Happy 2009!!

Today is the last day of 2008 and the official countdown to 2009 will be starting soon. I wonder what lies in store for the year 2009? Hope it will be an even more exciting and fulfilling year. Anyway, I wish to thank all those people that have made my 2008 a memorable one. Lastly, happy new year to all and best wishes for the new year ahead!! =)

Cheese Tarts!

Today was my first attempt at making cheese tarts using a recipe I found on the internet. Was rather worried that my tart pastry doesn't turn out well. Luckily, it turned out ok... =) For the 1st batch of 6 tarts, I decided to pipe some hershey chocolate syrup as a decorative element for the tarts before sending them into the oven for baking. The hershey chocolate syrup was too watery to be piped and thus i ended up with a disasterous pattern for the very first tart. As I began to get used to the piping, the subsequent tarts looked better... haha..

For the second batch, I only had a little more pastry dough left so i could only make 3 cheese tarts. I decided to do the plain ones instead, just to see how it will turn out.

Dad turned out to be my first guinea pig... haha. To my relief, he commented that they taste good and even helped himself to a second one... =)

I think the tart pastry was nicer than i thought it will turn out to be.. the cheese filling wasn't too bad as well, not too sweet, just nice.

Guess my first attempt at making cheese tarts didn't turn out that bad... heehee... =)

Flowers...

Sometimes, life can be so hectic that these beautiful sights go un-noticed even if they're just along your corridor... =)

Four Christmases

Went to watch this movie "Four Christmases" on a Friday evening with my sis after work. Though not exactly a fantastic movie, it was a light-hearted comedy that puts you in a "Christmasy" mood.

The story revolves around this unmarried couple during christmas when their initial holiday plans were busted due to the foggy weather resulting in all flights being cancelled. Having lied to their families that they were doing charity work overseas, their worse nightmare came alive when they were caught stranded in the airport on live tv. They ended up having to visit 4 families in a single day. That was where all the fun and laughter unveils. The couple starts to learn about each other's past which involves some embarassing childhood moments that they would rather not talk about. Eventually, they start to view their relationship differently and learn to embrace the commitment and responsibility that comes along with it.

On Leave! (15/9/08 Monday)

I took a day leave today and planned for it to be at least an eventful one. Well… not bad I think… haha…=)
This morning, as usual, I was woken up by the stupid alarm which I didn’t bother to turn off the night before. I thought I’ll just ignore the alarm when I woke up realising that I’m supposed to be on leave today. However, to my annoyance, I couldn’t really get myself to go back to sleep after a futile attempt as I was already quite wide awake… guess I just couldn’t adjust my body clock around… what a waste, since there was a slight drizzle outside and it was meant to be the PERFECT weather for sleeping or at least lazing in bed.
At about 11am later, mum and I went to Sengkang, planning to meet third aunt for shopping and lunch later on. Initially, we took the MRT to harbourfront thinking that we’ll eat the ala carte buffet at the dragon gate restaurant. However, we were late when we reached (almost 2pm) and the last order ends at 1.45pm. I didn’t even realized we were that late… haha… so paiseh when the waiter pointed that out. In the end, we didn’t eat at the dragon gate restaurant.
Our next destination was Chinatown and we thought we could probably settle on a decent restaurant there for our lunch.
Well… we did settle down for lunch at almost 3pm at Yum Cha restaurant in Chinatown. There was a dim sum high tea buffet from 3pm to 6pm and it was only available from Monday to Friday excluding public holidays (wow… just happened to be something I was secretly craving for a while ago… haha). We eventually settled on that and these are some of the dim sum we ate:

Sesame prawn and mango roll (right) and prawn dumpling? (left)

Sesame prawn and mango roll (again?) nope… haha… from the main plate…

The variety… consisting of steamed chicken claws (bottom) crystal chives dumplings (top left) and erm... scallop with pea shoot dumpling? (right)

Steamed Xiao Long Bao!!

One piece missing in action…=)…

The menu….

Introducing the delicious mango pudding…

The pan fried carrot cake I waited so long for (left)… and the crystal (wonder why?) paper chicken (right)

The lemongrass jelly with fruits… it has a special taste, I like it… =)

Overall, I think the food is nice and the prawns used in their dim sum were fresh. A great experience I would say. The bill totalled up to almost 60 bucks which I think was rather worth the price as I think almost everything tasted good. Even third aunt, who was usually picky about food, commented that the dim sum were nice… =)
After the dim sum high tea, I left to meet my friend W at orchard to catch the movie Mama Mia at Lido. I accompanied W to have her dinner at Sakae Sushi. I didn’t eat anything cos I was still feeling extremely full from the dim sum just now. After the dinner, W and I went to shop around as well as to buy some tibits before proceeding to Lido for the movie.
The movie was nice and I really like the songs in it… such as “I had a dream”, “Mama Mia”, “Dancing Queen” and many others that I didn’t know of the song titles. It was classics… and the tunes were like so catchy that makes u feel like singing along…

Well.. glad my leave today turned out to be an fufilling one =)

Lunch at Bugis (14/9/2008 Sunday)

Tada... my 1st entry in this new blog of mine. Thought it would be worthwhile to start on the nicest topic in life - FOOD... haha. =) I'll start by introducing some of my past & recent dining experiences and sharing some of the photos i've taken.

On Sunday (14/9/08) , dad and I went for lunch at bugis. We went to the wang jiao HK café and ate all these:

Dad eating his garlic toast with soup. See my yummy milk tea shake…


Mouth watering french style fried rice… yum yum…

The silvergold XO roll and chicken ham roll with thousand island sauce. Dad’s watermelon juice was chopped off in the pic… haha

The grilled pork chop with black pepper sauce

Well, conclusion is:
We both agreed that the fried rice and the XO roll were nice but the others weren’t really that nice… haha… I like my milk tea shake as well as dad’s watermelon juice though… The bill summed up to almost 50 bucks.
Just a sidetrack… these pics above were taken by my 3.2megapixels sony ericsson W890i phone. Not bad huh?