Mandy's attempts at cooking

Don Quijote Spanish Restaurant & Udders

2009-11-30T21:07:00.002+08:00

Lorong Kilat.. somewhere near our place which we never explored. Don Quijote Spanish Restaurant -- Our Nov FWA(Food & Wine Appreciation) Venue!

http://www.hungrygowhere.com/singapore/don_quijote_spanish_restaurant/

Spanish Food is not a common thing on my usual dining menu. Naturally, I was not sure what to expect and of course, what to order. Learnt a couple of new words though like tapas, Paella and sangrias.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tapas
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sangria
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paella

Sangria is like wine mixed with syrup and cut fruits! yumz yumz! Its sweet and fruity!! I am not a wine connoisseur like the rest of them so i knew since I love it.. those wine lovers will prob will not like it that much. hehe! I prefer Sangria to red wine anytime!

We ordered quite a few tapas dishes. They were pretty different but werent much to my liking.

I love it seafood dishes! Fresh and perfectly done. Seafood palleas had an abundance of prawns, clams and mussels. I totally adore the clams.. sweet, fat and juicy!

Bread with garlic butter while waiting. Love the garlic butter!

My yummy Sangria! We ordered the red. They also have white and sparkling white.

A few of the tapas we ordered:

Spanish sausage which some said taste like chinese sausage! :|

Egg wrapped salmon. Taste like egg wrapped salmon.. :P

White cabbage wrapped glutinous rice and bacon bits.

Scallop meat ball?

Omelette with potato. BLAND!!!

BIG FAT CLAMMIE with white wine garlic!! YUM YUM YUM!!

Seafood palleas! Check out the big prawns! and clams! The rice has been infused with the seafood flavours!

Scallop with bacon bits!! Its a different kind of scallop we usually have! Check out its pretty shell! Imagine this.. big fat succulent scallop oiled with a little bacon oil and topped with cripsy bacon bits.

Squid Ink pasta.. the pasta was too thin to my liking that it makes it more like a bee hoon dish. On the other hand, if it was less dry and with a thicker pasta, i will prob love it.

After dinner, we headed to the new famous ice cream joint around.. udders! I have only tried udders at home so far. Kindly packed by my sis in law! I love it's Hazel's nut! I hated its strawberry and green tea ice cream though! It was then that i learn that they serves ice cream in 3 grades. Classic, Premium and Connoisseur.
Hazel's Nut falls on the Connoisseur range wherelese green tea and strawberry under the classic. No wonder the great difference in standard!

The place was really packed that night. Our large group could not get a seat so we ate our ice cream jus outside the shop.

Lychee Martini and Tiramisu. Shared with one of my friend. Lychee Martini was not fantastic. Daily Scoop is better. Tiramisu? THe liquer is strong! Smooth but kinda bitter!

The one I shared with my husband. Yes. I am greedy! We had Mao Shan Wang and my all time favourite Hazel's nut. Mao Shan Wang was durian smelly! But tasted kinda like any other normal good quality durian ice cream. Hazel's nut was good as ever! like nutella in the form of ice cream! Rich, Smooth, Hazelnutty chocolatey!

Morton's Bar - The perfect burger!!

2009-11-24T22:32:00.002+08:00

For those that can afford to end work early should head down to Morton's Bar @ Mandarin Oriental for $10 martinis and free fillet mignion sandwiches! Its ultimate indulgence between 6-7pm (might start earlier)!

http://www.mortons.com/singapore/

For others like me, who cannot make it for such timings.. can only indulge at a price of $25 (from 8-11pm)! The morton's prime burger! $25 too pricey for a burger? Not for morton's burger it is not. With $25, you can a really thick and juicy beef patty which u can request for degree of doneness topped with your choice of cheese (blue, swiss, cheddar, and something else which i forgot) and mushrooms and bacon! Very generous toppings. The fries at the side is cripsy and tasty that you cant stop eating it! And if you are not a big eater like me, you can share it between 1-2 gal friends! I attemped to finsih the burger by myself one.. I felt really sick after that! Definitely not the way as it spoilt my lovely experience with the burger.

The first time I had this burger was with 2 of my gal friends...we shared the burger among the 3 of us and then ordered the "Jumbo Lump Crab, Spinach & Artichoke Dip
Served with Toasted French Bread Croutons".. its actually this baked crabmeat and dip which we will complement it with the bread croutons provided. Pretty creamy which makes us abit "sick" after a while. 2 items for 3 gals was jus nice. We were not in the mood for drinks so we had the mocktails (ard $10) which was yummy too.

My yummy mocktail!!

showing their food! Look how juicy and thick the beef patty is!!

After sinful and expensive meal.. i was craving for something sweet to end the night. Most of the places in our surrounding were closed... so we head down to the haagen daaz near our place for some ice cream..

It was a great night of food and catching up. Adore my greedy gal frns..

Hansang Korean restaurant @ Square 2

2009-11-24T21:23:00.002+08:00

Went to Hansang Korean restaurant to celebrate my sis' bdae back in August. My mum was in the mood for korean food so we decided to try out the korean restaurant which we always passed by at square 2.

humble starters.. din like the beans.

Korean pancake was never my thing.. so this one did nothing for me also. :)

Side dishes..

The brinjal side dish which everyone loved.. dun love brinjal.. so din try..

We ordered a few items for korean BBQ.

Fatty Pork Belly!

Mushrooms & Pork Belly!!

Love the fragrant the mushrooms gave!

Beef! (Cant rem what marinate)

Another Beef.. cant rem either

BBQ meat cant go wrong as long as the meat is fresh and the meat is well-marinated. However, its more of if the price is reasonable that makes the meal worth it. As mentioned before, buying good quality fresh meat and lightly marinate with pepper and salt over the pan makes a beautiful meal too~ A friend taught me that. Totally enjoyed the meal i had over her stove except the heat in her kitchen was unbearable!!

Korean kimchi hot pot!! Love this to bits!!! Wanted to try something like this ever since i read a gal's blog where she raved about the hotpot she has at "Your Woul"(haven got a chance to try). This hot pot (not sure if is similar) is yummy too!! Got ramen.. got rice cake.. kimchi.. toufu and hotdog!!! MMm!! Love the rice cake!

Ordered a saba fish rice set for my daddy who is not a fan of korean food. My mama loves the saba fish! Sweet meat!

Wat they love most was the sweet potato rice! Very fragrant! Soft and fluffy!!

Nothing like a cup of tea to wash down the oil..

The cake from choc-a-bloc which I got for my sister! Looks a bit smashed because of my daddy!

The cake was very moist but it din get my thumbs up. Somehow I still prefer awfully choc although it has disappointed me during the last few times.

Dim Sum @ Peach Blossom

2009-11-23T21:49:00.002+08:00

Another dim sum session. This time to Peach Blossom @ Thomson Plaza. One of my colleague mentioned this place to me for pretty good dim sum.

The place was super crowded when we arrived there at 12pm. Thank goodness I made reservations earlier.

The dim sums were pretty decent. Fresh ingredients. Price-wise normal for restaurents.

红油抄手 - one of my most faved food but not that good here. Think the best place to serve this is still crystal jade!!

carrot cake. soft..and relatively tasty. My favourite carrot cake is still from Ah Yat!

char siew rice roll. so-so. The texture of the rice roll is not smooth and soft enough.

the worst item of the day! fried wantan! yucks! tough and not tasty fillings.

What i love most was the char siew bao and the egg tart! Soft fluffy bao with moist char siew filling. Love the flakey frangrant crust of the egg tarts! The kids love the tarts. Little Tian ate like 4 himself! haha!

She loves the egg tart!

"I love my egg tart! No one takes it from me!"

The last item of the day!! Nai Huang Bao!! Like finally!! Super runny!! But.. abit too watery for my liking.

Still in search of the perfect nai huang bao.. Recommendations anyone?!

Hibiki @ Singapore Flyer

2009-11-23T20:36:00.002+08:00

Hungrygowhere has been my best friend these few days. It's the time of the year where there are birthdays and loads of gatherings to organise! Best opportunity to try out new places.

Came across a reasonably priced ala carte buffet with GREAT reviews from hungrygowhere. Got all excited and informed a group of my friends that we were be heading there to celebrate their bdae. To my disappointment, the hibiki at cuppage was under renovation! No wonder no1 answers my call when I called up to make reservations.. :(. Its other branch at Singapore Flyer had rather bad reviews but we stuck to it and decided to head to the one at singapore flyer.

SingaporeFlyer has mixed reviews:
http://www.hungrygowhere.com/singapore/hibiki_singapore_flyer/

Cuppage Terrace got good reviews:
http://www.hungrygowhere.com/singapore/hibiki_cuppage_terrace/

http://www.hibiki.com.sg/promo.html
This was the ala carte buffet that we tried out. Not much variety but if the food is really good, variety is not a big issue. Unfortunately, like the reviews, the food was generally disappointing, at least to me and my husband.

The buffet doesnt comes with drink. But you can order free flow of brown rice green tea at $5 per pax. Pricey!

The sashimi was generally fresh and thick slices. Nothing much to complain. I did enjoyed the raw ebi. So sweet!!

Prawn tempura.. one word.. BAD! It was not crispy..the prawns has no taste.

Teppanyaki beef. Tender beef fried with loads of garlic. Not bad.

Tempura mushroom. Din try. Believe it was quite decent.

The teppanyaki prawns was really good.

No complains of its teppanyaki items.

Din had this. Cant comment. :p

According to the reviews, the cuppage terrace branch is known for its great sumiyaki which i think is charcoal grilled stick items. I wonder what is the difference from the name of kushiyaki which is known as japanese satay. Anyway, to me.. they are known as 串烧. Being lovers of kushingin and kazu at cuppage plaza, the sumiyaki served here was a HUGE disaappointment for 2 of us. We tried Shin Kushiya once at vivo and did not love it that much as many pple do. After what we had here, i think what we had at shin kushiya was pretty good. Its branch at cuppage plaza could be much much better since it is highly raved in the reviews.

The meatballs was not well-received from the group.

Look how unevenly sized the asparagus are! Presentation fail!

half boiled egg in some cold sweet soup. interestingly it was pretty good.

sushis were decent. No complains either! :)

so were the temakis!

Agedashi tofu. Normal too. No complains either.

Pomelo Jelly! The only dessert! Pretty cheapsake! But i love it! Refreshing!

Edamame. Steamed instead of the usual cold one. :)

The birthday cake from swissbake! Chocolate Fudge! Pretty good!

Went to Fish Spa for the first time that night too! Buffet time for the fishes! Bet they had a better meal than me. :p

Peony Jade Dim Sum @ Keppel Club

2009-11-13T12:35:00.004+08:00

I have to say my experience at Peony Jade Dim Sum @ Keppel Club was less than satisfactory.

I chanced upon the place when I was googling for good "Nai Huang Bao". I had a strong craving for it back then. (Still have not satisfied my craving for that yet). The reviews I read for its dim sum were generally good and they seem to have some interesting new dim sum selection.

To my dismay, there was no "nai huang bao" that day. Cant rem much except I prob wun go back there again. :p.

Tau Huay Tarts, Tanjong Rhu Pau and the 3 Greedy Pigs!

2009-08-30T17:43:00.001+08:00

My husband, my sister and I are like partners in crimes for FOOD! We have been doing little sinful trips (within sg.. :P) these past 2 weeks. yikes!

It all started from my craving for Tanjong Rhu pau. My husband's brother-in-law bought it back one day and got me hooked to its mini cha siew pau. I was craving for it 1 day over at my parent's hse and mentioned it to my dad. My dad was so surprised that I forgot I used to eat it all the time when I was young. He said there are so many branches around these days. He say he will bring me to the original stall to buy it. So off we go, after church to the place near old aiport road.. forgot the exact name. Turns out! It doesnt open on sunday!! Dammit! Wat a disappointment! My husband then mentioned they have 1 at geylang.. we went to geylang and found it has moved!! arghz!! wat a day that was. Due to us having other plans after that, we forgo with our pau hunting.. this leaves behind a very unsatisfied me.

Then the next week, i started to have a new craving... my good old tau huay tart. We were all lazying at my parents hse on a saturday afternoon.. then I turned to my husband and begged him to bring me to selegie to buy me my fav tau huay tart!! He agreed. My sister tagged along and told me something about mixed tau huay tart her colleague buy for her. I insisted they only come plain.. she insisted otherwise. Turns out.. they really sell mixed flavours tau huay tarts! So I bought a box of original and a box of mixed tau huay tart. My sis on the other hand went selegie beancurd stall and bought tau huay drink, tau huay, you tiao and on my request the salty crystal bun. Mind you! We jus had lunch like an hour before we left hse. Oh my! sinful!!

Here are the mixed tarts I never knew existed! suaku me! haha! Auntie there said its very popular! I took 1 of the last 2 boxes.

However, I dun fancy the mixed flavour tarts that much. The combi is wierd I still love my plain original tarts!

And ydae! We finally got to buy our tanjong rhu pau. This time round, after my husband had his lunch, my sis and I bugged him to bring us go buy tanjong rhu pau! haha! the poor guy! This time I finally got my pau and ate it! We had to buy a couple more boxes as my relatives are coming to visit my dad who recently had a mini op. Anyway.. the pau is really expensive! 60 cents for 1 mini pau! oh my! 3 of us were cash-strapped (why they dun take nets or credit? keke) and pooled our cash together to buy 4 boxes (1box has 10 paus) of cha siew bao and 1 mixed dao sa and leng yong bao. haha! so kelian. We still had a few dollars left and went to kallang macs drive-through to treat ourselves with milk-shakes. ANother sinful saturday.. oh my!

The mini 60cents addictive cha siew pau!

3 mini paus! (leng youg pau and dao sa pao are 50 cents each)

I m missing it already~ it was finished.... (i only had 4!!!! so small!!)

I wonder wat sinful acts will 3 of us get into again next week... haiz.. FATTY ME!

Chicken Rice cum Traditional Steamboat @ Golden Mile Tower

2009-08-30T17:06:00.000+08:00

August's makan place was simple. Guess they are still nursing their pocket from their June's expensive meal. Perhaps its also showing signs that times are bad.

I nearly gave up joining the rest this time round as I finished work rather late. They were so nice to wait for me to start dinner. They must have been famished! (It was 8.45pm by the time I reached) Turns out there were 2 others later than me! But we started dinner without them as we were unsure of the time they will arrive.

When I arrived at Golden Mile Tower, I went straight to the basement level as I told it was at B1. I scanned around.. most of the shops are closed and the place seem dead. I thot I was at the wrong place. I turned into a corner to find it entirely different. There it was.. the restaurant... bursting with tables and tables of pple digging into chix rice and steamboat. I was welcomed with a strong fragrant smell of chicken rice as I went to look for my friends admist the crowded restaurant.

The moment I sat down.. food was served. Very prompt service! (think they waited very long to start serving our table.. :P) Chicken soup was poured into steamboat pot and the heat turned up.. 4 plates of veggies, 2 plates of raw mixed seafood, 1 plate of raw beef, 2 plates of chicken (1 and a half chix in all), 12 bowls of chix rice and 1 bowl of 3 raw eggs filled the table. The table was overfilled with food. Very good for hungry pple like us.

We also had 2 plates of hainanese pork chop which I loved!!! So crispy and tasty!! However, for the rest of the food, it wasnt that fantastic.. the rice smells good.. tastewise.. normal.. the same goes for the chicken. Steamboat? still ok.. simple.. cant go wrong.. food quite fresh. We quite love the beef which was very tasty and tender. Price wise, it was reasonable. Less than $20 per person, considering all the food that we had.

The concept is very similar to Yet Con at purvis street, a place I went with my gal friends a couple of years back. (see post here). I think chicken and chicken rice wise, I think Yet Con will be better. I cant wait to go back Yet Con to try again to compare. Trying hard to convince my husband now... or maybe I should get my friends to organise a date to go back there again!

The wantan mee .. worth waiting...

2009-08-22T09:13:00.003+08:00

My family (or rather my dad) has this thing for wantan mee or as he calls it "kolo mee". In fact, all his brothers and sisters and my granpa can eat it at least once every 2 weeks. There are 3 places of wantan mees stalls which the Tan Family are die-hard fans of(and we have our own names for them).. first is "Joo Chiat kolo mee" (known famously as fei fei wan tan mee), second "eng ko kolo mee" (named as such because the cook's name is Eng) and the last "Lor Mydin kolo mee" (its a wan tan mee stall along Lorong Mydin).

We used to patronise fei fei wan tan mee alot until after the old stall owner passed away then we frequent it slower and then hardly ever. Standard has dropped alot and it has become overly commercialised. I can still rem when I was a young gal.. where we had a long tables of 20 pple (family outing) waiting just for feifei wantan mee. We always had it with the rojak there. Nice!

Its only within these 2 years which I start to fall in love with eng ko wan tan mee. I dun rem eating it when I was young but I always hear my dad and uncle toking abt it. Apparently this wantan mee has killer chilli. So anyway, dad started tao-baoing it for me. U might think tao bao(packet) noodles will not be nice and be soggy. For his wan tan mee, u r wrong. The packed noodles of cos become "pong" (expanded) means i have a bigger pack to it. But the noodles is still al-dente and has soaked up all the flavours. ANd his chilli sauce! 1 teaspoon can kill! but yet, the excitement of the spiciness, i cant resist not to add it. Only thing.. his cha siews and wan tan are not much of a rave. Who cares? the noodles itself is making me crave for it again.

It was only until last month I managed to go down dunman food centre to eat it there. The place seems empty YET we had to waited for at least half hour. Waiting is no issue for my family when it comes to food we love. We used to wait for an hour for 85 ba chor mee.. and nearly every weekend an hour for simpang bedok ah lim mee pok! Even my husband (who comes from a family who hates waiting) also waits patiently with us for his meepok. keke! Greedy husband!

Ok back to noodles, the noodles came abit wet and messy. Guess good food matters over presentation for old stalls like his. It still taste good but i really prefer it packet. I thot I was being wierd until i brought my husband down to eat it himself and he agrees with me. So I should jus wait for dad to tao bao for me next time for i can minus the waiting time, get a "bigger packet" for the same price and taste nicer! MMmmm... sounds evil! keke!

The stall at dunman food centre.

Seletar Hill Restaurant

2009-08-02T19:28:00.001+08:00

Just as I thought I should eat something light and simple, my dear husband decided we should bring his mother out for something nice for Sunday lunch. We watched a TV variety show together that recommended this place. He promised his mother that he will bring her there. N he wanna fulfill that promise! Wat a filial son!

(For reviews and details: http://www.hungrygowhere.com/singapore/seletar_hill_restaurant/)

Tea smoked Duck.. crispy skin and tender meat.

Some brinjal thing. Everyone else say this is nicely done. I dun eat brinjal... cannot comment.. :p

Fried wan tan! Kinda like it.. it taste freshly made. Pity.. think the chef trying to creative and fill each one up generously with mayo. Not everyone welcomes the mayo.. i dun mind the mayo! So i end up eating most of it.

Garlic chicken. Dun taste very garlicky.. instead the sauce taste kinda tangy sweet. Meant to be an appetiser.. more like a main dish to me

Claypot toufu... normal.. normal...

Their famous Dong Po rou... very tender meat. But we cant help comparing it to our normal kong ba which we love although they are different. No wow factor to us.

The nice soft chinese bun for the dong po rou

My chinese sandwich... I still loves my mummy's Kong Ba Bao... I need my chilli!!! belachan!! cannot eat the chinese sandwich without the chilli!!!

The fried rice... fragrant and not oily.. and with crisy little ikan bilis added.

Chendol dessert.. $1.90 (some offer... eh.. Normal too)

Mango pudding.. pretty good for a $1.90 dessert..

Will I come back again? I doubt...no dishes that entice me to...

The Patissier.. Steamboat dinner

2009-08-02T17:31:00.000+08:00

It has been a long while since my friends and I had steamboat dinner. We decided to have it over at my parent's place (at the lift landing) like we used to. None of us have a place big and comfy place for a steamboat. Damnz! I need to have my own place soon!!!

The occasion? It's my friend's Sherrie's bdae! We bought a cake for her from The Patissier! Earl Grey Cheesecake.. chosen by the birthday girl! I got a shock when I collected the cake! So small! 40 bucks for a 500g cake. We reckoned cheesecake tends to be denser and heavier! The cake was rich and creamy with a tinge of earl grey taste. Yummy. The birthday gal loved it! Maybe I have not always been a cheesecake person.. dun fancy it that much.. but I am aiming one of its choc cakes! I wun mind a rich chocolate cake anyday!

The steamboat stock was cooked by my big chef husband this time round! He told me can use soyabean, pig bones and ikan bilis and boil for several hours can make a delicious steamboat broth. We also added some dried scallops as recommended by my mother. We simmer it for nearly 6 hours. Everyone loved the soup.. claims its yummy! haha.. we usually buy chicken stock and tom yum paste from the supermarket for our steamboat! O!

As usual.. our steamboat is always piling with food!

Think I need to go on extreme diet soon!

Seafood Kitchen @ Elias Mall

2009-08-02T16:44:00.000+08:00

For the month of July, we headed to somewhere cheaper for our end of the month gathering. The decision was to feast on crabs at some zi char place. BC recommended a place which my family often frequents for crab beehoon!

This zichar place used to be at the open-air coffeeshop located also at the mall. Due to some reasons, the zi char place was moved to the aircon coffee shop. We tried the new zi char that took over open-air coffeeshop. (apparently they had a couple of the old cooks). We also tried the original zi char at the new coffeeshop. Both zi chars has the same kind of famous dishes. The conclusion by our family is dishes wise (yam ring, veggie with beancurd skin and butter squid) the new zichar place is better.. but for crabs, stick to the original! :P! Our family loves the crab bee hoon!!

Ok! Enough of long story! Back to our july's feasting!

My clever husband ordered 12 crabs for just the 9 of us. He claims he can eat 6 crabs by himself (i reckon he was toking about smallie crabs!). Anyway, he wanted to book 10 large crabs! Luckily...the lady say there were no large crabs that day.. only have medium smaller crabs that day. My dear husband wanted to have increase to 15 crabs! Madness! The so-called medium smaller crabs aint small at all. Thank goodness we insisted to stick to 12 crabs.

The crabs are sold at $38 per kg. The 12 crabs are weighed 15.6kg in total! Means its less than $60 for each! Not cheap.. but at least not extravagant! 6 female crabs and 6 male crabs: 4 crabs - crab beehoon, 3 crabs - salted egg (highly recommended by the waitress) and the last 5 crabs - black pepper!

The waitress and cooks knew how to serve the food in right order; first crab beehoon, then salted egg and then black pepper. This allows us to savour the flavour of the crabs properly. The waitress were also prompt with their service.. keep changing our plates as we pile it up with crab shells. Pity.. they served the black pepper crabs so fast.. by the time we tried to finish the rest of the crabs and came to them, it got a bit cold.

The crab beehoon! The best part of the dish? The bee hoon of cos! Absorbing all the sweetness of the crab! Crab was fresh and sweet too!

Enjoying my bowl of bee hoon with the roe I "kop" while scooping the gravy! keke!

This was an excellent recommendation! This was my first time trying it. No strong distinct salted egg yolk taste. Instead a sweet creamy taste feels my mouth!

I think the crab are deep fried in batter first before frying in with the salted egg sauce. There's curry leaves too! Fragrant!

The black pepper dish! Our final round! It was rather cold and I was very full by the time I came to this dish. Was not very enthu towards it but I had this before and thot it was pretty good. The black pepper was not very whelming or over spicy.

My husband deshelling his black pepper crab!

Crab roe overloaded!!

After spending so much, they gave us a complimentary dessert. Longan Sea coconut.. refreshing! Nice way to end the dinner!

Orient Succee Coffee House
Seafood Kitchen Pte Ltd
Blk 623 Elias Road, Elias Mall
#01-01
S 510623

Raw Kitchen Bar @ Bukit Timah Fire Station

2009-07-12T18:25:00.002+08:00

The old Bukit Timah Fire station has been revamped. It has bars and schools. It's a nice quiet place for a restaurant.. away from the traffic jam and the crowd.

Around 2 months back, we tried out the raw kitchen bar. The drawback was that it was non-aircon and mosquitoes. Not good for those pampered patrons. But yet it gives a nice warmth feeling of like we are dining at our friend's house or courtyard.

The service was kinda slow but the people were quite friendly. Our friends were quite disappointed with the limited wine list and also, most of the wine on the menu were out of stock. We were having a fun/wierd time figuring the menu. It was right aligned. We always have to turn it up and down around twice before we get it the right side up. Quite comical

We ordered nearly everything on the list and shared among like around 10 of us. It was like a food tasting session. The food was generally good but I cant remember which are must tries. You can get the reviews from hungrygowhere (http://www.hungrygowhere.com/singapore/raw_kitchen_bar/). I can only rem vividly the fried cheese cake! Similar to fried ice cream. The fried cheese cake has the ultimate Ooze factor!

No harm giving the place a try.

The courtyard decorated with lanterns.

We ordered some appetisers while waiting for the rest to come.

Fried calamari..

Raw salad. Sashimi salad. I kinda like this

Fried wanton skin and some mango thing. Nt bad.

Did not take the main dishes as the lighting was kinda bad. No pt taking blurry pics. Tats why I cant rem wat I ate. :p!

Ala carte buffet @ Peony Jade

2009-07-12T14:13:00.002+08:00

Went to peony jade for the first time last month! Heard raves of its food and that its quite popular for wedding. Went there with my colleagues for ala-carte dinner buffet to celebrate a colleague's birthday. They were having some promotion that month where for every 10 persons, 2 dines for free! We only managed 9! Wat a waste! But we still went ahead.

It's similar to the buffet offered by tung luk restuarant at hotel Paramount except there's no salmon sashimi. There are a few signature dishes that you can only order once. Usually its the more exp and popular dishes such as shark's fins, prawns and chilli crab.

We were at the peony jade @ clark quay (http://www.quaysidedining.com/pj/promotions.html). The restaurant has a very quiet and classy ambience. Some of us felt that we were kinda spoiling the ambience of the place because we wearing jeans and being rowdy. Hehe! It's rather small but it looks perfect as a small wedding event venue! One colleague who attended a wedding there before mentioned the food during the wedding banquet was great! So pple getting married can consider here.. on budget yet love great food..this place can be just as classy as hotel. Hoho!

There were hits and misses for the buffet.

love the way they used the pebble as chopstick holder.I had a small pebble! Their appetiser was this candied walnut thing. Quite interesting.

Shark's fin! I got a big piece of fin!

Drunken prawns! Generally fresh! except 1 or 2 not so good prawns.

Fried scallops. Intesting but not THAt special

Prawn and fruit salad! like normal cold dish. not bad!

The chilli crab... was quite fail...BUT...

Yummy mantous! haha!

This dish was the main highlight of that night! Smoked duck! My first time trying! My gawd! Taste like ham! I love it! Cannot forget the taste! And i only had 2 piece. It was under the 1-time order list!! Boo Hoo!

salt and pepper silver fish. we were like mainly eating batter

mini abalone.. so cute! 1 spoon can hold like 10 of them!

kurobuta (Black Pig!) ribs in sweet and sour sauce! Awesome but can only order once too! boo hoo!

jelly fish and top shell! shredded jackfruit gives it a refreshing twist.

fried vietnamese spring rolls

Soon Hock!

crab claw.. nothing special..

Pork Belly with Garlic! How can anyone go wrong with this combination? Yumz!

this dish which i was so looking forward fail badly!!! The prawns were not crisy and the sauce was not there! The roe does not seem to go well.

Black pepper beef!

interesting sourish steamfish but can be kinda spicy. must be chilli padi!

3 cups chicken! Pretty good but abit too salty!

Coffee ribs.. I felt the coffee taste too strong.

Kung Pao Ostrich. Dun feel kung pao to me.

Claypot toufu.

simple veggie to balance the endless meaty dishes

Roast duck. Good! Cripsy skin. juicy meat. abit fatty. hehe!

sugarcane chicken. Bleahz!

Fried noodles. Some found it oily. Some found it tasty. I dun rem.

Phew! Finally done! I think we almst ordered all the dishes on the list manz! haha!

Dessert time...

sea coconut..

Vanilla ice cream..

fresh cut fruits..

An expensive dinner it was...*heartache* I think if have a chance, should go for its buffet lunch then it will be worth it. Same menu but at a much cheaper price!

Crystal Jade's Steamboat buffet!

2009-07-12T12:38:00.003+08:00

Crystal Jade has buffet? Crystal Jade has steamboat? Crystal Jade has steamboat buffet? Haha! Did you have the same thoughts as me? These were the questions in my mind when my husband told me he was going for a steamboat buffet at crystal Jade! I am sort of a fan of crystal Jade! I love their porridge.. I love their xiao long baos! It is 1 of those places that when I have craving..I can go there and have a meal by myself! (sounds abit sad right? but hard not to satisfy craving AND hard to make pple go sin with me jus because I have craving)

Anyway, this steamboat buffet thing is like kind of special. It only starts at 8.30pm and last until 1am. Wat special timing! Late dinner. And so far, I only know it is available at Holland V's La Mian Xiao Long Bao Outlet. It cost 19.80++ for weekdays.. for weekends, add an extra $2. And wats the best thing of its steamboat buffet? Free flow of xiao long baos!!!! Haha! Yum Yum! They also have free flow of drinks such as tea and barley inclusive in the buffet. Sounds like a good deal to me!

So I decided it was a perfect pigout place to meetup with my steamboat loving friends! These gals love going for mala hot pot! We haven go out for ages! Bugis was the usual place to go to satisfy mala hot pot cravings,

Ticking orders.

Our soup base.

The drawbacks to the crystal jade's steamboat is the lack of variety.. it does not have the usuals i love when I go for steamboat. Those that were lacking were fish glue, cockles, meatballs and quail eggs. And for prawns lovers, they will be sad to know that each person is only entitled to 100g of prawns. But I must say, their prawns are extremely fresh! sort of makes up for the lack of prawns! Quanlity vs quality!

Our complain that night was the power for the electric stove kept tripping.. ard 3-4 times. Not good for hungry pple waiting for food to be cooked. :p!

Crazily stuffing our pot with food once power is back!

The sliced beef was pretty good and fatty.. but it came so hard frozen! sad! Their la mian was good but made us full pretty fast! The xiao long bao's standard was maintained even if there were huge orders for them! They also have those sauce corner where u can make yr own sauce like those steamboat joint. I love the sauce i made! I majorly pour/threw everything that was there. Ha! Turns out great!

Overall, I feel its still worth to go there, esp if you are a huge crystal's jade xiao long bao fan!

Xiao Long Baos! We had 5 'Long's of this!!!!!

Me happy with xiao long bao!

Purple Onde Onde!!

2009-07-12T10:13:00.005+08:00

It has been ages since I blogged! It has been even longer since I made anything with my own hands! I will like to treat it as I have been really tied up with things than say that I am actually really lazy!!

There are several posts to be updated but I am more excited to update about my onde onde! Mainly because its purplely pretty! and it is the first time that I attempted nyonya kueh! Woo Hoo!

Had a strong desire to make onde onde ever since I came back from Malacca last week! We went to this house/shop call Baba Charlie that is popular for their nyonya kuehs and onde onde was one of their specialities. Apparently it is a must-go for singapore tourists! We saw like 3 big buses of tourists outside the super ulu house/shop. Anyway, they were making onde onde on the spot. They were boiling the onde onde like "tang yuan" and when it floats, jus toss it to the plate of shredded coconut and its ready! Seems so easy! I started searching recipe onlines and found this (http://thebakerwhocooks.blogspot.com/2007/05/purple-onde-onde.html)! Purple onde onde made from japanese sweet potato! O so pretty! Made me more detemined to get them!

kuehs kuehs @ Baba Charlie! Look at all the colours and variety!

Baba Charlie's famous onde onde.. notice they put white sesame seed?

Mama helped me buy the ingredients from the market. I used the recipe from thebakerwhocooks. I kinda modify the recipe abit. She did not mentioned that the shredded coconut needs steaming but I went ahead to steam it. Steaming the shredded coconut makes it last long and IMO, make it taste better, of cos cannot forget to mix some salt in it! (Been watching too much nyonya cooking programmes) My mum and I also decided to steam everything that needs steaming together the with pandan leaves to get the nice aroma. So we steam our sweet potato with pandan leaves, steam our shredded coconut with pandan leaves and boiled the onde onde in a pot of water with pandan leaves too! haha!

Japanese sweet potato!

Glutinous rice flour!

Preparing the sweet potato to be steamed!

The gula melaka I bought from Malacca for my mama! And I used it.. :P!

Steaming the potatos seems to bring out the colour even more!

O so pretty!

Kneading the dough was the hardest part! Dunno why I always have to use alot more water than the stated amount in the recipe! But the sweet potato was really dry and plus the flour.. 2 Tbsp of water isnt enough. After getting the dough, my husband feels i did not knead evenly enuff and helped to knead further..

Soon, it was like a factory line production in my mother's kitchen. My husband and I was making the onde onde balls (Stuff the gula melaka inside the dough and roll them into balls) and throwing them in the pot of boiling water. My mother was responsible of scooping up the cooked onde onde (the glutinous rice balls will float to the surface) and then throw them in the plate of shredded coconut. With the help of my 2 kitchen helpers (hehe!), we did everything pretty fast!

Looks good enough to sell! 3 for $2?

But how did our end product turn out to be? The skin was chewy BUT.. too thick. It also has no ooze factor! But the taste is good! So the recipe is perfect! but we need to build up on our ball rolling skill! Thinner skin! and more gula melaka! But it was overall a good effort!! Tiring Fun! But a nice way of bonding! :p!

Tin Hill Bistro Winebar @ Bukit Timah

2009-04-26T21:33:00.002+08:00

Tin Hill was our place for April. Was supposed to go Valentino's but..it was fully booked. Apparently 1 week in advance is not enough.

Tin Hill is a pretty shophouse located near 6th Avenue. Very catchy to the eye everytime we drive pass it. From reading the intro on the menu, Tin Hill is the literal translation of 'Bukit Timah'. Interesting. Never knew. Ha!

Erm... whoever's car is that I apologise.

Took me 5 secs to realise how to view the menu. Haha!

We order some small side dishes while waiting for the group to arrive. Some fried fish snacks, fried portobello mushrooms and potato wedges. The size of the sides is really small and we finished it pretty. Love the wedges. Fried Fish was ok. But the crust of the fried portobellow mushroom was too thick. We din quite like it.

For the mains, as it was our first time there, we pretty much ordered everything on the menu, except fish and chips and Wagyu burger to share among us.
You can check out the menu here (http://www.tinhill.com.sg/dining.htm)
While waiting, we were served pork belly in white chocolate, complimentary of the chef. Wat can i say? The roasted pork belly itself was ok on its own, so is the white chocolate sauce on its own. But the combination... too wierd for me! bleahz...

was getting abit disappointed. However, the service there was really endearing. They confirmed with us if we were sharing and then naturally aligned the dishes in the middle and gave a empty plate for each of us. As the place was really dark and the table was really long, I did not take a pic of all the food but I can still rem most of the item really well.

Prawn Tagliatelle tomato, chili, lemongrass
I thot this pasta was very normal. Nothing fantastic.

Miso Cod Aglio Olio pesto, shimieji mushroom
This pasta was absolutely yummy. Pity I only managed a small bite. The fish was nicely pan-fried. Yumz.. and I dun even like cod fish. I will order the next time if i come back again! haha!

Roast Chicken with mushroom & smoked chicken pithiver, beurre blanc
The skin was nice and crispy and the meat was juicy and tender. Tats about it.

Fish Pie smoked cod, prawns, leeks, parsley
Woo! Love this! Crispy crust and yummy tomato based fillings!

Ocean Trout corn, herbs, seaweed
Hmm... din leave an impression on me! haha

Grilled Pork Chop bacon, fennel, apple
err.. yumz? haha

Braised Lambshank ragu, mash
Absolutely tender and nicely done. No "lamb smell"

Bistro Steak Frite hand cut chips, béarnaise sauce
This was the best dish! Very tender and not over done.

We had an additional pizza cause the mains din seem to fill us up. But the pizza end up to be too little for the 8 of us! The toppings were heavenly, generous with the cheese and mushrooms. Pity, we found the crust abit too soggy.

For desserts.. it was kinda scary. Not sure wat to order. So the waitress recommend told us she will bring us one of each like the mains. Regrets.. it was too much!!!

My Fav! The Crumble of the Day was apple and pear! The apple and pear was nicely done and not overly sweet. And the crispy crumble top and the combination with the ice cream on top! Heaven!

Such a clear pic. But we did not exactly fancy the cupcake. normal.

Pavlova strawberries, passion fruit, mascarpone
As good as it looks! love the blueberry floss.

Cheese cake was nice and creamy.

Sticky Date Pudding vanilla ice cream, butterscotch sauce

Brownie
no "wow" factor.

The set dinner seem really worth it at 38++ since the mains are cost nearly to 30. Nice ambience and great service. Some really good items which I dun mind going back for.

Prego @ Fairmont Singapore

2009-04-26T21:01:00.002+08:00

Tried out Prego at Fairmont on my Hen's night (http://www.fairmont.com/singapore/GuestServices/Restaurants/Prego.htm). I cant remember the exact things we had as it has been more than 2 months ago. I can vaguely recall we were stuffing ourselves with the free bread with olive oil and basimic vinegar as we were really hungry.

We shared 2 pizzas, 1 risotto and 2 pasta items among the 7 of us!

I remembered we really loved 1 of the pizza. Cant rem which!

O! I remembered loving this pasta the most! cause my puke (due to after dinner events.. :p) smelt alot like it . Never eat pasta before drinking.. cause the puke stinks like hell!

Eh.. cant rem much!

And we ended the dinner with absolutely yummy creamy tiramisu!!!

My beautiful and wonderful friends who contributed to the FUN and FUND of my hen's night! And to my lovely bridesmaid, thank you for all the planning!

Buffets to try...

2009-04-23T22:23:00.002+08:00

Saw some buffets less than $30 from food and travel magazine which i love to try....

Jade (Fullerton Hotel)
Things to expect: xiao long baos, crystal crab meat dumplings, abalone siew mais, steamed sharks fin dumplings and scaalop dumpling!
Weekend Dim Sum buffet: S$28++ per person. 11.30am to 2.30pm
Link: http://www.fullertonhotel.com/main.html#/dining/jade/
Me: the food list sounds damn exciting right! The dim sum looks so intricate and beautiful in the magazine!! Hope it tastes as good as it looks!

Parkway Thai (Centrepoint)
Things to expect: tom yum soup, mango salad, satay, chilli and black pepper crab, claypot crab with tang hoon!
Buffet Lunch: S21.90 nett from 11.30-3.oopm on weekdays and s$23.90 nett on weekends and PH.
Me: I remember how much my friends and I love the parkway thai tomyum soup during our sec sch days. Only my indo frn rich enough to frequent there often.
Link: http://www.parkwayrestaurants.com/Parkway%20Thai%20Website/CompanyProfile.html

Pete's Place (Grand Hyatt)
Things to expect: Wood-fried oven pizzas to fresh pastas, piping hot soups, salad bar, bread counter.
Italian Buffet lunch: S$28++ (adult) from Monday to Saturday, 12pm -2.30pm (inclusive of coffee and tea)
Soup, Salad, Dessert Buffet Lunch: S$21++, from Monday to Saturday, 12pm -2.30pm
Link:http://www.restaurants.singapore.hyatt.com/petes/petes_intro.html
Me: My frn used to mention about this place for relative quite yummy food. But it was many years ago and till now, I have not visited it. Price seems reasonable for me to try it anytime.

This will be a good reference for me in future when i run out of ideas!

Picnic @ Marina Barrage!

2009-04-13T17:38:00.002+08:00

In times of recession, we decided that birthday celebrations this year shall be simple. Mine was a potluck at Mel's place. And now, for Mel's celebration, she suggested having a picnic at Marina Barrage. Good idea as some of us, including me, have never been there before. We did a similar picnic for her at Bontanical Gardens last year.

Unfortunately for us, we were greeted with heavy rain at around 3plus 4. Our picnic was suppose to start at 4pm. We postponed it to 5. The weather was still gloomy when we arrived at the barrage. The sky was sort of clearing up but the guard there did not allow us anyone to go out in the open. Think he was afraid that we get struck by lightning. Anyway, we got tired from waiting and decided to have our picnic on the concrete ground where we were standing.

The gloomy skies that greeted us when we arrived.

Happy in our little corner

Our spread:
- Crabmeat & Prawn Roe, Tuna & Egg Mayo with baguette
- Sidedishes from Astons: Potato Salad, Coleslaw, Pasta salad
- Luncheon Meat Sandwiches
- Big Ben's Pies
- Sausages! All kinds!
- Homemade Healthy Chicken Patties

Tiramisu lovingly made by Sherrie!

Happy Birthday Mel!

Digging in to our alcohol soaked tiramisu!

Kit Kat Dark Chocolate!

2009-03-31T23:49:00.002+08:00

Mummy bought a box of these for me from London. Recently I saw it being sold in supermarkets! damnz! I wonder where are they made from though.

Anyway, bugged mum to buy kitkats for me cause kitkats made in europe definitely tastes better than those sold here in Singapore. Except if u buy them from cocoa tree or candy empire where they cost so much more (unless they are about to expire).

Dark Chocolate Kit Kat is really yummy! Should try if u enjoy dark chocolate and loves kitkat!

Shinobu, Smoochies & Aburiya

2009-03-29T20:17:00.004+08:00

Had several mini birthday celebrations this year.

First was at Melissa's place where we had our usual pig out session. Sherrie was the dearest who baked me a super rich chocolate cake with chocolate honey icing. Yummy! This poor girl tried the recipe 7 times just to get it right for me! Some Nigella's recipe. Ha! Maybe I should try it one day! Love the icing!

Unflattering pic taken by hubz

Second was at Shinobu (http://www.singaporemirror.com.sg/co_shinobu.htm), a japanese restaurent at PSA building which my colleagues and I occasionally goes to. We love the kani toufu there! Its toufu with crabstick meat filling, poured over with century egg yolk sauce and topped with chopped up century egg white. They have reasonably good set lunches from $16 above. My lovely colleagues gave me and another march baby colleague a treat. Free meal! Wee!

Next was at Smoochies (http://www.smoochiesbistro.com/), a good friend cum colleague, Wendy, gave me a treat there! ANother free meal! They have lunch set meals at $9.99, which comes with a soup and a main. But there are no choices for the soup and main. Fixed.

Wendy told me the pumkin soup was heavenly. Unfortunately, they only had tomato soup that day. The tomato soup was sheer awful! It basically tasted like diluted tomato ketchup. Very sweet and makes our throat feel uneasy. We only took a few spoons and rejected it. The kind waitress told us they will get the cook to recook the soup but..there was no difference from the soup. We told the lady it was fine. Perhaps both of us are just not used to the taste.

The main on the other hand was pretty good. Fish cutlet and spagetti. Small as it looks, it was really filling! I love the breaded crust of the fish cutlet! Crispy and fragrant! The fish meat was nice and moist too!

We order a lava cake to share as dessert! Such a pretty presentation! Love the warm chocolate oozing out of the cake. Only complain.. the cake taste kinda airy to me. Hard to explain the texture but i prefer something more moist.

The ambience of the place was quiet and cosy. The service is good. I dun mind going back there again.. provided they are not serving me that tomato soup anymore.

On the actual day of my birthday, I requested to dine at Aburiya. It is a place I always wanted to go back to after I first tried it. I remembered the "xinfu" feeling I had and wanted to relive that moment! I think it was somewhere in 2005. How time flies. Anyway, the branch in holland V died so we went to the one at robertson quay.

I already knew which set I wanted to order. Was already browsing the website way before my birthday. But we saw a new set there which was the waygu beef set, 10 bucks more than the beef set we wanted to order. Greedy us naturally ended up with the wagyu beef set. O! and a plate of pork belly.

The food was pretty good but sad to say.. I could not get back that xinfu feeling anymore. No more "Wow" factor left. I guess its because we have pampered our taste buds too much recently. The pork belly is normal. BC can season pork belly and bbq them crispy and heavenly easily. Beef wise, recently, we discovered that The Butchery sells Angus and Wagyu beef at such resonable price. For around 80-90 bucks, we can get 5 steaks of Angus and 3 steaks of wagyu (around 100g per steak). Season with a pepper and salt, and bbq with really good fire and you have such heavenly tasting tender beef!

Well.. at least I satisfied my craving for Aburiya and the craving will probably stop here. I am not saying they are not good. They are still good. But if I ever have craving for japanese BBQ again, I guess it will be more affordable and reasonable to bbq them myself. We can then spend our marnee on yakitori joints instead! which both of us EXTREMELY enjoys!

Bloglinks and updates!

2009-03-28T23:15:00.004+08:00

Mandy is now a MRS!
That's why my blog was dead for a few months. Hees! Work has been crazed.

Revamped the blog layout. Simpler and Cleaner look!

I have a wedding blog but it is still being updated. Too busy. Have to backdate quite a few things. Will try to complete everything and wrap it up soon.
http://mandybcgwee.wordpress.com/

And I have recently taken up a new hobby! Photography! and yes! I created a blog for it too. Sheer madness!
http://mandytakesashot.wordpress.com/

Happy reading my friends.

Prawning at East Coast park

2009-03-23T19:45:00.002+08:00

There's a new prawning place at East Coast Park. Behind the tennis court. Near the Burger King area.

Prawning cost $15 per hour and $10 more for subsequent hours. Uncles there seem friendly.
The place was comfortable and orderly.

Our catch. Prawns are quite big. But not tasty. Bought it home to cook cause heavy rain. Maybe should bbq instead. They had a heated pit there for pple to bbq their catch. Saw a guy caught fish. Another caught crab.

We caught a mummy. Look at the huge amt of roes!! but not yummy leh!

will be back soon to update more

Happy 'Niu' Year!

2009-01-27T22:45:00.003+08:00

I got to spend new year's with my family this year! I love new year at home! Went for trips during the CNY period for the past 2 years. Having trip is fun but nothing beats spending new year's with yr family and relatives. The fun, laughter and food!

I must be growing old for I am starting to appreciate the traditions that we have. Traditions give us something to look back to, something we will always remember.

Reunion dinner is something I always look forward to during Chinese New Year. I love the food! It used to be a rowdy and big event before granpa passed away. I always remember going to granpa's place after sch (haf day sch) for lunch. There will always be the usual yellow noodles which goes so well with curry. Then i will go back home for a lazy afternoon nap then head back to granpa's place again to join the rest of my cousins and uncles/aunties for dinner.
I can rem the dishes.
There was always :
- chicken abalone soup
- Itek Tim (Salted Veg duck soup) --- MY FAV!!!!!
- Curry Chicken
- Chap Chye
- Roast pork/ Duck
- Kong Ba (Soya Sauce Pork)
Most of these food can be kept for days and moreover, taste even nicer after kept for a day or 2!

And we always end the night with canned fruits for dessert!! haha!

Then the next day, my Da gugu will come with another fav soup of mine, Bakwan Kepiting (Crab, meatball, bamboo shoot clear soup) that she has cooked for her inlaws to previous day. My cousin will then help themselves to the duck soup. Its like a soup exchange! keke!

Pity.. part of the tradition has been lost along the way since.

This is what my mum cooked for us this year! My amazing mama! Jus for her greedy daughters and husband.

She cooked the yellow mee for lunch for us like before. Too bad she din have belachan!

Salted veg duck soup ... perfect when added with some brandy.. MMmm!

Curry CHicken.. :)

Cantonese Chap Chye -- this one is given by my ah yee. Hokkein or Cantonese.. i dun take chap chye! haha!

Pork Buah Keluak! MUm's first try! Delicious! As yummy as Ayam Buah Keluak!

ANd kong ba... which i forgot to take again! keke!

After reunion dinner, I will always catch the new year's countdown and wrap angbaos for my mother.

On the first, we will go church and have long hours of visiting to my dad's uncles and aunties with all my cousins. Nowadays, its much simpler.. jus gathering among the cousins.

On the second day, we will never fail to go to the columbarium to wish our grandparents Happy New Year and then its visiting with my mother's side.

My dad went crazy with new year decoration again this year...

Overview...

Close up 1...

This branch my dad picked up from downstairs. The flowers, buds, ribbons, decors... all done by him. I think chinatown should hire him next year! haha!

He made the lights red that I thot it made the whole place looks like a brothel instead. HAha!

Happy 'Niu' Year everyone! Have a prosperous year ahead!

I hope I can continue with my family this way every year...

Bean Curd Tart @ Le Cafe Confectionary

2009-01-17T07:21:00.004+08:00

I was introduced to bean curd tart by TH jie. After I tried that first tart (i only got one.. :( ), I cannnot stop thinking of it! I absolutely love the smoothness and lightness of the filling! The crust was flavourful and "crispy" despite it being refrigerated.

I keep bugging BC since to drive me there and get them. :). When I have a craving, i must satisy it else I will be a very grouchy lady. Hehe! Yes, he brought me there eventually. When i reached the shop, there was stickers pasted all over their tarts picture, saying they will be producing them until after the CNY period. I guess they are busying making chinese new year cookie. I tried my luck and ask for a box of bean curd tart! ANd they had it!! Woo hoo! My first box of bean curd tarT!!! :)

8 tarts for $8. Reasonably priced!

it was as heavenly as the first time I had it! Yum!

Coincidentally, the next day, Sunday Times introduced the tarts as 1 of the best food below $10 in Singapore! Making me crave for them again (No, i did not finish the 8 tarts by myself!. Only had 2!). So the following Friday I bugged BC to drive me there again, BUT this time round.. they really stopped the production!! Boo Hoo! Now i have to wait till the after CNY to get to eat them again!!! Sad!

You can check out their website at http://www.lecafe.com.sg/

They seem to have many other yummy goodies sold in their shop! THe pineapple tarts are supposed to be good too. Wonder if I should buy one bottle and try.... HMmm....

Himawari

2009-01-02T19:47:00.002+08:00

Happy new year! Had a pre new year gathering with my colleagues at Himawari. http://www.sbestfood.com/himawari.htm I had only tried this place once for its set lunch which I thot it was not bad. Was really interested in the buffet offered by this place since. Many times tried to organise it with my friend, Wendy to check out the buffet together but some way or another 1 of us cant make it. Anyway, did not get to it with her again this time either but doesnt really matter since she already had it like 3-4 times without me! hees!

We went to the alexandra branch which was a short walk from our office. Being an ala-carte buffet, we naturally ordered as much as we can once we reached. The teppanyaki was not available although its stated in the website.

Generally the food was quite ok. There was a few items which i do like but most of the items were complained by majority to be too salty! To finish the jellyfish became like a challenge to most of them as they felt it was too salty. But it turns out that the miso soup was the ultimate winner of the saltiest item of the list! No effect on me since i did not take both of the items.

What i like was its chawanmushi, chicken wing, shabu shabu and its sashimi was fresh and good.
Other than that, fried items were just normal. I know the cod fish was well liked by most. But the same sauce used for the cod fish seems to be the same for some of its other items too. So i guess the taste gets kinda too familiar and too much after a while.

Service was ok considering they were majorly understaffed.

From the comments i get, I dun think I will hear most of my colleagues going back there for another time. Me? well... i will not crave for it but wun reject if anyone ask me to go back there.

Picture time!

Squid, Jelly fish, scallop sides

Shabu Shabu

Chicken wing & squid

sashimi

Chawanmushi

Yakitori

Merry Christmas Everyone!

2008-12-24T18:42:00.002+08:00

It's a wet wet christmas eve! It has been raining since this morning! Non-Stop! Hope it will not dampen everyone's christmas spirit!

Did not buy any christmas presents for anybody this year. Off work, during work, there is so much things on my mind that time jus pass so fast that before I know it, its already christmas eve! Received quite a few in office. Feel kinda bad though. No wonder I feel kinda empty and lack christmas mood this year! But its ok! I am going to Midnight Mass tonight! It has been a while! Hope the rain will stop in time!

The annual christmas party with my friends this year is at my house once again. I guess from next year on, there will be less chances of gathering in my place.

I made sheperd's pie again. I wonder how many years already! haha! To my friends, they say they only get to eat it once a year. I also heated some frozen mushroom soup which my mum bought. it was surprisingly quite nice except watery.

Meiling bought ham and turkey again! haha! What to do? She is the one with the discount! She was the earliest this time round as we needed to heat up the big bird! Anyway, we had a big screwed up with the turkey sauce. It was quite a drama with the Cold Storage helpline. Thanks Mei to going down all the way again to get a new sauce.

Mel made clams and mussels! She cleaned the shells so well.. they were practically shining! haha!
She did this quite easily. She first fried the onions till translucent and add chopped garlic. Then she added the shells, added chicken stock, added white wine, abit of lemon juice and butter. With some chilli flakes and salt, the dish is done!!

YX made mentaiko pasta! She always cook everything with the simplest and no mess way! So amazed. This is what she did. Remove the mentaiko from the sacs. Mixed it with butter, mayo and seaweed and keep aside. Cooked the pasta. And mix it in with the mix while the pasta is done. So EASY!! But she forgot to add soy sauce that day! haha! no wonder so bland!

Audrey brought brownies and ice cream! Sherrie bought roast potatoes and chocolate fondue! Her roast potatoes is actually very nice! It is potatoes drowned in olive oil with loads of garlic, spice(not sure wat) and then baked till it has a nice crispy top. However, she came so late THAT we were all full by then. Good for me though. Got to eat it the next day! haha! Ju brought the drinks and wine and ice!

Our table of food.

We had no entertainment though. watched 2 whole episodes of Harry potter! That is like 6 hours of Harry Potter! hahaa! I think we need to start playing charades or something or some drinking game! haha!

The whole group enjoying their chocolate fondue.

Our free log cake that came with the turkey!

And to end the night, we had our pressie exchange! I got a dark blue handbag from edc from Mel. We all thought it was black! haha!

Song of India

2008-12-08T22:25:00.002+08:00

http://www.thesongofindia.com/ <-- was november's gathering chosen place.

Its located along scotts road, next to the SK2 spa. Beautiful colonial building we always past by but never thot we try. Heard the food here is really pricey but exquisite.

we wanted to order ala carte items but was recommended to order the set. This was because the set was 'refillable' and at the rate we were ordering, the waiter told us it was more worth it to order the set. There were 2 type of sets; Tandoori salmon and tandoori prawn. Half of us took salmon, the other took prawn. This way, we could interchange our items.

The food comes in a nice plate which looks like a paint palette. There was spinach and goat cheese, mutton curry, some chicken thing, yellow rice and youghurt. This is the salmon set.

My prawn set. We love the spinach and the mutton curry! and reordered it immediatly! The youghurt had mixed reviews. Some of us said the more u drink it.. the more u like it. It was suppose to aid in digestion of all the rich food. I skipped it.

This is my favourite! all sorts of bread! rumani bread and naan!!! LOVE IT! Order and reordered! yummy yummy! The bowl is dahl i think. haha.

Sugi cookie -- a surprise went failure.. ha!

2008-12-08T16:27:00.002+08:00

Took leave sometime back to handle some stuffs. Was free in the morning and had a brainwave to bake some sugi coookies which BC had always wanted to make for him again.

I checked my blog and realise I dun have the recipe. Checked for those recipe printsouts i have. Also missing.. Cant rem the webbie so jus randomly chose a simple recipe on the internet. Turn out to be a failure. I cant seem to knead a dough from the allocated amt of oil suggested. I think i added like 25% more and manage to knead something like a dough.

ANyway.. spend my leisure time taking bobo pictures...

Saybons - French Food Factory

2008-12-08T16:10:00.002+08:00

I tabaoed this when I was at Plaza Singapore like a couple of months back. It seems to be a great hit with youngsters as I seen quite a few youngsters standing round the shop sipping their soup like a cup of starbucks coffee on-the-go.

I have read about this place previously on the newspaper about its soups. Being a 'The Soup Spoon' addict, I have been eagered to try this place out but as usual, too lazy (and "busy") to drag myself them. Things are different if there's tranport readily available for me. Ha!

I ordered their set. Seafood bisque and sun-dried tomatoes ciabatta. Their soup isnt chunky like that of Soup Spoon so its nice for a light snack. Naturally, the price is much cheaper too. I dun rem their soup's exact taste but I rem I quite enjoyed it. Will like to try their mushroom soup 1 day.

Grill Out @ Sunset way

2008-11-03T22:58:00.002+08:00

October's food appreciation session was recommended by mei. She told us that she tried out a great place at sunset way with affordable quality steaks! She tried out the place after watching it on the makansutra program on tv!

Sunset way is almost like any ordinary hdb neighbourhood except its full of many pretty exciting restaurents! Its near where daily scoop is! :) (My fav ice cream place) The restaurent is open air. Thank goodness it only started getting warmer towards the end of the night.

As usual, we were early and got to wait for the rest to arrive. We ordered the clams to start with! I was really excited over the clams because it came highly recommended from Mei.

The complimentary salad. We werent exactly a big fan of it cause there werent much dressing.

The complimentary bread! We were so looking forward for its garlic bread which we saw on some1's blog! but we were told they ran out and so we have buns. It wasnt that bad. It's jus that we were disappointed. Hees!

Clams in white wine and garlic!! My fav!! I kept drinking the wine! it was only me.. the other 2 din like it tat much! ha!

BIG fat Juicy YUMMY clammies!! hehe!

Mushroom soup! Some of us feel its too "WILD", meaning taste of all sorts of wild mushroom inside.. hehe!

Pics taken out of bordem while left at the table all alone...

When the rest arrives, we ordered another round of clams and mussels. We were told we could have a mixture of clams and mussels. So we ordered two orders of mixed clams & mussels, 1 cooked in garlic and white wine.. the other in chilli.

I love the chilli one too! Everyone else had their own preference. I am greedy. I love both! (next time, i must bring a spotlight with me for dinner. blur pics!!)

My Black angus tenderloin! 200g for 30 over bucks! it was pretty good. Better than the kobe i feel which is twice the price! BC and I ordered different steaks so that we could try both out!
I love the baby potatoes and side veggies! fried fragrantly with garlic!! 1 of the rare times i finish all my side veggies!

BC's US kobe beef. Too soft for my liking. Soft because its marbled with fats. I dunno.. I jus felt mine was better and a much better deal. 180g at 60 over bucks

We had dessert too! (too lazy to take pics by then) We tried their fried milk which is bascally like milk pudding/cake and panfried with some added spice. I guess most of us aint ready to accept it. It was pretty neglected. We also had a durian cake, coffee cake, chocolate lava cake and a blueberry cheesecake. All were pretty normal we felt.

However, their service was really good. The young waitress was professional and friendly. Even if we were the last one to leave (as usual), they were happily chatting at a side with no intentions to chase us away. Also, when we commented abt the kobe beef not to our liking, i think the manager/boss even came to chat with us and toked to us about the species of cows and cutting of beef. We really felt comfortable with their service.

I wun mind going back there again... i love the fresh clammies!!! We are sticking to jus the black angus next time round. I guess US kobe beef is jus not something I enjoy. :)

Stammtish @ Sixth Avenue Centre

2008-10-05T23:42:00.002+08:00

For Sept's dinner venue, the group decided to try out Swiss Cuisine. As usual, I just tagged myself along for a chance to try something different. I apologise for the blur photos and also, I have forgotten most of what we had on that day. Jus enjoy the bad photos. :)

We went to Stammtish @ 6th Avenue Centre.

The group were late so BC and I went ahead to order something first. We decided to try the Bacon, Egg and cheese rosti! Like breakfast set! haha!

The barley soup! Read good review of this soup from "Hungry No Where". The name did not sound so appealing but I am glad we ordered it. Heavenly! Cheesy creamy soup with barley.

Tomato soup and some other soup. The tomato soup was too sweet for our liking.

Forgot wat this is. :P

Forgot wat this is too. :P

"Bangers & Mash" -- haha.. not the real name of this dish

Pork Knuckle!! Cripsy and yummy! If only I can jus eat the skin only, i dun care so much for the meat. haha

Rosti with mushroom in creamy sauce.. Yumz!

Dessert time! Chestnut puree with meringue and icecream. Great reviews from "hungry no where" too. Not bad.

Strawberries & Cream in red wine.

Fondue! Fondue! Love the chocolate!

Pretty display colours of fruits...

Into the mouth you go....

A pity we did not try the cheese fondue. I always wanted to try cheese fondue. Maybe BC and I can go back there for another time. I know he loves the pork knuckle! and wun mind going back there for that! haha! I will defintely have the barley soup too!! Plus the chocolate fondue! :)

Nandos @ JB

2008-08-17T10:06:00.002+08:00

Yet another few hours trip to JB. We will travel to JB once in a while when we get bored of finding things to do in SG. But this time our target was to eat Nandos! Yes! We found Nando in JB! Do not have to wait til we get a chance to be back in Aussie!

We went to the Nandos located at the Zon. The Zon is actually a ferry terminal surrounded by a shopping centre, a huge club and several restaurents. There is even a super high class KTV entertainment building. Think its those sleezy kind for rich business man. Haha!

The Nandos there is actually a restaurent, unlike when in aussie, where its like a fastfood restaurent. We had waitresses attending to our order and needs. Price wise, converted to SG, its similar to when its in Aussie.

Each table has 4 bottles of peri-peri sauce. Tomato, Garlic, Hot, Mild.

They had something new on their menu: Called peri peri soup. Its actually normal cream soup with added chicken bits and some peri peri spice. In short, spicy cream of chicken soup. Ha! Nothing special. Wat you expect for 3.50 Ringgit.

My quarter chicken! BC has his 1/2 chicken. The spice on the chips was different. But thankfully, the chicken was as juicy and nice. Both of us were happy! We do not mind coming back again whenever we have a craving for nandos! The only thing we hate is the slow customs! Else its like travelling down to orchard for a fav meal!

Our sauce plate consisting of garlic, mild and hot... haha! We love mixing them up!

My gift! A bottle of peri peri sauce! haha! I only have haf bottle left from our last trip to Melbourne. BC bought a couple of bottles for his fwens who misses nandos too. So sweet of him!

Au Petit Salut

2008-08-02T17:31:00.002+08:00

We went to Au Petit Salut @ Harding Road to celebrate one of my good frn's birthday. This place has been 1 of those high-end places in my reserved list for special occasions! Not saying that my fwen's birthday is not special. Its jus that its not 1 of those place that u consider for gathering with fwens. Unless I earn like 10K per mth, its no problem! Haha!

Anyway, for dinner reservations, we were requested to fax over a sheet of paper with our contact and credit card details. Apparently we have to pay $98++ (the price of its set dinner) for no show. We made sure that expected attendance was counted properly. In the end, we found out its more for the purpose for when the whole group fails to turn up and not individually and feel more assured.

The restaurent is in 3 storey building located along Harding Road (near Dempsey Hill). Nice, quiet but rather inaccessible place. The restaurent consist of outdoor and indoor dining. Naturally we took indoors, small but cosy. The place was nicely lited and was quiet. We kinda spoilt the nice ambience with our laughters and loudness.

Website: http://www.aupetitsalut.com/

The followings are what we ordered. I shall reference the menu on the webbie and give the exact name of each item. haha!

Demi-douzaine d’éscargots de Bourgogne (Escargots in garlic butter)

A Closer Look. Mmmm! We love the garlic butter!

Soupe de coque au safran ("Little-Neck" clams cream soup)
The soup was lovely! It was frothy and creamy. There were loads of clams! Just alittle bit too chewy though.

Caille rôtie, farçie aux Foie Gras et champignons sauvages (Oven roasted French quail stuffed with duck Foie gras and wild mushrooms)
Isnt this dish pretty?!! The thing about French Cuisine is that every little dishes is like a work of art! The quail was pretty juicy. (i got a small bite! Ha!) But wat i really love is the Foie gras and mushroom stuffing!!! Yummy! The Foie gras simply melts in yr mouth!

Risotto aux homard et St-Jacques (Lobster and Scallop Risotto)
The dish was infused with the thick and creamy lobster broth, freshness of the seafood can be tasted in every bite. (Description with courtesy from Mellie).
I, on the other hand, still have not learn to appreciate risotto, still taste like hard uncooked rice to me. Haha! But other than that, i tasted the dish and enjoyed the creamy cheesy mouthful i had.

Filet de boeuf pöelé au poivre (200gm) (beef tenderloin caramelized with white peppercorn)
Nice and tender. Abit too spicy with all the infused white peppercorns. You have the option to omit the peppercorns if you are afraid of the spiciness. I love the mushrooms. Kept stealing it.

Onglet de boeuf à l’échallote (200gm) (onglet beef served with shallots confit and mashed potato) My dish! Enjoyed it too. But found the meat abit tough and chewy towards the end. Think it was also partly due me asking it to be 'Medium Well'. Mashed potato was the same throughout the dishes. Smooth and creamy texture, not so strong flavouring and compliments each dish nicely. There were cloves of garlic at the side too but I did not venture eating them.

Cuisse de canard confite (Crispy French duck leg confit with green lentil stew and mixed green salad)
The skin of the duck was crispy and the meat tender. We did not care so much for the green lentil stew though. Looks like green bean soup to me. HA!

Our only side dish. Potato Gratin. I can only rem it being hot and cheesy cause I was too stuffed by then to eat more of it. The portions may look small but its actually quite filling.

The good thing abt dining with close friends is that we can share and try every dishes each one is having. Dinner is filled with laughters and you do not not feel awkard. Good food and good friends, that is life!

And even how full we were, we gotta make some room for dessert!!

Charlotte fraises et framboises au Champagne et biscuit Rosé de Reims (Strawberry Champagne Tiramisu)
1 word! Strong! haha! The first bite i took! Wow! the cake is really well soaked in champagne manz! Some friends really enjoyed the cream. I am not really a cream person.

Profiteroles au chocolat
I enjoyed this the most! The combination of the choux bun (like cream puff but crispier.. to me) and the ice cream and the chocolate was heavenly!!!!! I have seen a show on "travel and living" channel. The chefs really does these from the scratch. Simple as it looks on screen. Its a long and tedious work!!

Crème brulée à la vanille de Madagascar
Another good item! I love the crispiness of the harden carmelised sugar coating on top.

Soufflé au Grand Marnier
I love the chocolate truffles inside the souffle. A warm and chocolaty surprise in the middle.

The happily stuffed customers!!

We highly recommend the lunch set lunch! http://www.aupetitsalut.com/aps/menu02.html
The food was enjoyable! Wun it be even more enjoyable when u can enjoy the same thing at a cheaper price?! The set lunch is 30++. Some of the main items costs more than 30 in the menu! Now I have to find some1 who can drive me there for lunch!!!

A small thought...

2008-08-02T17:15:00.003+08:00

can mean so much!

Guess what i found stuck on my keyboard's space bar when i arrive worried and sleepless 1 morning at work? A sweet little note of luck. Even though my batch job did fail that day, my colleague's little note of sweetness brought a smile to my face. The whole day din seem as bad after all.

To cut a long story short, the job manage to run sucessfully on sat night. I din have to be at work. Her wish did work after all. Thank God for his almighty work!

I am really lucky to meet so many sweet nice pple in my life. It may such be a small little note but it can bring so much encouragement for one. I hope i can be more like them, bringing smiles into pple's lives.

I found it! - Reese peanut buttercup!

2008-07-20T19:54:00.002+08:00

I found it! I finally found it in sg! Cocoa tree in Terminal 3!!!!! I love this chocolate!!
Yum! Dun have to wait for fwens to go overseas and buy for me! Haha!

I DID IT! - SHAPE RUN 2008

2008-07-20T19:51:00.003+08:00

An accomplishment for big fat lazy bum like me!

Not very good timing but HECK! hee hee~

Pictures using 'Colour Accent'

2008-07-17T08:08:00.002+08:00

My colleague has kindly taught me how to use the colour accent function! a function which exist in my camera that i never knew.

Was bored that day and decided to have fun taking some colour accent pics!

Mentaiko Pasta

2008-07-17T07:21:00.003+08:00

Trying to throw some stuffs away that has been cluttering my room and found a piece of old newspaper. Its a page of sunday times containing the recipe of Mentaiko Pasta. Decided to put the recipe here and then i can throw the newspaper away.

Was first recommended to Mentaiko pasta when I was in Ma Maison with my group of gals. I totally enjoyed the pasta. My fwen told me its really easy to make and she used to cook it all the time. It so happened that the next day there was an article on it on Sunday times. Talk about coincidence!

Hope i will get my lazy butt off the chair and cook it soon!

Mentaiko Pasta

Ingredients
For 2 main course servings:
160g spaghetti
2 sacs of mentaiko (90-100g)
30g unsalted butter, softened
50g japanese mayonnaise
pinch of Shicimi Togarashi or yuzu pepper, or ('something' missing from the article) to taste
2 tsp rice wine vinegar
2 stalks spring onion
4-6 shiso leaves (optional)
1 myoya(optional)
2 Tbs dried sakura shrimp (optional)
handful of nori strips

Method

Bring a pot of salted water to boil. The water should taste salty like seawater. When it comes to a rolling boil, add the spaghetti, It should take 7-8 mins to cook.
In the meantime, get the sauce ready. Slit the sacs of mentaiko down the middle with a sharp knife and scrape off the eggs with a small spoon into a small bowl. Add the butter, mayonnaise, shicimi togarashi and the vinegar, Mix well, with a spoon and set aside.
Chop finely the spring onion. If using shio leaves, snip off the stems, roll into a tight tube and slice finely crosswise. Slice the myoga on the diagonal, if using.
Toast the dried sakura shrimp lightly in a non-stick pan. Set aside.
When the pasta is al-dente (to look up the meaning! hee!), drain into a colander, shake it a couple of time to get ride of the excess water and return the noodles to the empty cooking pot. Add the mentaiko sauce, spring onions, shiso leaves and myoga. Mix well with a pair of tongs.
Divide the pasta between 2 serving bowls. Top each with sakura prawns and nori strips. Serve immediatly!

Roast Pork

2008-06-29T21:07:00.002+08:00

Haven been updating .. cause there haven been much to update.
No interesting places...

Jus a picture of the roast pork I ate last Sunday. How much I miss this!

The golden brown crispy skin.....

That's all folks!

Topone KTV

2008-06-01T18:54:00.002+08:00

"Suaku" me went to some new KTV place recently which I thot is quite comfortable. The machines used were similar to the KTV place which I went to back in Taiwan. Every level has a theme. We got the 5th level. Some kind of icy cemetry theme. Everything in the room is quite well-maintained.

We paid 19.80++ for 4 hours of singing which is inclusive of free flow of drinks. Unfortunately, the drinks tasted like syrup water. I ordered 2 cups but barely finish like 1/4 for each. That is my main complain.

No remote controls here. Jus a single machine to "dian ge". We all feel the software need some improvements. Abit difficult to find songs. We all had fun playing with the light functions (there was a disco light function). We were all disappointed where no smoke came out when we press on the 'smoke' button. haha!

some control buttons at the other side of the room for your convenience. Like those in taiwan.

we took the opportunity to celebrate a frn's bdae. Macha cake from breadtalk. Too sweet for my liking.

The sign that got us laughing like mad! Haha!! The glass panel must have gotten exhausted from being stuck to the door for too long.

Ah Yat Abalone restaurent @ Turf city.

2008-06-01T15:07:00.003+08:00

It was the time of the month again where we go out and splurge on food. This time its seafood dinner at Ah yat @ Turf City. I heard raves about the Alaska crab and the cheese lobster.

We reached Turf city earlier so we went ahead and choose the seafood first. There's a 50% off discount for all the live seafood. Surprisingly, although turf city is starting to look more rundown and crowded, it is still pretty crowded.

We chose the Alaska crab, lobster and scallops and then aheaded to the restaurent to wait for the kitchen staff to prepare them. $4oo plus worth of seafood! The scallops cost $4.40(discounted) each! Then the alaska crab and lobsted costed ard about $200 each.

big huge alaska crab saying hi!

The restaurent was really crowded. The food took more than haf an hour to come. We were famished!!

Scallops steamed with garlic. So so sweet the scallop meat! love the garlicky gravy too.

Our beautiful Alaska King crab steamed with egg white.

its side profile... keke!

Attacking the legs! We have to use scissors to cut the meat out cause the shell is kinda softer than the normal crab we eat.

The claw! The meat was sweet and heavenly.

Cheese lobster!!! Mmmm!!! yummy~~~ absolutely sinful!

The body of the lobster was used for the cheese lobster dish. The legs were used to fry noodles. Quite yummy too but the ginger taste abit strong. We also ordered a plate of sambal kang kong. It was pretty good but we were pretty stuffed by then.

The final bill came out to less than $500. We expected more. Thankfully not.

We then headed for the morton's bar @ oriental mandarin. Absolutely comfortable to sit down to chat and have a class of wine. They have really frnly staffs there. They closed at 11 officially but they stayed till 1 plus jus for us. Very good service.

Spent alot that night. I guess once in a while is ok to indulge and enjoy... shld not overdo... hehe

Ilovemother.net

2008-05-20T14:11:00.002+08:00

Read about this cool website (http://ilovemother.net) from the 'Food & Travel' Magazine.

Apparently, this website provides recipes and food preparations services. So it simply means you get the fun part of cooking and the hard work of marketing, slicing, dicing, peeing and so all is all done by them!! What a interesting business idea they have!!

I love cooking! but the preparation part always kill me! So i think this website is sure gonna make money from those busy-yet-love-to-cook pple!

However, dun think I will venture it out anytime soon. Maybe, after i become somebody's mrs. ha!

Now all i need is a service that does the cleaning up! the maid? ...no maid! damnz!

Peranakan Inn @ Katong & our 'fun & feast' day

2008-05-19T02:06:00.005+08:00

Peranakan Inn

Had to run some errands at Katong after work on Friday. BC decided to bring me to this Peranakan place for peranakan food which he been to recently. I have stayed in the east for ages and have never been to the Peranakan Inn. Its the kind of place I know its always there but never bother to try. Ha!

The place was pretty empty when we arrived. I believe they run a slow steady business. The place looks like those old red house kind of cake shop with those big round marble tables and wooden chairs, except its air-conditioned.

We ordered a few pretty standard dishes....

Ngoh Hiang... taste was pretty standard.... but abit overpriced. $4.50 for like 4 pieces.

Otah... so-so...

Itek Tim! This is like my favourite soup which i only get to drink it once a year (during CNY).
I had high expectation for this! BUt... the taste is not what I expected it to be. It tasted abit like bak kut teh kiam chay soup combined. Maybe this is how true authentic peranakan salted veg duck soup? not very sure. I still feel abit different from what i drink at other peranakan restaurents before. I guess the one that suits me the best is still the one mum makes.

Ok.. the fish was pretty good! Really crispy! My only complain.. not spicy enuff! hehe!

I guess its a place I wun be coming back soon. Just doesnt suit me i guess. But i do think its a good place for tourists to visit.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Fun & Feast Sat

Having a long weekend means we can enjoy our saturday to the fullest without the nagging thot of "gawd.. its sunday tomorrow which means monday is coming!!"

We decided to make chinese dumplings on this day! We had some unforgettable dumplings from some neighbour from china. Just wanted to try it out ourselves. BC even suggested that we have a steamboat then we can have dumplings in our steamboat! wee! I love steamboats!

Manage to found a couple of recipes online. Wun be posting it here cause we thot the recipe isnt that good.

Firstly... the recipe stated 500g of flour with 100ml of water to make a dough. My goodness! i nearly died from kneading the dough cause they cant stop crumbling!! which kinda makes sense since there werent enuff water. We decided to add water as much as it takes to make the dough. think we used about 250ml of water in the end.

I was in charge of the dough. BC was in charge of the filling.

My dough...after more than haf an hour of kneading in the hot kitchen! I perspired like mad and had to ask BC to help wipe my perspiration. Kinda like doctors in the surgery room! haha! No choice else my dough will have "extra ingredients".

The food expert BC prepared the meat filling. He is so much better at this than me..
of course i left him in charge of the filling.

We wrapped one dumpling and cooked it. the filling wasnt fantastic. so we added egg, sesame oil and chives. Tasted better but still not like those made by the china granny. I guess we gotta get the recipe from her instead next time.

our dumplings!! Curry puff looking kind was made by BC.. keke!! Such hard work to roll the dough and then fold the dumplings...

BC stuffed some of his meat fillings into little tao pok pockets! like yong tau fu!

we made mee hoon kuay from our leftover doughs! haha! 'Q Q' ok!

BC's special made 'sa ca jiang' for steamboat. His sis and i love his sauce for steamboat!!! its not steamboat without his special sauce!

Our other steamboat ingredients....

Jus had a wonderful time at my friend's place... her chicken curry was good! Nice to sit around with friend and have a good luff at a crappy movie.

I love long weekends~ So sad.. its gonna be over soon.... boohoo! N the next one will not be here for a very long time...

Urulu @ Duxton Hill

2008-05-19T01:29:00.002+08:00

Needed a place for a little celebration... asked several friend for place recommendation... a friend suggested a place he read from today's paper suggesting places with HSBC discounts. Urulu was having a 1-for-1 discount for it set meals and the newspaer recommended the place for its wondrous steaks.

It was pretty hard to get a carpak at duxton hill. So little lots but so many pubs and restaurent at the area. Thank goodness we were there early. We waited for haf an hour till we got a lot. For those willing to spare with $5, they have valet parking there.

The restaurent looks pretty small from the main entrance but they seem to have a bigger place where u can enter from the back of the restaurent. Din get to explore it cause we were sitting pretty near the entrance.

The 1 for 1 promotion is really worth it. But there were limited choices for the set dinners. We were kinda in the mood for steaks so we decided to forgo the 1 for 1 promotion. How wasteful are we?

They had wagyu beef but they cost like around $100 for like 200g of wagyu beef. We are on a tight string so we opted out.

This was what we had...

Complimentary cheese bun.. cheesy-ly good!

A mushroom soup to share. Abit too creamy for my taste. but still quite quality soup.

My sirloin. Each main comes with 2 side dishes. I took wild mushrooms and truffle mashed potatoes. Love the mash. At first thot it looks pathetic but i understand why. Cause its really creamy.. too much of it makes one kinda sick. the portion was just nice then. The wild mushrooms really contains all sorts of wild mushrooms. Its only then i realise i dun love ALL kind of mushrooms.. ate 1 a bit too bitter, and another made me kinda sick. not sure if its the way they cooked it or the mushroom itself.

My triple mustard sauce for my steak! Mmm!! goes well with the steak! but i still cannot differentiate the mustards! some sort of foodie am i...

Tried to take a juicy delicious sauce but because of bad lightning and shaking hand. Failed! Must b too eager to attack on my steak! Not bad. Quite tender and juicy. Love it with the mustard!

BC had a ribeye with wine sauce which i thot made his steak pretty yummy! He took wild mushrooms and wedges as sides he really loved the wedges. they were really crispy on the outside and soft on the inside kind.

And to end the night, a little chocolate cake to sweeten our tooth! Ohh.. it was really good!! love it!!!! So creamy kinda like ice cream! Oh! I went to TCC recently.. I saw that they have a similar cake i think! but its cut into strips and served with berries too! wonder if its the same. hees!

Overall, think the food was pretty good but there's nothing to make us feel like going back another time. Unless we are going back for its 1-for-1 promotion - quality food at a good price then. We did have a discout though. 15% from HSBC. So the night end pretty well for us too i guess..

Thanks BC for the treat once again!

Picnic @ botanical garden!

2008-04-28T22:18:00.002+08:00

We celebrated mel's bdae by having a picnic at the botanical garden. Something different. And it has been a long time since we had our pig out picnic session.

This time round, our picnic is suppose to be high class kind. So we omitted out our old items such as roast duck, chicken curry and beehoon...to the disappointment of one of my fwen.

So we had sandwiches, ebi roe kani salad, sausages, cheese & cracker, potato salad, loads of chips, fruits and scones.

The weather was super hot that day!!! melting in the sun... nearly died... ha! a simple but enjoyable birthday.

We planned to have our local picnic the next time round! and our fav east coast park! bet it will definitely be much coooler!

I was incharge of potato salad..

bacon bits fried by me early in the morning...

my potato salad...

Our picnic...

the pretty tiny bday cake from rive gauche! love the cream!

Hyang To Gol Korean Restaurant @ Amara Hotel

2008-04-28T21:36:00.002+08:00

Joined my bf for a dinner gathering recently. Forced him to take me along when I heard he was going for korean bbq! I have been craving for bbqed pork belly recently and was so looking forward for this dinner.

Amara Hotel has a nice interior design. I especially love its glass elevator. The korean restaurent is located at the 2nd level of the hotel.

The restaurent was pretty crowded. We were welcomed with the delicious aroma of bbqed meat when once we entered the restaurent We were guided by the waitress to a nice private room with a LCD tv. Classy!

We had a lot of dishes that night..

An appetiser that we had while waiting for the rest to arrive. I like it! Some others din like it. It's look like sushi but it taste abit different. The rice felt more like glutinous rice and it's filling are like picked veggie, kimchi and some other ingrendients that i cant figure out.

We were served this sourish water to drink. It is suppose to be appetising. The guys din like it. We gals find it quite refreshing.

the numerous side dishes....

We had two kinds of kimchi.. one is sweet and one is salty. this is the salty one. nice but too salty!!

The other kimchi...

looks like ice cream.. taste abit like ice cream.. yummy potato salad.... we cant stop eating it!

fruit & veggie salad.. quite nice too..

2 of the side dishes i din take. pickled chilli and the other is some radish thing which i find taste really sour and wierd. But there was some1 else who really enjoyed it. haha!

Sauces for our bbq meat...

Beef... the first batch we had taste so-so ... the second batch tasted better. But it was quite exp.. so we expected it to be damn good..

the long awaited sin....

bbqed pork belly...into my mouth.... my stomach..... and also my artery!! oh my!

spicy kimchi fish roe soup.... soup was sweet but nothing fantastic. i preferred the one i had in Melbourne previously..

ox tongue... abit too chewy.... disappointment...

second batch of pork belly.... Hee!

thinly sliced marbled beef... this was good! better than the other type of beef!!

enter into my mouth.... Mmm...

Korean pancake... is something i can never appreciate.... not bad i guess but jus dunno how to appreciate..

Bbqed mushroom is the best.... and look! o so pretty!!

seafood hotpot!! this was good!! the seafood was plentiful! the soup was super sweet from the seafood. Will enjoy it more if i werent so full by that time!

Overall, i think the standard is abit above average. However, there isnt anything there that will make me wanna go back there again. A good one-time experience however.

but i must say.. the service there was really good. We had a waitress stationed in our room. She bbqed our meat and serve us evenly. She served us tea dilligently and also portioned our food for us whenever there's a need to. I am glad i am not korean. The amount of dishes they used to serve the few of us was numerous.. imagine having to wash so many dishes!!!

Out of the Pan

2008-04-12T23:04:00.002+08:00

Been really busy with work and stuffs....
nothing much to update recently anyway...

"Out of the Pan" is located at the basement of Raffles City where the escalators are. It is always crowded with customers and the crepes look really good. It is 1 of those place I usually past by, make a mental note to try it but never did. Because it's so centralised and accessible, we kinda take it granted it will always be there and can try it another time. Anyway, this time i finally tried it with a frn. Actually, we settled for that because most of the other places were crowded and it was getting late. Hees!

We could not decide to share a crepe or have one on our own. Finally, we decided to share a set which contains a savoury crepe, a salad or soup and an ice lemon tea. Cant remember the price now (think its ard $18) but it was really worth it!

We took the potato salad. not bad.

The crepe was rather nice too. Cant rem wat we had. But i do rem that we took the sun-dried tomato crepe.. nice!

The portion of a crepe was quite ok, considered we were sharing. Filling but we still felt a tiny unsatisfied. But having one alone maybe will be a bit too filling.

We took a dessert crepe! Strawberries & cream! Strawberries were abit sour but there were an overload of them!!! Generous. The vanilla ice cream was good!

Place is worth to give it a try. Dun mind going back there again! :)

Birthday Weekend!

2008-03-23T20:12:00.004+08:00

It isn't my birthday yet but I have already celebrated it trice! Wee!!!

Last week, it was celebration with my best frns at Togi @ Siglap! This Togi branch fails in comparison to that of the one at Mosque Street. 1 thing,the rice cake ramen its not as nice. It doesnt even have egg and dumplings! I was craving so much for it. Such a disappointment. The other dishes were so-so.

We did a little touring of Singapore that afternoon. ha! Long story! We then headed out to Cedele @ Wheelock. Haha! I had a craving for its chocolate cake previously so yx suggested to get that as my birthday cake! yumz yumz!! Wat an enjoyable birthday! Thanks everyone for the treat!! and for spending it with me!

Lucky to have so many pple to come and celebrate my birthday with me!

My cake! yummy yummy!

:)

And yesterday.... it was birthday lunch at The Line @ Shangri-la! hehe! Been wanting to try this ever since i heard it was like the best buffet in Singapore! Opted for lunch because I reckon it will be cheaper! haha! It was! The bill came up to $112 for the both of us! Meaning its around $48++ per person.

The food were not bad! They have a fantastic selection of cold appetisers. The oysters were huge and fresh! They have a wide variety of food for one to choose from. Some were good.. some were pretty ok. We tried to take abit of everything and was already stuffed by then. I think we are too old for buffet. I used to be able to eat much more. We reckoned we should continue to stick to ala carte.

Huge oysters! So huge.. that 2 is enuff! 4 me! Ha !Yummy scallop!

BC's artistic prawn pic. He say he is trying to bring out the "loneliness of the water lobster". Go figure!

Sashimi and California handroll! Yummy yum!!

Roast pork good! Duck.. so so..

Snapshot of the indian food... the indian food is not as nice as the asian kitchen buffet @ hyatt...

They have a counter where you can customised your own pasta. You jus point out the ingredients u wan and they will make it for u. Pretty much like those omelette counter when you go for those breakfast buffets. This is my sun-dried tomato, mushroom and bacon bits pasta tossed in olive oil! The waited added a bit too much garlic and oil. haha! But its a excellant combi! you should try at home!

intricate desserts...

They have an ice cream corner with a good selection of ice creams instead of the usual vanilla, chocolate and strawberry flavours. And they have all sorts of toppings! you can even customise your own ice cream! They have all sorts of candies, chocolates and gummies for you to choose from! exciting eh~ They even have a crepe corner! amazing! the only challenge is how much can u stomach! I am quite sad that there were some dishes i had to forgo jus because I cant eat as much.

Then at night, we had a good dinner at Pu Tien @ Kitchener Road. The food there was pretty good but both of us were too stuffed to actually enjoy the food. I dunno the name of the type of cuisine they serve there. i guess its some part of china? hees! Its a really crowded place though. Amazing!

Jus a pic with my mischevous little gal~ We were both wearing polka dot dresses that night!

and the night was spent with some of my good frns singing ktv! It has been a long time since we last met up as a group! N a super long time I sang KTV!

I had a beautiful cake! I dunno the name of the cake but i do noe its from Rive Gauche! It has a amazing nutty chocolately bottom crust!

I also had a super long birthday song! and 2 pressies! Weee!! Thanks for the delicious cake and wonderful time my frns! Love you guys!!

Dun count the number of candles on the cake!! Forever 21!!! HAHA~ who am i kidding?!

Hua Ting @ Orchard Hotel.

2008-03-02T20:11:00.003+08:00

It's mummy's birthday! Brought her to Hua Ting for dim sum! My friends love this place and frequent there often. A place I have always been eagered to try but never had the chance to.

Table setting...

Chee Chong Fun! We had 2! this was the "mei cai rou bing" one.... so unique!! and i liked it!! The other one was scallops. Pretty good too!

Fried beancurd skin prawn roll... Good! Good! too

Siew Mai! Dun u think their siew mais are very pretty?!! unique!! N its like filled with prawns mainly! Fresh and yumz!

Har gow.. yummy too. loads of prawns again!

Yam cake & chicken feet! both i dun eat. Heard the yam was something unique.. but the chicken feet a bit salty.

so-so..... not the kind i like. i think even the one i had at melbourne was nicer. The traditional cantonese kind.

Some fried ramen. Din eat. heard it was so-so.

egg tarts. I think china teahouse ones are nicer. My mum and aunt found it a bit too sweet.

mango chicken tart... bleahz... sweet and wierd.

the xiao long bao. THis dish totally spoilt it for me. The "tang" inside the xiao long bao was so oily makes me feel kinda sick. Wat a way to end my lunch!!

The dishes are rather pricey like 1 siew mai cost about $1.60 kind of price. I thot the overall bill will be costly but it turned out pretty okay. Even cheaper than if we were to eat at china teahouse. I think at china teahouse we tend to over order and we always order like the more expensive dim sum (like $6.50 per plate kind). N i had citibank 10% discount! Wee!!

I find the dimsum there are exquisite and yummy but must avoid a selected few.. esp the xiao long bao. I still like crystal jade's xiao long bao! and din tai feng's xie fen xiao long bao (din tai feng's normal one are not as nice as crystal's jade)

Went parkway after that and got myself a little treat from cedele!

Chocolate banana cake! 1 of my favourite chocolate cake! yummy yumz! I think awfully chocolate not so nice nowadays. I had a slice ydae. Cake feels a bit dry.

Sun dried tomato foccacia!! taking pic for fun! haven eat yet... haha!

Kimchi soup!

2008-03-02T17:57:00.004+08:00

My colleague who is into korean culture taught me how to make kimchi soup. I really liked the kimchi soup we had @ Togi. Also, the kimchi soup we had at the korean bbq place at Melbourne was kinda yummy.

My colleague told me that she did it in a really easy way. All you have to do is to fry some onion and the kimchi, then add a little water and bring it to a boil...and then some of the kimchi "water" (the kimchi 'gives out' water the longer u keep them) and some canned tuna.

She even told me to use those kimchi are about to spoil. The stronger the flavour the better...adds more flavour to the soup... she sae that's what most shop did with their leftover kimchis.

Onions and some leftover kimchi in my fridge...

frying onions and then the kimchi....

Add a some water.. else the soup will be too diluted.... and then pour in the kimchi water...

I was lazy to open a can of tuna so i added meatballs instead... and bring it to a boil.

The soup was not bad... there was the kimchi flavour.. except i find the soup lack a certain sweetness. I think if i added the tuna, i think it will taste quite good! my Home-made kimchi soup!

A yummy way to use my kimchi leftovers!

The trip ends... Day 10..

2008-03-02T00:22:00.002+08:00

Day 10 was simple...

We had a couple of hours before our domestic flight back to Melbourne and then back to singapore.

We visited the Swiss Village. It was like a small resort with loads of activities. It looked really relaxing and fun to stay in. We wished we could have been there earlier but it will also mean we would have missed out a good day in our itinery to enjoy its facilities. So we thot maybe we should visit the french village at cameron highlands 1 of these days. It should be similar than this. N moreover, its so much more cheaper and nearer.. hehe.

we even had our brunch at its cute little cafe...

an interesting view from the top of the plane....

I finally finished blogging abt my trip!! I AM SO HAPPY!! DONE!!! Weeee~~~
I think i am too freee.... blogging takes up so much time manz...

Tasmania Day 4 - Trip Day 9

2008-03-01T23:09:00.002+08:00

Day 9... almost the end of our trip...

Its easier to start the day when you dun have to pack in the morning. We were staying put in Launceston.

We were supposed to go to cradle mountain on this day! But unfortunately, once again, we deferred from our itinery. After speaking to some colleagues who have been to Tasmania before, it seems like it was a sight we should nt have missed. Dammit!

We first went to the Evandale Flea Market... it only happens every once a month. I think its the first sunday of every month? Cant rem now. Nothing much for me... they sell everything from kitchen ware to dining china to honey to dolls. Its a flea market. Somehow second stuffs dun seem to interest me. I dunno how to appreciate good stuffs.

blackberry... Extremely sour. i think normally pple dun eat them straight.. maybe use them for cakes or jams...

There were pony rides... going for 3 dollars for 1 round around the flea market. Mainly for kids.

honeybear... 10cent for one.. sold at the honey stall...

the next destination was (supposedly) cradle mountain which was nearly 3 hours... so we decided... we should stop by any attractions we see on the way so we wun b so bored on the way..

We saw a salmon farm and decided to stop by. Basically, the farm is some high tech farm where they have to channel the water so as to make it suitable for salmon rearing. I really cant rem the details now. Anyway, they had a few activities you can do there. We jus chose to feed the salmon. It was so so fun!! throwing the feed into the pond and u can see loads of salmons jumping up. feel like catching them! took a video but not with me.. shall post it here when its uploaded.

we then bought some smoked salmon and order some salmon sandwiches for lunch! Yummy yum!! the smoked salmon tasted a bit like ham. hehe.

We love this salmon rilette the best!!! its like some sort of salmon pate... yum!! goes so well with sandwiches and cracker! Pity its can only last for a day when outside refrigeration meaning we cant bring back to singapore! Boo hoo!!

we were eating in the car... can see all the maps and brochures below the salad? hehe!

we noticed there was a wildlife park nearby and decided to go there. I mean we cant leave Tasmania without seeing the Tasmanian devil right? I think we saw some dead ones on the road but not really sure if its really the tasmanian devil.

We first went to see the Koalas! this time they were much nearer to me than not high up on the tree like that time in Melbourne! I even get to stroke one. No chance to carry though!

Eagle!!

Wombat! so cuddling looking!!! hehe!!

Awww.... jus look at its face!!

Tas devils!!! really violent creatures!! They apparently feed on only dead animals so they should not be attacking us. But still, the noises they make and their actions.. really violent! They kept ripping the zoo keeper's pants off when she was trying to feed them some kangaroo's meat. They even fight with each other. I took a video cause its hard to capture them clearing due to their fast movement. Again, will upload them again when i get the chance.

Sleeping Tas Devil...

After the zoo, all of us became a little tired and running late for cradle mountain. We were suppose to go to another place after that. So all of us decided to skip cradle mountain and head to our other destination. I think of us are getting weary by this day.

took a pic on the road of a mountain... in my heart hoping it was cradle mountain but i seriously doubt it... haha.. but still looks good wat..

our last stop! TasMAZIA! Yes.. its a maze. Again! haha! We went to 2 mazes in our previous trip. I think we really enjoy them.

A teatowel with an overview of the maze...

we spilt into 2 groups... we were challenging who will reach the goldilocks house smacked in the middle of the maze first!

We found something... but its not the house... this was some land in the corner of the maze.

"Promised Land". While walking... we heard shouts... the rest have reached "the promised land".... haha.. we could not get to them.. but after some instructions, we reached the promised land too.

Promise land is a tiny town... how cute!

a mini "step maze" in the maze.

trying to "action".

we were exhausted and decided to head out to the pancake parlour found at the entrance.

chocolate icecream pancake..... 1 word... SINFUL!

SCONES!!!

triple berry pancake!! the whipped cream makes it looks like banana split from the side though.. haha.

hot chocolate...

chocolate sundae!!

After the pancakes, we decided to give the maze one more chance. We wanna find the goldilocks house before we leave. We manage to find it. Thank goodness!

Then its a 2 hours ride back to Launceston. I think I was really tired for i slept throughout the whole journey back. No more map reading for me. We decided to do take outs for dinner. No cooking... no dining out. We were exhuasted and we still need to do some serious packing tat night.

We decided to do take-outs at this italian restaurent... looks impressive... but bleahz... we did not like a pizza a single bit... our last dinner at tasmania is extremely disappointing... haha.

that ends day 9...

Tasmania - Trip Day 8

2008-03-01T11:03:00.003+08:00

Blogging on a saturday morning... Boo hoo! Sheer bordem! I have half a mind to do my work since I have my laptop with me. Maybe I should.. spend my time more constructively.

I am starting to forget details of the trip by now. Hoho! This should be a brief entry.

Day 8 -- Our destination was towards Launceston city. The next major city in Tasmania.

Our first stop was at first to be another fruit farm. But we decided to forgo that to spend a leisure morning at our wonderful beach house. We could not bear to say good bye to it. We even snapped some group pictures.

Anyway, so our new first stop was the st columbia falls. This falls is so much more magnificent than the one we saw at Melbourne. N we did not even have to walk haf as hard. The distance was shorter and the slopes were much more gentler and there's werent steps. I still feel cheated.

Some pics of what we saw on the road....

Result of a forest fire.

I think the trees looks rather nice though... haha

loads of 'moo-moo's on the road. Gary was thinking of steak everytime we past by a load of cows. He is able to different which cows makes the best steak. something to do with the build of the cow and the muscles or something. My love for beef has not gone to such extent for me to distinct the good cows. I mean I wun be able to grab one and go home and crave it anyway. Gary's knowledge and passion for steaks is power!

Gary was thinking of steaks when taking this pic. haha

Mooooooo~~~~

The falls from a distant...

a stream?

Our next destination was suppose to be a wildlife park. But when we got there, it was closed already. The closing time and the stated closing on the website was about 2 hours difference. We got cheated. All that travelling time for nothing!!

we headed for launceston city early for a view. They were having a like a mini fun fair similar to our pasar malam but you got to pay like 10 bucks per person so we skipped it. Not as if we get free food.

After a quick drive round the city, we realise its not as vibrant as Hobart city. There werent much life along the streets.

We decided to check in to our new accomodation. Its suppose to be a victorian townhouse which means its a really really old house. N yes, it did look rather old on the inside. But thank goodness, it was clean and as a warmth feeling on the inside. Its not as modern but its comfortable enuff.
The toilet cum bathroom was really huge! But once again.... there's only one!!! Sad!

Dinner that night was steak! haha! Good for Gary who have an extreme craving for them after seeing all the cows.

We went to the JailHouse Grill which is supposedly one of the best steak house in Tasmania. Thankfully, we went early cause it seems you have to make reservations to ensure a seat in there.

Dinner Dinner.... I cant rem wat cuts we each have... so jus see pictureS?

Grilling steaks... see the thing in the corner? looks like some torture equipment in the "Jailhouse"

Some salad from the bar..

Garlic bread with the shadown of some1's fingers in the background.

Gary's steak

Pork ribs.

More steaks..

seafood...

Duck... super awkard angle...

A bite anyone?

The steak was pretty good. Except mine, it was a bit too well-done.. so abit tuff but still good.. Shld have asked for medium. Gary's was yummy and juicy. They had a salad bar like that of Sizzlers.. kind of yummy too. The steakhouse was overall not bad but we think it is a bit sad if it is like the best steak house in Tasmania. Not much of a "wow" factor.

After dinner, we did a little shopping at the supermarket. Got to stock up on sweets and chocs before we go back to sg...... then its back to our accomodation for some relaxation.

it was really cold in the townhouse at night.... i enjoyed curling up in my heated matterus bed... hibernation.... hehe

That's for day 8

Tasmania Day 2 - Trip Day 7

2008-02-25T23:10:00.003+08:00

Day 7 - Our itinerary was towards the north of Tasmania. We were at Hobart which is like at the south of Tasmania.

Our first stop was the Sorell Fruit Farm. Yes, we have a craze for fruits picking. The fruits that were in season at that time was cherries and strawberries. Normally, at this time of the year, we will have missed the cherry season. However, because of the cooler weather of Tasmania, it seems like the season is like 2 months behind that of Melbourne and Perth. So excited! Enuff of strawberries, its time to get our hands dirty for cherries!

We were picking blood red cherries!

artistic anot? keke

cherries anyone?

cherry trees/ bushes. Anyway, there went much cherries left in this bushes to pick. We then headed to the area with really tall cherry trees.

The most beautiful cherries were those right on top of the tree (where most pple cant reach them of cause). We dragged down some branches and even climbed one or 2 trees to get to them. Shhh!!!

see how much taller these trees are.

we picked a bit of strawberries jus for the fun of it. These strawberries were as beautiful, large, juicy and sweet like the one we picked @ Melbourne. Some were even sour. Bleahz!

ice cream!!! i saw the shop was selling ice cream and asked for one! Their ice cream was absolutely heavenly. creamy milky taste!! Mine was strawberry. BC's one was blueberry!! the blueberry was so so good!! I kinda miss the ice cream now! :(

couldnt resist taking some beautiful scenery pics while on the road.

Next stop was freycinet oyster farm. Sounds really cool. we were hoping to have a better luck with oysters this time round. When we reach there, we realised the so-called farm is jus a small hut selling oysters. Geez! wat farm! Well.. they did had oysters. Really small ones though. Reason? Spawning season. Those oysters they have are those that are unable to "spawn" apparently. Geez! Nevetheless we did have some. Fresh oysters are really salty! I thot they were pretty ok. But Gary said china has really good, cheap big and really juicy oysters. geez. Jealous!

Third stop was at Coles Bay for lunch.

Beautiful!

baby mussels found on the rocks.

Lunch was yet again... Fish n chips... HAHA! Still not good enuff for us. Bleahz! Not a single good fish n chips this time round. keke!

Then its time to head to Bicheno for our accomodation!! I love this accomodation the best!! Its huge! Its new! It has everything! Its beautiful! It has a fireplace! It has a beautiful view! N It is near the beach!!!! When i grow old and retire, I wan a beach house like that! Its so beautiful.. that we dread the next day where we have to leave it for another. Oh! n it has 4 toilets! the other accomodation we stayed all only had one! so troublesome when we have 6 pple!!

The beach infront of our house! the waves are really strong here. There were about 3-5 pple surfing there. Boy... must b cold.

Having fun with the icy cold water...

We had an early home cooked dinner at our accomodation. We got a penguin tour at 9pm that night. This tour is more exciting than the one we had at Phillips island back in Melbourne. We were allowed to take pictures(without flash of course) and then the penguins are really close to us! So within reach.. no barriers... a couple of them even ran past my feet. hehe! so exciting! Only thing the tour is done in darkness.. except for a couple of torch light shown by the guides. ALso, the weather is even much colder in the night. Brrr! freezing our butt off...

its really difficult to take pics in the night with no light with my camera. But we did manage a few shots when the guide shined his torchlight at some penguins near us. This tour was totally worth it.

Feeding...

many many many.......

The best shot we got!

N then its back to our warm n cosy apartment......

we tried to keep ourselves awake with nachos and movies as we wanna spend more time with this beautiful house for the next day, we b leaving.. hehe! wierdo us.

So that ends day 7.... few more days left...

Tasmania - Trip Day 6

2008-02-24T14:09:00.003+08:00

At ard 9pm, we reached Melbourne airport to catch our domestic flight to Hobart, Tasmania. There was ard nearly to an hour flight delay for our flight due to some technical issue. We heard an annoucement later that it was due to some fault with the pilot's chair. This is considered a technical issue?! Sheesh! Such a waste of our time.

While waiting for the so-called technical glitch to be resolved. Manz! I am FAT!!

Being the first day of CNY, all of us were wearing something red that day to get ourselves in the festive mood. hehe!

We reach Tasmania around 11. We then head out to the Barilla Oyster Farm which was like 5 mins drive from the airport. This oyster farm was featured by some channel 8 travel show ("ming xing dao you") so I guess its pretty well-known! We were suppose to have our lunch there and maybe look at the oyster farm. But guess what? NO OYSTERS!!! I mean no fresh oysters! why? because its spawning season! *FAINT*.. such luck we have.

Tasmania Airport.

Barilla Oyster Farm

Geez!

Oyster Kirkpatrik. They still had frozen oysters.

Baked oyster... cant rem the name. Not very nice.

Fries.

BAcon wrapped scallops.

Calamari. this is good.

Clam Chowder. MMmmm!!! thick and nice.

Pasta Marinara. Loads of seafood! The best! Love the fat juicy mussels.

After lunch, its time for our next destination. The Tahune Airwalk. We really love the sceneries of Tasmania when on the road. Its really beautiful. The waters are so blue and calm. And the mountainous background makes it even more gorgeous. Its unlike the usual view we see on the road which is mostly fields and vineyards.

This is taken by Casio Camera.. Love the deep blue colours!!!

Did I mention that Tasmania was really cold? I mean I was not prepared for the weather with my normal jacket. So when the winds blows, I was like freezing!! I really cant stand cold!! Thank goodness, the rest have an extra windbreaker. The weather was like Melbourne, where it was hot like sg.

Pictures from Tahune Airwalk....

The view of the walkpath from below...

Everytime after a strenous walk... there's always a food reward!

Next stop was Mt Wellington. "The Mountain" of Hobart City. We went right to the top of the mountain which is about 1271m above sea level. The wind was ice freezing cold!!! N I was wearing slippers instead of covered shoes. I felt like my toes are about to drop off!! Haha!! Really awesome view from the top though.

Frozen smiles.

Due to some fault of my SD card, did not manage to take any pics of our accomodation of the day. We stayed in Hobart city. The streets were not that quiet towards the night.

We had nandos for dinner that night.

Melbourne Day 5.

2008-02-23T23:30:00.003+08:00

Melbourne Day 5 was chinese new year's eve! We woke up early to head out to the airport to pick the rest of them!!

It was a rainy morning that day. Wat a way to start the holiday for the rest of them. We first went to Geelong to visit Deakin University and its surroundings.

Then headed for Queenscliff for good fish and chips lunch. But we did not noe the exact place and setttled for first one we saw. Not nice at all. Such a disappointment.

Thank goodness we were heading for strawberry picking after lunch! I was so looking forward to it since we din manage to pick any fruits from the orchard. This time round, we already called and make sure before we headed there. Hees.

The strawberries were huge and really sweet!!! YUMS!!!

Due to a miscommunication, We had an overload of strawberries. Overpicked! keke!! this was 40bucks worth of strawberries!!

We then head back to Melbourne city for some snacks. This time we tried another vietnamese restaurent. BC's friend recommended us this restaurent. It seems most vietnamese in Melbourne prefer this restaurent instead of Mekong. But we tasted and felt like that there's no much difference. The most unfotunate thing though was i saw a rat near the table of our seat! Yikes! I thot I was sawing things but turn out to be true. We sort of lose our appetite after that. We ordered just a little to try.

Next we try out BC's favourite chicken chop rice. But we jus ask for chicken chop only. We were too full for rice. N dinner was jus a couple of hous away. So nice n crispy! yummy!

We then check in to our new accomodation. Bigger accoodation. A townhouse this time round. Looks old on the outside but really nice on the inside. It even have a little back area with BBQ pit I love the kitchen!!

After settling in, we headed out to Supper Inn for our reunion dinner. I was so glad that we made a reservation early. Its was really really crowded. However, it seems only the "ang mos" who love it there. I dun see much chinese dining there. Din think the food were fantastic.

Then we had an early night for it has been a really tiring day and we had to wake up early the next day to catch the domestic flight to Tasmania.

Melbourne Trip Day 4

2008-02-23T22:40:00.000+08:00

Back. Saturdays are starting to get boring. Shall try to continue updating the trip as much as i can before i forget most bits of it.

Day 4 was to be the highlight of our trip. We are finally gonna do some activities instead of plain sight-seeing and loads of eating! We were gonna do snorkerlling and horse riding!

We went to Mornington Peninsula. We visit Mornington on our previous trip to Melbourne. We were suppose to do horse riding then but so happened the horses had the flu and had to be quarantined.

We went to Port Sea to for a snorkelling session. We were too early for our session so we went for a little exploration and photo taking ard Port Sea.

The beaches were beautiful but we were irritatingly bugged by flies. If pple were observing us might think we were having fun at the beach, but we kept running ard wildly to run away frm the flies. Haha!!

The snorkelling session was quite fun! We had the full wet suit on because the water was really cold that day, ard 20-21 deg C. It was rather hard to move with the suit because its quite bouyent and the currents are rather strong. We saw some fishes call "leather jackets", "goat fish", the sea dragon (a sea horse) and also many many puffer fish!! Puffer fish are so cute!! Wanna grab them home!

The jetty which we snorkel under. This is where we saw the sea dragon and cute puffer fishes!

A group of divers getting ready for their dive.

We spotted a sky glider? (what are they called?) while at the beach.

The beach

A beautiful lookout.

After a quick rinse, we head for our horse bush trails. Both of us were kinda nervous. It was our first time to ride on a horse. The horses were so huge!! eeek! I got a horse called "CHewy" and BC got on a horse called "Jet". My horse was the greedy kind. The moment I got on, he went for a drink and grab a bite on the grasss. hehe! N the horses are not allowed to feed on the grass outside the stable. So during the bush ride, i had to keep pulling his head back to stop him from eating.

The scariest thing happened midway during our session. We were moving on a single file (1 instructor, BC, me and the other instructor) as the pathway in the bush trail is rather narrow. Then we were going down a small slope where the front instructor's horse suddenly stop moving and refuses to move forward.Then in the quick second, the horse threw the instructor off and the horse kinda fell (not completely, because of the bushes) to the side. It was so scary! BC said he wanted to jump of the horse during that moment but he knew it be worse if he got off. I was shocked. We cant move anywhere in that tight position....n we were afraid our horses will be influenced by her horse and gone berserk too.

After that, we did a u turn and continue to rearrange our position (the berserk horse and instructor is at the back this time round) and then continue out ride. In my mind, I was hoping we turn back. The instructors later explained the horse was scared by the shadows of the trees and that's why he refuse to move. Poor horse. But its was a really dangerous moment manz.

We din exactly enjoy our ride after that.

Victory pic of us surviving the ride... KEKE.

Our mucus was black after the horse ride. This was like my 4th tissue. Imagine the amount of dust and horse's poo vapour i breathe in. ( i forgot the horses keep pooing during our ride..haha)

We headed back for a quick shower and then met up with BC's ex roommates for a Korean BBQ dinner. Sweet gals and a cute brother. We wanted to give them a treat and ended up being treated by them. An enjoyable dinner. We ended the night early as we had to wake up early for the arrival of our other travel mates the next day.

Hmmm.. we all looked kinda solemn dun u think? haha.

Ends Day 4.

CNY Weekend!

2008-02-18T23:29:00.003+08:00

Manage to celebrate abit of CNY over the weekends! Celebrated with frns, not with family though.

We went pgy's house for steamboat on saturday! hehe! We were in-charge of getting the beef. We went Meidi-ya to get some shabu shabu beef, shabu shabu pork, bbq beef and some other miscellaneous stuffs. Spent ard 100. HoHo! Sinful steamboat!

Yu Sheng kindly made by Pgy's mummy.

Lao ah! Huat ah! ( where am i? taking the pic!... keke!)

This was just 3/4 of what we had... keke!

BBQ our fatty beef! Sinful!!

Let's EAT!!

After dinner, the guys played mahjong and the gals played blackjack! I was winning!! Until PGY started eating up all our money towards to end. keke! Look how filled her turtle coin bank is!! My money is in there!!! boo hoo!

We all had great fun that night! thanks for all the trouble pgy and your mummy!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On sunday, i met my gals for our annual CNY gathering. But we were 3 gals short this year. Our group felt so small. So sad!

We went The Paramount for dim sum. Very little selection choice of dim sum. I think it was because of its CNY period. The dim sum tasted pretty ok. Din take any pics.

I wore a bright red cheongsum-like dress. Trying to get into the festive mood. But I feel i look like those chinese restaurent waitress."Ha Gow, Siew Mai, CHar sao bao?" keke! Thank goodness the waitress at paramount werent wearing red cheong sums. keke

Then we went Auddie's house to lou hei! hehe! Went to get Sakae yu sheng again! Its really quite tasty manz. They summore buy extra sashimi from the Japanese shop. So fresh!! Mmm!!! ALso, Auddie's mummy specially peel pomelo for us to put in our yu sheng! give it such a nice refreshing and tangy twist to it! We kept pinching the pomelo towards the end. Keke!

We were trying to think of all the auspicious words as we pile up the rest of the ingredients. HAha! It was quite funny cause we came up with all sorts of "chen yu". Only ah mei is the best can think out of appropriate ones.

All SET!!

Huat AH! 10 million toto is ours!! Haha!!

After we lo hei, auddie's mother ask us to pick a number each! we got 7 numbers in all! Can buy system 7! haha! Summore, i heard this yr is a good year of wealth for those born in the year of the dogs. Haha! I have a good feeling of the numbers we picked out. I bought already! hehe!!

It's a pity I couldnt stick ard to play cards cause we have a dinner appointment that night.

Now it feels more like CNY to me...
Jus a couple more days left....

Melbourne Day 3

2008-02-17T02:03:00.002+08:00

Had a super filling steamboat session at a frn's place earlier. Decided to stay up a little to blog about 1 more day since i feel so full still and still feel so awake after my bath.

Melbourne day 3 was another long and tiring day ahead! We were heading to the Grampians! Another 5 hours drive away too! yikes!! Our itinery did not even had a timeslot for our meals! Got to pack our meals!

Woke up in the early morning to find BC cooking away! There was mushrooms, scrambled eggs and bacon. He even made such beautiful sandwiches with them. Suddenly, i felt ashamed as a woman. Haha!

All packed and ready to go in our "Lock-Lock" containers. keke!

We were suppose to head to an orchard as our first stop to pluck some fruits for our consumption! The main reason I resisted buying some fruits from vic mkt the day before. Turn out the orchard only open on sundays!! imagine the frustration! The website states that it opens everyday!!! They obviously did not update their website!

All we could do is to stare at the rows n rows of ripe apples tree infront of us but unable to reach them. The longer we see the apples, the more we felt cheated. SO we decided no matter what we should go down and take a few pics. So we stopped our car and went down to snap a few pics of us with the apples. In the end, an apple fell while BC was holding a branch. Both of us look at each other and went "opps", quickly grab the fallen apple and went into the car! hahaa! I think at that time we needed something to satisfy our cheated feeling. We were so happy! Only thing the apple was not ripe enuff! So hard! it was really sweet though! imagine how nice the ripe apples will be.

So near but untouchable!

God's gift to us! Haha!

We then head towards grampians! Took a toilet stop at some park and saw a group of aussie aunties doing taiji! decided to snap a pic of them for my mother to see!

After few more hours of navigating (for me) and driving (for him), we finally arrive 1 of the information stop at the Grampians national Park.

We decided to take our lunch break @ the picnic area before going to visitor's information counter to see which scenic spots of the national park we should visit. We finally decided that we should head for Mackenzie falls and then stop by any scenic spots while we are on the way there. We were looking for spots where we need to walk the least. If u noe by now, we are really lazy pple. keke!

I really forgot all the names... and at this hour, my brain is pretty much gone. so jus enjoy the pics.

Nice rocks.

My arse was being roasted by the hot rocks to take this pic... HAHA!

The mackenzie falls pics are next. This was suppose to be a breezy walk! I got cheated by the brochure!!! It was such a long walk to get to the fall. and it was a pretty small fall. I nearly died climbing back up. We went past a norwegian old couple. I think they were pretty amused abt how weak i was. I mean they have difficulties getting back up but I was the one taking loads of long stops to rest. The super hot weather that day made it 10x worse!! I never felt my heart beat so fast! i think i seriously lack exercise!

it didnt seem to be so far from the top..

the path still looks breezy...

After many steps and turning! We finally reach the bottom of the falls!

Got to take more pics to make the walk more worthwhile!

Taking a pee... HAHA! no la! Jus on 1 of the big rock to cross to the other side of the river or watever u call it.

"Mr Evil" was so amused about how weak I was... decided to take pics of me even though he is dying frm the climb back up too...

If i could, i will have "whack" him. But i was at the stage that nothing matters anymore.... all i wan is to be back up there......dun wanna climb anymore!!!

My reward...... I rewarded myself! haha! i felt i deserve it big time!

@ another scenic lookout. I was so tired.... i did wanna go for anymore scenic places!! jhaha!

We decided to head to another destination stated in our itinery. But we were so tired from our climb we stop our car by the roadside again and slept for an hour odd. After that, we really felt like going back to Melboune. I was starting to crave for Mekong already after the long walk! I was hoping we can make it back in time! But its another 5 hour drive back. We decided to look at the melway for an alternative route back..I glad we did... we make it back in less than 3 hours time. Weee!!

a quick snap from the car at some place before we stop for our nap.

some silly stunt we were doing to make our car ride back more passable....

we saw 2 really huge and beautiful rainbows on the way!

We made it for Mekong! We arrive ard 9 plus! wee! Absolutely famished!!! BC sae not as nice as before but I cant rem the before taste. HAha! I still think its kinda nice.

After dinner, we decided to give our favourite roulette machine 1 more chance!!

I glad we did! Cause we won 20 over bucks!! Love the sound of the coins dropping from the machine! It isnt much! But we sure gotten loads of coins after that! keke!

That's all for day 3!
N thats all for tonight...

Melbourne Day 2

2008-02-16T09:37:00.002+08:00

This day is city city city all the way for us! keke! It was sunday! It's meant to be relaxing!

So guess where's our first stop? Victoria's Market of course! Wanted to buy some gifts and food!

Victoria's Market seem really quiet this time round. It was sunday and some shops aint open. We learn from BC's friend later that pple are going to another market where things are cheaper and the stalls vendor are friendlier. Guess Vic market is becoming too upmarket for the residents there. I pity the stall vendors though.. even if it is a hot tourist attraction. How much meat, fish and vegetables can tourist buy?! Fruits are still fine. It seems they are there for us tourist to snap photos... hehe!

MEATS!

How come we dun display minced meat like that in Singapore?

The fruits are so fresh and beautiful! I love the colour combination. When can our market vendors start displaying like that? keke!

Banana? Mushroom? then grapes?! haha! so wierd! We bought the mushrooms! They tasted so good!! so chewy!! Mmm!!

All kind of potatos! I shld live here manz!

Apples! Apples! and more Apples!

red, plump and juicy! :p!

A chick pet, anyone?

Fairy costumes!

This pic is for my mum! to make her jealous! haha!

We then headed for our brunch!! wee wee! we were going for dim sum!!! i haven had dim sum for ages.

"har gow... siew mai... char siew bao... "... haha! sorry! its har gow, siew mai and fried wanton! keke!

The carrot cake was delicious! but the veggie thing beside it sux big time! bleahz!!!

Chee Chong FUn.... so so

Fu Pi roll...

Egg Tarts!

This place is really hot in melbourne manz! I was shocked by the long queue when i came out! Good thing we came early!

Went to another place to buy baos! Hehe! They display their baos so interestingly.

Got myself a custard bun! Nice!

We then went smith street for shopping! Loads of factory outlets along the stretch... Did buy much! Cause i still dun feel its that cheap enuff. Haha!

We finished the street much earlier than intended. So we headed back to our apartment for an afternoon nap. We slept for nearly to 3 hours manz! How lazy! haha

We went to Latrobe street for dinner. This street is filled with italian restaurents. It kinda reminds me of boat quay/ clarke quay. The restaurents will have pple to approach you to persuade you to dine in their restaurents.

We finally setttled in a restaurent where there was no1 bugging us.

Pizza was not that nice.

The tortilli with bacon in creamed sauce was super good!

Caesar salad!

We then headed for crown!!! My request!!!

We played Baccarat and won $50!! Weee!! I had my lucky undergarments on that day! HAha!!

After that, we went out to see the Crown's fire. Also met BC's old army frn for a chat and a drink.

A fun and relaxing day it was.

Back! - Melbourne Trip Day 1

2008-02-16T08:41:00.002+08:00

Hey peeps! I am back! CNY is ending but i feel like I have not even celebrated it yet! How sad! That's the bad thing abt going overseas during festive season! U miss out on all the fun! GOod thing is that CNY is 15 days long. Gonna catch up on the festive mood this weekend.

The trip was pretty good! But I got really homesick on the last day! Was really glad to be going home! haha!

We headed off for the airport right after work on friday. Thanks to ays, we manage to arrive in airport just in time.

Leaving on a trip straight from work simply means we arrived at Melbourne with the same clothes we wore the previous day at work and also, really exhausted from work and the plane ride. But the excitement of the trip kept us pretty awake in the early morning.

We had a tight itinery that day. We collected our rented vechicle and headed for Lake Entrace immediatly. With our well printed out itinery, detailed google map direction and the supplied Melway (Melbourne's street directory), we headed for our destination. Thanks to BC for his detailed planning. His itinery is well informed, detailed and neatly organised by days. So impressed!

However, Lake Entrance was about 5 hours drive away. After the first 2 hours, we started nodding off. Seeing all the road signs asking us to take power nap made us even sleepier. So we really stopped by the road side to take a powernap! Felt so awake after that!

Our nap stop.... :P

The driver sleeps...

We made a stop at St Mary's church to look at the handpainted ceilings (like the one of michelangelo's). Exact location.... forgot! Itinery isnt with me. Sorry. The church seem so quiet when we arrived. We werent sure whether we could go in. But the doors of the church is always open (during official hours... keke) so we went in anyway.

So beautiful the inside of the church was!! So Magnificant! How i wish I could get married there. I couldnt resist taking some pictures. Pity my pics turn out rather blur.

The altar.

The entrance.

A small section of the ceiling

The outside

Its side view.

Finally Finally! We arrived at Lake Entrance. The scenary was beautiful. I think its a place where the city pple come to for relaxation and enjoy some water activitied. Pity we were not staying there that night cause we could not manage to get accomodation. So we did not plan for any water activities. Although our luggage was still with us, we decided to forgo doing any activties cause there's still a long drive back to melbourne city.

So we took a relaxing stroll around and look for our fish and chips lunch.

Lake Entrance.

Swans & gulls... ard around...

More gulls!

How to escape from fish n chips when u r in aussie?

Crossing the bridge to the beach

Can see the boy? A group of Aboriginal(i think) boys were having fun jumping off the bridge. They were doing it again and again. Like our kampung kids last time.

Lifeguard's hut!

The beach! - Actually, aussie has quite nice and quiet beaches. I wonder why pple bother to go Bali. It is not as beautiful as everyone claims..

1 more pic of Lake Entrance before we head back

Beautiful sky while we were on a way back to Melbourne.

We arrived at Melbourne ard 7 that day. The sky was still shining bright. We checked in and dump our things and then headed for dinner! My favourite! Nandos!!! How i miss it!! Keke!!

My quarter chicken and peri peri fries!!

Yummy sauces! I bought 2 small bottles back to SG!! Hahaha!! :P!

We headed for our favourite roulette game again! We lost 20 bucks! really fast this time! So disappointed! haha!

We went for a short walk ard the city.

We decided to share a second meal @ dessert house. We were really full from nandos! Jus plain greedy cause we wanna try many things and not much days here in melbourne!

Pork chop rice in house sauce + milk tea!! Yumz yumz! We mostly ate the pork chop! The rice was barely touched. The portion of rice is the amount of rice i eat for like 2 days lo! MAdness! BC sae he used to be able to eat that amount. haha!

We went back to our apartment after that. I noticed something funny when BC parked his car.
Can you guess which is our car? keke!

Our apartment looks like some old dorm from the outside but it was pretty clean and nice on the inside. So it was quite comfortable.

My travel mate is so neat. I was so amused when i went to the toilet to find all the toiletries lined up so neatly. Haha!

Forgot to mentioned that i stocked up on my favourite drink! Calpico!! I still cant find it in SG!! :(

That ends our first day! barely did anything but exhausted already! keke!

A pleasant surprise

2008-02-16T08:36:00.001+08:00

Happy Lunar New Year of the rat

2008-01-31T08:50:00.000+08:00

This will be the last post.....of the Year of the Golden PIG!! *oinks* It has been a good year! YEar of the RAt.. give me more marnee!! loads!! heehe!!

Wishing everyone happy new year so early because I will be going overseas tomorrow!! Wee! cant wait!! With the trip, the gatherings when i am back and all the wondrous food i gonna stuff myself with, it will probably be quite a couple of weeks before i blog again! Dun miss me!! :p!

Some pre CNY preparations to share...

Went to my aunt's place during the weekend to help her to make pineapple tarts. Actually, she was making for us, so what we mainly did was shape the tarts.. quite fun! (psstt~...my cookies factory kinda stopped... too busy and too lazy... Unreliable factory! keke!)

She was making the "covered" kind of pineapple tarts. It was my first time rolling the tarts into the shape.. so the few few of mine turns out a bit fat, then a bit long, then a bit too skinny until i got the consistency! haha! Fun!!

But i love the open tarts kind! So kind aunt went to make a new dough for the open kind. This was more fun! using the cookie cutter. I had fun luffing at my sister who made really ugly ones! Actually , mine was pretty ugly too.. haha.. there were differences in the thickness of the tarts.

When the tarts were done, it was ready to pack in those red cover transparent container. I asked my auntie if she have those round lining or i can cut out square ones for her. She then teach me how to cut out a round shape out of normal baking sheets!! Basically, u have a square shaped paper ard the size of the container and keep folding in halfs until u cannot fold anymore. After that, use a scissors and snip the top off. N wah la! u get an almost round lining! I felt so stopid after that! haha! it seems like something so common sense and i felt so in awe seeing her do it. Old ginger are still spicer! haha! there's always something to learn!

----------------------------------------------------------------------

My dad decorated the house like shopping centre again! he really loves decorating the house up for the festive season! Mum complain we look like those shops in chinatown selling decorations. haha!!

Some photos to share..

I really hate to use flash!! The colour is all wrong! But the wind was so strong and keep blowing the angbaos decorations causing my pics to come out blur! fed up! haha

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!
COLLECT TONS OF ANGBAO!
SHARE SOME WITH ME AFTER THAT OK??

Togi Again!

2008-01-20T19:59:00.000+08:00

Went back to Togi with my colleague recently cause both of us were craving for the "Ra Pok Ki"

The side dishes were really nice this time round! So was the kimchi! Better than the previous visit!

My colleague introduced me a new dish! Kimchi soup & the black bean rice! I love the soup! So yummy and it seems that they have canned tuna inside the soup! Spicy and appetising!

Think I am starting to like korean food. But i still prefer japanese food.. much gentler to my stomach. Moreover, its light & healthy!

The Sandwich Shop... Cant stop loving its sandwiches!

2008-01-20T19:53:00.000+08:00

I tried the smoked salmon sandwich recently! My goodness!! It's so yummy!! The combination of the salty smoked salmon & the egg mayo was excellant! $3.50 for a sandwich is really really pricey but its jus too yummy to resist! worth the splurge!

Beppu Menkan Japanese Restaurent

2008-01-20T19:22:00.000+08:00

Went to Beppu with my colleagues for lunch. We have this decision to try all the yummy food near out work place before we move to the new place.

I used to eat Beppu once a month during attachment. It was like our pay day treat back with my other classmate during our attachment period.

Beppu is the place for spicy ramen! It has different level of spiciness for the ramen. I think there is level 1, 2, 4, 6 and 8. I heard they have even higher levels but not stated in menu. I remember level 1 is of "no kick". I stuck at 2. Its jsut right. Level 4 will be sucidal!

My colleague's ramen '#18'. Haha! That's nt the name of the ramen. Its so popular that they remembered the number by hard. Its fried chicken. I had this recently.. O so nice and crispy the chicken.

My teriyaki chicken ramen! The chicken skin of the chicken is so nice and crispy. Yumz yum!

We all took level 2 spiciness. 1 of my colleague told me he ever had a challenge with his fwen to finish up a level 4 noodles. Drink finish the soup to the last drop! Madness! He said they end up with a stomachache that same nite.

I kinda like it... its something u will crave.. esp on a cold rainy day!

Mandy got LUCKY!

2008-01-20T19:07:00.000+08:00

I finally won in a lucky draw!! Wee!! First time! Won the 5th prize at my Company's Appreciation Dinner! I was ready to rush off early for my movie.. I am so glad that I stuck ard!!

Guess what i won? $250 Taka Voucher! Wee woo wee! Just nice! Me super super super BROKE!

Sugee Cookie

2008-01-15T17:58:00.001+08:00

It's saturday! Here i am at home, so early for a saturday night, blogging and baking sugee cookies in the oven. But it feels kinda failure today cause i could not get the knead out the dough today.

Baked sugee cookies on monday when I was in leave on tuesday! baked 2 types of recipe! baked till 5am! madness!

Purpose of baking so hard? Preparing CNY goodies for my relatives! something warm and personal.

Y sugee? because dad mentioned that he really misses the sugee cookie he used to get frm the coffee shop's cookie bottle. Me trying to recreate the feeling for him.

Sugee recipes are confusing! Sugee means it should contain semolina flour right?But most of the recipes I found does not use semolina. They used Ghee instead. Those with semolina, does not use ghee. So confusing... I always thot both was used.

Mmmm..... cookies aroma filling up my room.... *Heavenly*

Jus wanna share the recipes, and photos i took that night...

*goes check on cookies....... eveything looks good... yEAH!*

*sifted flour* As u can see...I was taking my time tat night

Icing Sugar...

Ghee, butter & icing sugar..

Ghee, butter & icing sugar..combined till light!

Added sifted flour & gound almond into the mixture..

To refrigerate for haf an hour...

The end product!

The cookies here were too brown to be called sugee. Mum reckon i cooked too long. Also, it is those crispy kind of cookies. Not soft and melt in your mouth kind. But it was pretty good! I thot pple will find it too hard so I decided NOT to give it as gifts and try the other recipe. However, i gave some of this recipe to BC and PGY and they kinda like it and din think it was hard at all! how comforting! :)

Second recipe I got it from the Ghee's website... keke! I am sure the ghee company will gif some very good recipe to promote their ghee. N I wasnt wrong!

This recipe 250g of Ghee!! Scary! Ghee overloaded!!

Icing sugar, flour, salt, bicarbonate soda. almond powder (replace 50gm of plain flour with it)

Melted Ghee!

The dough!

Before entering the oven...

Look wat came out frm the oven.... this is still a bit too brown! but the 2nd and 3rd batch were perfect!! White and cracked!! Beauty!!

The taste?? melts in yr mouth kinda feeling!!! Mmmm!!! was so happy! worth staying up all night!

will post the recipes another day... tired! heez

Yummy "Canadian" Food

2008-01-15T04:43:00.000+08:00

Mad woman me is baking.....for CNY! On Leave tomolo! i mean today! very fwee right? Waiting for my cookies to cool..... so here i m, blogging!!

We had a family fwen from Canada who came to visit us last weekend. Keep hearing frm relatives who have been to Canada that he cooks really well and makes the best salad!

He kindly whipped up a delicious meal for us! Greedy me jus took pics of his yummy food instead of helping out!!!

When I saw this salad, i thot it looks pretty normal. Nothing special. Jus different veggies, tangerines and grapes... UNTIL....

he added his special sauce! My goodness!! such an appetising salad!!!! Its sour, sweet, light and really appetising!! I couldnt stop eating! If mum made veggies like that all the time, she wuld never had the trouble of trying of getting me to eat them previously!!! He sae secret recipe... cannot divulge.... O WHY!!!

NExt on the list... potato Salad!!! MMmmm!! yumz! Once again, secret! All i noe its potato, mayo and egg! HAha!

CLosed-up!! I am jus having fun taking pics! Haha!

Cream of mushroom soup! Everyone loves it! I jus thot it is a bit too creamy for my taste but it seems the rest loves the thick soup!

Lontong made by my auntie. SHe complains the canadian relative is stealing her "business", everyone was too busy eating his!

N CHeck out his bbq food!!!..... RESTAURENT CLASS!! Pity i was not into meat that day. Tasted abit.... they were GREAT!!

Some pics to share!

My bbq pics still kinda sux... sad...

time to pack cookies!

Mandy goes JB...

2008-01-07T08:51:00.000+08:00

Finally got a chance to go feast at JB again... This time it was not jus the 2 of us. Went with 4 other frns. It's something they always toked about but never had a chance to realise it.

The weather was not on our side that day. Heavy downpour whole day long. Thankfully, the rain kinda stopped in the evening.

Did a little shopping. Actually, only me. The purpose of the rest seems to be just to go JB and eat dinner. Feel alittle wierd. But i got myself a cheap buy! Wee!

This time, B bought us to some place near "The Store" shopping centre. I believe the road is called "Taman Sentosa".

He said he ordered 'Rat' meat for us to eat. Trying to cheat us as usual! it was chicken.

Frankly speaking, from afar, it really looks kinda like a rat laid flat out. But its actually the wing joint that had been rearranged. I love the marinate of this chicken. Think its some chilli powder and its really spicy!

N the one we were all craving for. Good. But i still prefer the chilli of the roadside stall. That one is 'Sedap'!

and some dishes we ordered from the restaurent.... i think only the butter squid was nice.

and 1 more round of chicken and grilled prawns~ (prawns were fresh!)

The food were really cheap though even if I did not feel it was that fantastic. We took a cab back to the streetstalls area (near city square) to fill ourselves with fishsticks and fried chicken skins! Absolutely sinful!!

We were 6 full satisfied pple heading back to singapore. :)

The daily scoop. - again! :p!

2008-01-07T08:40:00.000+08:00

Went to daily scoop again on new year's eve. Sorta of celebration of the coming new year since we did not have anything exciting on that night. Well...suppose to go to frn's hse for a drink... too tired.. too lazy. Old boring pple! :p!

This time i ordered 2 scoops! 1 lychee martini and my favourite, green tea and red bean! I wanted to try the baileys! But stopid B said he refuse to share his lychee martini with me. selfish!

This time round, i feel that the ice cream is a bit too icy. The green tea and red bean really cannot beat that of azuba sabo. Firstly, the red bean they used is wrong. I think they use those local red beans kind. Also, the green tea ice cream is jus not creamy and fragrant enuff. Haagen Daaz green tea ice cream is really good.

Also tried the chempadak, like the durian, the flavour is rich and strong like the fruit itself. kinda like that. hees!

O! by the way, jus realised that the ice cream at island creamery is even cheaper. $2.50 per scoop! haha! Had some ice cream there when I went to order my logcake. But this place is so much more conveinient for us. But no more green tea ice cream for me.....

Christmas 2007

2008-01-03T22:39:00.000+08:00

Its already the 3rd day of 2008 and I am here.. still blogging abt christmas. Nothing much to say... the holiday season is over. abit sad. hehe! Let the pics do the toking...

some preperation done before christmas

Caramel corn.. requested by my sis for her office xmas party.

oatmeal raisin cookies to be used as gifts to our guests.

bacon bits to put in my mashed potato on christmas day!

Christmas decorations - excellent job by dad!

he did an excellent job with the decor. Really put the whole hse in the christmasy mood! I jus took a few simple shots of what he did. Dad is the best!! I thnik he gonna cry abt having to take down the decorations tml/sat. hees!

On Christmas Day

Cookies... packed in a rush! Too busy helping to prepare and forgot abt them. Ha! cant pack earlier else will 'become soft'.

assorted nuts as snacks for the guests.

Sausages & chipolatas

The turkey tat occupied the oven for 5 hours! mum woke up at 6.30 jus to prepare this!!

The ham! great job done by mum! love it!! Yumz!!! everyone tabao my ham home... so little leftover ham for me! :(

Korean "nian gao". Din eat it. Cause not christmasy food to me! haha!

Otah from malaysia

some greens.

My dish! mashed potato with bacon bits! I mashed about 20 potatos!

O! and a log cake from Awfully chocolate which i forgot to take photo of! Doesnt matter.. it was pretty ugly. Also, had a bad experience with their service! LOng story! Over it! Cant b bothered to explain!

And you think thats all the food we had.... U R WRONG!!

Pumpkin soup and seafood pasta from my auntie! She also made fried rice, baked tofu and some mushroom with veggie!!! There's too much food! I gave up taking pics!!

Mee siam! made by another auntie. 1 of our usual party fare! this is like our family's 'jia zhuan cai'~ haha!

and there was curry chicken with baguette too! I cant find my pic anywhere!!

there was also fruitcake made by my mum. Thats the bad thing abt me. If its something i dun fancy, i wun rem to take pic about it. Then there were more fruitcakes, tarts, cakes and otahs nicely bought by one of my uncle.

Christmas day was food overloaded! I did not noe where to stay. With so much choices, it was surprising that i din eat much! I think i got full looking at them!

Thank you mum and dad for the wonderful party!! and B for helping with the preparation and for driving all the way to cluny court for the logcake! I love preparing for christmas party! God bless mum and dad with long life and good health so we can always have many many more christmas parties ahead!! hehe.. selfish thot of me!

P.S. and miss pgy ... this is all that u missed for not coming! :P

Little Nat's bdae

2007-12-31T16:35:00.000+08:00

Was requested to help take pics for little nat's bdae. Her mother borrowed an SLR from her friend for me to use! My first time using the SLR!! I tried quite a few shot to realise I am fumbling with it. The shots did not turn out pretty. I end up asking the SLR owner to help take pics of the birthday instead. Dun wan to ruin little nat's bdae with my awful shots! Useless me! Used my own camera to snap random shops ard instead.

Enjoy the pics of her fairy themed birthday! Her mama even hired a body art painter! Lucky kids! I wanna be a kid again!!! *pouts*

Shot with SLR:

haha! my little cheeky fairy nat! this is what i call a bad picture! haha!

And every little kid gets to go home with a set of wings and wand!!! such a sight! all the little fairies running ard!! (shh!! i got my own set too... i requested after the party! HAHA!)

Shot with my own cam: (after using SLR, i realise how slow my camera is to capture the human expression)

The food

Cute sandwiches for the kids!

"Wand" fruits!!

Little birthday wishes from nat's friends. Wand and hairband belongs to cute nat. Our little fairy abandoned her gear! Haha!

her fairy-heartshaped- train- grapes- strawberry cake. I always imagine it as a messy disastrous cake everytime little nat describes to me what her dream cake is. I am glad the baker is much more imaginative and creative than i am! haha! Little cupcakes were made by her friend's mum!

Hmm... wanted to show more pics of the little kids and their beautiful body art but i reckon better nt. Wait the kid's parents come and sue me for putting their kids pics online!
Sorry!

I really really wan a SLR!!!! but i think i need to learn more abt it first! the lenses and how to use it....also.. the $$!!!!! ANyone wanna sponser?!!!

Korean Restaurent - Togi

2007-12-28T10:47:00.000+08:00

Finally, manage to try out some place new since i started on my new job. My colleague brought me to this korean restaurent called 'Togi' at Mosque Street. This colleague of mine studied Korean Language in Korea for a year plus. So the place she brought me confirm sure will be authentic korean.

Of course, we left the food recommendation and ordering to her. Its so interesting to see her conversing with the lady boss in korean! hehe! Dun worry! You dun have to noe how to speak korean to order. Lady boss noes english and their workers seem to mostly be from China. No language barrier there for me. heez!

After ordering, we were each served some clear soup and barley tea. My colleague sae the soup taste like the one she had when she was studying back in korea.

N of course, we were served with all the little side dishes!! the cabbage kimchi not so nice though we feel. abit sour. the rest are good!

This was absolutely good!!! only 10 bucks only!! its call "ttok ppok ki" in korean! its like korean 'nian gao' (rice cakes) fry with "ramen" (instant noodles to me... haha)!! Love it!! very nice!! Very filling!

N this!! I've heard abt this and been wanting to try it out for a long time! Its korean's cold noodles! Can you see the ice cubes in the soup?! I have seen this on 'Dynamic Korea'!
Interesting right? Have u eaten anything that is icy cold?!
I heard some colleague ate this previously and stomach cannot take it so end up having diahorrea. Oppz!
See the 3 white slices on the side? its pear! nice sweet pear! haha!

The noodles - closed-up view! We were sharing! heez! The soup was salty and light. You gotta add some mustard into in and it taste really nice! I dun like the beef much but the noodles were very very chewy!! ("Q")! But becareful, dun slurp in too fast! abit slippery! wait get choke! haha!
My colleague mentioned the cold noodles here not very fantastic. She had better.

My other colleague's bibimbap! I din eat so I cannot comment! But only 10 bucks too!! Worth it leh! Considering all the side dishes we had. Refillable somemore. Better than eating at food court where the beef is measley and so is the kimchi!!

And I end this post with a lovely pic i took of a small flower which some1 picked on the roadside for me.. Zzzz... HAHA!

My new hp camera not bad hor?