Earl Grey Cream Tea

It’s flowery with a creamy sort of undertone. I still like to add 2 packets of sugar and extra creaminess.

Pita bread

Recipe here.

Pureed zucchini & chickpea hummus

• Cooked chickpeas — very important, because the zucchini on its own is too watery
• Zucchini (raw & chopped)
• Diced raw garlic
• Salt to taste
• Sesame Oil to taste (add for taste & slight creaminess, but not more than 5 tablespoons)
• Lemon juice to taste

That’s it. Puree it, and eat it. I find it delicious, delicate and tasty, warm or cold, I love it on top of pita bread.

Why I don’t like a lot of oil or fats

I don’t put in a lot of olive oil or sesame oil, nor do I put in tahini (which is crushed, roasted sesame seed paste).

The reason being is that I’ve noticed a distinct correlation between high amounts of oil/fat/butter and my face breaking out like crazy into deep acne cysts.

It’s just my own body reacting to how much oil I eat in my foods, and does not mean that oil will make you break out — but it makes me break out, so I’m avoiding high amounts of it, which includes putting it into hummus.

Eggs also make me itchy, I think…

I also noticed (after my little oak leaf mite experience in Europe), that eggs make me itchier.

I don’t know why that is, but eating egg pasta and eating eggs made my whole body itchy and crazy unbearable, even though the itching had stopped long before, and the mites have been left across the pond.

Then I stopped eating egg pasta and eggs, and either it’s all in my head and it was just a placebo, but my skin stopped itching, and I am going to lay off the eggs until I heal up.

More Europe posts to come.

They just take so long to prep & do…

In the mean time, feast your eyes on my bounty of SUGAR!!!

This’ll be a fast post.

Why are women considered to be the ones who SHOULD cook in a household, but in a professional setting, there are more men who are chefs, than women?

I’m an avid fan of Top Chef, Top Chef Masters… okay, any kind of cooking show in general, and whenever I hear comments from women contestants such as:

“So.. it’s just me and the guys again.. which, is normal for me, as is the nature of our industry!”

- Susan Feniger – Top Chef Masters Season Two Contestant

(whom I ADORE by the way!)

And other various:

“Well you know how it is, being the only woman in the kitchen.”

“I’ve had to fight tooth and nail to be seen as a respected chef, who is a woman.”

“We [women] just have to be tougher in the kitchen, and we’ve taken a lot of crap.”

“They will tell you point blank: You are a woman, you will never become a chef, you should just stay in the bakery. So I’ve had to really fight my way through to the top, to be respected.” — I believe this one came from Cindy Pawlcyn (Another Top Chef Masters contestant from Season One)

So what gives, world?

Why are women stereotypically told that their place is in the kitchen when they’re growing up, but men are the ones who dominate the culinary arts?

My mom used to tell me:

“If you want to catch a husband, you better know how to cook”

… or …

“Don’t you want to be able to cook for your family and your husband?”

(That one made me retort: “I’d like to think my future husband could carry his own weight and feed his family and his own darn self if need be!”)

The sad thing was that I never hated to cook! It was more out of spite, that I refused to cook. (Yes, childish and silly I know.)

When she finally gave up the nagging and guilt-tripping, I eased back into cooking, which seemed to surprise her, as I never seemed to show an interest in cooking as I was growing up

In our little world of two, BF is the one who is the far better chef than I.

He of course, has had more experience, not having rebelled against his mother and her pleas to be a good wife who should know how to take care of her man’s belly.

But I ain’t too shabby, if I do say so myself!

What about you?

Were you ever pressured to cook, for reasons OTHER than just having a basic, practical working knowledge of how to cook?

I’d love to hear the perspective from any men who are lurking regarding the subject!

You hear these bizarre stories about supermodels losing weight and “surviving” on chili water with honey and an apple a day.

Me, I ate an orange, 4 square bars of chocolate, and a quarter tub of yoghurt in the morning around 8 a.m., with lots of water

Then.. I just forgot to eat.

(Partly because I assumed BF would cook, as he had the rice cooker going, but alas, the rice was for tomorrow‘s meal, and not today’s.)

But by 3 p.m., I was feeling faint and dizzy. I wanted to throw up. Or crawl into a bed and sleep, while waiting for the room to stop spinning.

There would have been no way for me to be able to stand up for even 10 minutes to make a meal, not that I even had an appetite to eat it!

I didn’t want to even think about food.

It was as though I had been stuck in a small car and spun in a circle for hours to activate my nasty motion sickness.

So knowing that my body was giving me some serious “you must eat something” signals, I drank some water, and then slowly forced another orange down my throat, with another quarter tub of yoghurt before I felt “okay” enough to stand up and make myself a (quick) real meal — ramen with eggs and vegetables.

And even after eating that, I felt “okay”, but still weak.

So how the heck do these girls survive on an apple a day? Or a salad a day without fainting? Especially collapsing on the runway in a heap?

They’re a good foot taller than I am in most cases, and way lighter!!!

That being said, perhaps it’s just my body.

I’ve watched BF (the Food Camel) go a whole day with just a bowl of oatmeal in the morning and a 600 gram tub of yoghurt, feeling perfectly spry and fine.

What he ate, is what I’d consider to be snacks in between meals!

Maybe my body is more sensitive to not having food in it than most…

And how about you? Do you NEED to eat at every 4 hour intervals like I do, or are you a food camel, like BF?

Saw this as I was dozing off last night.

Campbell’s Creations Soups had a tagline that said:

“Made with real vegetables, like celery, carrots and broccoli like you’d find in a homemade soup!”

All I could think was: So what the heck were we buying/eating from your brand before, Campbells!?!? Fake soup? Chemicals that taste like soup? Fake vegetables?

Bah.