OUR ATRINA JOURNEY

Monday, September 15, 2008

What have I been cooking recently?

Lack of updates recently due to limited internet access.
I haven’t stopped taking pics of my cooking yet :)

01) Brunch on 08/09
I love doing 1 dish meals. Simple, fuss-free and best of all, less dishes to do!
I will name this dish Oriental Fried Rice.
Ingredients used: chinese mushrooms, eggs, wolf berries, topped with crispy pork floss.
Rice is a little soggy as I poured too much miso stock in.
I learnt that using leftover rice for fried rice is better as the rice is more grainy and separates easily. I guess you could also try cooking the rice with less water if you forgot to cook extra rice the night before (like me!).



02) Dinner on 09/09
Spaghetti aglio olio.
I decided to create my own version by adding whatever I like :)
We had black pepper ham, asparagus, Chinese mushrooms and cherry tomatoes.
I’m using the newly bought olive oil and this is the first time I’m using so much oil in my cooking.




03) Dinner on 11/09
Noodle soup. As mentioned previously, I love 1 dish meals for the simplicity and time-saving factor.
However, to boil stock for the noodles, it took about 1hr 10min.
I used 3 stalks celery, 2 carrots, 8 pcs Chinese mushrooms, 1 garlic, 1 corn on the cob and 6 prawn heads, some cherry tomatoes and half a handful of wolfberries.
Chicken slices and prawns were added after discarding the celery, carrot, garlic and prawn head.
The results exceeded my expectations by a lot. I’m so proud of my own creation that I had to text Mummy immediately.
Colour of the soup is a little too dark as I poured too much dark soy sauce but taste wise was not overwhelmingly salty.
Still had a small bowl of stock leftover over which I used for the next day’s cooking.
Flat noodles from Daiso. Hidden under the ingredients.



04) Dinner on 12/09
My darling bro came over for dinner. Have not seen him for abt a week. Super miss him!
Sorry ah didi, che only can cook simple fare but I promise to cook something better the next you come.



Act Ang Mo - Broccoli and ham in cream sauce.



Hubs and didi like the sauce. This is such an easy dish. Just pour cream in and fry. It’s that easy. But very sinful. Imagine a whole 200ml of cream inside. This broccoli is really ang mo leh.
Cost me a little over 2 times of what I normally paid in Fairprice. Cost for this dish abt $9.
Very expensive for the normally niao me.

Tofu Cheena - Soft beancurd with mushrooms and chicken.



Stock was leftover from previous night.

Bd cake for bro who turned 15 on 13/09.



Nice packaging they have.

Didi likes the cake.





Young man now. He deserves his first toast!



Alamak! Boy don't know how to appreciate sparkling wine yet.
He thought it's the sweet fruity kind we used to drink.
No prob man Che finished it up for him.

05) Tunch on 12/09
I think that’s the correct term for late lunch cum tea?
Used whatever was available in the fridge, meatless.
Well just simple fried kway teow. No pics taken but I found it quite good myself.

Note: Whole week’s meal consists of chinese mushrooms.
We have a 400g pack of dried mushrooms in our fridge currently and I’m desperately trying to finish them up.

We've also over 10 oranges in the fridge and I've been having OD of OJ.

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Thank you all for celebrating with us!

It's a day after our wedding and we would like to thank all our friends and relatives for your presence.
Special special thanks to our Bros and Sis for sacrificing your beauty sleep and helping out on our special day.

We've got some nice gifts from friends and family.

Champagne flute from D. I *heart heart* it.







Lovely tulip champagne glass with champagne from Y.
Just nice my 4 girls can toast with them.







From Jeanne and Ian. How nice and matchy with above 2 gifts!



Chilling in the fridge now.

From the cousins. Cutlery set and wine glass.
Haha, I wonder how on earth did they learn about our love for 18/10 ware?
Since we already have our cutlery, we decided to give the set to Mummy if they manage to get their ideal unit soon.



Wine glass. Great to have although we seldom drink.
D will be very happy when she comes by. Lots of wine ware to choose from. She's such a alcoholic.





Mummy's good friend Auntie Margarete and company got me this nice tea set.
See, just nice 5 pcs set. Just nice for me and my girls. Oops... forgot about my husband.
Nvm la he never liked tea and cakes anyway *whistle*







Details:



Dainty card from R. Really like the embroided flowers.



Our wedding favour. Moist chocolate cake with chocolate coating.
We missed to give out to the guests who left early as there were left refrigerated.



Ok I will admit that we are not so creative to come up with such meaningful phrases.
We just got the same wording from the display pce in the shop.

Our AD shots taken by Terry Ng of One Eye Click.
Will upload soon after we get them.
Hope they turn out nice :)

Friday, September 5, 2008

Girls' Night In

My girls decided to have a big discussion on how to make my husband's life difficult on Sat morning's 迎亲.
I tried my best to be a good hostess. I really did.
As I wasn't working on Thurs, I planned on making some finger food for the girls since they were coming after work.
But turned out???
Barley drink failed - Left the barley and winter melon in the pot instead of scooping them out and they "sucked in" most of the barley water. Clever Y managed to squeeze out 2 precious cups of barley drink (I had prepared more than 8 cups initially!).
Mid-joint wings - I still don't fully understand the character of my oven well enough.
Time took to bake 1 batch of wings took almost 2 hrs?
By the time the 2nd batch was out R and me were the only ones who still had the hots for them :P
Can someone pls teach me the correct function to use for baking meat items?
My sandwiches were the least disastrous. But then again, what could have gone wrong with sandwich making?

Open-faced sandwiches. Cheese & ham and scrambled egg.
I used cookie cutters from Daiso.



Y put them to bake for a short while.



Tasted better after baked. Notice the top left heart - Cheese "pong-ed".

Last pce no one wanted it. Just nice Hubs came back after the girls left and he got to eat it :)



Shy pic of the wings.



They were rather well marinated (7hrs) but my bake ware not the non-stick kind so the chicken skin teared during the flipping process.
Thanks to Y for helping with the wings and the Royce choc.
Also thanks to D for getting the sliced cheese.

I'm gonna make sure I do a better job next time round.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

I love my husband very much :)

After the 过大礼saga, Hubs still 乖乖listen to Mummy sing-song and buy her nice mooncakes.
I'm so proud of you, Hubba!



The mooncake albeit too non-traditional but I like it so much.
Hm... liquer mooncakes are so for me.