An Unfortunate Loss of Words

Yesterday, for some strange but unsurprising reason, my not-so-new laptop died on me by refusing to boot windows. At first, we thought it could be the hard drive or maybe we had to reinstall Vista but as we entered the setup page, it became painfully clear that the froze within the setup page probably meant something more - the motherboard had failed.

My Acer Aspire was only 1 year 1 month old when it died - a month over the warranty. I don't really care much for it but I do care that my folder containing hundreds of food pictures are currently lying in the abyss with that piece of junk. Until I extract them out of my hard drive, I am going to be picture-less and sad. Of course, there will be new pictures of food but I had a few recipes worth of pictures in that folder. Without my pictures, my words are nothing but lost because when it comes to food, pictures do speak a thousand words.

Oh well.

I have bought a new laptop yesterday (yes, the same day I knew my old laptop was unsalvageable) to replace my dead laptop; a Compaq Presario A900.

It has the same screen size of 17inch as the old Acer, because I can no longer downgrade to anything less, but with 3Gig of RAM and 250Gig of diskspace. It also has an inbuilt camera and microphone that works like a charm in terms of clarity and quality. So much so that my parents were pleasantly surprised that they could see my pores. In anycase, this new acquisition is the apple of my eyes and has rekindled my awe for technology.

Please bear with me on the lack of posting. I have several setbacks lately including the death of my old computer, the imprisonment of my picture folder and the lack of time due to a new project that I have undertaken. I have not been able to cook as much as I wanted to, much less take pictures.

This will change soon, I promise.
But you know what? I made a delectable pound cake two days ago! The texture and flavor of the cake reminded me of the cakes my grandmother used to order for Chinese New Year back in Penang for her guests.

I followed the recipe from Joy of Baking: Pound Cake and you MUST try it! The secret to making it perfect is to really beat the butter until it become light and fluffy - weak arms need not fret because an electric beater is all you need. ;)

Don't worry, I will blog about it with pictures soon!