Woo, Friday! I’ve had a good week, very laid back for some strange reason. I even had time to read a book. Well, I’m only on page 23 but that’s quite an achievement for me! Let’s get cracking on this week’s questions then.

#1. Clair’s question. What’s the biggest kitchen blunder you’ve made?

Read all about it, read all about my granola adventure here. I make granola bars like you’ve never seen, honest .

#2. What’s your favorite snow day beverage?

A steaming hot coffee in the winter is the best thing ever.

#3. What’s your favorite way to eat celery?

I like them in my pasta.

#4. What’s the most unappealing looking food you can think of?

Whenever I go to seafood restaurants, which is pretty rare unless we get invited to dinner, I always quicken my step when I walk past the live seafood languishing helplessly in tanks, oblivious to the fiery deaths awaiting them in the kitchen nearby.

Say what you want but there’s something about this picture that really puts me off live seafood, no matter how good it’s supposed to taste.

Want to play Four Foods on Friday? Simple, go over to valmg’s blog at Fun, Crafts and Recipes and grab the details. Have a great weekend, everyone.

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Right, so I decided to try my hand at homemade granola bars now that the wedding invitations seem to have eased off and I’m less busy.

I fried some sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and rolled oats, then put them in a bowl and stirred in some orange peel preserves and honey. Into a baking pan lined with greaseproof paper, I poured in the granola and flattened it out. I topped it with another sheet of greaseproof paper and stuck the pan in the fridge to cool. A few hours later, I was all set to cut my granola into bars but found they weren’t sticking together.

I added more honey thinking maybe there wasn’t enough earlier to hold everything together. Nope, so I decided to bake it. When I took  that lovely slab of bedrock granola out of the oven and started cutting, I ended up with this !! How do you like my granola bars?

What? They don’t look like bars to you? You sure ? Well, okay, I managed to get a few jagged chunks (not bars, mind you!) here and there. But by the time I got them unstuck from the greaseproof paper, even those few miserable chunks had gone to pieces.

What a disaster! I showed the kids “my new style of granola bars” and we just sat there laughing. I scooped up the bits (literally) and now I have a whole container of granola bits to finish up.

I don’t like to waste food so I guess I’m stuck with this for breakfast. Every so often, I have to fish out the paper fragments floating on the milk and leave them on the side of my cereal bowl. See the paper fragments in the picture? Those are the ones I caught. As for the ones I didn’t catch, don’t worry, I’ve digested them, hahaha. Honestly I could develop a taste for paper !

Ever since my vegetarian diet ended, I’ve been like a bird out of a cage. Not that being vegetarian was that bad. In fact, I quite enjoyed it. But somehow I still miss my favorite food, just like dim sum which I love so much and ate so much last weekend.

I was hankering after a nice, juicy piece of steak too . I got my wish two days ago when we went to The Ship, my favorite old-time restaurant that I’ve been dining at since I was a kid, and I had this scrumptuous Minute Steak.

At the rate I’m going, pretty soon I’ll need to be reading more than a phenphedrine review to see how I can take off the pounds that I pile on . In case you’re wondering, I lost a whopping 1 kg (2.2 lbs) in a month of being vegetarian but I haven’t gained it back - yet! Not sure if that’s good or bad?

Yep, today is a brand new day, the day I’m officially done with my 30-day vegetarian diet which started early last month. And this is what I had for breakfast this morning, my first meal … ta da, yummy, huh?

Nasi lemak (coconut rice with various condiments), ironically minus the chicken because it’s too heavy a breakfast for me otherwise. But I’ll get to eating chicken eventually… er, soon, at lunch today probably .

Eating healthy is a great feeling. I continued my gym workouts as usual during my vegetarian month. Not eating meat didn’t make me feel any less energetic. In fact, I revved up my workouts incorporating push-ups for the first time. It’s hard work but it left me happily tired.

I have a crazy metabolic rate even when I’m not vegetarian, so you can imagine how hungry I was this whole month not having anything substantial meat for my tummy to grind. I was hungry all the time and always looking for food .

Remember I did this for religious reasons, not to lose weight but I couldn’t help wondering what the effect would be of abstaining from meat completely, working out regularly and stuffing myself with carbs and snacks every two hours. Well, guess what? I lost a total of 1 kg (2.2 lbs) in the process. Nothing significant about that really.

The thing I missed most was eating out with my kids. I’d just sit and watch them eat, or pick at their fries and hijack a few gulps of soda. Most restaurants don’t have a vegetarian menu, and most vegetarian restaurants are crazy expensive. Maybe if we’d been on vacation at a Westgate resort, there might’ve been more meal options for me to choose from, eh? But hey, no complaints, it was a fantastic experience!

Hey, I’m back… from nowhere. Sorry I missed last week’s FFOF but I did get around to commenting on a few of your blogs. Well, here I am, with a few days left till the end of my 30-day vegetarian diet. That’s pretty exciting but so are this week’s questions .

#1. Anele’s question. Do you have a natural ability to cook or do you feel you just “get by?”

I learnt to cook during my college days so I wouldn’t starve. Strangely enough, though I’ve been interested in cooking and baking from a young age, I never learnt to cook. I’d like to think I have some teeny-weeny bit of natural ability hidden somewhere but right now, I just enjoy playing with my food, learning from others and being adventurous and creative .

#2. Why do you buy the size eggs that you buy?

Medium, it’s just the right size per serving as I usually pair eggs with other dishes.

#3. Do you have any cooking “rules”?

Minimize the oil (fat), sugar and salt. Try to keep things simple. Don’t waste food, get creative with leftovers and cooking disasters and try to turn them into something edible .

#4. Fresh corn. Yellow, white or bicolored?

Yellow.

Want to play Four Foods on Friday? Simple, go over to valmg’s blog at Fun, Crafts and Recipes and grab the details.