May the Dragon year bring you all that your heart desires.  ROAR!

With love from miss ene, the boy and Moon.

My FIL makes pineapple tarts every Chinese New Year and he does it all using a tiny oven, baking one small tray at a time. Talk about patience! The boy and I were over at his parents’ the other night and he was single-handedly making the tarts so I decided to be a dutiful DIL and help out with cutting of the pastry. It looks seemingly easy but it took me a while to get the hang of it.

Do pardon my less-than-stellar mop of hair. I was really proud of myself having filled up the entire tray with pineapple tart pastry. And as you can see from the picture on the bottom left, Miss Moon was more than eager to help eat up any bits of uncooked pastry that fell to the ground. Pfffft.

Unfortunately, the thunder clouds soon rolled in and thankfully, we left the beach before the rain came down in sheets. We were also glad that we didn’t bother washing the car because all the effort would have been wasted. Tee hee hee.

No, she did not get any bak kwa.

The answer is still no.

I finally attempted to make fried bee hoon for lunch on Saturday afternoon. I did not follow a recipe (so brave, yo!) but followed the verbal instructions of a colleague who shared with me how she makes it. I dumped the entire packet of bee hoon into the the frying pan which was a mistake because it was really tiring on the arms trying to toss the noodles. Phew.

The verdict? It was edible and didn’t taste too bad. Yeay! I definitely have new found respect in making this seemingly simple dish.

One of my favourite red packets from this year are these ones from CapitaLand. Check out the really cute pandas, called Jia Jia and Kai Kai. You can’t really tell from the picture but the images are embossed. Nice!

How’s your CNY preparations?

And just so you know, I took this picture for all my cat-loving friends out there And they’ve even got a pretty comprehensive website. Anyway, back to the market. There were so many pretty shops and so many things to see! I was mad excited.

This is not like the pasar malam market we have back home. Most of the products were locally or handmade and more importantly, prices were anything but pasar malam-like. I bought stuff from these 2 shops – Pretty In Pink and Mooza Designs. Pretty In Pink sold really pretty wristlets, pouches and all sorts of little pouches. I wish I could buy them all but then, the boy was keeping an eye on me. Tsk. Mooza Designs made pretty hand crafted signs for the home. I bought a male/female WC sign for our bathroom door, something like this (taken from their website):

And the word ‘Laugh‘ for our living room:

LOVE THEM!

After our jaunt to the market, we even found ourselves at a city art gallery. Free entry!

So arty farty eh? Hur hur.

Just down the road from the art gallery was a city reservoir called Paddington Reservoir Gardens. It used to be a reservoir but has since been turned into a nature respite in the middle of the city.

It has a sunken garden with lush greenery and even has a couple of houses at the side. We spied a male resident wearing only his boxers, grabbing a drink from the fridge. I’m not sure who was more shocked. Heh. We spent some time just taking in the greenery and I couldn’t resist the urge to do jump-shots.

Woohoo! This turned out to be one of my favourite photos from the holiday. Such unbridled happiness

After all that jumping, shopping and sight-seeing, it was time for a late afternoon snack. Our hosts took us to an Asian place near their home called Aseana Food Village. Between the 4 of us, we shared two dishes – bak chor mee (hehe) and nasi campur. Check out the amount of bak chor! You can barely see the noodles.

After that lovely meal, it was time for a walk at the Centennial Parklands. There were loads of black swans! It was a pity that we didn’t have any bread with us.

On our way back to the house, we stopped by Coogee Beach for a stroll. The deep blue skies, the crashing waves, the cool breeze on our faces….it was truly GORGEOUS.

The boy took this photo and I got reminded again that nature’s amazing.

I could sit and stare out at the sea forever…but we had to head off for a nice dinner at a rather fancy Japanese restaurant called Toko.

It was one of the highlight meals of our trip. Every dish was exquisite and the true flavour of the food shone through. I’m drooling just thinking of the food we had that evening. Mmmmm…..

Our feasting didn’t end there. We headed off to a Hungarian cafe/bakery called Kurtosh.

These freshly-made-on-the-spot sweet bread is crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. Yummy! A perfect way to round off another perfect day in Sydney.

I stumbled upon this picture while clearing out boxes of old stuff. Thought of The Pleasure Monger’s entry on kids and telephones.

That’s me at my very first home, a kampong house at Yio Chu Kang Road. The inflatable rabbit toy is larger than me! And check out that old dial telephone. I remember that I loved dialing the numbers just for fun. I also realised that the telephone was sitting on a bowling trophy and I have no idea who it belonged to. Did you notice that I had my legs crossed stylishly? I bet it was my Dad’s idea.

Dad was always putting me in funny stuff and taking pictures. Like this:

Like, why was I wearing funny glasses? What book was that? And was I wearing a night gown?! This was taken on the front porch of the same kampong house. I think this was my Dad’s idea of wanting me to grow up to become a lawyer. Hur hur.

Ahh….nostalgia

It turned out surprisingly good! And it was really easy. I followed this recipe generally but added long beans for a bit of fibre and colour. Also, I seasoned the meat which made it a tad too salty. Next time, I’d leave out the seasoning and cook it immediately. A definite keeper, especially for weekday dinners! What’s there not to like in this all-in-one meal?

Tonight, I decided to use the leftover long beans and made fried rice for myself. The boy has a night out with the rest of the boys.

I also learnt a couple of tips about frying rice from my colleague who’s in F&B:

1. Season the cold cooked rice with salt and pepper. This will make the fried rice more fragrant.
2. Fry the lup cheong first so that the fragrant oil is left behind. Set aside the lup cheong, then fry the egg into an omelette. Usually, I would fry the egg last and it’d be soggy and a bit gross. Once the egg is done, throw in the garlic/onion, rice, lup cheong, etc and fry away.
3. When adding light sauce to taste, pour it into the side of the frying pan, NOT onto the rice itself. The sauce will bubble up in the heat and you can then toss the rice onto the sauce. Ahhh!

I have to say that this was the best fried rice I’ve made for myself! It was definitely more flavourful than the previous versions that I’ve made. I’m so glad to have learnt some tricks to making a decent portion of fried rice. Another easy peasy quick dinner for a weekday.

What are some of your favourite weekday dinners from your kitchen? I’d love to learn more!

Recently, I was introduced to ba zhen tang (八珍汤) or Eight Treasure Decoction. You can read about its benefits here. Apparently, women take it at the end of their monthly period to nourish the bodies and to ‘replenish’ all the lost blood. I’ve never heard of it until recently. Basically, this tonic soup nourishes the blood, helps with the qi and balances the hormonal system.

For me, I usually get pretty bad cramps on the first day of the time-of-the-month and would usually need to pop a Panadol to manage the pain. However, after I drank one packet of ba zhen tang (one packet can last for 2 rounds) last month, I noticed that the cramps were not as bad as usual, i.e. I survived without resorting to the Panadol. Woohoo! I did not do anything special so I attributed it to the soup. I have to add that it isn’t the nicest soup. In fact, it’s far from nice. It’s thick, gooey and rather…gross. Check it out:

It tastes as vile as it looks. The best thing to do is to gulp it down very quickly while pinching your nose shut. Well, at least that’s what I did.

So yes, even though it’s thoroughly gross, I’m now sold on the soup because I no longer get cramps! I’d drink anything to stop the cramps, really. I accompanied my mum to the medical shop one afternoon and bought another 4 packets. I did not realise that each packet was specially concocted on the spot! I always thought that it was bought it off the shelf.

Check out the amount of herbs in one packet. LOADS! No wonder each packet costs $14. I saw the same packet of herbs (but a lot smaller) sold at shops and they were $6.50 each. Apparently, the types of herbs used are of different quality and quantity so naturally, the price is different. Ahhh, now I know.

Ladies, do you drink this tonic soup? Have you heard of it and do you drink it?