my food blog

My food blog has been an unfortunate casualty of school (as evidenced by the graph below).

Ive never written much about my personal life on this blog. Some may argue that goes against the very idea of a personal blog but I am a private person. I decided early on that I wanted to keep my medicine world going-ons separate from this blog. I didnt write about seeing open heart surgeries and I never wanted to complain about 30 hour days (dont worry, Steven can attest that I vent enough in person).


This blog is about food and the food should speak for itself.

It was extremely important to me that I continue cooking regardless of how busy I became. Even though Ive written a whopping 4 posts in the last year, I have hundreds of photos I snapped in hopes of eventually getting to writing a post (check out the new recipe graveyard) . So I think this blog has been neglected long enough and its time for a revamp.

a picture of Mr. Bun for fun

(or Peter Francis Bunnington the IV, Esquire)

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Blog Event 20 Budget Meal Closing date 27 March 11

Recently while chatting with some facebook and twitter friends about the TV program known as "3 Plus 1 Sr 3(三菜一汤)" showing on every Wednesday, 8.00pm on Channel 8. I realise that the few of us usually have the habit of preparing homecooked dishes either by our own self, parents or helper at home. Especially now when the food pricing is rather high compare to a few years back, I am sure most of the family would rather prepared some simple homecooked food than eat out most of the days.

So here I would like to urge those who loves to prepare simple homecooked meal to join us in this small event in order to accumulated more cooking ideas as well as sharing with each other on how to purchase ingredients with a minimum sum of budget given.

WHO CAN JOIN:

~ Anyone who is interested to help and share more ideas in preparing homecooked meal.

CRITERIA:

~ Prepare any "2 Dishes plus 1 Soup" or "1 Pot Dish" using a Maximum budget of S$20.00. If you are from overseas, you can also particpiate by converting to the appropriate currency value, (ie. US$15.00, RM$50.00, Rp $138,000 and etc)

~ Send in either your blog link with a post of all the prepared dishes plus soup together with at least 1 recipe on the prepared meal.

Or

~ If you do not have a blog, just send in the photos and recipe of your dishes and I will publish on your behalf in my blog, credited to you. (photos can be taken in any form using digital camera or handphone)

~ Please do mention in your blog that you are sharing this post to “$20 Budget Meal” event and link it to this page so as to encourage more readers to contribute.

SUBMISSION:

~ E-mail your "blog link" or "photos with recipe" to ellenaguan@hotmail.com with a subject "$20 Budget Meal" in the following format:

Your Name:
URL of your post:
Name of your dishes + soup:
Estimate amount spent for each dish:
Attachment of your photo in your email (each photo, preferably 500kb or less).

CLOSING DATE:

~ 20 March 2011, 2359hours 27 March 2011, 2359 hours and all entries will be compiled and posted on 30th March 2011.

~ If the respond is good we will held a readers voting event for the best "$20 Budget Meal" family over at Cuisine Paradise Facebook Page for more giveaways.

For example if you wish to cook some delicious and nutritious herbal soup but you do not have those necessary Chinese Herbs in your pantry. Here is what you can do with any purchase of pre-packed herbal soup ingredients from any local supermarket. I bought this FairPrice(Pasar) herbs for S$4.50 + 2 Chicken drumstick for S$3.20 so total I spent S$7.70 for this pot of Chicken Herbal Soup. In this case I will have S$12.30 balance to get ingredients for another 2 dishes.

  With this pre-packed herbs, follow the instructions at the back of the packet and you will have a pot of delicious soup in a few hours time. Before this, perhaps you would like to take notes on a few items when preparing the soup.

SOME PREPARATION NOTES

~ Always rinse the herbs with either running water or warm water in a bowl to watch away any dirt in it.

~ Depend on your preference, get ready either chicken bones, chicken drumsticks, pork ribs or pork fillet. Trim, rinse and blanched them in boiling water for about 5 minutes, rinse well before use.

~ You can use a auto-timer and cook the soup in slower cooker even if you are out of your house so that the soup will be ready during meal time.


Lastly I hope that everyone can help to contribute some of your homecooked dishes so that we can get the opportunities to learn from each other and add on more cooking ideas to our "2 Dishes, 1 Soup(两菜一汤）" recipes bank.

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Changes to the blog

I am changing the direction of this blog a bit. Henceforth is is going to be not only about traditional Icelandic foods, but about what Icelanders like to eat in general.

So far I have mostly written about traditional Icelandic food, most of which is still being cooked and served in Icelandic homes. But the food many of the younger generations like best can also be called Icelandic, even if it includes such obvious new imports as passion fruit, Parmesan cheese or prosciutto. Therefore I am going to change tack and start including more modern Icelandic recipes here. To separate the traditional food from the modern, I have labelled all the traditional recipes as such.

Some of the food I have labelled “traditional” is really rather new, like cocktail sauce, rice pudding and hot chocolate, but I have labelled it as traditional by dint of its either being so lastingly popular that it has been proven not to be a fad and therefore likely to continue lasting, or because it or its use is unique to Iceland. Do keep in mind when searching for recipes that “traditional” may have as little as a 20 year history behind it.

A number of the recipes may look familiar to foreign visitors, which simply indicates that Iceland is not a closed country and we like to try foreign recipes as much as the next nation.

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