Valentine's Day 2011 Degustation Menu

So I planned this menu specially for Valentine's day!

Shared the menu with some of my friends and no one told me abt the spelling mistakes haha.

So with the exception of the Cream of Mushroom, which I bought from Heinz (and it was really nice!), I made the rest of the items myself.
Will share them in the next few entries.

Have a good vday celebration!

Happy New Year!

CNY is almost coming to an end. It was visiting and non-stop eating for us, and of cos, Ang Bao giving period.

Anyway, we went Ah Yat Abalone for lo hei on the 6th day of CNY. I must say, the food was really good. So hopefuly, we huat this rabbit year!


Ah Yat at Hotel Grand Pacific, the old Allson Hotel. Still old though.

Roast piglet. Yums.

Sharks' Fin. 

Lo Hei! Huat Ah!

We had a 8 course meal I think. It was so filling. Love the effects of my pictures? I took all these with my iphone and used instagram to achieve these effect. I'm so hooked to it now.

I also prepared a 5 course valentine's day dinner for the hubby last evening, Shall put it up shortly!

Bintan Agro Beach Resort

Was looking through my list of food photos which I'm supposed to upload, I found some from Bintan! In sep, before hubby changed his job, we went for a short trip. In order to avoid the crowd at Nirwana and Bintan Lagoon, I opted for Bintan Agro Beach Resort. It's a pretty painless affair to book the package from http://bintanspavilla.com/packages.html as they were based in Singapore.

I took package C, a sweet memory package which includes ferry tickets, land transfer, 2 nights accomodation, 150 mins spa, poolside candlelight dinner with an additional upgrade to Blue Ocean Suite. The full package costs us $656 for 2 pax and payment was made via bank transfer and within days, my trip was confirmed. There was no need to go down to the agency at all. Internet really made life so much easier.


Agro Beach resort has 2 other sister resorts, Cabana and Yasin Bunglows. Agro seems to be the more popular one. I wouldn't say it's crowded, in fact there's probably less than 10 rooms occupied when we were there! It's was nice and quiet, most likely due to the fact that we went there from Thur to Sat. The suite we got were simple, very simple but clean and a nice view of the ocean. The resort has been around for a while, so some of the stuffs were pretty old.

We had fun snorkelling though!! I bought a digipac to place my camera so that we could take photos underwater, and it worked really well.

Anyway, food was good too! We went to the Sun Moon Restaurant (and it has no affiliations with the one in SG), food was not to expensive and it's really nice.

Some pics I took. The Dragonfruit juice. It was fresh dragonfruit jucie and the 1st time I tried. It wasn't too bad.

Fried Rice, their specialty. Don't belittle this small simple plate, it was really good. Still drooling over it now.

Weather was cold, so we ordered tom yam soup. This was not too bad as well, just the right amount of spicyness.

The prawns were nice and fresh, maybe cos they were pretty near the sea? All in all, the meal was actually quite cheap and affordable.

All in all, it was a good trip to rest and relax. Looking forward to the next trip to Bintan in Feb with hubby's friends!

Happy New Year!

It's the start of the year! So much has happen last year, and the year flew by just like that. This year, I hope to be less irritated by people who keep asking hinting about babies and people who keeps saying relating rich to me. Seriously, I think I should update my status less often on facebook!

So that was just some rant on the 1st day of work.

Less of rants and more on the happy stuffs, I have tons of photos waiting to be uploaded. Gosh, I can feel really lazy at times.

While I work on that post, Have a good year ahead!

Staycation at Changi Village Hotel

Merry Christmas!

We had our early christmas celebration at Changi Village Hotel 1 week before Christmas. Took a 3D2N package with Executive suite for about $400nett, so it came with access to the executive lounge, with free flow of drinks and evening cocktails.

The lounge was filled with the Shopaholic Series which I love! I didn't read them cos I have the whole range at home. I love the infinity pool! Blame it on my good friend who came to visit, so I didn't get to use the pool at all.

We stayed on the same level as the executive lounge and had a really cool ocean view from the room. The bathroom was quite unique with the see through glass window. I only realised that we can pull down the window screen for privacy on the 2nd day. :p

Spent 2 hours cycling along changi beach, pass the long stretch of road where you race with the airplanes. It was really fun, but tiring since we haven't been cycling for so long.

Ordered Room service. It was really nice for a rainy afternoon. Yes, it rained really heavily after cycling, luckily we were already back in the hotel.

The last day was spent slacking around in the room, before we checked out.

The overall experience was ok I guess, the Wifi is really weak, even the hotel staffs said so. The air con was really cold, somehow, we off the aircon and slept through the first night. (A good friend said cos it's haunted. :p) I hope to stay at Hotel Quincy the next time, also under the Far East Group.

How was your staycaytion experience?

Tea and Desserts

Recently, 2 good friends and myself celebrated early christmas at Jewels Artisan Chocolate, located at Orchard Central. We ordered a tea set and had fun bitching, enjoyin tea on a saturday weekend and listening to music from the Lush 99.5 studio just beside us.



We exchanged our christmas presents and all of sudden, the servers came and sprang a surprise on me with a birthday song! That was ultimately sweet of them. Of cos, I'm sure my friends must have planned it in advanced.

Left the place feeling real sweet, it's one place that I will go back again. I love the afternoon tea set, had my favourite Earl Grey Tea. Although it wasn't as good as Coffee Bean's but I love the desserts. One more tea place to add to my favourite list.

Steamed D.O.M Chicken

 

My mum, knowing that I was on leave, gave me some 2 Chicken Thighs and 2 Chicken Wings so I could prepare the for dinner. Took me really long to decide what kind of chicken dish until I came across this D.O.M recipe from Noob Cook. It was real easy to prepare and not forgetting that I have this bottle of D.O.M that I was trying to find ways to finish it.

I followed the recipe and forgot about the sesame oil until 45 mins later! -_- However, I must say that, even without the sesame oil, it smelled really nice, so I added sesame oil, hoping it wouldn't be too late. I steamed the chicken for slightly more than 1 hour, and it was really nice, however, it was a tad too sweet, I suspect that I threw in too much wolfberries. The hubby likes it though. :)

I used water for my version as I was lazy to prepare any stock. There's no mushrooms in my chicken too, cos I hate mushrooms. :) As for the ginger, I shredded them, tried my very best to squeeze out this little bit of juice and threw in all the ginger into the dish as well.

So, here's the recipe.
 Ingredients
(Serves 2)
2 large chicken thighs
3 tbsp DOM (D.O.M) Benedictine liquor (法国廊酒)
1 tbsp ginger juice (grate the ginger, take the ginger pulp and squeeze out the juice)
5 tbsp water
1 tbsp wolfberries
10 red dates
1/2 tbsp sesame oil

Directions
1. Place the chicken thighs into a wide and deep plate. Line the bottom of the vessel with sliced mushrooms, reserving some to top the chicken.
2. Add in ginger juice, D.O.M, water/stock, sesame oil, wolfberries and red dates.
3. Cover the vessel with a lid or seal tightly with aluminium foil and cook the chicken on high heat until the water at the steamer is boiling.
4. Lower down the heat and continue to cook for about 40-50 minutes.
5. Add salt to taste if required.

Mummy also gave me some French Beans, so I made French Beans in XO Sauce. :p

What Boredom Can Do To You?

I'm officially bored. It's another 1.5 hours before my leave starts. And I've been surfing the whole day. And I thought, since I'm so free, I might as well update and try to revive my blog.

Changing the layout cos it's boring!

Afresh

Ever since I started on my new job, I haven't really been busy. :p
But, because the hubby started his new job, which is at the other end of the island, we tend to go home really late, have dinner outside and weekends are reserved for sleeping in, and cleaning the house.

There's a hiatus in between because my old laptop crashed. I had so much photos inside waiting to be uploaded! It's not going to happen though. :(

That said, it's really disappointing, as I have not touched the oven for 5 months! I hope to be able to do some updates soon. My hands are itching, and the bar of cheese from my cottony cheesecake is still in the fridge. :p
I should really do something these 2 days since I'm going on leave. Time to move my butt! 

iPhone Addict

For someone who used to hate iphone because it's so selfish, I must confess that I'm heavily addicted to iphone! Blame it on the long ride to office, I need at least 1 hour, after taking a bus to bukit batok, taking the train, changing the train at Jurong East and walk for 8 mins to my office. iphone is like my entertainment, sometimes, I watch TV, read scary chinese novels, surf net. Now, I'm playing with my Megu pet, it tweets! At the same time, make sure i have food in my bakery and also no one is bored on christmas island!

I have been reading my old posts, my old blogs, so much has happened, and 1 month after my 29 birthday, I'm not sure whether I have been more matured after all these years. 1 year after the wedding, I was surprised it flew by that fast. So much has happened the past 1 year. The pregnancy, the job, the trips.  


The unfortunate baby would have been at least a month old now. I'm still sad and I still miss the baby, but I guess God will bring him/her back once the time is right.


On the job, there's never a perfect job. The irritating girl aside, my job is almost there. Flexible. My boss is usually not around. Though I really hate writing papers about how African can use Europe as an example to ride on the benefits of ICT, it gave me the platform to do something on my own, no irritating people 'marking' my papers, and yes, my boss is so much more appreciative. I get to come to work and leave work on time too. I get to travel.
My only gripe is that toot's new job requires him to leave for work earlier, and end work late. So, I ended up reaching home late, I don't even cook that often now.


The good news is, we bought a Volkswagen Polo Sport 1.2 TSI. You may think we are crazy to buy a car when COE is so high, but we don't get to drive Father's car anymore and COE is going to increase anyway. I do hope we can get the COE bidding by the next round though.
Next year, when our punggol house is ready, I hope things get better. Travelling time gets slower.

Wedding life has been good so far, there wasn't a lot of changes, I guess travelling together and staying together over the weekend prior to the wedding was a good opportunity to understand each others' habits so that we don't get a shock. It's been a fast year, hopefully there are many more to come.


On friends, things have changed, people are no longer who they are. It's normal, cos we grow, our priorities change. Although sometimes, I find that I don't even know them or understand their rationale anymore. I wouldn't say it's because I got matured after the wedding. We probably have moved to different spectrum of the universe.
 
toot says I expect too much, but if I'm married and I can put in certain efforts, I don't see why the others can't. Sometimes, one just take friendship for granted, it's unavoidable, but it's really hard for me to accept. Maybe I really have high expectations. I can only be nonchalant about it, since everyone does the same. 


But still, I have found good friends over the last 2 years. I never thought I would have find them at such an age. They may not have seen me grown up, but somehow, we match on a certain level. And at the end of the day, you need to put in efforts to maintain a relationship. I'm happy there are still people who understand me, who don't think I'm throwing a tantrum or making a big fuss, and most importantly, appreciates me for being there.

With the new year, I hope to stay happy. Be less pissed with things and people. That's All I want, really. Somehow, I'm so looking forward to 2011. :p