Project Eden - one year

It has been a year since the last post for Project Eden. Many things have happened in the one year. I will keep it short and leave you guys with all the exciting updates...

Throughout last year summer, the chili plants produced so many chilies that I could not finish by myself. It was like 4-5 ready-to-eat every day! I ended up giving the surplus to my colleagues. Words spread through the office, and I was known as "chili" man in the office.


Well, good thing never lasts. Remember the "growing" concern from the management? It seems that chili planting is not something that an IT guy should do in the office, and they claimed that the chili plants attracted some flies to the office vicinity. I did not spot any, but the management claimed they had. Probably the fly looks like this:


or this:


I guess it was latter that sealed the fate of the chili plants: Public urination does not exactly fit with the company's image :) and the plants had to go... It was heart wreaking moment, giving all my plants away to people as I did not have any place to keep them. Basically, 4-5 months of growing was down the drain.

Anyway, I managed to moved the remaining to my colleague's place. He has an abandoned green house in the backyard. It sounded ideal initially, but it was lack of sunlight that those plants need. Well, I guess it was better than leaving them in the trash.

Since then, the plants were not doing very good in the new environment. They were not bearing the same amount of fruits as before. When autumn came, all plants were almost dead. It worsen when we got one of the coldest winter in UK last year. These were the last crop of the chili in late summer:


At this point, you might think that I probably gave up on the chili growing idea. I would have if I was alone, but this time I have several "partners" in crime :) I guess I got them hooked with the chili that they could not live without it (the bad quality office canteen food might help the cause; chili just makes it better). This time, we come prepared... and the management will not know what is coming :)

Caffeine Curve

This picture pretty sums up what I feel about coffee every day :)



Nirwana is achieved after 6th cups of coffee :)

To eat or not to eat?

I am sure everyone of us has dropped food to the floor before. This workflow might able to help you to sort out the dilemma of eating it or not:

20 things worth knowing about beer

Stumbled upon this site and the author did a very good job to make beer so informative that I am compelled to share it with the rest of you guys. A sneaky peak of what you about to see:


The rest is over here: To the site

Bacon Pasta

Bacon is one of the favourite things I love to cook with. It just auto-magically makes anything taste good. Bacon sandwich, bacon salad, roast chicken with bacon, and the list goes on... Here is a simple dish that I like to cook if I am running short of time but still need a good tasty meal. All you need is lots of bacons (prefer smoked bacon), pasta, two cans of chopped tomatoes and few cloves of garlic.

First, heat up two pots. Fill one of them with salt water and let it to boil. Once the other pot is hot enough, dizzle a bit of olive oil and fry those bacons till they are slightly crispy:


Once the bacons are crispy, throw in some finely chopped garlics. Fry it for a while before you add in the chopped tomatoes. Let it simmers. By this time, the pot filled with salt water will be boiling. Add in the pasta:


Stir the pasta and sauce occasionally to prevent them from sticking to the pot. Once the pasta is about right, drain them and put them aside. The sauce should be thicken by then, if not, just wait another 5-10 mins. Season the sauce with salt and pepper when it is ready. Mix the pasta into the sauce and serve it grated parmesan and a bit of oregano:


If do it right, all the prep + cooking will take around 30-35mins. Probably 4-5 servings depending on the amount of pasta you put in.

Beer Can Chicken

Shawn and I have been talking about this idea for a while now (inspired by various posts on the internet at that time). We thought of giving it a try this summer. The principle is kind of easy, I think it is best to show it in the picture:


Yupe, there where the beer can goes :) and we made sure we used the best beer can we had - Carlsberg Export. If Carlsberg did a beer can chicken, it would be something like this. Oh ya, one more thing , you need to open the can, drink half of the can , and poke holes on the top half of the can. This could spell disaster in your oven if you used an unopen can.

We put some marination under the chicken skin. This way it will make the meat tastier. Once it is done, just pop it into the oven:


This is picture of me trying to justify why a beer can should be up the chicken's arse:


Here is the result:


I cannot remember much of the details of the chicken now. From what can recall, the chicken was beautifully roasted - every part of the skin was golden brown. The meat, hmm, did not taste like beer. It is definitely something I will be doing again for christmas, probably a beer keg turkey :)

What happen if you eat lot of wasabi peas in one go?

This pic tells it all:


Happy birthday, yeng yee... purposely keep this for your birthday >:)