and living and breathing it (humid air and all).

But before I go, Singapore is an interesting balance between different worlds, different lives, and different goals, yet it all coexists together on this small island. It’s moments like these that are magical:

Stay tuned for my next post, as I visit Vivo City and other places!

Esta semana toca un vídeo épico de esos que son difíciles de olvidar. Nada más y nada menos que Los Teleñecos parodiando la mítica canción Bohemian Rhapsody de Queen. Simplemente perfecto…

1.  Effort

2.  Results

3.  Reward

The Man let me lie in till 7am.  ”Well done for staying in your bed again Son 1!” I beamed, as I went downstairs to where he was eating his breakfast.  He beamed back. “I’ve got a sticker.  And I’m eating two breakfasts.”  ”He’s already eaten a pancake,” said The Man.  You will remember yesterday that Son 1 aged 5y 2m had four stickers to go on the breakfast line of his sticker chart.  This morning he had two.  Hence the bowl of cereal as well as the pancake.  You will also note that this process would not stand scrutiny by the Electoral Commission.  At some point yesterday, an extra sticker was stuck on the breakfast line. It wasn’t me, and it wasn’t The Man.  We don’t care; Son 1 has never in his life stuffed himself at breakfast time.   Yes I know, all your children  tuck in gratefully to rolled oats and wheatgerm with slivers of dried apricot and ground linseeds sprinkled on top.  Ours have Coco Pops Moon and Stars because we have tried EVERYTHING to get Son 1 to eat before he goes out for his 10-hour school day.  Sometimes he can’t be bothered to add milk and eats a few dry from the bowl. Sometimes he doesn’t touch them, and drinks the chocolate milk they make after soaking. And now he eats two breakfasts. Hooray.

Son 2 aged 2y 2m and I went to the Town Pool for a swim with the Wednesday Mums. Really good. I do like swimming with small children.  It’s so easy and stress-free.  The water was cold, so Son 2 headed for the Bubble Pools.  I’m a bit wary of these, as there was a lot of  “spa baths cause scarlet fever” anecdotes pinging round when Son 1 was ill. But Son 2 loves them.  He was playing with a green sea horse. I took my eye off him for a couple of seconds. “Where my see ‘orse?” It had vanished.  ”I don’t know, where is your sea horse, what have you done with it?”  I looked over the side into the swimming pool. I peered into the foaming depths of the bubble bath. I squinted along the channel running round the outside.  There was a gap in the cover.   We went back into the big pool and I told a lifeguard.  Two of them dismantled the filter and found the sea horse. Son 2 had posted it through the gap.  He swam, he played with a surf board, and he was a joy to be with.  After an hour we all got out and went for a coffee in a hotel.  The boys were all horrible, climbing over sofas and running up and down. We consoled ourselves with the thought that things would have been much worse with the elder three around. 

The Man collected Son 1 from school, because we were meeting Elder Brother and Nanna for pizza in Town. The phone rang.  Son 1. “Daddy hasn’t brought my Gormiti Egg.” “Oh dear,” I said. “It was Daddy’s job to get it.” “He says he didn’t know it was his job.”  “Silly Old Daddy.”  We agreed they would head for the other end of Town so they could get a Gormiti Egg. I’d push Son 2 in the Big Pram to see if he would sleep, and we’d see Nanna and Elder Brother in Pizza Express.  I pushed, Son 2 slept, we met the others. Son 1 turned up with his Gormiti Egg. £6. I thought it was like a Kinder Egg.  Oh boy. I am being seriously out-classed here.  Son 1 ate his food, Son 2 woke half way through and cried and grumbled. Elder Brother is leaving very early tomorrow to get to the Aged Aunt’s funeral. The Man and I were planning to drop Son 1 off at School and then drive over. We have booked Wonder Nanny to do tea, bath and bedtime.  Elder Brother says it could take six hours to get there.  Oh boy.

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Berry Topped Pancakes
3-4 pancakes

Fruit Compote

1 c. frozen blueberries
1/2 c. frozen raspberries
1/8-1/4 c. of water
1 TB sweetener or sugar

Pancakes

1/4 c. rice flour
1/4 c. corn flour
2 TB corn meal
1 egg
1/2 c. hemp milk (soy, rice, regular would work)
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 TB sweetner or sugar

Fruit Compote
1. Add everything together of a medium-high heat

Pancakes
1. Mix everything together
2. Heat a griddle or frying pan over a medium heat and add 1/4 c. of the batter at a time
3. Heat for about 2-3 minutes then flip over
4. I spread about 1/2 of a TB on each pancake and then covered with about 2-3TB of the fruit compote

]]> http://intelligenceroom.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/presentaciones-meet-the-twitter/ Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:54:19 +0000 Pancaĸe Jr. http://intelligenceroom.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/presentaciones-meet-the-twitter/

Así es amigos. Hemos decidido hacer una cuenta Twitter para conseguir más visitas así tener un trato más cercano con los lectores. ¿Por qué estoy escribiendo esto yo y no Zavier como de costumbre? Pues porque el no es el único que hace cosas en el blog ¿vale? ¿eh? Ahora esto lo llevo yo, hijos de…

Desde Twitter os avisamos de todo lo que vaya ocurriendo en el blog, nuevas entradas, etc. con desvaríos ocasionales. Y te preguntarás “¿Para qué estoy leyendo esto si yo sólo buscaba hombres musculosos en 3 dimensiones?” Simple, tu vida es una serie de catastróficas desdichas y no tienes nada mejor que hacer que masturbarte con fotos de Malena Alterio.

Y sin más preámbulos, aquí lo tenéis:

http://twitter.com/IntelRoom

Stalk us on Twitter!

It’s been a great year for me, and I’m very grateful for you being a part of that success. This week being Thanksgiving I want to make sure I’m showing you how grateful I am.

But before I do…

Let’s get serious for a moment. You’re going to eat a LOT of food this Thursday. You know it. I know it. And that’s ok. I’m sure you’ve been working out just a little bit harder to prepare for it, right? And I know you’re going to get a good workout in on Thursday before you chow down, right?

Now, besides that, I also want to remind you one thing you do NOT want to do on Thursday is skip meals so you can stuff yourself with one big one. That’s a no-no.

You still need to start your day right by boosting your metabolism with a solid breakfast. So to help you out with that I’ve got a gift for you from me and my buddies over at Prograde Nutrition. It’s a delicious Protein Pancakes recipe.

Thanks to the protein in the recipe your blood sugar won’t go crazy like it can just by eating a huge stack of pancakes with sugary syrup. Nope, this recipe will fill you up, nourish your body and give your metabolism just the boost it needs.

You can get the Protein Pancakes recipe here.
Be sure to let me know how you like it.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Memré Savant
PS – Seriously, have a nutritious breakfast this Thursday and your body will thank your for it on Friday.

http://fitnesssavant.getprograde.com/prograde-pancake-recipe.html

I’m back from Seoul and am already missing the food. What an experience! Of course, there were many classic Korean dishes that we found at restaurants all over the city – bibimbap, kimchi, noodle soups, kalbi – and it was amazing having authentic versions on a daily basis.
One of my favorites by far was the seafood pancake, or haemul pajeon.

Gorgeous haemul pajeon at a restaurant near Insadong

I guess it’s no surprise I loved this so much, since I am addicted to the Japanese version, okonomiyaki. No offense to okonomiyaki fans – these pancakes were far superior! With fresh shrimp and squid, along with scallions and an extremely tasty soy-based dipping sauce, it was absolute heaven. The nice thing is that you can get these in many restaurants all over the country as either a meal or an appetizer. I highly recommend them if you are at a Korean restaurant looking for something tasty and different.

View from the restaurant window on a cold November day

My Old Dutch is a pancake specialised restaurant where you choose from a choice of different pancakes, savory or sweet. The pancake here is big which are served on this big dutch China plates that are really heavy.

You can choose fro already created pancakes or even make you own with a choice of topic. So you can create you own savory pancake or if you like something sweet then you can create your own sweet pancake.

On this particular evening I felt like having a savory pancake and went for the My Old Dutch pancake. This contained smoked bacon, chicken, ham, sweet peppers, mushroom, sweet corn and cheese. But thinking about it I could not remember tasting the sweet corn or ham. Although I could have thought some of the ham was smoked bacon. However it was nice meaty pancake which I could only eat half of it.  A small stomach like mine the pancake here I can share with another.

Although I only had half of it I was craving for a sweet pancake and took a bite off another plate It was one of the sweet pancake with peaches and ice cream. This give pancakes another feel from the savory pancake. This pancake was nice but I prefer the apple and cinnamon sweet pancake which I had before as a dessert after dining nearby in the area.

As well as pancake they also do waffles and dutch apple pie as other sweet alternatives. If you have enough room you can even start off some starters, which there are a range of dutch delicacy such as kaasballen (deep fried cheese balls) and bitterballen (dutch meatballs). There are also a range of salads of those who want something to go with you pancake or maybe you watching you calories and need an alternative when you there with pancakes eaters.

There are a range of drinks to go with you pancakes including fruit beers but my favourite are their milk shakes. If there are extras which does not fit in your glass they will give you that extra in the metal flask that your milkshake was shake up.

It was quite busy on a Saturday evening but did not really had to wait for a table. However if you came on pancake day you will see outside a long queue.

My Old Dutch (Holborn)
131-132 High Holborn
Holborn
London
WC1V 6PS

http://www.myolddutch.com/

Last week it was raining here almost every day.  The rainy weather reminded me the winter mornings in our hometown. We used to eat early lunch and then go to school.  So I thought to make early lunch and asked my husband for that. He loves the old day granny recipes as much as the new age recipes. So when I told him my idea he asked what’s cooking? I told that I want to make Cafli-Bhat and he approved my idea in seconds. But the problem was that for it i have to wash the greens and it might take a while to prepare the lunch and the babies can’t wait for that long. so I asked my husband to prepare  pancakes for babies and himself. Initially he told he can’t do it but then got ready , so i told how to do and he did it. The good thing is that he was happy with the results and happily made all pancakes.

Pancakes are the simplest  things to make . All you need is

1 cup flour

2 eggs

1 cup milk

salt or sugar to taste

Just mix all the ingredients to get batter of pouring consistency. You can adjust the amount of milk to get the batter. Pour two tablespoons of the batter in a hot non-stick pan, if you are using twa drop some drops of oil before pouring the batter. turn it when it looks set. Take out of heat when cooked on either sides. Serve with fruit jam or tea.

Here’s a quick and lovely dish to serve up to guests for breakfast. It falls somewhere on the taste spectrum between a pancake and french toast.

Serves 4-6

1. Peel, core, and slice 4 medium apples. In a large cast iron skillet, melt 1 1/2 tbls. butter. Add apples. Cook apples over medium-low heat for a total of ten minutes.

2. In a large measuring cup or bowl, add in this order:

2/3 c. milk
2/3 c.cream
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
3 large eggs

3/4 tsp. salt
1 1/2 tbls. sugar
3/4 c. flour

3. At this point, you can hold the apples and batter until the rest of your meal is done. When ready, pour the batter over the batter, starting at the edges and pouring towards the inside. Bake at 425F for 17 minutes.

Notes:

• I served this with scones and bacon for a full meal. You can dress it up with an apple or maple syrup, but it is fine by itself.

This weekend Bittersweet Restaurant, in the historic district of Kent, will offer these delicious specials:

• Omelet – asparagus, spinach, tomato & swiss
• Bavarian cream-filled pancake
• Homemade biscuits with sausage gravy
• Eggs Bittersweet – our twist on Eggs Benedict

We’re open from 8 am to 4 pm Saturday and Sunday, serving breakfast all day, as well as lunch from 11 am to 4 pm. See you soon!