Hello everybody. *taps into microphone*. I am back and I have an important announcement to make.

Chinese New Year is not Chinese New Year without pineapple pastries. Warning. Never attempt Chinese New Year without pineapple pastries. Never! Never ever!!

Otherwise be prepared to face your own gastronomic perils!

And become the laughing stock of the neighbourhood!

And get outcast by relatives!!

Your great grand-children might be black-listed from Havard!!!

Ok I’m a nutcase. What I’m not kidding about though, is how simple to make and delicious these little buggers are.

Ingredients (makes 46 tarts/balls)
220g unsalted butter, softened at room temperature
2 egg yolks
375g plain flour
2 tbsp corn flour
50g icing sugar
1/4 tsp salt
2 egg yolk for egg wash

About 530gm of cooked pineapple jam.
(either made from scratch or pre-made ones from the supermarket)
To make pineapple jam from scratch, peel and grate 2 ripe pineapples. Then squeeze gently to extract excess juice, but not till its as dry as the Sahara.
Add about 360gm of caster sugar and 5-6 cloves, and cook over low heat till sugar melts. The mixture should be wet and sticky, but with too much liquid. By then you should be exhausted. Put the jam in the fridge and make the tarts another day.

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There had been a slight hiccup with the website (and I have to blame it on D-man. Who else!) but Peonies is back and thank you for your patience. Especially those whom have been asking about the site and when the next update will be.

Watch this space! :)

And my personal favourite….

I’m not one of those people who boast about what their kids can do or what tricks their pets can perform. But I find this habit of hers quite puzzling.

Do dogs generally sleep on pillows? Or have I done such a good job in spoiling her rotten?

We went back to the old hometown last weekend. Every trip back has always been an exhilarating one and this one is no different. Catching up with my folks over overflowing tables of food, I noticed that while some things are not the same anymore, there are others that have thankfully remained the same.

My favourite aunty for instance, has despite her age continued to deliver her mind blowing array of gastronomic delights. Every dish is painstakingly handmade herself, with every gram of food passing the most stringent of inspections. If there is a Malaccan version of Nigella, it has got to be her. Only better.

My run down kampong is still as run down. We ate half of our dinner in the dark and without ventilation, because the electricity had tripped. The staff in the restaurant were totally deadpan about it as well. I can only guess that we were considered lucky because at least we had lights and fans during the first half of dinner. Things like that would have put me off before but as I look back, it’s all but part of the charm of village life. It’s these uncertainties that made us thankful for the times when we had running water and food on the table.

As I watched my cousins’ kids playing with their own cousins, it dawned upon me that not so long ago (or at least it seems), that was me and my cousins. Every chance to get together was one precious opportunity for frolicking in the outdoors, with no recollection of responsibilities nor restrictions. I remember that holiday when we “harvested” vegetables, “cooked” them in a makeshift hawker cart, and forcing the rest to “buy” our culinary breakthrough. Good thing I was not evil enough then to force them to eat it as well.

I might now. :)

Thankfully I did not poison them then. How else could I witness such cute things that they fathered.

My brother loves to hold kids hostage.

Speaking of kids, they love us.

See, what did I tell you about kids loving us…

Aunty’s organic garden. Yum!

Bad Pitt and his retro but trusty C70.

Badgelina spotted in the kampong.

Once upon a time, men keep dogs so the dogs can work for men. Men can sleep in peace knowing that their dogs will keep them safe.

Evidently not anymore. My soul feels disturbed and unbalanced as I see this whilst I drag my weary body to work this morning.

This week, something happened. Something important – one of our regular supermarket clients Mrs Bagel (who owns a bagel shop) was chatting with our supervisor. Her landlord is about to increase the rent for her bagel shop by $500 to $4,000. It turned out that the landlord in question is neither a high flying white collar executive nor a scion of a rich family. He is a middle aged guy selling granny clothes next door (well you know, old fashioned clothes that only grannies would dare wear out). Doesn’t this remind you of the fruits seller?

I bet many of you out there feel frustrated that you can’t do any “proper” investments because you do not have the luck to receive big money such as the 8-months bonus payout your cousin Linda gets, or the humongous commission your brother John, who is a top grossing insurance agent, earns. And you’re probably vexed that your savings ratio (say 10% on $2,000), comes up to only $200 every month and you’re thinking: what in the world can $200 do in terms of investment? If that’s really how you feel, chances are you just might have overlooked the power of small money.

In finance, you need to remember a very important concept – wealth takes time to grow. This concept forms one of the most basic fundamentals of successful financial planning. Over a period of 30 months or 2.5 years, your $200 a month would’ve turned into $6,000. If market risk type of investment appeals to you and you’ve taken advantage of the opportunity of low stock prices brought about by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and bought say, the shares of Olam International Ltd, which were trading at less than $1 a share at the peak of the crisis, you would have gotten 6 lots of shares (1 lot = 1,000 shares, for simplicity we’ve rounded up figures and assumed no brokerage charges). Olam shares are now at more than $2.50, which means that you have a gain of $9,000. Not bad for $200 a month eh?

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Your cup of tea if you’re a Denzel Washington or post-apocalyptic movie fan.

Was awe-quite-alot! These beautiful male ballerinas are so elegant I feel like a hippopotamus. The dance was so exhilating it must have been the best Dying Swan and Swanlake I’ve ever seen.
Who says ballet have to be serious?

Last weekend while chilling out at Blooie’s, the cool gang and I (not that I was anywhere near cool) were deep in our knees over a conversation about fit. The gist of the conversation was that it doesn’t matter which business school our friend chooses, it has to be the Right Fit for him.

Now that had been food for thought. What exactly constitutes the right fit. Is it the feel, the environment, the people, the time, or all of the above. As the Chinese believe, everything is about Tian Shi, Di Li, Ren He. Loosely translated as success will come in the exact moment in time, geography, and the harmonious energy of the people.

But what if you are torn between your own liking and feel of another? Like in the case of our friend and the choice of 2 schools he shortlisted, how do you choose? Is the right fit simply an intangible but pulling notion, or something more complicated like using decision making algorithms?

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