Who said F1 racing was a boring?

Ok, I might've said that before, but as I watched the preliminary (is that what it's called) and also the actual race itself, I found myself glued to the tv not daring to look away in case I missed something. But it wasn't the race itself that was exciting as such, it was all the mishaps that happened. Like when one of the cars drove away from the pit stop with the fuel hose still attached to the car and causing one of his team mates to tumble across the ground and consequently causing him to lose his number 1 position. Or when one of the teams got out of the race because their car got damaged after ramming into the barrier. And then finding out how penalties are awarded. How exciting! Hehehe....

The weirdest and annoying thing was hearing my FIL and MIL making running commentary as if they knew anything about F1.

Sick children at the Paeditrician or Clinic

You know, it really irks me when sick children at the clinics are left to run around unrestrained by their parents/caregivers. I think it is very irresponsible as they risk passing on germs and viruses to other children who are not sick and may be at the clinic to see the Dr for other reasons. If they're running around and not being near other children ok, but the ones I've seen have always been very close to other children including mine. And when you suddenly hear them cough their lungs out right next to your child (like it happened to us today at the PD), your immediate instincts is to grab your child and move them away. But children of course don't understand why they're being taken away from their new 'friend' and struggle out of your grip only to end up back next to that child again at the toy area. I don't think we really should care about whether we offend those irresponsible parents/caregivers right? We're just trying to protect our child. My fear when I take Caelyn to the doctors is that she'll come home with some kind of sickness that she picked up at the clinic.

Customer Service desks needed at local supermarkets

I realise not a lot of suburban supermarkets like NTUC Fairprice and Cold Storage have a Customer Service desk where customers can go and enquire about something or requests for exchanges or refunds. So it is rather inconvenient when you need to do either of the above and you don't know who to talk to and end up having to join the checkout Q and hold up the other people trying to checkout behind you. Seems only the big hypermarkets like Carrefour, Giant and the Fairprice at AMK Hub have a separate Customer Service desk.

Today when we went to Cold Storage at Kovan Mall, I had bought something that had been marked down and I guess unfortunately the mark down sticker must've fallen off. So after hubby had paid the stuff, we walked away from the supermarket and I went over the receipt to check if everything was correct since I wasn't with him at the checkout. When I realised that we had been charged the full price of the item ($2.15 difference) I made him go back to get a refund. I know it's not much money, but the way I see it is, I wouldn't have bought the item if it hadn't been marked down in the first place. We went back into the supermarket to double check and sure enough all of the same item had a markdown sticker on it and I was still sure that when I picked up the item to put in the basket it too had a markdown sticker. So we joined back to the Q of the cashier that served us earlier. We told her of the situation and you know what, she made us feel like we were cheapskates for trying to get our money back. Furthermore she made it feel like we were troubling her so much and she even proceeded to make it seem like we were stupid by saying, 'next time you have to get the item with the markdown sticker or else you don't get markdown price'. Like hello! We did that in the first place, we're not stupid! She still wasn't convinced that we were entitled to the markdown price.

Anyway, eventually she went to find a superior to help her (and so we held up the Q of people behind us). The superior then came over and we had to go through the whole explanation again to her and even she treated us with suspicion. It's not like we're trying to shoplift or cheat them! Eventually she just offered us to take 2 of the item to even it out so she wouldn't have to write out a credit note for the $2.15. We reluctantly agreed because we understood that it was troublesome to write a credit note for a measly $2.15. Still, what I'm saying is I'm not trying to be a cheapskate, I was just trying to stand my ground and I really feel that the supermarkets here still have a long way to go in providing proper Customer Service. I don't even know if we can exchange or return stuff here at the supermarket if we change our minds. My Mum was telling me that at Woolies in oz, if they don't charge you the right price for an item, they will give it to you for free.

On a side note, I am now reading all the labels of my food products to see where the stuff is made from. Steering away from all China made food products as much as I possibly can just to be on the safe side. I do feel sorry for the bad rap China's getting on their food safety, I wonder if that trust will ever be able to be rebuilt.

Korean Instant Noodle Variation

I'm a big fan of those Spicy Mushroom Korean instant noodles. For variety, try adding some miso paste, corn kernels and dried seaweed into your soup mixture. Yumilicious!

This dried seaweed sells for $2 at daiso and goes a long way. It's great to add to your miso soup.

My Home Made Sushi

Last week made sushi for lunch. They turned out fantastic. My favourite fillings for sushi is avocado, tobiko (flying fish roe) and raw salmon. This time however I only used avocado, tobiko, egg, crabsticks and cucumber. Wish avocado was cheaper here, then I'd eat more of it, but at $1.95 (when it's not on sale) per piece, it's a rather expensive fruit to eat.

So what do you like on your sushi?

Desaru Beach Weekend Getaway (Malaysia)

While my Mum came to visit us, we decided last minute to take her to Desaru Beach in JB Malaysia for a weekend family getaway. Little did we realise that the place is so Ulu that our GPS didn't even have the exact route to our hotel. We only roughly guessed where we were going based on the bigger map of JB. We had no idea how remote this place was. It took us roughly about 2 hours to get there, but only an hour and a half to get back. The roads were pretty narrow and only one lane for each direction, got a bit scary at time when other cars were tailgating us.

We picked to stay at The Pulai Desaru Beach Resort based on pictures that showed a nice swimming pool and it being right on the beachfront. The place is so secluded and so peaceful. It almost felt like you were on another island. The hotel itself is pretty good, 4 star quality resort. We tripled shared with my Mum and requested one King Size bed and one Single bed. Both beds were really big. What's more, the room was huge! It was probably the size of my living room plus kitchen. The room had a small tv, a walk in wardrobe with a safe box, a sitting area, and a separate vanity area and bathroom area. In the bathroom there was a bath tub and a separate standing shower area. The resort does show a little wear and tear but I'm not one to be too bothered by it. The swimming pool was great. It had a slide and a mini waterfall. And just over the pool wwas the beach. A very clean beach at that. Tho not exactly the white sand type, it was nice all the same.

The hotel breakfast buffet isn't very nice tho. We've had better at other hotels. The one thing that really irked me was in the wee hours of the morning, someone came and rang our doorbell like 6 times between 4am-7am! We're not too sure, but think it has something to do with the ramaddan and them letting people know when it was time to eat or to pray since there wasn't any mosques around to call the prayer. But for light sleepers like me it was definitely annoying especially since I had no idea what was happening. I even thought someone was playing a trick on us or even the bell was faulty or maybe a ghostly visitor! (ok maybe the last one might be a little crazy thought from the interrupted sleep).

For dinner we ventured out to another town that was 'supposed' to be nearby called Sungai Rengit for cheap seafood. I had read on the web about this seafood restaurant famed for its lobsters called Jade Garden Seafood Restaurant. It was rather scary driving to this town because again the road was just one lane in each direction and practically nothing on our left and right except bushes. Not even street light posts. My research before we left paid off because I could tell Edmund roughly where the restaurant was near. After driving around the town for like 15 minutes we found the restaurant we were looking for. The restaurant was crowded with families and Singapore cars in the driveway. In front there were tanks filled to the brim with lobsters big and small. There are different prices for big and small lobsters. We ordered 3 lobsters cooked in special gravy, bamboo clams, squid in sambal, soft shell crab and fried noodles and 3 cans of coke. Guess how much our bill was? Only RM175!!

On the way back, we stopped by Holiday Plaza and had lunch at a Wong Kok Char cafe. It was a great weekend getaway. 

Thai Fish Cakes

Another simple dish to make. I know that Thai Fish Cakes are usually flat and round, but I made these sausage shape so that I could poke a satay stick thru them to tempt Caelyn to eat it. Great way to eat fish I say!

In a food processor combine the following: white fish meat, Thai red curry paste, fish sauce, egg, corn flour, sugar and pepper. Pulse until it all comes together. Add some chopped up french beans to the mixture. If you want to check on the flavouring, put a little bit in the microwave for 20 seconds. Shallow fry or deep fry the fish cakes, drain and serve.

Asam Sotong Goreng (Tamarind Squid)

This recipe is from Mrs Lee's Cookbook and it is extremely simple.It is basically squid marinated in Asam/Tamarind and cooked in its own ink.

You just cut up your squid or you can use baby squid and keep them whole, separating the head and the body. Cut out the eyes and, this is important, make sure you don't break the ink sac because basically the ink sac is your sauce. So after cutting up the squid, marinate them in tamarind, tho I don't really think u need to add water as the recipe stated because squid can get a little watery anyway. But either way, after marinating for 30 minutes drain the squid and toss them into a hot wok with a little oil and cook for a couple of minutes till they're done. Make sure by this stage you've popped the ink sac. Remove the squid and leave the inky sauce to reduce, add salt to taste and pour over the squid and serve!

I love squid and so does Caelyn. What about u?

Dreaming of Greener Pastures

There are days where I wish we could move to another country for a while, to have a change of pace, change of environment, and just to get away from Singapore. Ideally to a western country like Europe or the Americas. Have I over romanticised the idea of moving to another country because maybe the grass really isn't greener on the other side? Or maybe I'm just dreaming of the day we'll be back in Australia again.

Ikan Masak Pedas (Spicy cooked Fish)

This is a very tasty recipe if you like sour type of gravy, I think another name for it is Asam Fish. Even Caelyn likes the gravy. The recipe is from the Joy of Cooking series - Traditional Nonya Cuisine.

Ingredients:
150g lady's fingers/okra, cut into pieces (I didn't have any, but had a yellow zucchini so I used that)
2 tomatoes, quartered
1 stalk lemongrass
2 tbsp tamarind/asam
10 cloves shallots (I substituted with 1 red onion)
5 dried chillies
5 red chillies
1 inch (1/2 tbsp) shrimp paste/belacan
1/2 inch turmeric or turmeric powder
some cooking oil
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
600g fish

1. Smash lemongrass. Mix tamarind with 3 cups of water.
2. In a blender or mortar and pestle, grind the shallots, dried chillies, red chillies, shrimp paste and turmeric together. Heat up oil and fry the pounded ingredients until fragrant. (This smells sooo good. Be warned, your house will be filled with the smell).
3. Add in tamarind juice, salt and sugar to taste and bring to a boil.
4. Add in lemongrass, fish, okra and tomatoes. Cook for about minutes then serve.

You don't have to use whole fish like I did, fish steaks would be just as good.

Pastry Day

I love pizza in any way, shape or form. So I made these Pizza pinwheels from ready rolled puff pastry. Very very yummy. They tasted even better the next day when I put them on the toaster oven as it grilled the bottom and made the bottom crispy. I also made some pinwheels with nutella filling for hubby as he likes chocolate filled pastries. I also experimented with the Silicopat baking sheet. I put some on it and some just on the baking tray with some cooking oil spray on it. Conclusion: the Silicopat is awesome. Nothing sticks on it. Although puff pastry is quite oily, it will still stick on to the tray without the Silicopat and you'll need to scrape it a little before you'll be able to lift it.

These are the chocolate ones

Also decided to make some almond koniyaku jelly. I just love the moulds. Loved them so much that I decided to make ice in the moulds, now I have teddy bear shaped ice cubes! hehehe..