One hungry day,



Hard to believe that I was actually xiao enough to go buy a pineapple for this. But I did! And it was very good. I used some packet pineapple rice paste that my mummy sent me. God bless international speed post. It was sooooo yummy and South-East Asian-fied.

To the grandkids: I'm not going back this mid-year. So you won't get your well-deserved whacks til the end of year. Sorry!

Here's a recipe which I thought up in an attempt to ensure that the monstrous foliage of Basil doesn't kill me in my sleep.

Grilled chicken breast with garlic, basil
- 2 chicken breasts
- Few sprig of basil (3-4)
- 2-3 cloves of garlic
- a bit of butter
- some olive oil
- lemon of lime juice
- salt
-black pepper

Garnish - cheddar cheese
- roasted pine nuts


preheat oven to 200 C

take two nice chicken breasts, wash and trim off the yucky bloody bits. make a slit in the middle lengthways but don't half it.(like a croissant)

then, rub with salt and pepper and lemon or lime juice and leave to marinate.

meanwhile,

take a few sprigs of basil (use more if your plant is threatening to suffocate you! like mine).
take 2-3 cloves of garlic (eh don't forget to peel first).
piece of butter about enough for 2 pieces of kaya toast (15-20g)
enough olive oil to make it into a paste

and dump in the chopper machine.

ZxZxZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

then, pour away the excess lime/lemon juice from the chicken breast/s
whack the green basil/garlic goo on to the chicken. make sure it's coated all over and stuff some into the lengthways slit (more the better)

put onto the oven grill rack thing. remember to put foil or something below so the oil doesn't have too much fun in the oven.

grill each side for about 10 minutes until it looks cooked and you can be sure you won't die.

take out.

put on plate.

grate cheddar cheese over it.

sprinkle roasted pine nuts

put in mouth, chew and swallow.

mmmmm.

drink some water. don't choke

Food Post time. Following a recipe from bbc.co.uk/food, this gorgeous Salmon en croute was produced in the comfort of my flat kitchen. As you can see, it looked damn nice and, let me assure you, it tasted even better than it looked. It was also the first time I'd eaten rice in a pie. I liked it. I should make it more often although it uses up a lot of salmon. You feel so high class eating it. :)

Here are some pictures for you to salivate over. Please wipe computer keyboard after dribbling.

Being an archaeologist is fun. Being an archaeological site photographer is cool. Look what I got to do one rainy Monday morning.


Check out the hi-visibility vest and my purple glove. The red and white thing is not a javelin. It's a ranging pole. Welcome to archaeological site photography.

While walking to the site, I loudly mentioned an "Asian Invasion" which made my lecturer turn around and give me a funny look. Lucky I was looking too completely Asian to be accused of racism. And I was set loose on the site with my group, holding my tiny, high-megapixel camera and snapping about a hundred shots per minute.

My exam was a stroke of luck! One question came out that I had already done before in the assignment essay. It wasn't worded exactly the same but was asking for more or less the same thing. So I had all the reading and journal articles to make it work. It was fantastic, I even got to cut and paste a little. haha. Hope it goes well, there was nothing else I could do since other people had kapoh all the good books.

Oh man! My friend Basil is incredible. At first, my sister thought that my demands would exceed his capacity. However, I've been cutting and eating him like no one's business and he just keeps growing and growing like no one's business. I cut and eat and the next morning, I wake up to find him in full luxuriant growth again! Amazing plant! I feed him lots of plant food so that the soil in the pot doesn't get depleted with him using up all the nutrients.