Snapshots: What-I-Ate-CNY

This time, let’s have a special WIAW… it’s what -i-ate-Chinese New Year Special!! Thanks Jenn for hosting, especially since I post the funniest (asian) WIAWs. This WIAW has a complete lack of green, which is excusable on my own terms, since it’s Chinese New Year, and it’s a time for celebration and relaxation.

I started by Chinese New Year off with a slice of Red Velvet Cake from Lynn’s. It was moist and pretty yummy, considering I’m not a fan of Red Velvet Cake. I just had to get some red into the New Year, since red = prosperity… or something along those lines.

DAY 1
It’s my family tradition to have a humongous breakfast on the first day of Chinese New Year. So this year, my mother lovingly put together a feast of yam kueh, stir fried noodles, pau, siew mai and egg tarts. It was like a mini dim sum feast! All right, maybe it was a dim sum feast, not so mini by the looks of it.

We even had Cheng Tng, a sweet asian dessert made from a sweet soup filled with longans, gingko nuts, white fungues and many more wholesome ingredients.

I was caught up in the hustle and bustle of visiting and wishing my elders happy chinese new year, that I forgot to take photos of the delicious food we had at the various houses. We had popiah, and kong bak pau, as well as loads of sweet treats and chinese new year goodies like pineapple tarts and love letters. I can’t believe I don’t have a single photo of chinese new year goodies. I guess they disappear way too fast.

Despite all that food, I still found the time to snack on some old school biscuits I found at my grandparents’ house. Marie biscuits anyone?

Dinner is unpictured.. but we had a lovingly cooked meal of porridge and chinese dishes, as well as fried bee hoon, prepared by my grandmother.

Ah yes, you all know what mandarin oranges look like. Try freezing them! They were the perfect cold snack, not to mention much healthier than pineapple tarts or bakkwa (barbequed pork) 😛

Day 2
I started the day right with more yam kueh and chee cheong fun. Yam kueh is a steamed chinese cake made of cooked yam, flour, shallots, mini prawns and loads of other ingredients. I love it so much! Chee Cheong Fun is a steamed rice flour roll topped with your choice of sweet sauce or sesame oil. It’s delicious as well.

Lo Hei made quite a few appearances this year… In fact, I had SEVEN Lo Hei’s this year. For the non-chinese readers, Lo Hei is like a salad made of grated carrots, various pickled vegetables, crushed nuts, crackers, raw fish and pomelo/dried fruits. It is topped with plum sauce and a drizzle of oil, before everyone mixes it up together with chopsticks, while proclaiming well wishes and hopes & dreams for the new year ahead. This dish is often eaten as an appetizer, before a sumptous reunion dinner.

My family continued our yearly tradition of having Golden Mile Steamboat for dinner! Nothing beats a steaming hot bowl of rice, with your piping bowl of soup filled with your favorite ingredients.

We are proud to say that we do love their sweet and sour pork chop very much! Crispy, yet not oily, and coated in the thick sweet&sour sauce with some peas, onions and tomatoes. It was as good as the very first time we tried it.

CNY is also about new clothes, so here’s just one photo of the dress I wore on the first day! I love the rustic background which was taken near some old flats during visiting.

HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR FROM THE CHAN SIBLINGS!

Hope you enjoyed this post!

WIAW: Sweet Treats Galore

Hello friends and fellow foodies!

It’s time for… *drumroll please*… What-I-Ate-Wednesday!! Even though it’s actually Thursday in Singapore.

It has been ages since my last WIAW post. This is only my third WIAW post actually, so I’m still pretty new to this whole game. My fellow Singaporean bloggers have yet to hop on the bandwagon. Hopefully, my fellow healthy foodies like Grace and Sheryl will give WIAW a go sometime?

My eats may seem pretty foreign to those of you who don’t live in Singapore, but take it as a mini food tour of sorts of things we have on offer here!

Breakfast:
Instagram is quite big these days, so I decided to buy freshly made yam cream swiss rolls from Qianhan who sells her bakes on instagram (@qianhanny). They were sold in sets of two rolls, so cake ended up on my breakfast table. I mean, I’ve got to eat it while its fresh right?

They were filled with a lovely yam cream, not too sweet thankfully, which had some chunks of yam. The swissroll was topped with dessicated coconut and chocolate shavings too. Mmm, I love dessicated coconut.

Of course, cake isn’t enough for breakfast, so I gobbled down 3 apricots for dessert after dessert. As if I’m not already sweet enough. These apricots were so sweet and juicy.

I’m not sure if apricots look like this overseas, but these were pretty small, about half the size of a nectarine in fact! Nonetheless, I really enjoyed them.

Lunch:
I tried to get some greens in at lunch. A commendable effort I must say! I ordered the Grilled Vegetables and Brie Sandwich on Soft Country Bread from Gastronomia da Paolo at Cluny Court. I’ve reviewed them here recently.

Mickey D’s were pretty nearby so I decided to give in to my super sweet tooth today. I had a vanilla cone. Don’t you just love swirly vanilla cones? They are my favorite type of ice cream. I would choose swirly vanilla cones over high end gelato any day. It must have been my lucky day cause those swirls are lookin’ good.

Dinner:
I’m Chinese, and I’m proud of it. Even though my verbal proficiency, and literacy skills for Chinese isn’t great, I’m Asian, and I’ll always go back to my roots. So… on the table for dinner is NOODLES!

I went to a local eatery, aptly named EAT. I ordered the Fishball Tang Hoon Noodles in Soup (right) while my friend had Laksa. If I were to translate it to something foreigners would understand, I would say that I ordered ‘Balls of Fishpaste with Glass noodles in Clear Soup’… something along those lines.

The dish on the left is Laksa, which is a spicy coconut-milk gravy poured over thick rice noodles.
I also ordered a side dish of fried beancurd/firm tofu to share. It was good, although the fact that it was fried probably ruined the virtuous aspect of beancurd.

Well, there you have it! These are my eats for today… Ah yes, I always forget to take a photo of my snacks though, but you can use your imagination and throw in an apple, an orange and a banana since those are pretty much what I snack on all day.

Here are some questions because questions are fun for everyone:

What’s your favorite Chinese dish?

How do you cook your tofu?

Would you prefer cheap (but oh-so-good) swirly vanilla cones or quality gelato?

Birthday WIAW and Skyve Review.

I couldn’t come up with a better title. Haha. Well, it sums up what this post is about so its pretty apt.

It was my birthday yesterday, yes, my birthday is on September 11. Anyway, I thought I’d do a post on my (birth)day which was really amazing, and made me realise how much I appreciate my family and friends. Don’t worry, all you foodies, my day was filled with loads of good food as well!

So here’s my third WIAW birthday-style, hosted by the creative Jenn at Peas&Crayons.

Just a disclaimer, this is far from healthy! Haha, but it was my birthday so it was no holds barred 😛 Two ice creams in day is what I’m talking about.. and 2 slices of cake the day before that. But hey, what’s life without treats?

Let’s skip breakfast, and jump straight to lunch since that’s where the pretty photos come in.

I went to Skyve for lunch with my mother and sister since I had been meaning to check that place out. The restaurant had a lovely laidback atmosphere, with a rather posh air about it. Maybe it was the decor, or the type of people dining there, whatever it was, it definitely created a distinct vibe. I can’t quite put my finger on it.

The table was the perfect depiction of “less is more”.

The lone flower in a glass cup added a nice touch, as did the cutlery in a rustic metal bucket (below)

Just a word of caution. The bottles of Fiji water displayed on your table aren’t complimentary. They cost around 4 bucks a bottle. Be sure to ask for normal water if you aren’t willing to pay so much. Our waiter/waitress didn’t tell us so we ended up paying for the crazily-priced water.

The menu comes in the form of a clipboard, and gives a clear description of each dish, so no worries about ordering something you are clueless about.

Here’s the food!

Skyving Breakfast

My sister ordered two poached eggs, with Brioche, and the rest is part of the standard fare… mushrooms, tomatoes, sausage, potatoes, the works.

This was pretty good according to her, so I’d say its worth the try! Especially for the bigger eaters.

Parma Ham Caesar Salad 

I for one would never order salad at a restaurant. It doesn’t make sense to me to pay so much for a bowl of vegetables when I can make my own bowl of salad. Well, for you salad lovers, this salad was topped with a lovely egg, with a centre that was similar to that of a ramen egg. The dressing was good too. The only bad thing was that it seemed rather small to me.

Mushroom soup

This was quality mushroom soup. You could taste the earthiness of the mushrooms, and the ever present chunks of mushrooms in the soup were proof that this was good stuff.

Sous-vide eggs benedict

Skyve specialises in sous-vide style cooking, so I decided to try their egg benedict. Their eggs benedict usually comes with bacon, but I asked for more mushrooms instead, cause I’m not a fan of bacon.

My eggs benedict came nice presented as you can see… but the portion was rather small. I saw another customer polishing off his eggs ben in a matter of 15 minutes, maybe less.

It was rather simple fare, if you ask me. Nothing spectacular, unlike the Eggs Ben at Wild Honey. Still a Wild Honey fan here! The english muffin and eggs weren’t hot, just slightly warmer than room temperature, which was quite a put off for me cause I like my food hot.

The mushrooms were good though, probably the same ones used in the soup. They were very flavorful and paired nicely with the eggs ben. The corn was well, sweetcorn. You can’t exactly make corn very spectacular.

Here’s what disappointed me the most. The eggs didn’t flow! The yolk was slightly firm, so I had to poke around to get the yolk to run. The strange thing is that the egg whites were rather firm, as you can see above, where it came off in a chunk, but they were undercooked inside. Somewhat like a soft-boiled egg.

I wasn’t too impressed with this dish. Small portions and average taste, I’d rather go to d’Good Cafe at Holland Village for their Eggs Ben which was much more afforable, and the same tastewise.

Top view! Their food looks pretty, but to me, that’s about it. Nothing amazing given their prices.

Just a few pictures of the ladies who lunch!

Skyve was good, but not great. It was nice to try a new place, but I wouldn’t be back again. I didn’t feel like I got the bang for my buck, if you know what I mean.

Rating: 6/10

Being voracious eaters, we headed over to Ben&Jerry’s for dessert right after. The portions weren’t enough for us. Haha. Clusterfluff on a cone for all three of us. Delish!

Then it was time for the festivities!

My lovely mother prepared my favorite meal for me… Popiah!

For those of you who don’t know, popiah is like a giant burrito, just that its wrapped with a thin skin…similar to what you find on wantons/egg rolls. The filling is shredded turnips, carrots, cabbage, and some stewed meat/chicken stock to add flavor.

What I love about it, apart from the fact that its a healthy veggie-loaded dish, is that you can customise your own popiah. You lay the skin down, put the lettuce as the base to prevent the skin from rupturing, and spread some sauce (chili/sweet sauce). Then you add the filling, and top it with hard boiled eggs, crushed peanuts, prawns.. anything you like! I like to add a dab of sweet sauce when I’m rolling it up so that it acts as a glue.

We were in such a great mood, I think we easily polished off at least 3 rolls each, as we laughed and talked about the day. It was such a brilliant feeling having everyone at the table, without technology distracting us from enjoying each other’s presence. I’ve really missed sitting down and enjoying a nice family dinner, especially since we are all usually exhausted after coming home from a long day at work/school.

I was so surprised by what my family did for me. They really planned every detail out. It was hilarious because I got excited over each thing they brought out, and each time I started to thank them, they would cut me off, and say there was more. It was so nice to see them bring surprise after surprise out. I won’t talk about the presents here, because the people matter so much more.

First surprise was the card! They bought cupcakes to match the cupcakes on the card.

What a genius idea, I was so impressed. Rose, chocolate and lemon cupcakes.

Lemon Cupcake
The cupcake was tart, and not too sweet. I usually don’t eat the frosting, but the frosting was full of lemony zing, unlike the gritty icings that are loaded with sugar. The cupcake itself was moist, and not sweet as well. I loved this!

Chocolate Cupcake
The chocolate cupcake was well received as well, and the frosting was similarly loaded with chocolate goodness and not the typical sugar-loaded commercial cupcake. Good stuff right here.

Rose Cupcake
The Rose Cupcake was nice too. It tasted like Bandung (Rose syrup drink), and like the other two, wasn’t overly sweet.

In case you’re wondering, these cupcakes are from Cupcake Engineer, I did a review on them a while back, and I’m glad to say they are still my favorite cupcake bakery to date.

Well, on to more surprises. My sister bought me a beautiful pink rose, because she said that people in sports rarely got flowers, unlike those in performing arts. I was so touched. I love receiving flowers!

The cake was another surprise too! It was so colorful and cute. Best of all, it was an ice cream cake, which I’d choose over a normal cake any day. They bought it from Island Creamery.  All the colours made me so happy! I felt like a little girl again.

I’m really thankful for my friends too, who wrote me cards, and gave me presents. One of them even made me a cake! Honestly, the presents don’t matter to me. I’m happy to receive a card, or a birthday wish, cause it shows that your friend remembered, and you actually mean something to them.

I was so thankful for my family, for planning a beautiful birthday, and keeping the mood high all day.

I’m thankful for my mother, for making and planning the celebration. It was an amazing birthday, and I could really see the effort and thought that went into it. Thanks mum 🙂

I’m thankful for my sister too, for she put together a cute little video for me, despite her busy schedule.

To my brother and father who couldn’t be there, thank you for making the time to call me from across the globe to wish me a happy birthday, and for giving me such well-thought presents! You guys are the best.

So here I am, a year older. How do I feel? Not much different actually, but I definitely know that I’m loved 😛 And that’s a really nice feeling. Can’t stop smiling as I recall my day. Its so nice knowing that people put in the effort to show that they appreciate you, be it through their actions or their words.

As I end off, I think it’d be nice to have a moment of silence, wherever you are, for the people who lost their lives on September 11. Let’s just take a moment to pray for their families who are still hurting inside, and remember to show your loved ones that you care. You never know what might happen today or tomorrow, and the worst feeling to have is one of regret. Call up your friend, your relative, someone special, and just let them know that you appreciate them. Its the small things that count.

Just for fun, I’ll end off with my outfit of the day… my favorite top and green pants!

 

WIAW: Mix and match

Good day everyone! Its my second round joining in the WIAW party, with the brilliant Jenn who’s hosting as always. I think WIAW is a brilliant way for bloggers to learn more about each other, even if its just by seeing what one another eats in a day. Kudos to Jenn for dreaming up such a fun event on the blogosphere.

Breakfast:

2 Weetbix topped with a cold banana, and soya milk. So simple and so delicious. I have a big appetite though, so I had two Jollipancakes to follow (below)

A Jollipancake is a thin pancake which is spread with peanut jam (crushed peanuts mixed to form a thick paste), and rolled up. The crunch of the crushed peanuts and sugar takes pancakes to a whole new level. I still prefer their normal traditional pancakes though, as you can see. But if you like western pancakes, then this would be a better bet.

Lunch:
I had hawker food for lunch today! I went to ABC Brickworks Market and Food Centre, which has loads of good food. Lunch for me was Handmade Fishball noodles which were spectacular. The soup was tasty, and the fishballs were springy and stuffed with ingredients, unlike their processed counterparts.

If you have absolutely no idea what I am talking about, should you ever come to Singapore, do get your hands on some fishballs. Fishballs are made of fish meat, which is ground up into a paste, so it does not have a texture like meat at all. Sometimes, spices like chopped red chillies and green onions are added for a flavor boost. My favorite kind is the FuZhou Fishball, where the fIshball is stuffed with minced meat. When you bite into it, the juices from the meat just ooze into your mouth, and its like a party for your taste buds. They may sound and look strange, but they are fun to eat (be careful not to stuff the entire ball into your mouth though, or the Heimlich maneuver may come in handy). While fishballs are considered simple fare, they are still a novelty since you probably will not be able to find them outside Asia.

Woah. that was an unexpected paragraph on fishballs. Haha, well moving on, here’s what I had for dessert!
I got these bowls of deliciousness from a stall called “Creo Desserts“. With stalls like Blackball, and Beanstalk taking Singapore by storm, I have to say, this is my kryptonite. Affordable, and in my opinion, better than Blackball and Beanstalk (*gasp*), these are just plain delightful. Crushed ice drenched in syrup, and topped with grass jelly, red beans, and taro balls (or taro for my foodie-in-crime)… the ideal dessert for a hot day in sunny Singapore.

Here’s a close up! Isn’t it pretty? 🙂

Dinner:
For my fellow health nuts, this should ring a bell. Sumo salad for dinner anyone? Here are the few variations I’ve had lately. I love how generous they are with the portions, literally stuffing the box with the salads of your choice.

Kumara/Sweet potato Couscous, Jamaican Chicken and Pumpkin with chickpeas. Eating the rainbow indeed! This was my favorite combination.

Chicken avocado salad, Couscous and Jamaican Chicken. Still loving the Jamaican Chicken.

Chicken Avocado Salad, Chickpeas, Couscous with Sausage, White bean and Kumara. I got greedy and mixed 4 types of salad together. Don’t follow my lead.. sometimes, less is more.

And, if you have leftovers, what better way than to add more veggies, and serve it up again the next day? The perfect way to get more greens into your diet. I’d say this WIAW has more greens than my previous WIAW 😀 Achievement unlocked!

Well, all good things come to an end, and this concludes my WIAW #2, I certainly hope you had fun reading 😀 or at least looking at the photos.

Have a brilliant day, may God bless you always.

WIAW: (Southeast) Asian style

With so many of my favorite food&fitness blogs joining Jenn in the What I Ate Wednesday fun, I thought I’d give it a shot. Maybe I’ll bring the fun to Singapore! An Asian WIAW… now, THAT will be interesting.

So here goes!

Breakfast:

I don’t usually eat tarts for breakfast… but since my mother made the effort to buy them specially for me, I thought why not sweeten my day with a Mixed Fruit Tart from Delifrance for breakfast?

Of course, as I always do, I had fruits alongside breakfast. Today, it was a nice bowl of strawberries. I love berries, but they are always so expensive in Singapore, so I do cherish every occasion that I get to eat berries of any form!

Lunch:

I was feeling rather ‘snacky’ today, so I decided to go with the flow and make myself a snacky sort of lunch! I started off with 2 pieces of Wasa Fibre Crispbread topped with Wild Garden Hummus, with a side of cherry tomatoes. So simple, and so delicious! I’m definitely loving the hummus.

If you want to go get some Wasa crackers or hummus, here’s what they look like:

Now, on to part 2 of lunch…

Next up, was a small bowl of cereal with one Weetbix, and some Familia Swiss c.m cereal and multigrain cheerios thrown in for good measure. Cereal for lunch anytime 😛

Finally, I ended off with my favorite snack, Leo’s potato and cheese crackers. If you aren’t from Singapore, you probably would not have heard of this… even Singaporeans may not remember this childhood snack, since they are extremely hard to find.

Tea:
No matter how busy I am, I always make it a point to sit down for tea break. Its just something I’ve done since young.

Today’s tea was Cherry flavored Greek Yogurt by Fruyo. (Parent brand: Fage) It was really rich and creamy, with a nice tart flavor from the cherries.

Dinner:

Well, I haven’t had dinner yet, but here’s what dinner will probably look like tonight…
It’s most likely going to be Japanese, but I haven’t decided if I’m having noodles or rice.

This is a Teriyaki Chicken Bento from UmiSushi at Holland Village. Its a nice, simple grab and go meal if you don’t have time to cook.

Maybe I’ll make some teriyaki chicken, with brown rice onigiri, and some steamed vegetables.

Or have a nice bowl of chicken somen in pumpkin soup, and a side of tofu topped with radishes.

I never thought that doing a WIAW would be so eye-opening! Haha, I never really realised how carbohydrate based most Asian diets are. And, it looks like vegetables will have to make more regular occurrences :O

Well. this concludes my first WIAW, and I definitely had fun doing it! I sure hope you had as much fun reading it 🙂