I am writing this for several reasons. There are only seven weeks remaining for 2014. Suddenly there exists a long list of to-do's with definite deadlines. I would have contributed some here which you may have overlooked. I typed more than a couple of pragmatic ones but have decided to backspace all of it. No one likes having their shortcomings pointed out. Instead, we could try looking at it constructively. I may be of help with some gifts ideas which you may consider for yourself or others, while secretly hoping that one of your resolutions for 2015 is to make more meals at home with your loved ones.

Over the years we have experienced living minimally, like out of four suitcases for too many months. However, regardless of where we were, we made efforts to control our diet with home-cooked meals. It was an uphill challenge because when you are new in town, you want to experience the taste of local flavors. Eating out is too often tempting or convenient. But the guilt of not knowing exactly what goes into our bodies kept us thinking about simple, balanced meals we can create in whichever tiny place we lived in. As long as the kitchen is adequately equipped. 

Which brings us to this question: what do we need to get the kitchen started? Assuming there is a stove already in-built, which basic items would one need in order to cook a proper meal, instead of microwaving leftover pizzas from the night before?

Some of my earliest encounters with biscotti were closely associated with work. The art of skiving, to be exact. It was not as blatant as leaving the office to hang out just about anywhere, anytime. My job at that time was to sell advertising space on the internet and, depending on the client's business, to push for an e-commerce store to be set up by the company I represented. 

The dotcom boom in Singapore at the start of a new century meant exploring new possibilities among small and medium enterprises for greater opportunities out there, despite not knowing much about the internet. It was my job to cold-call potential clients, get myself in their office to educate and close the deal. I use the word "educate" because most of my colleagues were hardcore salespeople. Hard-selling was their strategy, something I could not bring myself to embrace.

My sales director was a "cili padi" - a feisty, ambitious, aggressive leader with an insatiable appetite for sales revenue, attractively packaged in but five feet two inches. She was so sharp one had better not try to be funny, especially when one's sales figure had not been up to her expectations. Imagine your name on the whiteboard, with a daily, weekly, monthly and to-date (ie. since your very first day in the job) sales achieved. You'd also receive the printout every Monday morning at the sales team meeting. There were as many as forty salespeople, experienced and otherwise. Staff turnover was regular.

So what does that have to do with biscotti? 

That explains my absence in the past couple of months. 

But it was also because there was so much to share I couldn't decide where to start. I mean, JL and I made so many lists to prepare for our immigration paperwork, to offload quite a number of household appliances and furniture, to get to know New York better so we could zoom in to our preferred neighbourhood, to setup banking services there, to single out immediate essentials for the suitcases, near-immediate items for airfreight while leaving the rest for container sea shipment, all these to facilitate our move from 3,600 square feet of spaciousness to 1,200 square feet of Manhattan "massiveness". 

I don't trade shares. In fact I did very badly in Financial Mathematics back in uni when my classmates were already dabbling in the stock market, which was why they took up that module. That said, I think I have some very desirable qualities to be a good trader: intuition, discipline, patience, and decisiveness. 

Some of you would have seen photos of the cherry tree at JL's parents' house. When it is in full harvesting season, paying for cherries becomes a joke. I would anytime prefer pulling out a long chair under the tree and just keep popping those cherries like crazy. As if to satisfy a year's worth of craving. 

So the first time I came across a one-kilo tray of cherries going for RM 120, I had to ask the husband to witness the price-tag. And the first thing I will do when we go back to France again is to hug that tree in the garden. Yet at the same time, I think about cherry clafoutis constantly here in Kuala Lumpur. No amount of blueberry, mango or even pineapple clafoutis could sooth that yearning. 

I must be slightly over-enthusiastic to blog three times this week but since I'm waiting for a block of butter to soften, and that I've made something simple earlier on, why not? My schoolmates J and C came over for lunch today. Yes, schoolmates. But like what C had said, we were just schoolmates not so long ago. As the girls came from the office, they brought some savoury pastries - chicken and tuna puffs - shared over mushroom soup and lemon cake. 

When friends come over, I always worry about not having enough food. So for supplementaries - purely optional - I got some baguette slices lightly toasted to either go along with the soup, or for some tomatoes as topping. The Italians (and now nearly the rest of the world) call it bruschetta. 

Some days you just want to rebel against carbohydrates. After all, it's a never-ending unrequited love affair. Rice, pastas, potatoes - you love them but what do they do to you in return? What kind of love is that? 

Whenever I feel this way, I just run back to the open arms of proteins. You see, proteins give good love. They devote themselves fully to you, and shower you with little treats like crunch, fat, tenderness, not to mention the vitamins and nutrients to make you feel on top of the world. Most of all, they keep you lean.

So here's a 15-minute meal tribute to proteins. With all my love.

I was looking through some of the recent posts here when I realized the amounts of cream and cheese that must have gone through our bodies in the past few weeks. And these were just the ones consumed at home. How about the ones we have on our Friday dinner treats at the same old place!

Downward dogs or not, we ought to lighten up our meals. As in, no cream, no cheese, less oil, less fat.

I don't normally blog during the weekend but it is so hazy in Kuala Lumpur we are grounded. Self-imposed. Not that anyone is complaining since there are places worse than ours, and I feel sorry for the people who have to remain outdoors just to earn their keep. Like the drivers of trucks containing exhibition booth structures that wait all day at the holding area along Jalan Stonor - which is really a plot of open land that doubles as a carpark whenever possible - to enter the loading bay at the convention center. 

And I wonder if the family that sets up their weekday breakfast stall by the roadside near Exxon-Mobil building would be there tomorrow. Will they be wearing masks during those three hours or so? I really hope it would rain even for half an hour just so everyone could take a breather from this hazy atmosphere. 

One of our favourite pastimes is to (don't judge please!) go to Times bookstore at Pavilion or Bangsar Shopping Center, pick a few magazines or books, head to the in-house café, order coffee and spend an hour there reading. The café has seen a change of hands and it is now run by Espressolab. Don't ask us how they rate, though, because we always ask for two piccolos and a complimentary bottle of water. But based on those and their warm hospitality, an afternoon there can be very pleasant when it is quiet. And that we go there regularly says enough.

A recent weekday afternoon there, I sat through Leon Family & Friends cover to cover. It was tempting to bring the book home with me but I am already having a hard time keeping up with those on my shelves. The book is beautifully decorated with old photos, styled shots of appealing ideas for the home kitchen, and hand-drawn illustrations. Nearly every recipe from the eclectic collection has a story behind it. I also love that it is designed in a typically retro colour scheme. However, one needs to exercise restrain now and then so the book may have to wait.

This is one of our all-time favourites at home. If you haven't been cooking for a while, you may want to get yourself warmed up with this because it is a very forgiving dish. It cannot go wrong and easily feeds four starving adults as a single-dish meal. All you need is bow-tie pasta, a thick slice of ham, one or two zucchinis depending on the size, a small tub of cream and some mozzarella.

As with most of my French (home-)cooking repertoire, I learned it from JL's mother. The only difference is the choice of pasta. She uses mini ravioli stuffed with cheese that would be so cute for kids, but unfortunately, I have yet to see it here in Kuala Lumpur. Thus the next best thing: bow-tie pasta, or farfalle (butterflies in Italian) as it is also called.