A birthday gift

I made these two bentos for a friend's kids. It was meant to be a birthday gift for her girl, but I didn't get to meet her till a week after the day. I'm glad the kids were thrilled with them.

For CJ, I coloured her rice a shade of pink. The seaweed stood out against the light background and you can actually see it looked like an elephant. There were cherry tomatoes, a piece of seaweed chicken, baby corn, and some edamame on a pick resting on a bed of lettuce.

In the bottom compartment, there is broccoli, a fierce-looking Doraemon fishcake, and a lobster fishball. To finish off the meal, there was a packet of chocolate, a gummy worm, and some sweets.

JD had the same things except that his rice was coloured a greenish shade (I was going for a grey look but did not have the appropriate seasoning). JD's little elephant didn't stand out that well.

These were made in February but I had forgotten all about them till I was transferring photos out this morning. Stay tuned for another bento post coming right up.

The bestie's birthday

The bestie shares the same birthdate as princess. I had planned to celebrate for the two of them by taking them both to a lovely lunch. However, since the poor child was ill for her birthday, I had to rush out these cuppies. Had planned to do them anyway, but there was no motivation to kickstart the process till the very last minute. Most of the decor was made 2 days in advance. The thought was there, but the execution took a lot of effort. I just had to surprise her!

I found a courier service that said they do delivery of cakes but when I called them up, they said they only did frozen cakes. Oh well, I had to send them personally to her. I had hoped for a much more 'wow' factor.

I'm not very creative and if friends have received cuppies from me, they will realize it's usually the same few designs haha. This one, however, has a wannabe Kate Spade tote that she was eyeing, as well as a pretty present all wrapped up.

I'm missing her now, but I know she is having a fun time in HKG. And she'll be back tomorrow! How fast the week has flown by. Can't wait to see what goodies she has bought. :)

11111 + School bento #1

This is my very first post of the year 2011. But of course, the date's been rigged. How could I not take advantage of this date to remember my girl's very special birthday. :P The year has started off not too well, with the princess being sick. It all started with a high fever on 9 Jan. She woke up with a grouchy face and I asked her what was the matter. She refused to answer me at first but later said that she wasn't feeling well. We took her temperature and it registered high, somewhere around 38-39deg C.

I wanted to cheer her up, so while I was out to run errands, got her a cake from Four Leaves (she had requested for a strawberry cake for her birthday but I had no time or energy to bake her one). I had ordered Jewelpets icing a few days earlier thus I decided to improvise on the store-bought cake by decorating it with the sheets. It turned out a success except that I should have placed the sheets on just before serving the cake, as they had started to sag in the 3hrs the cake was left to sit in the fridge. But at the end of the day, it was still a joy for her to see her favourite pets greeting her on top of her favourite cake. :)

For this new school year, I made her 2 bentos. On the first week of school, this was what she got... a mini bagel with ham roll and a slice of cheddar, strawberries and a cherry tomato.

Happy birthday princess. Get well soon!

Cuppies for a special friend and updates

Hello everyone, I'm back! Not sure how long I will stay, though. Over the past month, it's been crazy preparing for Princess' final year exams. I'm glad it's all over, a weight has been lifted off my mind and shoulders. I'm happy that the hard work paid off, and she improved in her weakest subject. I'm glad that I made the right decision in sending her for enrichment class after her dismal results at mid year.

In between exams, I took time out to make some cuppies for a good friend of mine for her birthday. I'm happy that she liked them. There were a few more that I made, but I need to find the photos for them.

I also stopped making bentos. Just lost the interest for making them. Hope to regain it again soon. I did make a simple one for school one morning. In the bento was a ham and cheese sandwich, some homemade croutons, a box of Smarties, cubed dragonfruit and a cherry tomato.

Yhing Thai Palace

Just realized I have loads of photos on my iPhone which have not been transferred onto the Mac. They were taken at some of the eating establishments we visited over the past weeks. Yhing Thai Palace was from my birthday dinner with my dad, and I had forgotten about it. However, the photos in the next 3 posts are not very sharp due to them being taken on my phone.

Love the setting of one of my favourite Thai restaurants. I remember patronising them when they had a small shop in Kallang Leisure Park during the old days, way before it was torn down to be built as what it is today. Back when Palm Beach seafood restaurant was their neighbour and the entire mall was always packed with theatre-goers from the nearby Kallang Theatre as well as the football fans from the National Stadium. My father and I are very particular about rice and the feel of it in our mouths. We love them chewy and not mushy or too soft. We like those that you can taste each and every grain. The rice here was of a superior quality and had a lovely fragrance and it was simply special, but we couldn't pinpoint exactly what it was. It was our favourite rice as far I knew.

The small portion of green curry chicken which wasn't enough for the 6 of us, thus we ordered a second portion. The serving portions were really small but I didn't complain as we had a very big lunch and I couldn't stuff more food in even if I wanted to.

Sambal long beans with prawns. Delicious!

Ok I have forgotten the name of this fish dish. It comes with a 3-flavour sauce.

Stirfried baby kailan. Princess loves this very simple crunchy dish.

Thai fishcake.

Thai Otah. I've always loved how they serve it.

Red rubies, jackfruit and palm fruit in a coconut base. Nothing special about this. More ice than anything else.

Mango with glutinous rice. We had 2 servings.

Lei Garden, Orchard

I spent a lovely afternoon with hubby and princess eating and shopping. Hubby took us out to lunch at one of my favourite dim sum restaurants. However, I find that the food isn't fantastic now, and the staff were really pushy. There were like 3 menus to choose from, and the minute we sat down, we were 'pushed' to go for a soup dish. You really need to be very firm in what you want. We opted for the dim sum dishes which was what we were there for in the first place. But before I could even go through the dim sum menu, another lady came along and asked if we wanted to order soup. Again! They tried to 'push' their specialties, set menus etc. It got pretty annoying after a while, and with the princess being a bit hyper, it was getting on my nerves. We stuck to dim sum and 3 dishes from the main menu, and even with those, we were stuffed to the max. Of course dessert was a must.

I don't know what was with the girl yesterday, she was all over the booth seats, couldn't sit still, and I hadn't even given her any sugar! Hubby and I were discussing it later, and realized it could be because exams were over. Kids can't tell you, but I guess they show it through their actions. Their stress has been released so I guess it was a great weight off their minds. Could it be?

Apologies for poor photo quality as photos were taken with my iphone. I don't usually use cameras in restaurants. In order of appearance...

Siew Mai & Har Gow. A must as hubby loves these.

Cheong fun with char siew. Ok, hubby doesn't touch this. He doesn't like tasteless food, which is how he describles cheong fun, chwee kueh, tofu. I loved the cheong fun. It had great skin, not the mushy ones that make you feel sick after polishing off a plate.

Fried radish cake was ordinary.

Baked cod with some bean sauce. Ordered this for the princess to go with her bowl of plain rice. It was lovely and hubby enjoyed this. He had most of it.

A very unusually shaped ham soi kok or fried glutinous rice flour dumplings with meat and mushroom stuffing.

Sweet and sour pork with pineapple. This was well done, and went very well with the rice.

Lovely crunchy broccoli, not overcooked. I asked for oyster sauce but this seems to be the garlic version. Didn't bother to check with server.

Another favourite of mine after ham soi kok is wu kok, fried yam balls with similar stuffing to the former. I felt the stuffing was a bit on the salty side.

Princess wanted to have these. Nice crunchy, addictive fried silver fish. This came too late, at the end of the meal, and was nearly cancelled. I thought we could have done without this dish as we were quite full by then.

Mango pudding which used to be my favourite dessert here. Somehow I had forgotten the taste of this dessert, but something tells me it is not what it used to be. Maybe I am wrong, or my tastebuds have forgotten but this one feels more like a mango mousse. Thousands of bubbles burst on the tongue with each mouthful. It was a delight but I prefer my mango pudding to have more substance.

After lunch, we made our way to Tangs to look for my pot. I was really happy that they were having specials off the Le Creuset range. There wasn't just the buy 1 @ 20%, 2 @ 30% and 3 @ 50% off normal discounts. There was quite a good selection of reduced price items. I couldn't decide between the red oval pot or the pink 24" round one, but when the sales lady said the antique rose colour was a limited edition range from Japan, it kind of decided for me that I would go for that. I love pink, and it's not too girly a pink for a pot, so it was perfect. I'm in love with it! It was originally $568 but marked down to $284. Happiness!

A special day

I didn't have to do morning 'duty' today. I made sure I was spoiled for the day. ;P Gave instructions to hubby, who had taken the day off, that he was to wake up and send the girl down to the school bus, also on how to prepare her breakfast, etc. Of course, everything had been set up for him, from the filled water bottle (reminder to self - check with girl what happened to her bottle yesterday, did it go missing in school??) right down to getting out a ziplock bag for the sandwich as well as socks for school. I don't wish to be woken in the morning when they start scrambling for those. You know the idiom 'let sleeping dogs lie', well, that is me. I hate to be woken from my sleep for nothing. Coincidentally I was born in the year of the dog, or maybe that's why.

It's a week of feasting, starting on Monday with a treat from a good friend for both of us girls, who have our birthdays in May, a week apart. Thanks S, it was lovely. :) Cousin and bff have reserved dates in my diary for meals with them as well. No escaping haha.

I had to inject some joy to my birthday this year as I find it depressing thinking of how old I am. It cheered me up quite a bit spending quality time with my favourite friends over the weekend. For 2hrs, I tried to block out the presence of the exams that was looming in my mind. I always hated that my birthday fell right smack in the middle of the mid year examinations, and thought that I had finally gotten it out of my system, only to realize that it has come back to 'haunt' me haha.

For this year, I hope to have better health and to be stronger physically. I thank the Lord for the gifts of friendship from those who mean so much to me, the very old friends who have been with me through thick and thin and know me inside out, thank you for your love and grace. The newer friends whom I have come to know in recent years, thank you too, and I hope to have more years of friendship with you all. As my close friends know, friends are the most important people in my life. We may not always have the time to meet or catch up, but know that each and everyone of you is always in my heart and thoughts. :D

I am grateful too for my wonderful husband and lovely daughter who bring much joy to my life. I feel truly blessed and am thankful for their patience with me.

I am going to enjoy my special day and do look forward to the new year ahead for whatever surprises there are in store for me, hopefully good ones. ;)

Enjoy the card. I loved it tremendously and agree with the contents. :) I think all mums will.

The maid thing is what I say many times a day!

An early birthday present

Look what I found at Kinokuniya! Akinoichigo's bento book. So so happy to spy that there.

While out shopping with the princess for erasers last Friday, I was admiring the many varieties of cute collectible erasers available at Takashimaya. She was looking specifically for a dog one and I was commenting on how cute they were. She told me I could pick a set and she'd get me for my present. I told her I didn't want erasers hahaha. She said I could buy anything I liked, so I asked her for a budget. She told me $20, and that really caught me by surprise. Firstly, I wasn't expecting anything from her and secondly I was surprised by the amount she quoted. It touched me that she was so generous. I tried to bargain it down to $10 as I didn't want her to spend so much. But she was adamant and stuck to the budget, and told me I could buy anything, even clothing hahaha.

In the end, I let her buy me Akinoichigo's bento book since it was my intent to get it. I paid the difference of about $3 for it. Am indeed very happy with the book and princess' sweet gesture. It follows me everywhere I go in the house, haha. It is such a precious gift and I couldn't wait to get to work on my bentos, and this below is one of the few that I just had to do.

I love the little octopus but am very sad that we can't get the wieners that they have in Japan, those two tone ones. The effect of mine is very different from hers but still happy with it. I used leftover rice and meatballs from dinner the night before, from Tori Q. I boiled some young corn and strung them in skewers with the chicken meatballs that the princess loves. There was also golden kiwi and a strawberry. She loved her dinner very much and was very glad to see that I had re-created something from the new book she bought me.

Thank you darling, and I do love my present very much. :D

Happy birthday MS

Little MS is a friend Princess made at swimming class a few years ago. She is a year younger than Princess. Together with HT & his mum, we all hit it off pretty well and even though the kids are no longer learning swimming together, we mums are still very much in touch and we meet up once in a while for breakfast. It will get tougher to meet once HT starts P1 next year.

On the day of MS's birthday, I was chatting with her mum on MSN, and she was telling me she presented MS with a chocolate cake for her breakfast before school. The little girl had a lovely surprise, followed by lunch specially prepared for her by her doting maternal grandma.

I know MS admires the bentos that I make so I wanted to surprise her with one for her birthday but since I only found out about her birthday the morning itself, and she already had lunch plans, I decided to prepare one the day after. I had limited (food) materials to play with. It was a bit tough but thankfully I managed to pull it off and was rather pleased with the end result.

I had forgotten about the alphabet pasta that I had bought in Penang but came across them while I was searching for stuff for the bento. I made the words 'Happy birthday MxxSxxx', but while putting the bento together, there were too many letters to fit in, thus I had to forgo the name.

In the top box, there was plain rice with furikake, sugarbunny carrot, piece of tomato, wanton & chicken karaage. I use a smurfette pasta to decorate the boring brown chicken. In the second box there were tulip strawberries, sugarbunnies Nutella sandwiches, a Ferrero Rocher and 2 pieces of marshmallows. I also made another set for her friend whom MS's mum was babysitting that day.

The girls were delighted with their lunch and sounded very happy when they called to thank me. Am glad I brightened up their day. :D

His special day

It's dear hubby's birthday today and what a better way to celebrate it than have the entire world of Chinese people having a grand party for you! It's reunion night. So I thought it'd be great to make him a cake. I didn't want to do anything too elaborate so I had to rack my brains to come up with something simple to do yet something he likes. My initial plan was to do this. However, it sounded like a lot of work so I shelved it yet again. I browsed the web for a brownie recipe as I am not exactly pleased with the ones I have tried before. I needed a ganache as well and I found them both here. Where better to find them than at a site maintained by the people who make chocolate, right? ;) The result is that I would omit the chocolate chips required in the recipe as it made the brownie too sweet. The brownie base itself is good on its own. I have copied the recipe and saved it here in case it should go missing from the site one day.

Ingredients -

• 3/4 cup HERSHEY'S Cocoa
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 2/3 cup butter or margarine, melted and divided
• 1/2 cup boiling water
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1-1/3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup HERSHEY'S Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips(I would omit)
  
• CHOCOLATE GANACHE(recipe follows)
• Fresh strawberries(optional)

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 350°F (176 deg C). Grease 13x9x2-inch baking pan.

2. Stir together cocoa and baking soda in large bowl; stir in 1/3 cup butter. Add boiling water, stir until mixture thickens. Stir in sugar, eggs and remaining 1/3 cup butter, stir until smooth. Add flour, vanilla and salt; blend completely. Stir in 1 cup chocolate chips. Pour into prepared pan.

3. Bake 35 to 40 minutes or until brownies begin to pull away from sides of pan. Cool completely in pan on wire rack.

4. Prepare CHOCOLATE GANACHE. Pour over brownies. Refrigerate 20 to 30 minutes. Cut into 3-inch squares; cut squares diagonally in half to form a triangle shape. Garnish with fresh strawberry, if desired. Makes 12 brownies.


CHOCOLATE GANACHE: Place 2 cups (12-oz. package) HERSHEY'S Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips and 1 cup whipping cream in microwave-safe bowl. Microwave at MEDIUM (50%) 30 seconds; stir. If necessary, microwave an additional 30 seconds or until chocolate is melted and mixture is smooth when stirred. Makes about 2 cups ganache.

Note - I found that it took more than an hour for ganache to harden. I had used parchment paper to line the tin and when I tried to remove it, the brownie broke into 2 right in the middle. Thankfully and skilfully, I patched it back by spreading the ganache over to cover the crack.

I used tiny hearts to decorate the words and this was done stealthily while hubby was in the bedroom. A real race against time but I did it! The result is beautiful. He never suspected a thing. He only saw the brownie undecorated and asked about it. I just said it was dessert for tonight. ;P

The little hearts decorating it were 'donated' by the princess who had been given these packets of Cinnamoroll cereal which provided the perfect shape. So it was actually a birthday cum Valentine's Day cake. ;) We served it with melted chocolate (ran out of vanilla) ice-cream (melted on the way there) and a piece of strawberry each. Strawberries were very fresh, I got them at NTUC and went back for more as they were really good. They were selling them at $2.85 per punnet.

I have indeed been blessed with a wonderful hubby, one who has no vices (except if you consider spending too much time in front of the pc). He likes the occasional beer though. He is touched by the little things that you do for him, such as a surprise cake, and birthday presents (which he doesn't expect). :P He is 'popular' (not sure if it's for the wrong reason) with everyone and is always the 'go to' guy where electronics or computer-related stuff are involved and the minute his face appears anywhere, it's like oh, tech support guy is here. He gets along very well with his father-in-law and they talk about nothing but soccer, Apple (the company not the fruit), F1, computers, etc etc. In fact, I think my father talks to him more than he does to me. *googly eyes*

I wish that as he grows a year older today, that he starts to mellow down and have more patience. That is one thing about him that irks me - impatience. I also wish that he will spend more time with us, his family, rather than face some lifeless screen most of the time.

Lastly, I wish that he will get his dream come true soon, in the form of a bicycle whose shipment has been delayed time and again. Hope that he gets it in the next few weeks. I know that he has been waiting impatiently but there's nothing we can do about it. :(

Cheers to good health, darling, and all the best in everything you do, as well as in your career.

We love you.

Happy Eighth Birthday, dear Princess.

My princess is 8! The past year has just passed in the blink of an eye. I remember my tribute to her last year and reading through it again, I don't seem to have anything more to add to what I already wrote last year so I will let the pictures do the talking.

A month before her birthday, her godma and I were out shopping one day, and she spotted these plain canvas bags which she wanted to get for her eldest boy's birthday, a gift for his classmates. She was so excited and had all these plans for it, but upon reaching home, she was told by said son that he didn't want to give any goody bags to his classmate. He asked for a simple one with sweets and that was all he wanted. I decided to take over the bags she had and the original plan wasn't to sew on them, but when I spotted one which she made for another goddaughter, I asked her if she would help me write out the names. She offered to sew a few and that's how this project began. Together, we made 31 bags, personalised for each and every child in the class, as well as, the teacher.

Now, I absolutely hate sewing. I am neat and I do sew well, according to my home economics teacher during my Secondary school days, but believe you me, I just do not like it. I used to pass on my sewing class projects to my aunt or grandma and they would do them for me. Hehe. I bet many of you are also guilty of that. ;P So imagine having to sew so many bags, and worse of all, having to use my brains thinking of creative designs for all. Argh! I'm sure you can feel the love by now... :) I told myself that it is for a worthwhile cause, and that it is a very practical gift from the heart, as the girls will not be in the same class come next year. At least, this is a souvenir which will remind them of their days together. The best part is that it can hold the coloured files which they need to bring to school once in a while.

Couldn't resist this duvet cover with Cinnamoroll, her favourite Sanrio character. So kawaii, right? ;)

I didn't have the chance to take photos of all of them, so these below are some of the presents she got for her birthday. Thank you dear friends for all the lovely gifts.

My wish for her this year, is that she continues to be healthy, beautiful and happy. I see a lot more confidence in her this year and am glad to see that she really enjoys being in Primary Two. She has become more independent, but most times, she still loves to remain as mummy's baby. :) I pray that she will continue to do well at school so that this mummy will have less to worry about. Haha. Finally, I wish her all the best in her upcoming ballet exams and with her newfound confidence, may she finally get the 'distinction' that is easily within her grasp. Happy birthday, darling.