#FUN

Urban nomads: A small but diverse section of society that lives and works in an urban area, yet does not rent, own or otherwise reside permanently in any one location. "Nomad" suggests a chosen lifestyle, as opposed to "refugee", and it also suggests that nomads feel they have a home, as opposed to the "homeless". -Urban Dictionary-

That is the life that I am living at the moment. Since we landed in Sydney a week ago, Yuan and I have been staying in a temporary accommodation which we will move out this weekend into another place. I have not yet found a permanent place to live, so right now I consider myself a nomad. If you are curious how I identify myself as one, below is the checklist I came up with, according to my experience:





1) Luggage is your life: You tend to bring the minimum maximum with you which include the most important things. 

2) A cupboard? What's that??: Because you basically live off your luggage. You tend to compartmentalise your luggage just like how you do with your cupboards, one part for shirts, one part for pants, one part for undies etc..... and you also store your clean and dirty clothes in them, and at the end of the day still able to identify which ones are clean and which are dirty. 

3) Wearing the same clothes: Because you only have that much in your luggage

4) Buying the minimum: You tend to window shop more. I just went into Daiso yesterday (we all know that place is evil coz once you go in, you will definitely come out with many items coz they are so cheap and cute!) and there were so many things i want but I had to refrain myself from buying because I do not want to add on to the weight when I need to move again this weekend!

5) Basic food items: Salt, Pepper, bread, milk, eggs, pasta, pasta sauce, canned food.

6) Occurring meals: pasta, pasta, pasta, pasta, pasta. Because its the easiest to cook!!!

But we are pretty thankful that the place we are staying now has a well equipped kitchen where we can experiment with the limited cooking ingredients to make good edible food. They are not the best, but at least we are not having bread and tuna and pasta every single day. And I thought of sharing some of these ideas with you.

So if you are 1)an urban nomad like me, 2)a architecture student who survives on instant noodles during submission period, 3)working person who is just so lazy to prepare you own meals, then this series is for you!

So with the #FUN project, we aim to cook simple dishes, using the simplest ingredients, and EAT LIKE A PRO NOMAD because we I understand how hard it is to survive just with bread and tuna and pasta every day.....

So stay tuned, and I'll see you real soon!

Here's something interesting worth sharing about urban nomads.

Vivid Sydney 2014

This weekend was the start of Vivid Sydney that will run through till 9th of June (Sunday). It is an annual celebration with many different events revolving around light, music, technology and creativity.

Being so used to the Tasmanian laid back lifestyle, this event gave me a very vibrant and cheerful welcome; the highlight of my first week in Sydney!

It was really crowded all along Circular Quay, what more on a Saturday! But it was a really great opportunity to witness such large scale event with so many people.

Soooo many things to see! We walked sooooo much it really felt as if I could walk to North Pole.... but it was such an amazing experience, with so much things happening around you, you'd be carried away and forget how much you have walked until you reach home.

Light show projected on the custom house.

Amazing coordination of graphics and music, this was my favourite!

Not forgetting the Opera House. Since I recorded it from far, I decided to add in an audio track just to make it more glamorous, LOL.

So if you happen to be in Sydney during this time, remember to pay a visit to this event in the evening!

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And lastly, a little sneak peak to the next recipe..... :)

Hope you had a relaxing Sunday, and a good week ahead! 

back from a long break, with a new recipe!

Firstly, I would like to apologise for the loooooooooong hiatus. Here's why: since the previous post in September, Yuan and I got into a huge black hole of stress preparing for our finals, because its the grand finale! Yes the last architecture studio crit of our Masters degree. We were really living like zombies until the end of October. And then there was graduation, visiting parents and time to vacate our beloved house.
So now, finally I have some time to continue (yyyaaaayy!!!) and I hope you will continue to stay with me as I share more recipes and more interesting things with you.

For your information, the both of us have left Tasmania, one of the most beautiful places in Australia, to Sydney. And with this, I hope to be able to bring you more interesting events!

Now here's a cute recipe for you:

While I was back in Malaysia at the end of last year, I went to visit my grandmother in Terengganu (east coast of Malaysia peninsular). Knowing that grandma has many tasty recipes to share, I decided to show her my cooking videos. I felt embarrassed at first (it just feels so strange sharing your videos with your family members ><) but to my surprise she actually enjoyed watching them!

So today, I will be sharing my grandmother's cute recipe with you, Kuih Moho. To be honest, I have never came across this, neither have I heard of the name. To me, it is just a cupcake, and I really mean CUPcake. But it is special coz of the simple ingredients and baking method. Since grandma was eager to share this recipe with me, I took the opportunity and asked her permission for filming, and she said YES!

Very simple ingredients: (yields up to 50 cupcakes)
Sweet potato mixture
4 sweet potatoes (approx. 15cm in length)
1 bowl water (2 cups)

Dough
1kg pau flour (or cake flour)
400g sugar
4tsp yeast with 1/4 bowl water (1/2 cup)
6 small eggs/4 large eggs
1 bowl water (2 cups)

Directions:
Sweet potato mixture
1) wash and clean potato, and either steam or boil them till they are cooked. You can check by piercing a fork through the potato. If it is cooked, you should be able to pierce the fork through easily.
2) peel the potatoes and mash them in a bowl
3) add a bowl (2cups) of water and continue mashing/mixing
4) strain the mixture through a sieve to ensure you don't get chunks of unmashed potatoes

Dough
1) prepare yeast: instant yeast powder dissolved in 1/2 cup water
2) in a large mixing bowl, pour in flour, sweet potato mixture, sugar, eggs, yeast and water
3) keep mixing/kneading the flour until you get a sticky, elastic and moist texture
4) divide the whole mixture into 2 portions so that the dough can rise more effectively. Cover with a cloth or like my grandmother, she uses more bowls :) leave that for 30-40minutes.
5) while waiting for the dough, prepare a steamer and bring 1-1.5 litters of water to a boil
6) grandma uses small tea cups! wash them clean
7) after 40minutes, take a teacup and scoop a spoonfull of dough into the cup. place that in the steamer rack
8) steam for 10minutes
9) remove cupcakes into a plate filled with water (to halfway up the teacup). this is to cool down the insides of the cup so that it will be easier to remove from the mould
10) after 5 minutes, with a fork, gently push the sides of the cake and it shall pop out very easily.
11) serve and enjoy!

dough covered for 40minutes

 little teacups! Grandma has heaps of these cuties and I am surprised you can actually use these cups to make cakes!

 so tiny~

cupcakes!

these cakes are very soft and fluffy, and taste sooooo good!

here's the video recipe to it.

It was Yuan's birthday last week, we wanted to surprise her with not-another-cake, so we made her a giant fruit jelly cake for her and it was yummy and very wobbly~ 

I shall make a recipe video on this one day. It was really good!

See you!