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26/01/09, Monday - On the first day of Chinese New Year, my family had a good rest. We didn't do any cleaning and as my parents were traditional, we didn't do any housework at all on this day. So what we did was munching on the goodies such as pineapple tarts and love letters.
Speaking of pineapple tarts, this is the best pineapple tarts which I have ever tasted! Every year, I look forward to eat these pineapple tarts which are homemade by my auntie' friend. Apparently, I learnt from my auntie that she had to beg this friend of hers to make at least two bottles of these lovely pineapple tarts because making this particular goodie is a definite sheer hard work. Currently, the status quo of these pineapple tarts is finishing real fast. I think in two days time, it will be all gone!
On the other hand, my dad also bought a box of pineapple tarts from Bee Cheng Hiang. I'm not sure how much it costs. After tasting a few of those, my mum felt that these weren't that bad except for the fact that the pineapple filling is a little artificial.
After our morning breakfast, we went out for a walk in Botanic Garden. Well, it has been our family tradition for 5 years now that we go for a walk in a garden on the first day of Chinese New Year. Along the way, I managed to capture a picture of a swan swimming lazily on a big pond.
In the mid afternoon, my relatives from my paternal side came over to my place for a visit. We played mahjong, eat and drink merrily on this festive season where we are able to gather once in a year. So my second auntie who is very good in cooking came to help my mum with the cooking.
She whipped up this lovely vegetables with abalone.
Stir-fried leeks with tanghoon.
And lastly, she cooked this sweet and sour fish. Most of them ate up most of the fish before I can capture a good one on this.
This is one of my mum's speciality - Stewed Duck.
Before the dinner, all of us did a traditional thing - mixing of yusheng (raw fish salad). But instead of raw fish, we substituted it with abalone because some of us don't really like eating raw fish.
This was the beginning state of the Yusheng. It may unapetitising. But once it's mixed, it tasted really good.
This was how it looked like after we mixed it.
It was really fun to meet up with my cousins, uncles and aunties as we chatted, played and ate through the night in this once in a year festival.
25/01/09, Sunday - On the eve of the Big Day which was Chinese New Year (CNY), I found myself busying spring cleaning my entire house with my parents. Honestly, I don't really like spring cleaning because it just means giving out my entire strength and energy out for 12 hours non-stop. So true enough, I went on spring cleaning my house for about 12 hours till the clock strikes twelve which signified the start of a new day.
Anyway, for my reunion dinner with my parents, we had steamboat. It was nothing fanciful, just warmth and lovely food to go with the chicken broth. As you can see from this picture, there were some vegetables floating on the soup. It is called Tang-O. It tasted really well with steamboat actually.
My mum sliced up some fish, pork, prawns and abalone as the main dishes.
Then there were some simple straw mushrooms.
My favourite fishballs which my dad bought early in the morning. At the side of it was sea cucumber.
Lastly, my mum cut up some leeks as another alternative as vegetables.
Not forgetting, my parents did ordered a Roast Pork in a real pig form for this festival and man, I think it tastes like pork though I haven't tried it yet. Hah! It's amazing to see how the seller decorated the pig beautifully before sending it to us.
Since this is going to be a Chinese New Year Edition, the next few posts will be updated daily with the food I ate during this festive season. So look out for it!
This afternoon, one of my cell sisters, Justine invited us to her place for lunch after church service. It was a humble home when we first stepped into her living room and bedroom. Furthermore, she even prepared the food the night before till 2am. Boy, she really worked hard for this lunch and we all love her for that.
So she cooked two kind of dishes for us - Zha Jiang Mian and Egg Crepe Wrap.
For the Zha Jiang Mian, she toppled some pork belly, beancurd and peanuts with fermented bean paste sauce on the noodles. I mixed the noodles with the sauce before eating it. Since I didn't really like pork belly as I prefer lean meat to that, I passed some of it to my other cell sisters, Cherie and Jo. This was my second time eating this noodle dish and I still enjoy eating it.
Then came the Egg Crepe Wrap. She took the opportunity to make these while we went to the nearby shops to get some drinks. First, she made the platter by mixing egg, flour and water together. After that, she put the platter onto the pan and cooked it about 10 minutes or so.
Inside of the crepe, she put shredded crab meat, chinese preserved sausages, sesame seeds and fried kimchi. Before wrapping up, she smeared mayonnaise and tomato sauce.
To prevent getting our hands dirty, she passed some plastic gloves to us to eat this crepe with ease. The egg crepe wrap was really good and I told Justine how she should make more of these during future potluck gatherings.
7/01/09, Wednesday - As all traditions happen, my lovely cousin, Sharon and I celebrate our birthday together every year without fail. Unfortunately, we didn't manage to do that in 2008 as our schedule conflicted. So we brought it forward to 2009 and on this day, we headed to this newly-opened shop called, Cheeky Chocolates.
This dessert cafe cum chocolaterie is opened by this business graduate, Aaron Choy and given his passion for chocolates and desserts, he decided to open a dessert cafe. We looked through the menu and we decided on two chocolate desserts.
I ordered the Cheeky Chocolates Crepes with Chocolate Ice-cream (S$7.90). The crepes were made of chocolates and they even smeared lots of chocolate sauce on top of it. Yum!
Sharon ordered the Cheeky Chocolates Warm Chocolate Cake (S$7.90). When I cut through the cake with my fork, the warmness of the chocolate just oozed out of the cake. Eat it with the ice-cream, which was placed at the side, and you will get a warm and cold feeling of the dessert. It is really good!
Between those two desserts, I can't really decided which is better and I guess, each dessert has its uniqueness, just like us.
By the way, their entree aren't that bad. I tried their Mushroom Soup (sorry, no picture!) which cost S$3.90 (if I am not wrong). The portion was pretty big and the toasted bread came in big slice. As I slurped into the soup, there were some bits of mushroom floating on the soup. Lovely!
Cheeky Chocolates is located at 223 Upper Thomson Road. It opens from 12pm to 10.30pm (closed on Mon). This place even sells assortment of chocolates.
3/01/09, Saturday - Over the last weekend, Createlevoyage (an online Christian Arts Magazine) organised a small New Year's potluck gathering at Aaron and Nam's place. Prior to that, we had our bi-monthly core team meeting at Annabelle's new home. After the meeting, we went to buy some groceries with likes of drinks, crackers, mushrooms and even more mushrooms. Subsequently, we headed to our host's place to whip some food before all the guests arrived.
At their place, Aaron helped to chop up some mushrooms and sausages before throwing them all into the aluminum tray. Annabelle and I were giving some instructions of how to prepare this dish which was called, Annabelle CLV Surprise. Reason being, there are so many things inside this dish and each piece is like a surprise. You basically have no idea what you will be getting. Hah!
Anyway, Aaron chopped up Button mushrooms, Portobello mushrooms, King Oyster Mushrooms, Chicken Sausages, Onion Sausages and Cheese Sausages. Annabelle raved to us on how the aftercooked taste of the King Oyster Mushroom tasted similar to abalone. I must say, it really tasted like an abalone. After all the chopping, he sprinkled a little pepper, Mediterranean Spices and then spread some butter onto the food. Mix them well before putting the tray into the oven. However, do not put salt as the mushrooms will absorb the saltness of the sausages and the butter. Cook for about half an hour and voila!
The mushrooms really absorbed the saltness of the meat and as a result, there was a nice balance of saltness and the mushroom flavour. As there were some juices oozing out of the mushrooms, we dipped it with pita bread and it was fanastic!
On the other hand, Nam was really nice to bake us some cookies called, Hamantaschen Cookies. It means Haman's Cookies. This lovely pastry derives from Israel and the cookies actually represent Haman's triangular-shaped pockets which were filled with silver coins given to him to kill the Jews. Nam bought a recipe book, "Simply Israel" while on her trip to Israel in November and since then, she has been trying out some of the recipes. Many a time, her effort paid off. Well, we are lucky to be able to sample some of these Israel dishes.
She used Raspberries Jam and Apricot Jam as her fillings and to prevent the filling from spilling out of the cookies, she put a little jam inside of the dough.
Here is the first tray of the cookies.
And here is the presentation of the cookies on the plate for everyone to munch on.
Here is another angle of the cookies.
I really love the sweetness of the cookies. It was really good! I have a few of those raspberries one as I don't really like Apricot filling.
1/1/09, Thursday - Happy New Year! On this day, I woke up with excitement, embracing the new day in a new year despite the fact that I went to my church for countdown the night before. A few of my relatives will be coming to my place for dinner, thus, I have to garner some energy to clean the house before they arrived.
Halfway through my breakfast, my next door neighbour popped by our place and gave us a box of Apple Strudel, one box of Chocolate Eclairs and a box of Chocolate Puff. It was nice of them to gave us something for New Year Day. :)
Anyway, for our New Year Day's Feast, my dad baked turkey as it is our family tradition to eat turkey, not on Christmas Day but on 1 Jan (don't ask why). He even baked potatoes, pumpkins and sausages. By mid-afternoon, the aroma of the turkey and the side dishes had surrounded the entire house.
On the other hand, my mum fried Bee Hoon as the other main dish. She threw in some Char Siew (roasted pork) which she bought from the market and assortment of vegetables into the Bee Hoon.
My plate. I was pretty hungry when dinner time arrived. The turket meat was moist and tender. I really love eating that turkey. The sausages and potatoes complimented each other. I love the Bee Hoon too.
After the dinner, my relatives and my family sat around the television to watch the much-awaited drama serial, The Little Nonya. An interesting way to end New Year Day.
30/12/08, Tuesday - On the last two days of 2008, the 5ofus (comprises of Zoe, Gin, Cheryl, Ellie and myself) finally meet up and we indeed make use of every seconds to paint the whole town red! In the afternoon, I went on a shopping spree with Cheryl and Ellie as I need to get some clothes for Chinese New Year and I needed their opinions. Subsequently, Zoe joined us and lastly, Gin arrived.
For our dinner, we headed to MOS Burger@Taka. Usually, I would order Unagi Burger whenever I am at MOS Burger but since I was recovering from the therapy, I had to curb from eating all kinds of seafood. Hence, I had Curry Croquette Burger (S$2.40) and a small packet of fries (S$1.80).
After dinner, we continued catching up until Gin somehow suggested we go to KTV either at KBox or Partyworld for the rest of the evening. We went to Partyworld which was located next to Park Hotel@Orchard. Given the five of us, the rate which they were charging us for the evening was S$112 (after discount) and that includes drinks, two snacks and one plate of fruits. Since we didn't know where to go, all of us decided to sing our hearts out in the last days of 2008.
Speaking of singing, we indeed sang to our heart's content and not forgetting fun. What a way to end of our 2008.
On the other hand, my dad also bought a box of pineapple tarts from Bee Cheng Hiang. I'm not sure how much it costs. After tasting a few of those, my mum felt that these weren't that bad except for the fact that the pineapple filling is a little artificial.
After our morning breakfast, we went out for a walk in Botanic Garden. Well, it has been our family tradition for 5 years now that we go for a walk in a garden on the first day of Chinese New Year. Along the way, I managed to capture a picture of a swan swimming lazily on a big pond.
In the mid afternoon, my relatives from my paternal side came over to my place for a visit. We played mahjong, eat and drink merrily on this festive season where we are able to gather once in a year. So my second auntie who is very good in cooking came to help my mum with the cooking.
Stir-fried leeks with tanghoon.
And lastly, she cooked this sweet and sour fish. Most of them ate up most of the fish before I can capture a good one on this.
This is one of my mum's speciality - Stewed Duck.
Before the dinner, all of us did a traditional thing - mixing of yusheng (raw fish salad). But instead of raw fish, we substituted it with abalone because some of us don't really like eating raw fish.
This was how it looked like after we mixed it.
It was really fun to meet up with my cousins, uncles and aunties as we chatted, played and ate through the night in this once in a year festival.
