Have you seen the sun?

Woohoo, no rain yesterday and today. :) Never thought I'd be rejoicing at seeing the sun, but after a week of non-stop rain and being homebound, plus laundry taking ages to dry, it is a happy moment. At least it's not inconvenient to get around, seeing that I had to go out yesterday and today. We went for Disney on Ice and thank God for the dry weather, or else it'd have been more than a bit troublesome to get to the venue, as the car park is uncovered. Went with cousin and nephew and the kids enjoyed it very much. Princess was there for Ariel, and Ariel alone. Haha. She had her tiara on, and took along her Ariel baby doll. I had to resist buying the Ariel wand despite all the pleadings. Told her we'd get nicer things at Disney soon, and that'd be loads of Ariel stuff. Even the t-shirt they were selling at the show was nothing great. I think she's gonna go nuts over in Disneyland.

For dinner, I made eggplant with hae bee hiam...

Long beans with minced meat.

Baked chicken breast in Teriyaki sauce with onion and thyme.

Honey BBQ spare ribs. This picture isn't very sharp but the one with flash made it look very black so this pic will have to do.

Fruits after dinner consisted of mango, apple, dragonfruit. Litttle princess is a fruit bat. She eats any kind of fruits and goes crazy when she sees them. Hehe. Mangoes are her all time favourite, followed by bananas. She loves dragonfruit too, and other than durian, I haven't come across any that she won't eat.

Some meals

Meal 1 -

Baked salmon in Teriyaki sauce.

Broccolini and Mushrooms in Oyster sauce. These were cute as princess said they were like flowers as they had a long stem. She'd bite off the flowers, then slowly chewed off the stems. Personally I prefer normal broccoli. I boiled mine in water and made the sauce separate to pour over. Garnished it with fried shallots to serve. Coincidentally, little corner of mine cooked this dish as well, on the same day.

Baked Chicken Wings by special request of the princess.

Seaweed Usahana on a mound of rice.

Black pepper sauce which I used to bake other piece of salmon with.

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Meal 2 -

From this... (I wanted to take a photo of the vegetables before they were cooked to show the beautiful flowers on them.)

... to this. (I'm not sure of the name of this vegetable but I believe it belongs to the Kai Lan family. It's really crunchy and sweet, I believe it's also because of the oyster sauce used.)

Fried some Thai fishcakes which were nice but too spicy for the little one. Packet for my reference.

It was basically an instant meal with seaweed wrapped chicken and ready chicken rice mix. I somehow am 'off' this seaweed chicken as I find over the years that they have added more fat to it. It does get pretty disgusting biting into them. I stopped buying them for a while but princess asked for them as she recently had them at the CNY party in school. Have to look for another brand unless they cut off the fat on these.

Tada! The meal is ready.

Note - The vegetables were bought at the vegetable and fruits stall in the basement of Tangs Departmental Store. I used to love to buy from the lady whenever I made a trip downtown. Her produce is very fresh but I noticed they have kind of downsized the stall as the other half of it is taken up by a new vendor. She has unusual veggies and that was how I came about the broccolini and the other veg. I should have asked her the name of it though. So, if you are ever in that part of town, do check it out.

Mish mash

These were some stuff I cooked in the last couple of days. Really not in the mood to blog, or pretty much do anything, as my joints are acting up again and I feel so miserable waking in the mornings and not being able to walk on my hurting feet. It gets to me a lot, not being able to just up and go, or get things tidied in the house as much as I want to. Of course it takes a few hours for the medicine to kick in, each morning, after consumption. I'm usually feeling better by early afternoon but by then I'll be busy with other stuff, plus the girl will be back from school, so housework has taken a backseat, and I just can't wait for the cleaner to come tomorrow. Also, can't wait to see the doctor tomorrow to see what she says about my current condition.

On a happier note, I finally booked my air tickets and hotel in Europe for our holidays. Took advantage of the offers at the NATAS fair over the weekend to get the specials. And yippee, we'll be going on Singapore Airlines, and if not mistaken, will depart from the very new Terminal 3. :) On one hand, it's exciting, but on the other, I do dread it as I do not know how my condition will be like at that point in time. There'll be lots of sightseeing = walking, so am not really looking forward to it. I can imagine the suffering already.

Also keeping me busy are ballet classes in preparation for the exams next week. Can't wait for that to be over.

For dinner last night, I prepared the following :-

Pumpkin Curry

Syrian Chicken with apricots and figs

I tried cooking Basmati rice, but it turned out to be a disaster, and I wasted a teaspoon of saffron. *sob sob*. So in the end we had plain white rice.

This morning, I baked a loaf of Cream Cheese Bread. Got the recipe from a forum pal. I'm not sure if there was something wrong with my yeast, but I tested a few packets out and it did not bubble and, thus, they were very inactive. After about the 5th try, I gave up and thought to myself, whatever, we'll just try it out since I already measured the flour, butter, etc. So I went ahead with it and realizing the dough wasn't exactly rising, put it in a low oven to let it rise, but I guess it wasn't enough, since the result was a rectangular loaf like HK's. But no matter, it's the most successful bread I've ever made and it is yummy. Hope I have better luck with the next packet of yeast. I'm happy that there is no strong smell or taste of yeast unlike the last loaf I baked. Could it be the milk powder that offsets the yeast?

For dinner tonight, I cooked this Fettucine dish using a recipe from a magazine and will update the recipes tomorrow.

Chap Gor Mi or Yuan Xiao Jie

Thursday was the last or 15th day of the Chinese New Year celebrations. How fast times flies. First we were all busy baking, cooking, feasting and in just a blink of an eye, it's gone. Till next year rolls along. I feel so free and light since all festivities have come to a standstill for me, and also having stopped all enrichment classes in preparation for the ballet exams in approximately 2-1/2 weeks' time. Yikes! Shudder!

Before long, it'll be time for the Primary One Registration. Thank goodness that one is not a headache.

For sis - we had dinner in KB and this is what pa cooked up. This fish has C's (LCOM) name on it. Hahaha!

Prawns in black sauce. Hey sis, notice he didn't peel them for us? You are the special one.

There's another dish of chicken, from the nasi padang stall, which he bought for your (sis') birthday dinner so I won't show it again here.

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Princess and I had dinner at Swensen's last evening and this is what she ordered. Ham & cheese burgers with alphabet hash browns and corn. She polished off everything on the plate. The burgers were tiny and for an adult, maybe gone in 2-3 bites. Haha. I got the kitchen to not grill the buns as they usually do. I don't like all the grease on them so they baked them instead, which is a much healthier choice.

I wasn't impressed with my dinner which was some grilled fish with yellow rice and raisins so I didn't bother even taking a photo of it. :P

Do most people celebrate the end of CNY? I know not many people do.

Some food I made

Made fried wantons last night & an omelette with fish paste and spring onions. I love this omelette. It was something I discovered when we went to one of Princess' friend's house for a playdate and this was one of the dishes served. Not sure if I have blogged about it before, though. I mean, I'm not surprised as my dishes are always very predictable and same old, same old. So the truth is out. I'm a very boring cook who serves the same kind of food week in week out. Hehe. However, this fried wanton is not something I dish out very often. It does seem that I have been deep frying too much foodstuff! It's time to s-t-o-p! For the fish paste, you can buy it at the yong tau fu stall and beat it in with the egg. There is no need for salt, maybe just some white pepper. I added in the spring onions to give it a bit more flavour.

With the same minced meat, I added prawns, minus the water chestnuts and set aside some to make siew mai today. Unfortunately, they were edible but not presentable. They sort of fell apart when I was trying to take them out after steaming, so failure there. I wonder how little corner of mine makes it look so easy and beautiful. ;)

Made these crepes today just to have, not for tea or anything but just to fatten ourselves up, not that we are not fat enough. It's not funny how little princess' belly sticks out in ballet class and just 3 weeks' ago, the teacher had just commented that she had lost some weight. Must start watching what she eats now. Hehe. Maybe too much home cooking. ;)

The chocolate is way too messy and not artistically presented. But we're not complaining once it is yummy. :P

Dinner, etc

My offering for dinner this evening... finally tried the deep fried prawns in the netted wrap as recommended by Jo. It was lovely and tasty, and best of all, so easy to do. I just seasoned the prawns with a light sprinkling of salt and black pepper before frying. It is served with Thai sweet chilli sauce. Unfortunately I couldn't get the mango to go with it. Hope I spy some mangoes in the supermarket soon. It'll make this dish splendid! I loved it, since I love prawns and anything to do with them. The black dish in the foreground is fish flakes. I remember when I was young, my Ah Ma used to take the flesh off fried fish which we didn't finish the night before, flaked them, and stir fried with black sauce and some sugar. What I used was fresh fish though. Princess is not into fish. She refuses to eat them now, so I either force her to (in the case of cod), or else I 'camouflage' it this way. ;)

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A Princess Party

We were invited to little Princess Anna's party yesterday. She turned 3. Can't believe that her mum and I have known each other since we were 7. Wow, sure is amazing considering how we lost contact for a couple of years. I treasure old friendships from way back when...

The kids had a great time. There was the magician from one of our previous birthday parties (couldn't believe that he still remembers my girl by name!) and also the tattoo artist from our last birthday party. I even managed to get a flower drawn on one arm. :)

There was a good mix of spicy as well as non-spicy food. Needless to say, I veered towards all the curry and chilli. :) The fish was very very good. I'm so in love with it, although I doubt I can re-create it. The hosts had catered the buffet from a Nonya restaurant called Baba King.

Anna's mum gave me this gift from Hokkaido which her lovely hubby picked up specially on his recent trip to Japan. She said it was very good and I totally agree with her. It's sort of like rice krispies coated in chocolate but a hundred times better. Very light and tasty as the wrapper proclaims it to be. Look out for it next time you are in Japan. You won't be disappointed.

Xia Jiang Ji

Choo, I finally tried the recipe. I added some sesame seeds to batter too and it gave it some fragrance. However, I wasn't too keen on the smell when the bottle containing the shrimp paste was first opened. The pungent smell just hits you. If anyone thinks durian is bad, you should try smelling this. :D I was keeping my fingers crossed that it will turn out well as I had already marinated the lot, or else we'd have no dinner. Eeeks! However, upon frying, the flavours just fused together - sugar, sesame oil, etc.. And hubby loved it. Princess had no complaints so she must like it and I think it was lovely too.

I also steamed a piece of cod and stir-fried some vegetables. That was our meal last evening. :)

A home-cooked meal

I hate having to cook every day. It gives me a headache, and it doesn't help that nobody in the family can tell me what they want to eat for dinner. I was very sure I was going to make a pot of soup today and I also knew that I had xiao bai chye in the fridge from my last trip to the market. But the main dish was a bit stressful to come up with. I had a pineapple in the fridge, and finally decided that I'd do a pineapple chicken dish. So here you have it... bai chye with Foochow fishballs, carrots, and tofu soup. And a sweet and sour chicken stir fry with pineapples and assorted veggies.