Free Cone Day & Resorts World

Hubby informed us of the 'free cone day' by Ben & Jerry's which was held yesterday islandwide. It's an annual affair and even though I've known about it for a few years now, I have never gone for it. I hate long queues. Well, blame me for being in the 'fun' mood still, a spillover from the school holidays, so I decided to take the princess to Vivo after she came home from school. Needless to say, she was very excited about it. And while we were there, I had this sudden inspiration to hop across the island over to Sentosa to breathe in the Resorts World air. ;P

Despite the mega long queue @ B & J's, everything was handled so professionally and went so smoothly, that we got our cones within half an hour. They kept us occupied while we were waiting, by giving us word puzzles to fill out as part of a contest to win tickets to Vermont, USA. I managed to get most of the answers except the last two which were really tricky, thus I didn't bother to join the contest. I never have luck with them anyway. :(

When it came to our turn, princess chose the healthy mango sorbet while I opted for the new flavour called 'a cookie affair'. There were a total of about 5 flavours to choose from. I quite liked the flavour except that the ice-cream melted too quickly. Princess' one was ok. I had to eat real fast to prevent it from dripping all over my hand.

However, one thing put me off. While peeling off the paper from the cone, bits of paper were stuck and when I tried to remove them, I felt sticky glue all over the side of the cone which was really disgusting. It's the first time I've ever had problems with cone. Imagine if I had to pay for it. Well, of course I would have gone to get my money back but since I had walked quite a distance away, I didn't bother to complain. Princess' cone had the same problem so I believe it's not a one-off case. The next time you eat a cone at B & J's, do watch out for that. Poor princess was made to throw out the remainder of the cone after finishing off her ice-cream. The picture belows shows the paper bits and the area where glue was.

After our ice-cream, we took the train over to Sentosa. There wasn't really that much of a crowd there, much to my surprise.

We finally have our very own amusement park! Being there and soaking in the air, and being shut out by the barriers really makes one want to enter it. I would like 2 fun passes please... ok, in my dreams, but I will work on it. I know hubby hardly refuses my requests hehe, right hubs? ;)

This was all we could see from the outside - the main street. Princess was moody. We will try to get in soon, I promise, darling. :D

For more on our visit to Resorts World, check out my next post.

Lunch with friends

One day last week, I believe it was on a Thursday, two friends and I were supposed to meet in town for lunch. However, at the last minute I had to wait for the arrival of some computer chairs, thus I decided to invite the girls over instead. I wasn't sure what food to prepare for them and the bff said she felt like having either a solid hamburger from Wendy's or The Handburger, failing which, she'd settle for Japanese food. I don't make a mean burger so the next best was Japanese food which was right up my alley. :P I'm not saying I make great Japanese food, but it's much easier than a burger any day!

I served the meal in very pretty disposable containers which I bought from Daiso. I went to the wet market that morning and picked up a few pieces of fresh salmon which I cooked with teriyaki sauce. I used ready CP tornedo prawns which were so yummy and so convenient. I picked up a packet of California maki and made a fruit stick with sun melon, strawberries & blueberries. I also made a side salad and drizzled some goma salad dressing over. To comply with bff's wishes (I was making up for her birthday Monday past), I added mini burgers to the bentos. As I didn't manage to find any fatty minced beef, I decided to pick up some fresh English breakfast sausages and squeezed out the stuffing and made them into patties. I am embarrassed to say that the salmon turned out a little undercooked and a little pink in the middle but nobody complained and every one's plate was empty at the end of the meal. That is the greatest compliment one can ever get. :) We had a surprise guest who decided to join us at the last minute but thankfully there was more than enough rice, etc to go around.

This is princess' portion - she didn't eat the burger, I did. :)

This was specially made for the princess as she loves cha soba. What she gets from the Japanese stall in school is only soba. Yes, they have a Japanese stall in school! Isn't she ever-so lucky??

This organic tofu is my favourite choice whenever I make cold tofu. It is so smooth and it just glides down the throat. Love it! Unfortunately I wasn't prepared and forgot to pick up some bonito flakes to garnish it with.

Bff brought along a little gift of 'Black as Chocolate" ice-cream, all the way from Taiwan. Her cousin-in-law is a partner in this cake business and she sometimes brings goodies when she comes home for a visit. Lucky us get to try this. Read more about them here.

What lovely packaging.

The box comes with a spoon. How thoughtful, you can eat on the go, but I think the portion is too big for one person.

Look at all the yummy chocolate bits!

Verdict - I thought it was yummy with all the little bits of chocolate. Princess of course loved every bit of it, but hubby thought it was only so-so, as it was not creamy enough for him.

Random things

Here's Santa at one of the road corners in Orchard.

Love this little reindeer dressed up as a tree. For more reindeer photos, check out Peony's blog.

Ahh... I've been looking for these too cute ice-cream sticks since the time I spotted them at bff's home. It was during Halloween. I didn't have much luck till last week when I saw them advertised in the papers.

I remember having something similar to this when I was young. Super cute, don't you think?

Fish farm

Had a lovely afternoon with cousin and nephew. We've not seen each other in months and it was great to catch up. Both the kids were excited and looking forward to the outing. We had lunch at Ikea Tampines and then left the two of them to have fun in the play area for an hour while the both of us went shopping. It's been ages since I last set foot in Ikea and I even bumped into an ex-choirmate. :) She was relaxing, having sent her girl off to school, and having lunch and enjoying her free time. How nice. :D

After the play hour was up, cousin drove us to a nearby fish farm to feed the koi. She bought a packet of fish food for $3 and we went about to all the individual ponds feeding them. It was great fun for our city kids. :) We even had a fright once when a little black fish jumped out of the water in greed and found itself in trouble. We had to get help from one of the staff there who took a big scoop and hoisted the poor fish back into the pond. :)

From there, nephew had to proceed to swim class so we were given a lift to Parkway where we had a light dinner and then I promised princess I would give her an ice-cream treat, to make up for being a bad mummy and accidentally closing the car door on her tiny fingers. :(

So she asked to try the durian one but didn't like it. In the end she picked chocolate after testing like 3 flavours! And I was attracted to this avocado which was really nice. Decided to get a scoop of it for myself to enjoy. ;)

Chocolate Ice-Cream

Was blog hopping when I came across small small baker's recipe for homemade ice-cream. Following all her links & feedback from those who made it, I discovered it was real easy to make some ice-cream at home, without any need for an ice-cream maker. Now, with all this contaminated food business going on (even ice-creams are not spared), I decided to try it out. At least I know what is going in our tummies, and melamine sure isn't one of the ingredients (or so, I hope).

As I did changes to the original recipe, I thought it'd be easier to just type it out here -

Ingredients -

3 egg yolks
50g sugar
45g dutch-processed cocoa powder
50g Nestle 'Go" chocolate milk
200g milk (I didn't have full cream on hand, so used low fat that was in fridge)
250g whipping cream (I used Phoon Huat's whipped topping)
4 pieces of Chipsmore Double Choc Chip cookies, broken into pieces (optional)

Method -

1. Whisk egg yolks and sugar till white and creamy.
2. Double boil the egg yolk mixture and stir constantly. Pour in cocoa powder, and milk, and continue stirring until mixture is hot but not boiling.
3. Remove the milk mixture from heat and set aside to cool. (I plonked the bowl in a basin of water to quicken the cooling down process)
4. Whisk whipping cream till fluffy and fold in the cooled milk mixture. Fold in chocolate chip cookies
5. Pour into container and freeze overnight or until firm.

N.B. Kids came over for a playdate and when realised there was ice-cream, insisted on eating them. 2-1/2hrs after storing in fridge, it wasn't very hard, but rather the sides were and the middle was soft, still they wanted and it tasted like chocolate pudding. Haha. By evening, it had hardened but I found water crystals. Could it be because I 'disturbed' it while it was freezing or maybe I should have fluffed it during the freezing process? Overall, is a good & easy recipe. Great base to experiment with different flavours. The ice-cream was a lovely bitter, not too sweet. Reason I cut down lots on sugar was because the chocolate milk and whipped cream were sweet.