ARE EGGS HEALTHY?

Still Life by William Bailey

"Mrs. Bates, let me propose your venturing on one of these eggs. An egg boiled very soft is not unwholesome. Serle understands boiling an egg better than any body. I would not recommend an egg boiled by any body else—but you need not be afraid—they are very small, you see—one of our small eggs will not hurt you. Miss Bates, let Emma help you to a little bit of tart—a very little bit. Ours are all apple tarts. You need not be afraid of unwholesome preserves here. I do not advise the custard." - Mr Woodhouse, in Emma by Jane Austen

Weekend Reading List: I Heart Taipei

What is it about hotels that makes me eat like I'm in a Hollywood movie? This morning, I woke up in Taipei and went down quite eagerly to breakfast, and ate alot unthinkingly, including two large, fluffy, flakey croissants with lashings of butter and strawberry jam. And then I put on a sweater, and walked next door to Eslite. Eslite is the largest bookstore chain in Taiwan, and has a flagship store in Eslite Mall, located in the glossy Xinyi District. It's a lovely four-storey bookstore, set within a charming mall (more food, and all sorts of novel, pretty things to browse). Eslite has a "store within a store" design, with a Japanese bookstore, Chinese bookstore, arts bookstore (I found this section engrossing and comprehensive, and they even had an exhibition/art space and a charming cafe) and many other themed "stores". There is, unexpectedly, a wide range of English books and magazines, and an entire floor dedicated to the children's bookstore and children's discovery museum on the fifth floor. Which brings me neatly to the point that Taipei is so much more civilized a city than Hongkong - I've often been rather stumped that a city that prides itself as being cosmpolitan does not support any sort of a proper bookstore at all. Hong Kong has sprawling malls full of designer junk, and in the crags you find a half-hearted Dymocks or newsstands crawling with cheap tabloids but a proper bookstore like Taipei's Eslite, or even our own lovely Kinokuniya? I remember once wanting to buy a proper a book in Hongkong one sad bookless weekend and it was exasperating. Even the international magazines were months old. No wonder that Hong Kong people scare and bore me. You know, of course, that the expats thrive there - it really is the last outpost of the colonial era, isn't it? They really do the kow-tow properly in Hong Kong, like nowhere else I know. It's uncivilized. It's boring. It's the only city that makes me want to huddle in my hotel room untill the ordeal of being there is all over.

Weekend Reading List

I've been eating a lot of fine Chinese food over the Chinese New Year, and lots of yummy stuff cooked at home by mother, so pardon me as I leave a trail of drool as I stick my snout into the wonderful hawker food guide The End of Char Kway Teow and other Hawker Mysteries. It's by award-winning food blogger Dr Leslie Tay (ieatishootipost.sg) and it's gastroporn of the most delicious kind. Divided into chapters featuring all the heart-stopping Singapore street food like laksa, satay, rojak and other obsessions which I've not eaten in ages, it's a pretty definitive, opiniated, well-researched, guide including ratings and addresses and directions. I just want to tear downstairs and fly to the nearest hawker stand. Fortunately, the nearest one for me is Singapore's top biryani store (across the road); I don't like biryani, otherwise I'll be eating, not blogging.On a different note, I've been reading E M Forster's Collected Short Stories. They are queerly comforting, and read very much like period pieces. I didn't use to think so when I first discovered these in my 20s, but upon reading them again, I find that they feel anachronistic. It's truly a vanished world. Just downstairs, gay couples, with their Stussy T-shirts and sling bags, stroll in pairs of a Sunday morning, with nary a care in the world. They know no repression. They don't need polite metaphors for the love that once caused Forster panic and anxiety. They have their lattes, and designer flip flops and Lady Gaga.
Needless to say, I prefer polite metaphors and Merchant-Ivory movies.I just read in the papers that drinking more than two cups of coffee a day can be good for your health - specifically, some substance in coffee supposedly lowers the risk of diabetes. Alas I can only drink one cup a day, and never after 1pm for fear I would be tossing and turning the better part of the night away. However, I've been completely absorbed by the 2008 Korean drama Coffee Prince. I'm not ashamed to admit this because this is simply one of the best things I've seen in a long while and it's a very well made entertainment, perfectly cast (gorgeous good actors) and cleverly written to milk every adult tear still left in the desert of your folorn heart. It's completely escapist of course, with little that is realistic, but that's its magic I suppose. The girl is so poor that she has to disguise herself as a boy to work in a coffee house; No it doesn't make sense, and even her poverty never feels desperate or ugly, and is instead an excuse for very cute antics, and silly behaviour. There's no real crisis, no fatal illness, nothing upsetting or stressful, just the bittersweet romance of The Butterfly Lovers, or Yentl, or As You Like It, where the boy falls in love with the boy who is a girl, but with a Starbucks setting.
Gong Yoo, the leading man, is of course meltingly adorable (as yummy as the best oyster omelette), and has become an obsession. I can't believe how ideal they've made him, and how unrealistic and impossible to match in real life. So that's my discovery in the Year of the Hare, and if you find yourself all alone this Valentine's Day, do not despair. Go to your nearest DVD store and buy Coffee Prince - Gong Yoo is simply the best thing since... E M Forster?

Make a Cup of Tea

One of my favourite writers, Christopher Hitchens, wrote a story for Slate(http://www.slate.com/id/2279601/) on the proper way to make tea:
"It is already virtually impossible in the United States, unless you undertake the job yourself, to get a cup or pot of tea that tastes remotely as it ought to," he complains. "It's quite common to be served a cup or a pot of water, well off the boil, with the tea bags lying on an adjacent cold plate. The drink itself is then best thrown away, though if swallowed, it will have about the same effect on morale as a reading of the memoirs of President James Earl Carter."
His tips, in brief:
1. Always use Indian or Ceylonese—i.e., Sri Lankan—tea.
2. Make tea only in small quantities.
3. Avoid silverware pots.
4. If you use a pot at all, make sure it is pre-warmed. (Do the same thing even if you are only using a cup or a mug.)
5. Stir the tea before letting it steep.
6. Take the teapot to the kettle, and not the other way about. The water should be actually boiling at the moment of impact.
7. If you use milk, make sure it's the least creamy type. ("And do not put the milk in the cup first—family feuds have lasted generations over this—because you will almost certainly put in too much," Hitchens says.)
8. A "decent cylindrical mug" is best.
9. Brown sugar or honey are "permissible and sometimes necessary," even though George Orwell would probably disagree.

It was a heavy, melancholy day

"It was a heavy, melancholy day. Soon after the second breakfast, Edmund bade them good–bye for a week, and mounted his horse for Peterborough, and then all were gone. Nothing remained of last night but remembrances, which she had nobody to share in. She talked to her aunt Bertram— she must talk to somebody of the ball; but her aunt had seen so little of what had passed, and had so little curiosity, that it was heavy work.Lady Bertram was not certain of anybody’s dress or anybody’s place at supper but her own. “She could not recollect what it was that she had heard about one of the Miss Maddoxes, or what it was that Lady Prescott had noticed in Fanny: she was not sure whether Colonel Harrison had been talking of Mr. Crawford or of William when he said he was the finest young man in the room— somebody had whispered something to her; she had forgot to ask Sir Thomas what it could be.” And these were her longest speeches and clearest communications: the rest was only a languid “Yes, yes; very well; did you? did he? I did not see that; I should not know one from the other.” This was very bad. It was only better than Mrs. Norris’s sharp answers would have been; but she being gone home with all the supernumerary jellies to nurse a sick maid, there was peace and good–humour in their little party, though it could not boast much beside."
- Mansfield Park, Chapter 29, Jane Austen

The last bit about Mrs Norris taking the jellies just kills me. Picture: Georgian jelly moulds made by Josiah Wedgwood.

Damson in Distress

Kate, 36, has gone plum crazy for making JAM. She's been reportedly boiling damsons picked at her country estate in the Cotswolds. Kate has asked her billionaire Top Shop friend Sir Philip Green to help get her jars on shelves.
A source said: "Kate bought a load of expensive equipment because she's always been keen on the idea of making jam. Kate is being helped in the kitchen by daughter Lila Grace, 7."
(Source: The Moment Blog)
Pictures: No, those are not pictures of Kate Moss.

Postcard: Crete

"Dear D, 40 degrees celsius here on my last day in dusty village on Crete. Sweaty but calm. Lots of fresh seafood and sweet kopi. Been writing alot. Read some Austen to my nieces today. reminded me of you and your holiday postcards. Hope you are well. Uncle C"

Dear Jane

"Dear Jane, how shall we ever recollect half the dishes for grandmamma? Soup too! Bless me! I should not be helped so soon, but it smells most excellent, and I cannot help beginning." Miss Bates to Jane Fairfax in Emma, Jane Austen.

Obsessed With Watercress

"Watercress pottage is a good remedy to cleanse the blood in the spring, and help headaches, and consume the gross humours winter has left behind: those that would live in health, may use it if they please; if they will not, I cannot help it. If any fancy not pottage, they may eat the herb as salad." - Nicholas Culpeper, The Compleat Herbal, 1653.Water Cress (Nasturtium Officinale) is a hardy annual that grows naturally in the soil on the banks of cool to cold streams and spring-fed ponds. It can be found all winter long in unfrozen, sheltered areas. You can eat the leaves and stems. They have a very peppery taste. Waterfowl eat it and fish like it also. The small floating leaves are rounded, dark green and waxy. The branching stems can spread out for 2'-3' over the surface. Slender roots hang down from the nodes of the stems. It is a very good oxygenator. It develops many small white flowers over the growing season. Plant in garden soil and put the pot by the edge of your pond with a couple of inches of water over the pot. It will quickly form a mass of foliage and can outgrow a small pot within two months. Watercress tolerates sun, shade or partial shade equally well. You can also start it from a freshly purchased bunch. Make sure you can see the fine white roots on some of the stalks. Push these into wet soil and soon you will have enough Water Cress for all of the salads and sandwiches you could possibly want.

Weekend Reading List

In becoming more interested in cooking, rather than just food, I've taken to watching cooking programmes and reading recipes. Last week, H lent me Cook With Jamie: My Guide to Making You a Better Cook by Jamie Oliver (I have to say that he is my favourite TV cook), The Enchanted Broccoli Forest (Mollie Katzen) and All-Colour Pizza And Pasta: Appetising, Exciting and Inexpensive Italian Dishes (Renato Rudatis). I'm looking forward to trying ou some of the simpler recipes in my bid to eating healthier; My recent struggles in the changing room, tussling with apparel no longer my size is a big impetus for me. It didn't help that last night we ate a heavy Mexican dinner at the week-old Casa Latina on Waterloo Street to celebrate P's birthday, and tomorrow my mother's birthday lunch at the Imperial Treasure in Marina Sands will be another rich meal. After tea and cakes at P's flat a short stroll down from the Mexican, I left shortly after midnight with reading he'd been keeping for me, a bag full of back numbers of The Financial Times Weekender and How To Spend It supplements.
I should be jogging, not reading, of course.

The Jane Austen Diet

I must be going on a diet (with the Chinese New Year feasts ahead) as I've been a shocking omnivore of late, eating any- and everything and unrepentantly remembering how, once upon a time, I would at various stretches not eat yolks, prawns, red meat, fishballs, luncheon meat. A decade went by without drinking sugary bottled drinks; Years went by without my eating cake. Now, sadly, I eat everthing like the Veronese boy (above, Boy Eating, Veronese). Durian, mango, claypot rice, birds nest, beef burger, carbonara pasta, lobster, tempura prawns, early pineapple tarts - all this within the last week.
Emma's Mr Woodhouse would not approve. Mr Woodhouse prefers plain cooking for invalids (or anyone, actually):
“Mrs. Bates, let me propose your venturing on one of these eggs. An egg boiled very soft is not unwholesome. Serle understands boiling an egg better than any body. I would not recommend an egg boiled by any body else — but you need not be afraid — they are very small, you see — one of our small eggs will not hurt you…"
Prescribed diet from Mrs Rundell's 1816 book, A New System of Domestic Cookery formed upon Principals of Economy:
1. Water Gruel
Put a large spoonful of oatmeal by degrees into a pint of water, and when smooth boil it. (You see, this is quite easy to make, but perhaps not very tasty.)
2. Eggs (click and see below)

Weekend Reading List

I'm way behind in my reading, what with the festive season and friends coming back from abroad, I've hardly had a moment to myself. I've been so exhausted that the moment I start reading, I nod off. In yet another shelf purge, BG gave me two books he knew I would love (and which he bought, but hardly read): Zadie Smith's latest, a collection of essays Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays, and Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of the Hedgehog. I love Smith's novel On Beauty, but find it hard concentrating on some of these academic essays; Perhaps, not the right moment for reading this. The cover art is beautiful though. The latter book is set in a Paris apartment so I'm bound to find it fascinating, but I've yet start reading it, as I've just finished the slim Charles Ryder's Schooldays, Evelyn Waugh's posthumously published 'prequel' to Brideshead Revisited. This is a must for those, like me, who can't get enough of Brideshead. On that day that I met K for fish and chips (perhaps not the best choice for me since I've chosen the word 'Health' for my watchword in 2010) at Bras Basah Complex, I also picked up Bad Manners by Lisa Armstrong (Vogue UK writer) and The Collected Stories of Colette, from the National Library right next door. I love the library, and it's always a treat to hunt there. The last is a rich and inspiring feast, and I turn to Colette often, finding these audacious and seductive little gems are so right for the season.
(Picture: Matthew Goode as Charles Ryder)

Weekend Reading List

Back from my mini break and feel the effects evaporating (was it worth it?) the moment I drag luggage off belt 31 at Changi. Unpacking and running errands, including a quick sweep to the library to do some last minute prepping for painting class on Sunday. This is the haul, and what I have to graze and digest after dinner: Oil Painting, The Workshop Experience by Ted Goerschner; I, Raphael, a large picture book (I need to study the skin tones); Divine Presence: Arts of India and the Himalayas (I'm looking mainly for Tibetan motifs and symbols, but I fear the colour plates are not large enough at all); And lastly Artists' Houses (for pure entertainment). I've also got a stack of The Straits Times to plow through, which my dad faithfully collects for me each time I go away. And from the Time I pinched from the lounge, this article about how exercise is quite useless for losing weight. Now this is the sort of stuff I love to read.
According to this report, this is what it takes for a 70 kilo, 30 year old to work off an innocent blueberry muffin (360 calories):

1. Lifting weights for 115 minutes (5 minutes less than two hours, non-stop) or
2. Skating for 21 minutes or
3. Jogging for 33 minutes or
4. Folding laundry for 230 minutes or
5. Vacuuming for 92 minutes

Take your pick of the torture.
Seriously, I'll probably have to be doing jumping jacks from today till Chinese New Year to work off the scrambled eggs, sausages, bacon, plus four waffles with slabs of butter and drools of maple syrup that I ate for breakfast this morning, not to mention the tray of chocolates I inhaled while watching horror movie last night.
Personally, I'd sooner not eat the bloody muffin and not have to lift weights for 115 minutes.
As that's just not realistic, I'd rather be fat.
There, I said it.