Food!

So I was just lazing away online looking for some new delicious recipes to sink my teeth into and I came across this.

Looks amazing huh? This is pasta with creamy roasted pepper and basil sauce. All my favorite ingredients in one dish, heavenly! So here's the recipe (by One Lovely Life) if you want to try it out for yourself.

Ingredients:
3 red bell peppers
1/2 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
Olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
1/4c cream, or half-and-half
1/4c fresh basil, minced
1/2 lb. small pasta, such as rotini, fusilli, or gemelli
Fresh parmesan, to taste

Directions:
Cook pasta, according to package directions.

Meanwhile, on a gas burner or in the broiler (I used the broiler), roast peppers until they are charred well on the outside. Be sure to rotate peppers often, so that they blacken evenly. Remove peppers from burner or broiler and place in a paper or plastic bag to steam for about 10 minutes to loosen the skins.

Scrape off charred skin, remove stems, and scrape out seeds. Puree peppers in a blender or food processor until smooth, almost like a pesto.

In a medium saucepan, saute onion in a drizzle of olive oil until tender and translucent. Add garlic and cook 1-2 minutes longer. Stir in red pepper puree, cream, and basil until smooth. Taste and season with salt and pepper to taste.

Toss pasta with sauce and stir to coat. Top with parmesan to taste.

So let me know if you tried this and how it turned out!

PS: I just LOVE cooking and food so you'll find A LOT of these posts on here, =D

Take Off

So after some encouragement from a few friends of mine, I have finally decided to start this blog. I have always loved and enjoyed writing whether it be stories, reviews or some random thoughts here and there. You can say that's another reason why I started this blog. 

It has a been a while now since I have gotten in touch with my creative side. Too long. I haven't been able to set my mind into doing anything artistic whether it's writing, painting or drawing.  Maybe it's the fact that I simply don't have that much free time anymore or maybe I never really bothered doing anything. Planned projects started collecting dust on the shelves and I never even bothered dusting them a little bit. 

Life has been hectic this past year. 

I have been trying to juggle my university work, my social life and my hobbies but with no avail. Trying to keep them in harmony has proved to be a tedious task and one of the three has to always fall short. People who I used to talk to everyday, we barely exchange phone calls. Dates and deadlines I have set for myself seem like a distant past. Goals I wanted to accomplish now seem like a little child's imaginable fairy tale.

I keep questioning myself, is it me? Have I just lost the will to do what I once loved? Have I lost focus? It might be all these things. 

Things that once defined me are just not there anymore. Something just seems to be distracting me all the time but I fail to recognize what it is. 

It's painful when others have so many high expectations of you but somehow you're always just a little bit under that bar. You work hard but it never shows. My life has fallen into a mundane cycle that I'm not proud of. I feel like I haven't been utilizing my skills that they just seem to be falling though the cracks.

Nothing of great significance has taken place in my life recently except perhaps my engagement. Don't get me wrong, that event in itself has been one of the happiest and greatest in all my years but it's just that recently I feel like I have become a shadow of my former self. Time has never been more constrained. I still try to grab and experience opportunities whenever time allows me. I never find myself pondering about thoughts of purpose or what's my role in this life and all that. But sometimes I just miss the simpler times when I can call up a friend and just say, "Hey, I missed you. How about we go out for a cup of tea?" But alas, I'm not the only one that time has got detained. Whenever I finally get a breath of fresh air to do something new, no one else would be available.

I am a conversable person by nature but at times I feel like I'm turning more and more into a recluse, which is something that is far from my true nature. I love to be around others and talk about our interests, as trivial as they may be but life has gotten too serious and so we find ourselves striving for those trivial moments. Maybe I just need to re-connect with people again, and my creativity as well. This piece that I'm writing now may be the push that I yearned for all these months.