Saturday 28 April 2012

Getting ready for Melbourne!

I'm going back to melb for holiday very soon and so I must eat my favourite Singaporean food before I leave!

It'll be just about a week that I'll be away from Singapore but I had to eat my favourite yong tau foo!!!

The photos are my favourite yang tau foo (in a purple bowl), basil chicken rice at Newton hawker centre (spicy, but very delicious, I only eat this at Newton ) and very delicious fruit juice I tried for the first time today at far east plaza. This shop was good! Better than a lot of other places! I forgot the name...but yeah super nice!( this is not helpful is it?)
Mango & pineapple mixed juice! Very yum!!!

Monday 23 April 2012

The lucky one and yong tau foo

I watched "the lucky one" yesterday!
It was a very nice movie...
It's not just a love story, it's about family, wars and life.
I must watch it again! ( I have a habit of watching my favourite shows, movies & dramas over and over again)


After the movie, my friend took me to her favourite cafe and I had a mixed fruit juice :) yum !

We chatted for a while at the cafe and then moved to a food court...to have yong tau foo!!!!!


This is not the one in lucky plaza, in case you wondered.
My friend took me to her favourite yong tau foo shop!

I still think that the ingredients and the soup are better at lucky, but the special thing about this yong tau foo is that it comes with this spicy, sourly sauce!
You can dip tofu& veggies into this sauce and eat them.
Hmmmm it was very nice!

I had a very relaxing, fun and delicious Sunday! :)

Sunday 22 April 2012

Craft work

I bought very cute papers and stickers from an art craft shop called 'made with love' today!

They had so many cute stuff that I took a very long time to decide. They were having 40% off sales!!

I'm going to make birthday cards with these cute papers i bought today.
I'm so excited!

Dinner from few days ago

*hamburger steak with cheese
*wedges
*grilled tomatoes
*glazed carrots


Not so healthy but I had very healthy yong tau foo for lunch so I think it's ok
haha


Saturday 21 April 2012

Irresistible food - yong tau foo

I think the best food ever in Singapore is this dish called yong tau foo.

This dish is irresistible. I have to eat it at least once a week. If not twice a week.
My desire for Yong tau foo is so strong that sometimes it appears in my dream.

Yes I'm crazily in love with this dish.


Oh but I must say that not every shop in singapore sells my desirable yong tau foo. It has to be the one in lucky plaza.


Oh no.
I'm now worried that more people are going to visit that shop after reading my blog post.
The shop is already packed during lunch time so please don't go there.

Ok, maybe you can go there. I should not be selfish. I want you to enjoy yong tau foo too. Oh but please be reminded that you will be addicted and I'm not going to be responsible for this.


When I explain yong tau foo to people outside of Singapore, they almost always get puzzled.
They say, why is that dish so nice?
How can it be. It's just tofu and veggies in soup.


Yes, exactly. Even if I try all my marketing / advertising media skills, I can't persuade you... Until you actually try it!!!

But the hardest part is to let people try yong tau foo.


Even when my family came to singapore, I was trying to convince them to eat yong tau foo, but they found the all day breakfast from wild honey or lasagna and pizza from an Italian restaurant in holland village far more appealing.

Yes, I love them too but yong tau foo has different attractions.

Firstly, yong tau foo is a very healthy dish. you can choose as many veggies as possible to put into your soup.

But if it's your first time eating yong tau foo and especially if you don't like veggies, just don't put any or pick 1 or 2. When I first ate yong tau foo, I only picked a broccoli.
Broccoli is very nice in yong tau foo.


Secondly you must enjoy this thick, juicy shiitake mushrooms in your soup. It gives you a lot of flavours and yes, the mushroom taste awesome!!

Thirdly, pick some deep fried tofu or tofu skins to add to your bowl. Oil makes the yong tau foo soup very tasty.


Well you might think yong tau foo doesn't sound that healthy after taking only 1 veggie and rest is all oily tofu.

But now don't you think yong tau foo sounds much more tasty???

Lastly, I strongly recommend you to pick kway theow noodles and eat while dipping into this red sweet sauce. Please order soup rather than dry. I have never tried dry one before but I know that the soup one is the best.


Again, please don't forget that the best yong tau foo with delicious mushrooms is in lucky plaza.

But please don't go there too often, the shop is always super crowded.



Sunday 15 April 2012

Today` s dinner

*tofu nuggets
*chicken cutlets
*salad
*miso soup
*pickles


Long time no deep fry cooking!!!

I like to eat tofu nuggets with sweet chilli sauce but I forgot to buy it today... :(

I'll definitely get one tmr!!!

I cooked a lot of cutlets so am going to bring some to work tmr!

Ramen & cakes at Tanjong Pagar

I caught up with my friend over delicious cakes and ramen dinner yesterday.

The ramen shop was so popular that there was a long queue as soon as the shop had opened!
Ramen was all tonkotsu based and you can chose different degrees of spiciness. There were also free flow bean sprouts and boiled eggs.

My friend ordered black spicy ramen and I ordered normal tonkotsu ramen.
Both were delicious! I think the spicy ramen tasted like tantanmen and i found it quite spicy bur my friend didn't find it spicy at all!


I didn't know that there were so many cute cafes in Tanjong Pagar or even in singapore!

My friend took me to one of his favourite cafes next to this interesting looking antique shop!
(We actually went into the antique shop
and it's not bad! They were selling interesting stuff!)


The lemon tart and drinks ( fresh orange juice and some very tasty unique drink) at the cafe were all very tasty!!


I came to realise that he is one of the first friends I made in Melbourne and also one of the few long lasting friends from Melbourne.
It is really cool how we can still keep in touch (not just on Facebook but actually meet up) even after uni and moved to another country- Singapore!

I'm still new to Singapore and don't have close friends here so I appreciate his existence!

It was a good catch up :)


P.S


Oh and the purple cake is supposed to be super famous as it appeared on magazines before!

Friday 13 April 2012

Wild honey again!

My colleagues and I had a team lunch today at wild honey!!

My boss organises a team lunch once in a while. She gathers everyone in the department and have lunch together.
The purpose of this team lunch is to develop good relationships among each other so that we can perform a strong team work in the office!

Food was tasty and the cafe was pretty as usual!
I had a great time :)

Wednesday 11 April 2012

Today` s dinner

Japanese curry rice & pickles


I'll make curry udon with the leftover curry tomorrow :)

Tuesday 10 April 2012

Shoga yaki /ginger pork recipe

Today 's dinner

*shoga yaki /ginger pork
*salad
*asparagus
*veggie soup


Shoga yaki/ ginger pork recipe


Ingredient
*thin sliced pork 250g
*minced ginger 2 tea spoons
*onions 1/3
*carrots 1/2
*long beans about 10pieces

Sauce
* soya sauce 4 table spoons
*mirin 3table spoons



Instructions

1. Slice the onion& carrots and chop the long beans into eatable sizes.

2. Put all the ingredients in a bowl including the sauce. Marinate the meat & veggies with the sauce, leave them for 5 mins or so.

3. Heat up a pan with some oil, cook the marinated meat and veggies. Add the leftover sauce from the bowl at the end. Once meat is cooked and veggies become soft, stop fire.







Sunday 8 April 2012

hippopotamus

My housemates & I went to a restaurant called 'Hippopotamus' located in raffles city today for a birthday dinner.
It was one of my housemate's birthday yesterday, but we could t celebrate it yesterday so we did it today in stead.


It was supposed to be a French restaurant but I'd rather say, it was a French influenced restaurant. I had a French classic burger ( not sure if a burger is French food) and my housemates had steaks!

One of them ordered a course menu and appetiser was definitely Japanese yakitori served with sweet chilli sauce (definitely not French dish but it was very nice).



We also had this tomato based veggies which was very nice, and chocolate fondue & 'floating island' for dessert!

According to my French housemate, "floating island" is a authentic French dessert.

Floating island was very interesting!
It is actually meringue floating in a vanilla sauce with sliced almond on top!

I'd never seen such desserts or eaten them before so I was very excited!!

Meringue was very soft&smooth and it matched very well with the vanilla sauce! Pretty nice!

Chocolate fondue was nice as well, except for pineapples. I personally don't think pineapples go well with chocolate..

At last, but not least, Customer service was also very good at the restaurant!


It was a very good Sunday :)





Saturday 7 April 2012

Family trip in Singapore day1 #1

My family arrived in Singapore pretty early in the morning - before 6 am as the airplane arrived earlier than expected.

As no shops were open in such an early morning on weekend ( except for fast food i guess but it is very sad to take them to such places when they just landed to Singapore)
So my boyfriend's parents took us to a nice beach in the east coast.


We saw a beautiful sunrise!!

In japan, we don't get to see a sunrise unless you wake super early in morning. But here in Singapore, sun rises around 7am!!
This was amazing!



Kimchi fried rice recipe


Ingredients:

*Kimchi -1cup
*Rice (better to use left over rice)- 3 bowls
*Japanese/Korean sweet BBQ sauce -1table spoon
*Mirin (Japanese sweet sake sauce) -1 table spoon
*Long beans 6-10 pieces (you can use your favourite veggies here, carrots are also good )
*Onion -1/4
*Minced pork-some (2 table spoons will do but if you want, you can put more!)
*Garlic - 1 piece/ 1 tea spoon if you are using a pre-minced jar of garlic
*Sesame oil- better for smell& flavour but if you don't have it, ordinary oil will do.


Instructions:
1. Slice the onion into thin slices, cut the long beans into small bits, mince the garlic.

2. Heat up a pan with some sesame oil , cook the ingredients you chopped in instruction #1. After they are roughly cooked, add pork.

3. Add kimchi and rice. Use strong fire and keep stirring. Add the BBQ sauce and Mirin at the end.

Serve with sunny side egg in top!

It's a quick delicious meal!

Friday 6 April 2012

Kimchi fried rice dinner

Last night's dinner

Kimchi fried rice
Pickled cucumber
Vegetable soup


My family’s visit in Singapore

My family came to visit me in Singapore from the 10th -14th of March. :)


My family travels together every summer. Our family travelling history goes back all the way to the time when I was small. Then, my sister and brother were born, and as my family expands, our family trip became even more fun & exciting.

We always find funny things to do wherever we go. Sometimes we have serious fights on stupid things like which restaurants to go to, but most of the time, it has been all happy memory.

As i hear from my friends that it is becoming rare to see people travelling as a family nowadays, especially after we are all grown up, I appreciate my family travelling time very much.


But Since the time I left Japan almost 6 years ago to study in melbourne, I had not been able to join this family travel at all.

It's because Australia is in the other side of the planet so their summer is during christmas. When my family goes travelling in summer, I was doing winter in Melbourne and just like japanese schools, we didn't get a long winter holiday.

Anyway, I was very excited about my family's visit in Singapore this time because of these reasons. I felt like I have been missing out from all the fun which my family had!

Well, but this time, as I am working and living in Singapore, it was not exactly 'travelling' for me.

But that doesn't matter! What matters the most is to spend time together as a family.


I had a precious 5 days in Singapore with my family. I hope they enjoyed our family trip as much as I did. And I also hope that we can travel again next year, and the year after, as far as we can go!!!

Life is short, time is precious!

We'd better spend time with someone we love.