Tag Archives: Gift

Mental Detour

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The weather has been pants for a few days now: I’ve had thunderstorms and vertical rain. I don’t really mind because I don’t have to go anywhere and have been extremely busy sorting out chores that have been on the to-do-list for ages already. I finally started to mend some dresses and skirts and I finally finished my chocolate satin dress. I don’t know what happened but last week one thing led to another and all of a sudden I was sick and tired of the mess that has been lying around for some time now waiting for me to fix it or finish it. Oh… I remember what caused it: be prepared to dive into my warped mind…

Last Friday I received a wonderful surprise in the post all the way from New York, the package from Ismoyo that I’d won a while ago. Thank you, it’s totally sweet! So I wanted to take some pictures, I always take pictures of everything and that’s what it all started: me wanting to take pictures. I have a small desk near the window where my sewing machine sits and it’s the best spot to take pictures since the light conditions are always perfect. But the desk was piled up with dresses that needed fixing. So basically I ended up cleaning up the mess. Halfway I decided to sort out my CD collection too, all the archive CDs that is.

And before I knew it I was throwing out stacks of old CDs that my Mac refused to read and burning Gigs to DVD, reorganising years of archiving. Then I got all hyper and realised that I only have two LaCie Porsches that I really needed to sort out because I don’t have the extra backup space anymore. Well I do basically but it needs a lot of reorganising. So while working on websites for clients I suddenly realised that if one of those Porsches would crash I would have a serious problem: I don’t have the extra backup available, the second Porsche became home to my music collection instead.

What happened next is that I started my online research for internal and external HDs to see if I could afford one. I asked Christiaan for advice since I had a slight idea what I wanted but wasn’t sure if that was the best option but he confirmed my feeling *thank you!*. So I decided to buy an extra 500Gig internal HD since that is the cheapest way for now and I do need to invest in this if I don’t want to get myself into trouble. Over the weekend I ended up wasting time waiting for others to help me so I lost a few hours there but have been catching up these last few days.

Why the detour you wonder? Because I need to get rid of clutter: all the clutter around me on desks, the clutter on my Mac which used to be organised but most of all the clutter in my head. I’m probably over-criticising myself again because some from the past told me I was the most organised person they’d ever met and I guess I can see why. But you see, I can’t design new projects if I don’t have a neat place to work: neat place clean of clutter means no clutter but room in my head… So I decided to throw out and declutter starting with the pile of clothes waiting to be mended.

And since I finally have a clean window desk I finally took some pictures. Now if you’ll excuse me I need to get back to decluttering so I can start some web design soon!

I’ve finished my chocolate satin dress, more mending to be done…

Lovely surprise in the post all the way from NY

Cute Japanese generosity I received from Ismoyo, thank you so much! :)

Art Of Cooking

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Whenever I had a not-so-happy phase in life, I had the tendency not to eat and skip meals or eat soup and toast instead of a meal because I was too lazy to cook. I don’t know what triggered it but at some point I realised that I should look after myself no matter what circumstances and whether I’d feel like eating or not: I should have something nutritious. I guess my approach to cooking changed when I realised that I could use cooking to treat myself, be good to me. Buying and preparing nice, good food was like buying a gift for myself. Ever since that moment, years ago, cooking became almost some kind of meditation and/or celebration instead of a daily chore.

Last week I watched a show on BBC4 about the biggest Chinese restaurant in the world situated in the Hunanese town of Changsha [circa 5000 seats]. The owner at some point explained her philosophy of cooking in relation to her chefs which -what I first thought- was quite similar to mine: food is an expression of the soul… I feel that, when you cook something that looks and tastes beautiful, you don’t just feed your body but your soul too. To me cooking is relaxing [most of the time] and I try to take time and not feel rushed by a clock. I developed my own cooking Taoism [nourishment of the body, longevity] combined with some Confucianism too [taste, texture, appearance].

So what I didn’t understand about this show was the owners philosophy and how it was so not applied to their ways in preparing meals which was quite disturbing to me. At some point the 300 chefs were in a competition to show how quickly they could prepare certain dishes. They showed how to descale a live fish with a knife whilst holding it down on a cutting board. Next thing they did was batter the fish and shove the still wriggling body in a wok with smoking hot oil until fried. They then put it on a plate, sprinkled some green over it and served a fresh slowly dying fish to the jury. A similar thing happened to a snake which was skinned but the ‘worst thing’ happened to a duck…

The owner said that to keep her chef’s minds creative so they would come up with new ideas for new menus, she would take them out on a field trip to refresh the spirit. This time she took them to visit the duck farm that supplied their 200 consumed ducks a day. After a tour around the farm, they prepared their own meal and showed how to kill a duck before preparing it. It came down to poking a bamboo stick right through the breast, putting your finger through the hole to pull out the heart of the live duck. All this to keep the good flavours and happy customers… I had to turn my head away in disgust because I already had seen an overdose of animal cruelty during this 45 minutes show.

I was in total shock to see such cold-hearted behaviour. Don’t get me wrong I don’t approve of certain Western ways either but this was just immoral and all done for the sake of making as much money as you can to serve the country’s elite and the communist party… It totally doesn’t make sense to me, none of it. Well I guess my definition of nurturing myself and preparing a beautiful meal to celebrate tradition or simply to give a gift to myself and/or others is a totally different philosophy than the one showed on BBC4 that evening. Storyville: The Biggest Chinese Restaurant In The World, BBC4 broadcasted on Tuesday, 27 May 2008.

My definition would be something like this:

Last Saturday I had the most delicious flower ever… yes a thistle. Some might not realise that a certain ingredient of Mediterranean cuisine is a flower as well, the bud that is… But my thistles were huge and cheap too, only a pound each. And since it’s all about simplicity I boiled them with some garlic, a bay leaf and two slices of lemon. I made a dip of olive oil, lemon juice, some Dutch herbs, salt, pepper and a tiny bit of Lea & Perrins. I was having a most exciting, delicious and finger-licking lunch that day…

Like Mother Pearl…

He loves me… he loves me not…