Journalists are not sure if…

Share-a-Gift at MPH

I just wanted to remind everyone that MPH’s Share-A-Gift Tree is up at the store.

For those of you who are not familiar, MPH sets up a Christmas tree in all their retail stores with gift tags for children from welfare homes like Salvation Army. The tag will tell you the name, gender and age of the recipient to help you choose a book for them.

I normally try to pick a teen boy because it’s hard to find books that would engage them, especially if you don’t know too much about YA literature.  But all the boys were below ten so I picked the oldest girl and got her my ‘Book of the Year’.

Why yes, I did make a crack about sparkly vampires. ;P

The drawback about this kind of gift-giving is that you have no idea if they enjoyed it or if they are even the reading type. But I do this every year because I consider this my personal social responsibility as a reader.

There’s still a lot of tags on that tree last I looked, so go on over to MPH an get someone a good book!

Kitchen Noob Survival Guide

Welcome to a new series of posts as I blog my adventures in cooking!

Before this time last year, my best efforts involving any sort of cooking is instant noodles, plain egg omelette and the occasional sandwich. And by ‘sandwich’, I mean semi-flat stuff folded in a slice of bread.

A defenseless sammich

When I joined Studio 23′s bootcamp, eating healthy became a priority and the only way you can be sure of what you’re eating is if you prepared it yourself.

You’ve heard this a billion times… it’s far healthier and cheaper to make your own meals, but for someone who can’t tell one green leafy vegetable from the other and is generally afraid of singeing her eyebrows off, anything more complicated than boiling an egg is daunting. Also? Food preparation and cooking takes too long. Think of all the stuff on my Facebook newsfeed that I’ll miss!

It doesn’t at all help when well-meaning friends have all these wonderful recipes they want to share with you and your eyes glaze over mid-explanation because you don’t understand a thing they are saying.

When I finally started, it was using a combination of basic cooking/food combination skills that I already know. My first creation was a simple tuna pasta salad. It was a success. It also contained under 5 ingredients. It didn’t kill anyone who ate it.

Cooking with 5 ingredients or less isn’t a new idea. I love Stone Soup for the 5 ingredient recipes and for the wake up call that good food can come together quickly with minimal ingredients and preparation time… and without all that fuss with “a pinch of this” and “a dash of that” for some subtle effect that those at Cooking Level 1 won’t likely notice.

Kitchen Noob Survival Guide was named based on various suggestions by my Facebook friends (thanks guys!). I like how the abbreviation ‘KNS’ also stands for ‘like shit’ in Hokkien, which is something every rookie cookie will experience in the course of trying to make something to eat.

Looks like…

My objective here is to help you navigate your kitchen and guide you in creating simple dishes. I try to keep it healthy, but there will be sinful treats every now and then! Let’s cook!

For the full list of blog posts in this series, visit Kitchen Noob Survival Guide.