Lunch @ Carl's Jr in Jurong Point. I love their chilli cheese fries. It's probably the best fries I can have here after Belgain Frites. The Super Star burger + 32oz drink and the fries is large enough to last me for a whole afternoon. Not bad, considering that no matter how large a meal I take, I cant go food-less for 5 hours straight, otherwise my legs will, without warning, turn SOFT/WEAK/POST-INTERVAL WORKOUT STATE(choose any). This 脚软 syndrome, like how my mom calls it, is probably passed on to me from her!
Followed by: 3pm crazily hot & windless stroll at Chinese Garden. I never expected I would find, let alone climb, a pagoda in singapore. But that was exactly what I did, with 2 guys in toll to match. Awesome.
Maybe it was the timing, or the weather, but after walking the garden, I saw 3 Indians, 3 Filipinos, a few foreign workers, a causasian, and no chinese at all. If not for the temple and pagoda..

First week of school, gone! Just like that. Only in this week we've finally managed to form our FYP group, since we have one too many for a 5-man team. The unfortunate man who had to leave was Jesper, who ended up teaming with next door's classmates. Sorry for that, Jesper! This year looks like everyone has their Napfa test on their minds, hitting the gym every other day. 2 classmates' daily gym sessions has been rubbing off me quite abit; I've been to the gym twice this week, mainly to work on my not-so-strong upper body. My lower body is powered by another seperate two 2&half hours workouts. Bring on the physical test!

This looks way too nice and delicious to be done by me. Of course, it is my mom again. This Chicken with Apple Salad is her first time trying this dish out, but like all salads we have on Sunday night, it tasted just as awesome. It suggests thigh fillets, but my mom is a mega longtime fan of chicken breast and as her children who have grown up eating her food, we are lovers of breasts too! Chicken breast that is.

Today for the 1st time of my life I went grocery shopping. Went in NTUC to buy a loaf of bread, yogurt and a chuck of chicken breast. Then proceeded to the adjacent wet market to buy 20cents of taogay. Honestly I felt alittle lost in the market without my mom, like a chicken which has lost its head, mainly because only mom knows what to do in a market. Im like, should I buy this chinese lettuce? it looks nice, but wait, 40cents for 100g sounds pricey to me. How much is it again back in Jusco?

Lunch today: Fried beehoon + Taogay


Yesterday punctured TWICE in the space of 5seconds(?) atop mt. Faber. This just emphasize the point we need new bikes!


I made myself fried rice for lunch today. I was surprised it tasted so good because I have this notion that 'you cant make good fried rice on a frying pan. yoo need a wok.' This notion is given to me by none other than my SISTER. Yup, its her again. That time she cooked fried rice for us in Belgium, it ate like glutinous rice. She blamed it on the lack of a wok. Wait till she comes back, Im soo gonna prove her wrong with my delicious, mouthwatering, scrumptious fried rice. Honestly I cant wait to, as my mom put it, PK with her. same dish, different cook.

Labels: fried rice

After eating balsamic potato(which my brother made, which doesnt help matters) again yesterday since I last consumed it in Belgium , I am pretty sure I can include balsamic vinegar into my All-Time Food Phobia List.
I love eating everything and anything and I am always game to try and continue eating new food that doesnt always agree with my taste buds initially. So it's very hard for me to hate a particular food, unless something really nasty happened after I consumed it. So the 2 food right now that you-can-kill-me-and-I-still-wont-eat-it is Glass Noodles and a new entrant in the name of Balsamic vinegar.
This is how balsamic vinegar made it into the list:
The crime scene was in my sister's dorm kitchen.
The accused is my sister.
One is supposed to boil the potatoes to boiling point, followed by 30mins of simmering. So the potato is close to mashed potato texture. But what my sister did was half boil it, then had the oven to complete the other half of the task. In any case, the oven is needed to melt the cheese. So, this is what she had in mind, 'since I need to microwave the potatoes anyway, I shouldnt fully boil the potatoes. Half boil it, then half heat it to softness.' The result? The potatoes were HARD LIKE RAW. Coupled with the strong balsamic vinegar and a unique Janine Cooking flavour it in, it was...still eatable!Surprisingly, the phobia didnt happen at this stage. It developed much later, as late as when we were flying home on a 747.
Diarrhea-mania started when we were on the plane. The 12 hours in the plane was hell. It lasted for 2-3 days. I had a loss of appetite. Here's the catch, during the diarrhea, whenever I thought of the balsamic potato and crepe(nomination for All-Time Food Phobia List. Both times I ate it, I felt vomitty), I felt like vomitting. It's like as though those were the food that caused the infection.
My mom just told me bro spammed the balsamic vinegar when he made the balsamic potato
yesterday. Gosh, I wanted to use the dish to redeem itself, so that I'll never have to phobia-nize it. But it looks like both my bro and sist have single-handledly killed my love for balsamic potato.(The first time I ate it, my mom made it. It tasted heavenly then)

So now my All-Time Food Phobia List looks like this:
1. Glass Noodles (All time favourite TO HATE)
2. Balsamic Vinegar (pending until my mom makes it again for final redemption)
3. Crepe(pending)


Random
Saturday I was pruning my mom's plants and this is what I did to it. I halfed the bush because I found the old shape boring. My mom got a shock when she saw it.


Today I got the biggest shock of my life yet.
It's 4.30am in the morning, and I'm just about to leave home. When the lift door opens, my heart almost died on me. There's this dead man, or looks like it to me, lying on his side in a curled up position. His keys are on the floor, and his slippers nearby. It looks like as though he's been robbed and killed in the tussle. And it doesnt help that Im alone and it's dark and its eerily quiet, i mean it's 4.30AM, the roosters dont even crow that early.
But anyway no worries, the guy is NOT dead. He's just DEAD DRUNK. I know that because that bloody guy is snoring away and this is Singapore, people dont nap in elevators under normal circumstances. WTHell!
And the worst part? The lift he's sleeping in happens to be the lift that keeps coming to my floor. So I have to creep up into that lift, press a high floor button to send the lift far away so that I can successfully summon the other lift. I tell you, if this drunk bastard suddenly wakes up when Im pressing the button in his lift, I'll really FREAK OUT.
When I came back 2hrs half later, he's gone. Better be, otherwise..

Mom went back to malaysia, bro went for freshman camp. So, the moment I've finally been waiting for is here..to cook! Ever since I came back from Europe, I've decided to master cooking, and almost everyday I've been monitoring my mom's cooking, and also taking down notes & tips. I didnt want to cook with my mom because it doesnt help me develop my skills. Mom prepares all the ingredients, preheats the wok, pour the right amount of oil in, add in the sauce and all I do is just do the frying. In the end it tastes exactly like mom's cooking. Moreover, you learn a new skill best if you're left alone, with no choice but forced to do it yourself.
Cooking is very easy to learn, whipping up delicious food is the hard part, as I come to realise it soon.
Just last night mum cooked fried rice vermicelli for dinner, so it was still fresh in my head, and thus that was what I cooked for today's lunch.
I did exactly everything my mom did, or I tried to, but my meehoon tasted eons apart from my mom's. I like my food soggy, esp noodles, but I think my meehoon was way too soggy.
Problems faced while cooking alone:
1-I actually mixed up garlic & onion! Instructions: 2 cloves of garlic. Wait a sec, garlic is the purple one(onion!) or white one? I then quickly consulted google images for the right answer. But that was after I've alr cut the garlic, because it was like a subconcious kind of questioning in my mind that screwed it up..
2-I didnt know how to 'transform' the cold fishball in the fridge into one that is edible. Should I put it into hot water and microwave it? or should I cut it into shreds and cook it together with the meehoon? As I remembered e fishball midway, it was too late to multi-task. So ended up with absolutely no meat in my dish. But the egg was a double yoke egg and I think the egg tasted the best.
3-How much water was needed? Apparently my mom got the amount just right, attaining a mildly soggy wetness that I loved. Cant say the same for me, mine was downright soggy and it had that little vomitting-inducing effect if consumed much.
4-Panic! When your food is over the fire, time is really of the essence. When I need to leave wok-side to get something, i'll start to panic, fearing the food being overburnt. So, got to change panic to urgency, and then urgency to rountine. just like the pros!
5-I eat ALOT of vegetables and one thing good about cooking yourself is your food is up to you to decide. So I decided to spam on the veggies like no one's business. I though it was gonna be veggie overload, but as you can see frm the pict, not quite, infact far from it. Leafy veggies are deceiving, they shrink so much its so hard to estimate.

Now that I've started cooking, there will be more to come!