tokyo love

it's my fourth day and tokyo. and it's been brilliant fun so far! so much to see/do/eat/buy. yeah i have no idea how long my money is gonna last. but i dont care. i`m having fun. :) the past two days have been like 6h cross country walks. but then it's really just walking around ONE area. ahahha. at most it spans like 2 train stations. there are so many train lines here that its hard to estimate. so i'm talking in rough terms. every day is like a new adventure. :) ikebukuro shopping heaven (but i aint seen nothing yet), ueno`s hk style shops and lovely parks and today's lazy 3.5h day in hibarigaoka. it's just two small dept stores and a quaint walk down streets with all sorts of eating food stores and diff shops. i bought edamame peas from the farmer on the way home. these veggies are harvested fresh every day. sigh. i cant imagine not eating my nice lovely veggies and buying FRESH veggies. the veggie farm is just across the road. it's like totally plucking the veggies yourself :) train rides on the rapid/ semi express and express trains. yeah even taking trains theres so much to look out for. i pretend as if i know what i am doing, where i'm going but then i really dont. hahahah. i can get home safe tho. and that's pretty much the important part :) snacking on corn, beans, peas and tomatoes are the life. ahhh.

it's been a while since i took over the kitchen to cook up a storm. :) work was getting to me. flat out dog tired is as good as a description as i can get. and i really missed the kitchen. i didn't do no stir fry today. the headache was too much to handle but there's what i came up with. a chicken stew, baby bok choy and golden mushrooms and fishball/ cake vermicelli soup. daddy's dinner orders. and he liked it. :) it must be nice to have home cooked food after days of travelling. i wish i could do more. i always have grandplans and i usually carry them out (for the first few days when i was REALLY free). i just need to get back into the flow of things. hopefully have a blast at next weekend's dinner. i'm thinking wok stir fry next week. oh. i also have a camp next week. sigh. we'll see how things work out. for now, tuck in! bless,

what women want. is what they get. haha. coming from me? that's about as bimbo as i get. for someone who's make up interest extend no further than a blusher. i have only the slightest idea about how to go about using such stuff. but they're really pretty aren't they? mummy likes happy things like these too. her skin's too delicate. so she does get certain allergies. i hope these are gentle enough for her :) stila sweet.

my spot of sunshine. directly translated those are boxes of 'tai yang bing' = sun biscuits. aunt and little cousin were back from taiwan a while back and these were handcarried home for me! yum. they aren't very impressive looking biscuits. but they taste wonderful. it's basically malt candy in flaky pastry. and if you toast them just a tad before eating... :) the family's been jetsetting for a bit. i hope i get to hop on to the bandwagon soon. my haphazard planning skills. sigh. the Y's my second home right now. i love going in for a few hours a time to just help clear stuff. who's tired when they are doing some good with their lives? i can't wait to see my friends at camp in the coming weekkk! :)

there! and 've only covered 3% of the world. my wanderlust grows in strength. hahah.

This, i ate lots of. and hey, so did my brothers. thick. juicy pieces of sashimi. who could resist. okay for those who don't know better. and that's my parents. boring people who eat cooked food. hhahahh. genting highlands for a day was enough for me (sort of) save for the lousy movie timings. the brothers managed to catch x3 there. while the parents and i went to the casino. different ones we were at. i managed to lost 30 ringgit in 45 minutes and that's the end of my stint with the casino for the day. you could dine at certain restaurants with points that you earn from the casino. which of course since i play low, i get none. ahhaha. but daddy had some. and we had dinner buffet for free. at the coffee terrace. it's like buffet spread at The Line. for once, they had variety and taste. i was impressed. wok fried vegetables had 'wok hei' which a lot of other places lack. even seafood pasta wasn't overwhelmed by pasta but by sweet seafood instead. yum. and sashimi. that satisfied my long time cravings for a bit. yum. :) ok if you really wanna ask about my kl trip it's really all about food. more and more food. hahahha. i had the breakfast buffet every morning and it was yummy. more so the extra cheese omelette than anything else. hahaha. then there were the sides of baked beans and hashbrown. i wish i took photos. but then that's just embarrassing myself. :) you'll just have to believe my tummy. haha. i had a good trip. it was fun. mostly.

brenda
adj. more cute than usual.
"Big sis, you are way more brenda than Mom."

I wish

perfect princess jamie must be a happy girl :) too bad i'm not jamie. but i'm not missing out either. the favourite boy makes time for me. where do you find carl's jr portabello mushroom burger on demand! so the cameras have taken off hence my hiatus. dad's in bangkok, mum and brother's in batu pahat with the aunt and cousin. josh's away on his ncc camp. that leaves. well. me. it feels horrid to be family-less. (technically speaking anyway) 've got grandparents and my aunt and cousins. but still. it was a sleepless night last night. it's possibly subconcious. and i haven't done 3 hour-ish phone conversations in a long while. i heart you many. :)

Perfect Princess Jamie lives in a kingdom far far away,
Where she rules with much wisdom every single day.

It has been said that Princess Jamie has a magic pearl,
Which she loves more than anything in this world.

This magic pearl gives her everything and fulfils her every need,
So you see my friends, it truly is a very special pearl indeed.

The princess took the pearl with her no matter where she went,
People tried to ask her to put it down but she would not relent.

She was afraid she would lose it if it ever went out of her sight.
So she clung onto it so tightly every day and every night.

One day, she heard a voice that spoke so clearly from above,
He said, “You have to learn to let go of the pearl, my love”

Princess Jamie thought long and hard, she paced up and down,
And as she thought she began to pout and soon she started to frown

Would the princess be able to let go of the pearl she held so dear?
Could she find it within herself to overcome her greatest fear?

She wrestled with the thoughts that were racing through her mind,
And she heard God tell her, “My dear child, everything will be fine”

An unmistakable sense of calm overwhelmed her from head to toe,
All of a sudden, knowing He was there was all she needed to know.

So she placed the magic pearl in her room and went out for the day,
Somehow knowing in her heart that the pearl would surely stay.

When the princess had done all that she needed to do,
She returned to her room and found out it was true.

God had promised her that things would turn out for the best,
And she learned that day that in so many ways she was blessed.


She had Him who loved her more than anything else in the world,
And she broke into a glorious smile when she saw the magic pearl.

The pearl had remained exactly where she had left it,
It had not moved from its position, not even a tiny bit!

So today Princess Jamie is the happiest princess there will ever be,
For she knows some things remain forever—they are there eternally.

hot sour soup and family style extra-black fried kway teow.

and Singaporeans eat out because.. ?

our stash from germany. i would have that expression too if i decided to put them on sale. hahaha. that was nigel's attempt at entreprenurship. it wasn't too long before he gave in and ate it himself. YUM.

the white asparagus papa yeo DIDN'T buy.

Das is alles fur heute. :/

sunday's dinner. :)

brilliant explosion of colours and flavours.

my sugar high.

wouldn't it be nice?

what makes a good cocoa butter cake.

the proof is in the pudding.

it's an easy recipe. don't ask. just 8 ounces each of whatever you think should be

in there :)

who eats pumpkin? :) thank goodness my grandma cooks pumpkin stew for me once in a while. i can't remember the first time i ate and fell in love with pumpkin. it definitely is a rarity in chinese cooking though. this is hardly a sweet dessert. it falls alongside the family of the yam and carrot cakes (chinese style). has a tinge of sweetness and a lovely golden hue. it's not terribly hard to make. try it yourself!

all star favourite #2!

i really think for the time i was away till now, grandma hadn't cooked this dish. you could hear whispers (well, maybe not so soft) of wow. this hasn't been cooked for a longggg time.

join us for dinner?

one batter. two meats.

two meats plus preserved vegetables.

fresh greens.

all-time favourite! who can resist.

i should do an all-stars list.

in an entirely biased fashion of course :)

Before
After

If only slimming ads looked so good.

whatcha looking at you hockey puck?

eggs, bak kut teh, ngo hiang, dried shrimp kangkong, prawns.

entirely in order of preference :)

ingredients to kickstart your morning. well, my morning. :)

i thought i smelt lemongrass. and i was right! into the fishhead curry it went. today's curry was potent. it's a brilliant mix of my thai aunt's superb secret mix of chilli paste and grandma's assam mix. ok mix sounds bad. like a mishmash of rubbish. but then when you've secret mixes from the best, it's hardly gonna go anywhere else but superb. fried fishcakes and ngo hiang, fried radish with eggs. i told you the brothers couldn't have dinner without eggs. :) grandpa bought the kangkong in the background. yummm. i really think that plate of vegetables cost 40 cents. for all you zi char radish tops, take that! hahaha. a fool and his money are soon parted. aww. but then i wouldn't blame you. not everyone's grandpa makes trips to the market to do grocery shopping. :)
righto. did i mention there's also dessert in this household? yummm. hang on a minute and i'll grab a photo. while i eat it of course!

have a break. have a kkkkerrrropokkk. krunnnch!

who needs kit-kats when you have these.

i figure capturing breakfast wasn't as important as capturing the breakfast spread that has featured on the dining table since time in memorial. i always thought the ingredients were in an insane quantity but the quality is also insanely good. there must be a certain correlation right there! ok it didn't take a genius to figure that out. so it's a happy harmony of coconut milk (the hands that laboriously extract juice from coconut shavings), eggs (tonnes) and sugar (maybe just a ton) and pandan leaf (from the back garden) and there you have kaya. ka-yummy-ya. it's a family emergency when any of the households run out of kaya. it's not just grandma's. everyone else's family gets a share of the loot. :) it's not just mindless stirring. i need my brown caramelized color of kaya. i.e. not them killiney killed-by-eggs pungent and green kaya. and there's a trick to it. the proof is in the pudding. and staring straight out from the photos. 'nuff said. i've yet to capture the final product. which has already been bottled while i was catching my forty winks. yawn. :/

no photos? daddy's taken off to frankfurt for the week. mr totally-in-my-face-lucky camera got to hop on for the long haul flight too. i need to get me another. so mummy's day was lunch out at hong kong street restaurant opposite novena mrt station. food was pretty decent. i would've tried other dishes though. but for the kids it was sweet and sour pork ribs, spicy honey chicken. claypot tofu for me and fishhead beehoon soup. and their famed sam lou hor fun. yum. dinner we went western. well, we meaning minus i. haha. chicken chop, fish and chips, spring chicken. who knew a tiny stall in ang mo kio street something (i can direct you there) sold such yummy western food. :) and then there was horfun again. haha. somethings i can never tire of. don't ask me to make a list. it'd go on forever. i hope the contents more than made up for the lack of photos. till tmrw! :)

never. be too afraid to use oil. that applies only to the fried mee sua. other than that, cook healthily. :) prawn stock was the key ingredient. my lovely mushrooms. oyster mushrooms, black juicy shitake mushrooms. which totally made up for the mushrooms that never got into my tummy yesterday night. haha. brothers. pros and cons. :) so abalone and baby bok choy, my tad dry steamed minced pork and egg and then there was fried mee sua. with prawn, squid and mushroom overload! hahaha. we are a family that eats for more than less. as a consolation, everyone finished up their portions. but then, my fried mee sua couldn't hold a candle to the one i fried in montreal, even without my mushrooms, squid and prawns on the top left. sorry folks. next attempt. if there ever is another. :/

another for the record. my brothers beaming with pride. can you see what they are holding on to? who needs boyfriends when you have brothers? :)

they look better than they taste. and that. is a tragedy. considering the truckloads of people at the very same place we were dining at. we were there a tad late cos we were lost and it was vesak day. i.e. those 'float' things were major traffic obstructions. mum threw a little temper. she was embarrassed though. but that got us seats upstairs in air-conditioned comfort. thank God. it was an icky humid drizzle-ish day. so there. in no particular order, at least in the chronological sense. but total order in the taste department. scallop in yam rings were my favourite. running a close second was my claypot beancurd. :) the rest were mediocre to plain rubbish. imagine abalone drowned massacred and just plain destroyed but thick sweet spicy whatever sauce it was. i was too sick and cold/flu attacked to care. plus a splitting headache didn't help matters. but nope. that wasn't a biased review. the food met with the diapproval from the family as well. how sad. so that was mum's day part II. we had part I at a hainanese steamboat restaurant last weekend. and that was yummy. :)

guess what was lunch & dinner. little uncle (of course there is a reason for his form of address, nothing to do with acting cute) was over lunch time yesterday to pick up my tarte impossible and the chocolate cookies. grandma of course cooked her scrumptious beehoon. my photos hardly did any justice considering the fact that i dropped off for a nap till 5.30 thinking it was 4.30 still and missed the whole dinner process. these are after eating photos. top right is squid fried with chilli and sweet dark sauce. grandma said she wanted to fry them i.e. fried calamari. but then she decided to cook them in gravy instead. yum for me anyway. bottom left is MY FAVOURITE. egg tofu. egg tofu anything. fried, stewed, steamed. anything. so grandma likes to cook them with prawns and minced meat sometimes. i just take the tofu. :) there were more dishes but those are in happy tummies already. i would've chronicled breakfast. well, that was in my plans but i had to be at some briefing starting at 9 and ending at 10. but to wait my turn was a boring two hours. it was good that i could sleep. but still. 'd rather much sleep at home. ugh. so i was breakfast-less and hungry and sad and tired. ROAR. it didn't help with the flu/cold/whatever. okay. but good food overpowered the faulty taste/smell buds. (at least by a little) and yay. happy me. how do people lose weight when they're feeling under the weather?

there! stewed turnip was the star of the night. it's bad table manners (more like selfish/gluttony) but i always have just one bowl of it for myself after dinner. :) so that. is much tastier than popiah fillings. for starters this has sweeet carrots and yummy meat pieces. not much of a carnivore but this meat is tender and breaks away in our mouth. mmm hmmm. but today i'm really ill and not able to taste very well. i didn't have my extra small bowl but i ate enough to be happy. :) it's really easy to make. but a charcoal stove is rather important for this. and the work in grating the turnip. but that's about it. and you have a delicious main dish! side dishes included :
have you seen FISH like that. batam fish. yummy juicy burst of flavour in that huge fillet. and my greeeen veggies. last time we'd put oyster sauce atop blanched veggies. but right now, grandma's discovered a new sauce. and that's even yummier. i.e less salty and it's not gonna happen such that you accidentally put a dollop of oyster sauce in your mouth. ask me if you wanna know ;) till the next meal!

have you seen this contraption before? wait. no do you own this? this is important. very important. without which you'd overboil/burn stews, you wouldn't get lovely flavours infused in soups. that's enough hints isn't it? :) anyway. so with this my grandma has boiled me some of the most delicious soups. well, ALL delicious soups. hahha. tonight wasn't soup though. look on and see!

So today i baked. Of impossible tarts and chocolate chip cookies. well, more like rock buns. it was a recipe taken off the net. unlike the tart. the tart was a blast. i do miss auntie ruth making it for us. my missing home days were totally eased by her cooking efforts. as busy with work as she was, she took the time off to make tarts, satay pork, laksa, mini curry puffs. never would have made it through montreal without her. :)

Le Tarte Impossible

what's for dinner?

lunch was at orchard cafe, orchard hotel. it was a pretty decent spread of internationa cuisine. of particular mention was the sashimi. yum. i used to only eat the smoked ones but right now. raw's the way to go :) yum. soft shell crab, asparagus, prawn tempura was a draw for me too! and pork in bechamel sauce. desserts weren't any lesser of a draw. there was my favourite creme brulee and decent vanilla/caramel ice cream. i realise i missed out on tonnes of stuff cos my tummy couldn't fit them in anymore. things like freshly grilled satays. hmmmmm. and boiled soups and noodles and chocolate cakes and indian food. hmmm. haha. it's a good deal. try it this month with the uob one for one dining deals. :) so that was my date with M after a long while. girlfriend times are always good times. so that was lunch and that. above? is dinner. straight from grandma's wok. she was amused by my photographical instincts today. 'll try to explain to her about this photofoodblog soon enough. she made her signature curry chicken today for the mum who was on leave. which explains why i could leave. i'm supposed to be tutoring the brothers. my mum's been bugging her about curry chicken on the top right corner. her steamed minced pork and egg and fried eggs smack in the middle were for guess who? my brothers. they loveeee eggs. they'll be chickens some day. hahaha. the bird flu was a major scare for them. it's exam time for them now so that was my grandma's brain food for them. including barley water on the top left corner :) righto. my foodnotes for today. pun totally intended.

the family that eats together

pork rib tea!

bak kut teh. which sounds a mile more appetizing than some pork rib tea. imagine drinking it out of a china cup. well i'd do it. if the soup was really good. today's one was packed full of punch. with ample spices and blackkkk pepper. not that i forgot to mention my lovely blood red chillies. just that it's taken for granted. any meal goes with red chillies. don't ask me how i survived 4 months without them as a staple. i drowned myself in mildly sweet napa veggie soup and mashed potatoes. haha. so stewed eggs and fried tofu puffs- lor neng & taupok. trust me. if you speak the language. you get the goods. haha. usually this would go with preserved veggie ends. or cai buay. but i didn't have the pork fat to stewed them in. sigh. next attempt it is! :) enjoy. i'm lazy to put up recipes simply because i do most things by taste. but mail me. if you need the recipe and i'd be happy to oblige! :)