Mm.. kale chips!

Oh looky there, I showed up on the blog for the *gasp* second time this week! Honestly, its because I never write anymore and it seems like a good exercise to formulate thoughts better. I’d like to keep it up. I may have stopped because I was putting so much pressure to write decent posts, but you know what .. I’m going to throw that concept away. This is a personal blog and it can be free flowing if I choose to.

My frozen meals have been helpful so far! Easy peasy breakfast and dinners~ I’ll just have to sort out what I’d like to eat for work lunch and I’ll be covering all bases :)

Last night, I ended up preparing more dinners and finally tried making the much acclaimed kale chips. I keep seeing the recipe pop up in Pinterest whenever I search for ‘healthy snacks’. Oh boy, am I glad I made them.. they are so yummy and addictive. I’ve read about how kale is considered a ‘superfood’ and contains a high density of nutrients compared to most other foods. That sounds like a pretty good deal!

I ate them as a work snack today, and before I knew it I had eaten all of them. So I had the idea of making double of what I had yesterday. It already failed though, because I’ve already eaten half of my batch today .. *smiles nervously*. See what I mean!?

Anyways, here’s a recipe:

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Kale Chips

Ingredients

- Kale / Baby Kale

- Olive Oil

- Salt & Pepper

Equipment

- Oven

- Baking Tray

- Baking Paper

- Large Bowl

- Tablespoon

Method

1) Turn on the oven to 160 degrees Celcius.

2) Wash your kale, and dry it out as much as possible using paper towels or a salad spinner (otherwise your chips will end up soggy). The baby kale I bought were already prewashed, so I could use it right away. The full size kale will need to be destemmed and broken into bite size pieces.

3) Put your kale in a bowl and pour in 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil, depending on how much you have. I pretty much filled a large bowl and drizzled 2 tablespoons in. The next step is to use your hands to massage the oil into the leaves.

4) Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and loosely mix it with a spoon.

5) Prepare you baking tray with a sheet of baking paper, and lay out one layer of kale. This is important if you want to make sure your chips end up crispy.

6) Cook in the oven for approx. 8-10 minutes or until its crispy but not burnt. I used a chopstick to check if its crispy enough before I take it out.

7) Enjoy your chips now~ or store away in an airtight container for tomorrow :)

Warning: You might not be able to stop eating them once you start.

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I think its time for me to go and catch some Zzz’s.

Goodnight!

Tidying Up

Hello! It’s my rare post of the year, haha.

Winter is bit of a bummer, as I seem to always get sick! I worked at home for the majority of the week, and have gotten a little better. I’m just going to have to face the fact that I’m gonna be a bit sniffly for the rest of this season. I’ll continue to eat those vitamin c tablets, and buy mandarins. I do love myself a good sastuma mandarin. They’re so easy to peel without any unnecessary struggle. You can peel them all in one go!

I felt pretty productive this weekend. I tidied up, and got rid of two big bags of rubbish, and a big bag of clothes! It’s always tricky deciding what I should throw away .. but I remembered to keep the Konmari method in mind. Which items of clothing spark joy? Mind you, I’ve done this a couple of times .. and I couldn’t help but keep the ‘maybe’ pile (cos I’m such a closet hoarder! Pun not intended). It’s becoming smaller .. slowly but surely.

There was this episode of Aussie’s ‘The Living Room’ where Wengie was the featured guest. This was sooo refreshing compared to previous ‘hoarder' reality shows I have seen before. Usually, they show the hardout hoarders who keep years of literal trash lying around everywhere. But in this episode, it was so relatable to the everyday millenial hoarder. People who live a relatively normal life, but have a habit of buying things that can’t fit into a small apartment. It was quite informative actually. They had the guest take steps to minimise their belongings and teach them a few tips to organise their stuff bettter, and in a more presentable way.

Unfortunately, I can relate to it so much. I’m trying hard to cut down .. but I guess its tricky trying to fit a house worth of stuff into a small room. Especially when you have a few hobbies that need specific supplies. Yes, I have read Marie Kondo’s book, have listened to may podcasts about the subject but some part of me is afraid of doing the Konmari method for every category! It’s not only about the stuff .. its some psychological shit too. I’m gonna keep trying .. Maybe I just need a better storage system?

Also tried making some freezer meals. You have no idea how addictive it is looking through Pinterest for recipes! Nom noms … everything looks so delicious and I daydream about eating the meals, ohoho. Usually, the serving is quite large and it would probably feed a whole family rather as opposed to just one or two people. The idea behind freezer meals, is that you cook up a whole batch of meals on one day of the week/month and divide them into servings, chuck them in the freezer, and heat them up in the oven/microwave when you want to eat it. Easy peasy! This option is so attractive to me, because I often get frustrated about how much time it takes to cook meals after work when I’d want to just relax or focus on something else. Plus, it saves you a bit of money and forces you to think about healthy portions.

Oh, would you look at the time! I think I better go and rest~

Goodnight :)

JavaScript Fun + Gilmore Girls

My day was alright. I still can't believe its the end of the year again, and yes I think I do exclaim this same sentiment every December. Haha. TIME FLIES AND YOU GOTTA TAKE LIFE BY THE REIGNS.

Javascript 30

I made use of my Github account, and finally made myself a basic website template that I can use as a base for every project. Let me tell you. Wes Bos' new series Javascript 30 is amazing. He's an engaging speaker which makes it pretty fun learning code from him. I really wanna get better at JavaScript but I guess it was pretty boring reading about data types, arrays and objects over and over again in such a bland fashion. It's more enjoyable when there's a fun little project you get to build while learning. And then you end up picking up tidbits of knowledge along the way. Since you're engrossed in a project, you don't even realise that you're expanding what you know. That's the best way to learn IMO.

I've also been watching more series on Netflix since we now have unlimited internet! Am I ever grateful that it finally got upgraded!?

Gilmore Girls

I have FINALLY got into Gilmore Girls after some of my Glee friends kept bringing it up as some kinda cult series of the 90s. As a kid, I wouldn't have understood what was going on. They banter a lot, with several pop culture references in tow with almost every conversation they have (which I would not have gotten) and the focus of the series was a bit too mature and unrelatable to me at the time.

I am liking it a lot now though! It's very female focused. You would almost say its like the opposite of the Bechdel test. The Bechdel test indicates if there is an active presence of woman in a work of fiction. All it asks is "Are there at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man?". Well, they do talk a lot about everything! It would be very tiring to talk the way they do on the show in real life, that's for sure. How is one armed with a zillion comebacks every time? Or the perfect pop culture reference for every situation. Like damn, I wish I could roll words off the tongue like that haha.

A great companion while watching Gilmore Girls is the Gilmore Guys podcast. I've been listening to it while at work, but only if I've watched the episode in question!

Black Mirror

My boyfriend introduced me to this series called "Black Mirror". Sometimes, I'm not sure about his choices because we are generally into different genres unless its those mainstream top movies/series. So I skeptically watched an episode with him. It was really good! Yes yes, you were right.

Each episode is a different story, where the antagonist is technology. I've only watched three epsiodes so far but each of them was so jarring! I was on edge for most of the episode because the subject of technology is so personal, and to think that shitty things might happen if it goes a step too far is frightening as fuck! Almost too real.

The first episode was "Nosedive" with Bryce Dallas Howard as the main character "Lacie". It's a world where you can rate each other out of 5 every time you interact. And whatever rating you get affects you in life. This is so frightening because its a believable reality! Our social media platforms are becoming so prevalent, that what you show on your feeds could possibly dictate how people judge you as a person even though those two things can be totally removed from each other in reality. (ie. People usually post their highlights on social media and pretend their problems do not exist).

Lacie needs a rating of at least 4.5 to be able to afford renting her dream apartment. The thing is she's only 4.2 so she speaks with a consultant to get advice on how to increase her rating quickly. Long story short, it ends in turmoil. To keep a high rating, you would have to sort of live a lie. You'd have to keep living up to other people's expectations to maintain a good rating. And if you associate with people less than a certain rating, you could be ranked down too. This episode stressed me out so much, its insane. It just reminds me of society's inequalities based on your privileges. Something that is so scary especially with Trump being America's president-elect in reality. *shudder* (That is a whole other discussion) But powerful stories like these send a great message to the viewer and provoke discussion.

Plus, I am so OVER living up to other people's expectations. It's just never gonna work out. People are always gonna find something wrong with you, and those people probably aren't the ones you wanna hang out with anyways. I live in comfort knowing there are a select few who accept me while not having to change a thing. On the contrary, I do realise there are things you gotta do for survival but I don't think you have to lose yourself in the process of it all.

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Anyways, I better go to sleep because its getting late zzz. It's nice being able to articulate my thoughts into written form again.

If anyone is still here, thank you for reading! :)