Food at CreateleVoyage's Potluck Gathering

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.

An outing at the Sentosa

Yesterday Cheryl, Ellie and I celebrated Zoe's birthday at Sentosa with a picnic! We decided to have a change of location for our gathering for once as we usually organise our gathering in the town area (read: boring) and after much thought, we ended up at Sentosa. A few days before the gathering, Ellie and I discussed about the food items, like what food is required for the picnic and etc. Besides, it was our first time organising a gathering far away from the civilization world.

I woke up at around 8am to cook Fried Beehoon - a local famous food sample during a picnic - and it was a hard work! I threw some shredded carrots, mushrooms, cabbage and fishcake into the beehoon and mixed them all up. It's no easy feat stirring a huge portion of thin noodles all around the wok with a medium heat. Nonetheless, it was still enjoyable! At the end of it, I garnished it with some shredded fried egg and tada!

We took the Sentosa Express (S$3 for a one-day trip) to the island from Vivocity. It's actually the latest addition from the Sentosa Island. In the past, visitors used to take ships (yes, it's true), buses or walk to Sentosa. But now, we have train. Anyway, the train was practically packed with people. I had no idea where they come from.

When we reached at the Beach Station, the weather was pretty cloudy; it was neither sunny nor rainy. Nevertheless, Zoe decided to suntan at the beach. We went to the Palawan Beach for the picnic. We choose a nice spot which overlooked most of the scenery. We placed our towel and sheets of paper, as a substitute for picnic mats on the sand. We unpacked most of the foodstuff on the towel. We were all ready to eat when all of the sudden, we felt drops of rain started to pelt onto my head. Small drops of rain became big drops of rain and soon, arrows of rain started to fall onto the beach. Everyone, including us, ran for the nearest shelter. Well, our nearest shelter was Koufu Foodcourt. Cheryl heaved a sigh that our picnic had to end up at a foodcourt. I think all of us shared the same sentiment as her that our picnic had somewhat being ruined by the force of nature. Oh well.

After so many hurdles, we finally had our lunch peacefully against the raining backdrop. Halfway through our lunch, someone walked towards our table and asked us where we got our lunch from as he pointed to the box of fried beehoon. I kindly said that we brought it from home. Zoe suggested that I should have sold some of it.

Ellie bought two big packets of German biscuits from Candy Empire (S$9.80 for 2). This was one of the packets which we opened. It's called Desiree and it is so good! I wouldn't mind eating them all over again. Despite of the bad weather, we still had a good time chilling out with Lays Potato chips, German biscuits and fruit drinks.

At around 4pm, we decided to explore the Siloso Beach and since the rain had stopped, why not? We walked and walked and halfway through our journey, a strange passerby who didn't looked like a local to us, asked where is the Sentosa Station. Well, most of us giggled inside our hearts struggling with the idea of a Sentosa Station like our very own City Hall MRT Station. But we did a bad job in directing her to the place.

We managed to find a good spot at the Siloso Beach, lying down on the towel and feeling the wave crashing onto the seashore. It was a nice feeling. Zoe fell asleep for a little while.

Here is a picture of the beach. Gloomy clouds looming ahead of us.

And a picture of me and Cheryl's feet with our Havaianas flip flops.

By evening, we took a train back to the civilization world again. We had our dinner at Secret Recipe@Vivocity. It was quite packed when we went there and we waited about 5 minutes before we finally got a seat. In amidst of the waiting, we studied the menu and even ordered food in advance.

We choose two main courses to share: Chicken Cordon Bleu (S$11.90) and Pan-Grilled Catch of the Day with Lobster Sauce (S$11.50).

The Chicken Cordon Bleu is one of the strongest recommended dishes my friend usually tell me to order at the Secret Recipe. Inside the chicken is actually ham and cheese. So when one cut open the pippin' hot chicken parcel, one can see the melted cheese and the ham. Quite yummy!

The Pan-Grilled Catch of the Day with Lobster Sauce was the best. The fish tasted fresh and the lobster sauce definitely went well with the fish. Everyone on the table voted unanimously that this dish was the best.

As for dessert, we had both of their signature cakes - Chocolate Banana and Marble Cheesecake (both priced at S$4.90). Zoe, Ellie and I have a common eating cake habit - we usually eat the tip of the cheesecake first.

Cheryl would eat the bananas first in the Chocolate Banana Cake.


It was a pity that our dear friend Gin couldn't join us for outing but I bet Zoe was pleased with the birthday outing. I guess I should begin to think of an exotic place for our next gathering.