Running long is such a great feeling

1. His autobiography – this is free on the internet.http://d3vilsheaven.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/My-experiments-with-truth.pdf

2. A very comprehensive story about Gandhi and his political and spiritual life. http://www.amazon.com/Life-Mahatma-Gandhi-Louis-Fischer/dp/0006388876

3. The salt march was one of the most important event he organized that really got the colonialists shaking. England had a tax on salt and no one in India could make salt. So Gandhi organized a long walk to Dandi and took a handful of salt in his hand in his civil disobedience towards the British Empire http://www.amazon.com/On-Salt-March-Historiography-Gandhis/dp/8172232632/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1330746006&sr=1-1

4. Once you start reading about Gandhi, you might also want to read Rabindranath Tagore. He was Asia’s first nobel laureate
http://www.amazon.com/Rabindranath-Tagore-An-Anthology/dp/031220079X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1330746246&sr=1-1

Finally, I think you might want to buy these books when you are in India. Books in India are damn cheap… sometimes paper quality might be bad but you will find the bookshops have a better range that in Singapore.

There were a few things I discovered and one of it was that I could use my old non-support Adi-zero which has a very thin sole.  It must be my adapting to bare-foot running.  JOY!  And no ITB problems but just tightness in the knees.  What was great was I was able to do a 15km 3 days later with no problems.

Why the long run?  Its getting into the zone and what a joy it is to hit 15 km and feel good.  Thanks to the barefoot running style I am confident I won’t bust my knees just yet.

After the run, I was really happy to be able to do a long run so comfortably so I downloaded a book into my kindlefire

Excellent stuff and the story about Matt Long really moved me.

About the Event The event will be held on 25 Feb from 830 to 12noon.

Cyclists will ride along a 9 or 11km Park Connector to enjoy the beautiful green space and waterways.  Deputy Prime Minister Mr Teo Chee Hean will be the Guest-of-Honour of the NParks event.  There will also be a Carnival in the Park for the community to join in the celebration.  More than just a fun outing or morning exercise in the park connector, the event also aims to raise at least $100,000 for our needy elderly patients who require long-term medication and treatment in TTSH.  Individual registration fee is $50 and group of 4 and above need only to pay $30.   All participants will receive a Tshirt, a goodie bag worth $50.   More information is available on http://ttshcharityride.com.  

How you can help We hope Cycling In Singapore can support our event in a few ways: 
a.  Publicity – we hope to recruit more than 500 cyclists for the event.  We would be most grateful if you can help share the event on your website/facebook/blog. 
b. Sign up together as a group and cycle together for fun and to make a difference.   Group registration fee is $30 each and all participants will receive a Tshirt and goodie bag worth over $50.

The info below taken from the weather.gov.sg FAQ site

Singapore has two main seasons, the Northeast Monsoon (December to March) and the Southwest Monsoon season (May to September), separated by two relatively shorter inter-monsoon periods. Although there are no distinct wet or dry periods, the mean monthly rainfall shows drier weather conditions from May to July and wetter conditions in the months from November to January. . February is also a relatively dry month. The beginning and end of the monsoons are usually not very well-defined. Hence, from year to year, there could be slight delay in the beginning or end of a monsoon period. This probably accounts for the monthly rainfall anomaly experienced from year to year.

….

Sumatras are line of thunderstorms which usually occur during the Southwest Monsoon season from May to October each year. These squalls develop at night over Sumatra or the Malacca Straits and move east towards Singapore and the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia during the pre-dawn and early morning. They are often characterised by sudden onset of strong gusty surface winds and heavy rain lasting from 1 to 2 hours as they move across the island. Maximum gusts of up to 50 knots have been recorded during the passage of a Sumatra squall.

This below is from the Monsoon update page from the weather.gov.sg

Northeast Monsoon

(Updated on 27 December 2011)

Northeast Monsoon conditions have set in over the region since mid-November 2011.  The Northeast Monsoon season typically starts with a wet phase (December to January) followed by a dry phase (February to early March). During the wet phase, the Northeast Monsoon season is characterized by short duration thundery showers in the afternoon and early evening, and about two to four episodes of monsoon surges. Monsoon surges refer to the steady strengthening of northeasterly winds blowing from the South China Sea. These monsoon surges usually bring periods of prolonged widespread moderate to heavy rain lasting two to five days, occasionally windy conditions and cooler temperatures. During the dry phase, generally drier and windy conditions can be expected.

Based on long-term statistics from our climate station, December is the wettest month of the year (287.4 mm), followed by November (255.9 mm) and January (241.3 mm) respectively. The mean daily minimum temperature is lowest for January (23.3 deg Celsius), followed by December (23.5 deg Celsius) and February (23.6 deg Celsius).

The monsoon surge which has been affecting the region for the past several days has eased.  Windy conditions and passing showers in the afternoon are forecast for the next two days.  Short duration thundery showers in the afternoon can be expected for the rest of the week.

She told me to marinate the chicken by massaging the ginger and garlic paste into the thawed chicken for an hour or so.

Another important thing to do is the cook the curry paste in some oil in a wok to bring out the flavors of the spices.  I also realize that if that is not done, then the rawness of the ginger, garlic and onions can still be picked out.  Of course the caramelization of the onions will not occur as fully as it should.

So here it is – marinated chicken in the pot.  What I had missed here is to fry the paste (portion that wasn’t used in the marinating).  So I did that in a separate pan.

The outcome is this.  Notice I also added in hard boiled eggs – a tradition handed down from my family.  But I wonder where it originated from – lots of people are surprised when they scoop up an egg.  Hey, what do you expect from a pot of chicken?

The recipe

Part I – Ingredients

• Chicken x1 (chopped to smaller parts)
• Curry paste (For meats).  Preferably buy from a local wet market (if in Singapore).  The paste I buy has the dry curry spices as well as a separate packet of ginger-garlic paste and separate packet of shallot (onion) paste
• I small packet of coconut milk
• Spices – cloves, cinnamon bark, star anise, cardamom
• Oil
• Salt to taste
• Coriander leaves
• 5 hard boiled eggs
• 5 Potatoes, peeled.  Starchy or waxy are fine – both kinds add a different texture when attacking the potatoes.  However the starchy ones tend to break down faster but leave a nice thickness to the gravy.

Part II – method

• Marinate the chicken with half the ginger-garlic paste for like 1 hour before.
• Add some oil and brown the marinated chicken for about 10 mins and remove
• Meantime, heat up some oil and add some whole spices (cloves, cinnamon bark, star anise, cardamom) and fry till fragrant.
• Add in the remaining ginger-garlic paste with the onion paste and add the curry powder.  Mix in the wok in a low heat till the fragrant.  I think that would be about 5-10 mins.
• Add in the chicken and mix well till the curry covers the chicken well.  The chicken at this point would have started to cook and will break apart easily so its time to add in water and the peeled potatoes.
• Add in water till it has a curry-like consistency of your choice.  I prefer mine like a gravy.
• Now its time to cover the pot and leave the heat to low.  Slow cooking makes the meat more tender – the faster the protein denatures in the high heat will result in a rubber like consistency with rushed curries.  Open the pot occasionally to stir the curry.  After about an hour of this, the curry is about done.
• Now stir in the salt to taste and finally add coconut milk.  I usually add about half of the packet but if you like the curry richer, then add the entire packet.  Its all about customizing it to your own taste.  Once all these have been done, you can add in the hard boiled eggs and garnish with a generous bunch of coriander leaves.  I think the ammonia from the eggs do something nice to the taste.
• Note:  The coconut milk should be added in at the end.  I add salt at the end as the salt can draw out the water from the chicken at the start and leave it less succulent.
• Coriander leaves top the curry off very well.
• Now you can eat it.  Best with rice or for me, the french loaf.

For a more complete recipe from scratch, the page at rasamalaysia.com looks quite authentic.  But I think the idea is perhaps to keep this simple and then vary it according to your taste.  I remember meeting Otterman halfway up Gunung Belumut with a pack of curry powder and a packet of chicken so that he could cook chicken curry for his friends when they reached the summit and set up camp.

The curry chicken with hard boiled eggs is something of a memory vessel for me – my parents used to lug a huge pot of curry with hard boiled eggs, armed with several large baguettes (french loaves) and a long day of inspecting rock pools would end with some curry by the sea.

The recipe comes from this book called – The Cookie Book by Catherine Atkinson.  This book has nice pictures of each of the recipes written; I don’t understand cooking books without pictures.  The recipe can be found here in the blog: ” A year of cookies“.  (Interestingly the person who blogged this did just that – bake cookies 365 days!).  I can’t imaging doing that without getting sugar overload.  The sugars in some cookies can make up close to a quarter or a third of the calories in the cookie.  See how sugar cubes literally stack up in the calorie charts of different cookies here.

The dough is easy to make.  It’s just sugar, flour, almond, an egg, vanilla extract and butter.  It needs to rest for 2 hours in the fridge before you take it out and roll them into balls.

After you pop them into the oven to wait for 20 mins, you can melt the chocolate by double boiling, i.e., in a bowl over a pan of water that is being heated.

The cracks form on top of the cookies after 20 mins in the oven.  The smell of roasted almonds permeating the kitchen is quite something.

The fun part is to spread the melted chocolate in-between the cookies to make a sandwich.  This makes the cookie irresistible.

Freshly baked cookies are so distracting to kids who have to do homework.

I think I made them a bit bigger than its suppose to be but still I think the size is attractive.

This is one of the easiest cookies to make but looks like lots of effort been put in because the cookies sandwich the chocolate middle .  Excellent recipe and great tasting cookie too.  The almonds come through nicely and the smell highly delectable as the almonds get roasted.  They are a bit too sweet for me to have more than 2 at a time so I would suggest using a chocolate that is semi or non-sweetened.