New hopes and wishes for the New Year!

Looking forward to the New Year - 2009!

• Continue to spend time with my family and friends
• including Xiao Hei and Xiao Bai, my Raku dinner wiff Evon
• Cooking more exciting dishes and blogging about them
• Diligently practice Pilates at home i hope!
• Working with my best friend
• Spring cleaning for the Chinese New Year
• Enjoy my 1 week break before i start on my new job
• Travel to new destinations!
• Start on a new hobby sewing maybe?
• Make babies
• Try meditation

Stir-fry pork with sichuan vegetable

Stir-fried some lean pork strips with sichuan vegetables for dinner last evening. Simple and quick dish!

My husband likes it =D and polished it off with some rice

Ingredients

Lean pork, cut into strips

1/2 packet of sichuan vegetable (bought those that come ready in strips in small packets )

Sesame seeds, to sprinkle over the dish when its done

Garlic, minced

Chilli (optional)

1 -2 tbsp Vegetable oil, which is slightly more than my usual to prevent the meat from sticking together

Dark soy sauce

Light soy sauce

Cornstarch

Pepper

Sugar

Hua Tiao wine

Method

1. Marinade the lean pork strips with light soy sauce, sugar, pepper and cornstarch

2. Heat oil and stir-fry the minced garlic

3. Add-in the lean pork strips and stir-fry

4. Add-in the sichuan vegetable (and some cut chilli if you like)

5. Add the dark soy sauce, hua tiao wine and sugar to taste

6. Sprinkle sesame seeds over the dish when its done and serve

Xiao Bai's little butt sticking out from the toilet roll core while zzz-ing

I want to be a Pottery Barn kid!

Chanced upon this website: Pretty Little Things

This is my kind of thing! Then i went on to discover the Pottery Barn kids website...and Land of Nod...would so love to own some of these sheets and bedding and the dollhouse bookcase! I would love to be in this line as well creating such girly and dreamy works with my hands and bringing things to life (~^.*)

回顾2008

What have i done in 2008? Any significant events? Let me see...

• My hamster Cuppy passed away
• Two new hamsters Xiao Hei Xiao Bai wow my no. 10th and 11th hamsters
• Discovered the wonders of Nintendo Wii and Ravin Rabbits - see my Wii muscle?
• Discovered also the wonders of Facebook & MSN...better late then never hor?
• Started this blog! And posting of recipes 52 posts and counting!
• Travelled to Perth, Bali and Hokkaido
• Started trying for a baby
• The passing away of my youngest uncle
• Resigned from my current job
• Had a biopsy done
• Attended more funerals than weddings but also welcomed more babies been buying tons of kids stuff!
• Saw the value of my investments drop?
• My green fingers husband started our garden
• Spent more time with my family and friends =D
• Put on some fats around my tummy? kept waiting for them to disappear but alas! still had to buy new jeans
• My husband passed 2 of his papers!! Woo hoo!

Karaoke - 恰是你的温柔蔡琴？

Had a battle of oldies at the karaoke at the k-box @ Marina Square yesterday...kekeke 蔡琴's 恰是你的温柔 sounded really nice surprisingly when we sang it (using our modern day voice). Even the old SBC days drama theme song 温柔的夜 was sung.

Stay @ Fairmont

My parents had a complimentary nite's stay at the Fairmont which they gave to us and we went on Boxing Day. =D Hee hee and we went on a shopping spree at City Hall and Suntec! Bought 2 tops from a store i liked - Promod and managed to squeezed into a kids (size 14A) jeans at Okaidi. Spent about S$100 on the 3 items, quite a steal!

This is the view from 16th floor, south tower.


Joted down our wished on the white floating balls to be placed at Marina Bay

Xiao Hei giving me the pleading look - it was showertime!

More muffins for Xmas, century egg porridge

More muffins for Xmas! The blueberry ones are more popular with the adults =D ran out of most of the ingredients and muffin cups already...need to stock up and experiment with different fillings!

My husband had a craving for century egg porridge and hence my first attempt at it!

Century Egg Porridge

Ingredients

2 century eggs, shelled and cut into small cubes

Lean pork, cut into strips

1 cup rice

1 handful of glutinous rice (optional)

Water

Light soy

Pepper

Chopped Spring onions

Sliced ginger

Method

1. Marinade pork strip with light soy and pepper

2. Wash rice and glutinous rice, fill water to brim of pot and bring to boil

3. Add sliced ginger, pork strips and century egg and turn down the heat

4. Stir occasionally, with glutinous rice it tends to burn more easily

5. Turn of the fire when the porridge reaches the desired consistency

6. Add light soy or salt to taste

7. Serve with chopped spring onions

Choc chip & raisin muffins

My latest muffin bakeout - Choc chip and raisin muffins were a hit with my nephew Dong Dong, heard from my mother-in-law this morning that he was even licking the bottom of the muffin cups! I have a fan! =D I used the same recipe as the blueberry muffins and just stirred in some Hershey's semi-sweet choc chips and large raisins (pre-soaked in water so that they become plump and moist). By popular demand - will be baking some more for the xmas gathering! Shall spruce it up with some candy on top, ribbons round the muffin cups and stack them up like a Christmas tree!

Went to Jurong Point and wow they have this new Japanese food street! Transports me back to Japan (^.^)

Taking care of my inner self

Ahh...i have neglected my inner self...letting it get lost in a whirl of thoughts and constantly jumping from one thought to another...my overworked mind has taken a life of its own with me gradually losing control over it. I lost the ability to concentrate just on one task over time without realising it, as a consequence of always trying to multi-task. Am i always in a rush? Must i multi-task all the time? Why am i so uncomfortable with doing nothing?

Kinda like when u are surfing the internet, some people concentrate on one window and some open multiple windows. Of course this kan cheong spider belongs to the latter. I can have clothes in the wash, stuff cooking on the stove while i'm watching tv and ironing clothes at the same and throw in nagging/chatting with my husband...no wonder i feel tired all the time.

Came across this website which gave me a new perspective - http://www.successconsciousness.com/
Some of the concentration exercises are really useful (see the free e-books section). Such as counting the number of words in a paragraph in your mind, without using your fingers to point the words out or verbalising it =D Real tough i tell u! Counting backwards from 100 to 1 seemed a lot easier. Shall practice this diligently!!

Braised Chicken Wings (with Cinnamon & Star Anise)

Finally got 2 more key condiments in my kitchen - Cinnamon and star anise! Decided to try using them (my very first attempt!) in making braised chicken wings.


It turned out real nice!
Ingredients
- Chicken wings
- 1 1/2 Cinnamon sticks
- 3-4 Star Anise
- 1/4 cup dark soy sauce
- 1/4 cup light soy sauce
- 1/4 cup rice wine/hua tiao wine
- 3 cloves of garlic
- 3 slices of ginger
- Ground pepper
- 1 small piece of rock sugar
- 1 cup water

Method
- Put all the ingredients except the chicken wings into a pot and bring to a boil
- Put all the chicken wings in when it comes to a boil and lower the fire to a gentle simmer
- Cook till the chicken wings look really 入味

Going to use the leftover sauce to make "Loh Neng" or 卤蛋, yum yum！

I'm in love with this song!

Watch the MTV on youtube! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yt1HHqnbcs
Ok maybe i'm biased, i like 林峰。

Flipside of being a Libra

The symbol for Libra is a pair of scales...and this pair of scales drives me nuts when i over-analyse things, to the extend that all decisions become borderline decisions or weigh the same...why do i have to make things so difficult?! Ai yoh ai yoh - Just do it! And i'm never going to look back! Pls remind me when i'm making my new years' resolutions (^p^). Resigning from a job is like breaking up with a boyfriend...just cannot bring myself to do it and feeling all sentimental about it when i have already made the decision. Must applaud Evon and my husband for putting up with this want dun want nonsense from me =D

Chicken Cordon Bleu & Blueberry Muffins

Decided to be adventurous last weekend and made a western dinner of Chicken Cordon Bleu with potato salad on the side. The chicken came out really nice and tender and that was despite substituting some ingredients and skipping the ham.

I marinated the chicken thighs earlier with some oyster sauce, mirin and soy sauce. Rolled up a slice of cheese in the chicken thigh, secured the chicken roll with toothpicks, and coated it with oats (instead of breadcrumbs) and pan-fried it lightly before putting it into the oven at 200 degrees for about 25-30 mins.


My favourite blueberry muffins were a great success this time round! =D Absolutely yummy!


Blueberry Muffin Recipe (makes 12)
Ingredients
140 grams butter
3/4 cup white sugar
3 large eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
1 3/4 cups self-raising flour
1 cup of blueberry pie filling
Some roasted sliced almonds

Method
- Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius
- Cream together sugar and slightly softened butter
- Add eggs one at a time, vanilla essence and cream till its fully incorporated
- Fold in sifted flour to the mixture
- Spoon 1 spoonful of the mixture into each of the 12 muffin cups
- Make a well in the centre of the mixture, add in the blueberry pie filling
- Add another spoonful of mixture into each of the muffin cups, covering the blueberry pie filling
- Add roasted almonds on top
- Bake for 25 mins in the middle tray of the oven
- Remove and cool, these muffins can be kept for several days

I need some quality sleep!!

My eyebags are huge...haven't had a good nite's rest since August...yup August...gosh, its has been that long. My over active mind seems to have a life of its own engaging in its countless fantasies. The dreams make me all worned out! I must have tried everything already, avoided coffee, did exercises in the day, drank this drank dat, went to the temple, bathed with pomelo leaves...ai yoh ai yoh. I haven been to the doc's yet, keep thinking that the tiredness will accumulate and i'll just plonk into deep sleep one of these days and break this cycle. Somebody please knock me out!

More eats

My parents brought me to lunch at Foo House Cafe & Bar on Sunday (off 6 Jalan Pari Burong Picardy Garden) opened by an ex-Hyatt chef. They serve nice western and hainanese food at really decent prices and good portions. The must eats are the pumpkin soup (only $3.50 for a nice big bowl) and duck crepe (my mum had this!) I ordered the honey pork ribs...salivating...and Peiming ordered the Irish Lamb Stew with rice

Nice evening sky yesterday! The colours din come out as nice here, the clouds were reddish-pink!

2 funerals and 1 wedding

Attended 2 funerals and 1 wedding in a month...both funerals were for people who passed away suddenly, and i only accepted dats its for real when i attended the wake. Its knowing that for the years to come there'll be more and a wave of fear and sadness washes over BUT you'll also learn to not take the people around you for granted and accept that everyone has to die and that nobody knows when and how. Its hard when u see a face you know appear under the Obituaries section in the papers, i had 4 uncles and 1 aunt (on my mother's side of the family) and now with only 3 uncles. The last time we met together as a family was at my aunt's funeral...

Dinner & Dance 2008

My last D&D - Held at Goodwood Park with the theme "Pink & Blue" with gals in Pink and guys in Blue. The girls looked so pretty in pink but most guys came dressed in not so obvious shades of blue.

I won the 49th prize at the lucky draw, a $50 Robinsons voucher and a bottle of 2005 Celestial Bay red wine! (^-^) Can buy Xmas presents wiff it!

Here's a pic of the gals from my Department and Daniel Ong (Class 98.7 DJ), the MC for the evening and check out my colleague's pink wig!

My colorgenics profile - 24 Nov 2008

Occasionally i like to visit the Colorgenics site when i'm feeling a bit puzzled or confused.
Some parts are rather true for wat i'm feeling right now =)

You appear to others around you as a person who is simply 'laid back'. From time to time you shelve your ambitions and forgo the desire for prestige and recognition and you are often considered as mentally lazy. You have the ability and you are the first to know this, but you prefer to take things easy and indulge your longing for comfort and security.

In the past there have been - and maybe there still are - many things that you have had to do without. You have now decided to set your sights on a position or situation that could give you greater prestige and which will afford you considerable self esteem.

You are very demanding - and insisting on total involvement but you do not reciprocate with the same depth of feeling. However, it could well be that maybe an unprecedented surprise is awaiting you in the near future. For just as one whilst paddling in the sea, could flounder into a whirlpool, so you may be drawn into a loving situation that has high emotional demands - and you could well respond with a depth of emotion that you never even dreamed that you possessed.

Whatever you strive to do, something always seems to be holding you back. There is no subterfuge in you. You are a clear thinker and all you demand from life, in a relationship, is a partner whom you can trust and with whom you can, together, develop a foundation of trust based on understanding. You are your own person and you demand freedom of thought to follow your own convictions. You have no interest in 'two-timing' and all you seek is sincerity and 'straight-dealing'.

You don't like authority and you rebel against all forms of limitation. You are your own person and you intend to stay that way and to get on in the world simply by your hard work and determination.

My itinerary for today

My office closes at 3pm today for the annual Dinner & Dance this evening and to keep ourselves entertained during this time we have opted for:-
3.30pm: Upper body massage @ My Foot Reflexology 40mins for S$30 @ Centrepoint
4.30pm: Express pedicure @ Fave Nails for S$13 @ Centrepoint
probably followed by coffee or tea. Its my first time going to these 2 places so i hope it'll be a real nice treat!
The secretaries are going out in full force to doll up themselves (^.^) whoee wheet!
Hope i'll get a nice lucky draw prize tonight!

CPR!

Was smooching a dummy y'day morning, ahahah...no juicy pics though. The Management Committee of my EC organised a talk and demonstration by the Civil Defence on CPR and the use of the fire extinguisher and i got to try CPR on a dummy! Well it was a female dummy and i had probably "killed" her by miscounting the number of pumps i gave to her heart (supposed to be 30 consecutive times in 1 set) and grabbing her throat. Gosh...wonder how i would react in a real life situation under stress and with so many steps to remember! Some important pointers:-
- Do not administer CPR unless the person is both without a pulse and is not breathing
- Before administering CPR check to ensure that the airways are clear i.e. no foreign objects lodged in the throat, remove any with your index finger
- 995 is for both fire engine and ambulance services - need to specify that ambulance services are needed
=D Was pretty happy that i finally got to learn this life-saving skill!

My husband's green fingers

Look! I got a little garden going on here =) Finally something sprouted and stayed alive...realised that once i start fussing around them they wilt and die on me. I left it to my husband and voila! We've got pandan leaves (real useful!), ginger, pomelo and Mexican Heather. Hee hee and we went to Daiso to get more pots and stuff to decorate spruce it up.

Catching up

Lots of catching up to do! Been busy for the past few weeks and couldn't find the time to blog...kekeke partly attributable to the new Nintendo Wii set in our living room.

Dinner @ Ma Maison at Bugis Junction, our all-time favourite restaurant. We had scallop carpaccio, beef stroganoff and a caramel pudding (no sharing of this one! had to have 1 each!).
Lunch with Evon at Canele Patisserie at City Hall =) we had tomato and crab pasta, seafood doria (baked rice) and a slice of Le Royale cake!

My sweet hamsters

My 2 female hamsters are super sweet to one another (^_^) such a joy to observe them interacting with one another and enjoying each other's company...相亲相爱...is there room for 1 more? - me?

Pics from my birthday week!

My last birthday treat was lunch at Whitebait & Kale at Camden - where Evon and i had whitebait for appetizers (super yum!), snapper pie (real real huge) and kurobuta pork loin. We din have any space left for dessert (^.^)


Home cooked one-dish meals - Rice cooked with mushrooms, bamboo shoots and chicken & chicken porridge, simple dishes to clean out the palate

Chicken porridge
Ingredients
- 1 cup of rice (enough for 2 persons)
- 3 pieces of chicken thigh (fats removed)
- Sliced ginger
- Chopped spring onions
- Water
Steps
- Boil rice, water and ginger slices together in a pot
- Add in chicken thigh and simmer on medium/low heat
- Remove cooked chicken thighs and shred them
- Ladle porridge out into a bowl, top with shredded chicken and spring onions

Rice cooked with mushrooms, bamboo shoots and chicken
Ingredients
- 1 cup of rice (enough for 2 persons)
- 3-4 pieces of chicken thigh (fats removed) and cut up into big chunks
- Sliced ginger
- 2 cloves of garlic
- Half a can of bamboo shoots (i used Ma Ling brand), cut into big chunks
- 5 dried black mushrooms, soaked in water, halved with stem removed
Marinade
- Dark soya sauce
- Oyster sauce
- Pepper
- Sugar
- Sesame oil
Steps
- Marinade chicken and soaked mushrooms (i left it to marinade overnight)
- Using the rice cooker, put the uncooked rice, water, bamboo shoot, garlic, ginger, chicken, mushrooms and the marinade all in to cook

New vocabulary

Been picking up on some of my niece's vocab...my favs are "nonsense" and "alrite"!

non·sense
play_w2("N0145800")
(nnsns, -sns)
n.
1. Words or signs having no intelligible meaning: a message that was nonsense until decoded.
2. Subject matter, behavior, or language that is foolish or absurd.
3. Extravagant foolishness or frivolity: a clown's exuberant nonsense.
4. Matter of little or no importance or usefulness: a chatty letter full of gossip and nonsense.
5. Insolent talk or behavior; impudence: wouldn't take any nonsense from the children.
adj.
Genetics Of or relating to a mutation in a structural gene that changes a nucleotide triplet into a stop codon, thus prematurely terminating the polypeptide chain during protein synthesis.

Adj.
1. alright - nonstandard usage
satisfactory - giving satisfaction; "satisfactory living conditions"; "his grades were satisfactory"
Adv.
1. alright - without doubt (used to reinforce an assertion); "it's expensive all right"
all right
2. alright - an expression of agreement normally occurring at the beginning of a sentence
all right, fine, OK, very well
3. alright - in a satisfactory or adequate manner; "she'll do okay on her own"; "held up all right under pressure"; (`alright' is a nonstandard variant of `all right')
O.K., okay, all right
colloquialism - a colloquial expression; characteristic of spoken or written communication that seeks to imitate informal speech

My last birthday as a twenty-something

My birthday started off with a series of sms-es from some really dear and sweet friends, such a nice way to begin a day! (^.^)v Zipped through tons of stuff at work this morning and made it on time to have lunch with my mum and her old friend for a lunch at Equinox - the semi-buffet was quite a spread with foie gras, oysters, sri lanka crab, sashimi and an array of desserts and ice-creams! Took the rest of the day off and came back home to cook chicken porridge for dinner with my husband =p looking forward to my lunch treat from Evon tomorrow - the last of the birthday celebrations hee hee

My obsessive compulsive hamsters

(^.^) My hamsters have been obsessing with this toilet roll core for a while, really determined to shred and claw it to bits...must feel really shiok to peel the inner linings off bit by bit and adding the shreds to their bedding


Been feeling real stuffed from all the big meals i have been eating lately so i have reduced the portions of my home-cooked dinners these days:-
Steamed Fish Rolls with Lap Cheong and Rice for Tues and Buns stuffed with fried pork slices with ginger and onions last nite

Preparing the fish rolls needed a fair bit of work, but they turned out rather nice so it was worth the effort!

Ingredients
Dory Fish fillet
Chinese black mushrooms
Preserved Sichuan vegetable
Carrot
Spring onions
Ginger - grated
Sauce: Woh Hup Steamed Fish Sauce, Vinegar, Sugar


Cooking Oil
Method
Slice and marinate dory fish fillet with a bit of pepper, salt and rice wine
Slice soaked Chinese mushroom, carrots and spring onions thinly
Roll mushroom, carrots and preserved sichuan vegetable in the dory fish fillet
Grate some ginger over the fish rolls
Steam over boiling water on high heat for approx 6-8 min
Pour the Sauce over the fish rolls when cooked
Place spring onions over the steamed fish rolls
Heat 1 tbsp of cooking oil in a wok and drizzle over the spring onions when hot (u should hear a sizzling sound)