Wen Dao Shi @ 16 Sims Lane (Geylang)

I've passed by this place many times before and it's always packed - on the outside street seating that is, little did I know that they had an air-conditioned seating area inside too! This place is basically somewhere you can go to get a quick bite of dim sum. I wouldn't say it's 'excellent', but it's alright and it's a cheap. Just don't go expecting your typical yum cha restaurant with the trolley ladies.

Anyway, their chicken feet is pretty good, better than the one at Hokee Bao. And if you're there, try their seafood fried rice, it's rather good surprisingly. The fried oysters are also good, as are the prawn Chi Cheong Fan (is that how you spell it?). Their sauce was really different, but went very well with it. The weirdest one was the Guo Tie (fried dumplings), I was expecting it to be like the Japanese Gyoza (just like the ones I make at home) but it turns out they deep fried the whole thing and was even slightly charred - avoid ordering this one if you can cos it also has a weird filling. I love how the drinks are served in plastic take away containers rather than cups, somehow made it more refreshing....hehehe.

Iced Honey Lemon Tea

Iced Lime Juice

Chicken Feet

Seafod Fried Rice

Tofu Skins filled with minced prawns (fried)

These are supposed to be Xiao Long Baos - but were not since they didn't have any liquid or juice in them....so basically they were steamed meat dumplings. Disappointment.

Prawn Chi Cheong Fan

weird Guo Tie

Fried Oysters

My Tastiest Pasta Bake Ever!

I've made this several times before, but for some reason today's tasted sooo good. I think it must've been the addition of shredded mozzarella and red cheddar cheese (I bought a mixed packet at Cold Storage) which was mixed through the pasta and meat sauce.

This is my own recipe and I basically just used up what was in the fridge.

Ingredients:
Pasta
Can of Stewed Tomatoes
Tomato Paste
(and I even added some ready made pizza sauce I had in the fridge for extra flavour)
Dried herbs like Thyme and Oregano
Pepper
Salt
Red and yellow capsicums/bell peppers, diced
Onions, diced
Garlic, chopped
Minced Beef
Mix of shredded Mozzarella and Red Cheddar Cheese

For the White Sauce:
Butter
Plain Flour
Milk
Chicken Stock

1. Cook the pasta until it is half cooked, drain and reserve.
2. Heat some olive oil in a pot and stir fry the diced onions until soft, add the garlic and brown the beef mince.
   
3. Add the tomato paste, the can of tomatoes and the capsicums.
   
4. Sprinkle with the herbs and season to taste.
   
   
   
5. Return the drained pasta to the saucepan and combine evenly while adding the mixed cheeses to it.
   
   
   
6. To make the white sauce, melt some butter in a saucepan and sprinkle the flour into the butter and cook it out a little bit. Rachel Ray says don't overcook flour paste mix because it will affect it's thickening power. Whisk the liquids slowly making sure you whisk out all the lumps until smooth and seaon with pepper. The reason I used chicken broth was because I ran out of milk and again I saw on Rachel Ray show that she used chicken broth instead of milk for a more figure friendly option and she's right it tastes great.
   
7. Tip the pasta into a casserole or baking pan. I prefer not to pat the pasta down because I like to have some sticking out the top so that it crispens up and browns a bit. Drizzle the white sauce over the top and place in a preheated oven until the pasta is fully cooked and the top browns.
   
   

Little Madeleine Cakes

My Mum bought this electric 'Dough Cake Toaster' from Indonesia. If you live on this side of the world, you might be familiar with these little cakes that they sell at the bakeries. But I think they use a different type of cake batter than I do. I got this recipe for Madeleine cakes from my sister in law Margaret and they taste divine, especially when they're hot and crisp on the edges!

Ingredients:
2 eggs
3 tbsp caster sugar
2 tbsp icing sugar
1/4 cup self-raising flour
1/4 cup plain flour
75g butter, melted
dash of vanilla essence/extract

1. Combine the eggs, caster sugar and sifted icing sugar in a bowl and with a mixer, beat the mixture until thick.
2. Sift the flour over the egg mixture and add the melted butter on the side of the bowl with the vanilla and fold everything in gently.
3. Use a madeleine pan or an electric cake toaster like mine and bake till cooked (cooks very fast).

I should call these 'Little Caelyn Cakes'....hehehe. PS. This is how she poses everytime i point the camera at her. Total fake smile.

Vietnamese Fish Dipping Sauce

This is the quintessential Dipping Sauce that is practically the national Dipping Sauce of Vietnam (or so me thinks). It goes on their Bun (Grilled meat on vermicelli), or dipping sauce for the rice paper rolls and even salads. It really tickles your taste buds.

Recipe amounts are to your liking:
Garlic
Red Chilli
Fish Sauce
Sugar
Lime Juice

Best way is to use a pestle and mortar. Pound the garlic and chilli and add the rest of the ingredients. It's supposed to be sweet, sour, salty. The garlic makes such a difference, previously i never knew we were supposed to add garlic to it, till I watched a show where this vietnamese girl was teaching the audience how to make the sauce. See, who says tv is bad for you.....hehehe.

A Fun Day at Wild Wild Wet at Downtown East

On Sunday we took Caelyn to Wild Wild Wet to have a bit of a swim. We've always wanted to check out Wild Wild Wet, but for some reason never got around to it. HSBC credit card has a promo going on which gives you 20% off the entrance fees and if you're an NTUC member, tickets are even cheaper for you.

We were surprised that the park wasn't that crowded, i told Edmund that maybe cos Singaporeans don't like staying out in the sun so much. We had bought along Caelyn's swimming vest, but were told that we couldn't use it and had to use their life vests. And surprisingly this was provided for free! Even Wet n Wild at the Gold Coast doesn't provide any life vests for free to the guests. Great value added service. They have different size life vests for the little ones all the way to adult sized ones. i later found out that these vests are quite fun to use for floating alon on the lazy river (or what they call Shiok River)...hehehe.

There are also lockers for hire for $2 per use. note that i say per use because each time u decide to open ur locker u'll have to pay another $2 to lock it, which really sucks. So what we did was just use the lockers to store our clothes, shoes and valuables.Other things like drinks, towel and sunscreen we took out and put aside on a bench or deckchair. It seems relatively safe, a lot of ppl also did that with their stuff. It would be great if they installed some water fountains in the park tho. I guess they'd prefer if u just go buy drinks from the pizza hut, kfc or food stalls they have in the park. They say you're not allowed to bring in outside foods into the park, but there is no bag checking at entry, unlike at Sunway Lagoon, where even water bottles had to be thrown away before entry.

We spent most of our time at the Shiok River and the Children's pool which is called Yakult Professor's Playground. The Shiok River is excellent, tubes are free (again, unlike at Sunway Lagoon) and they have big tubes as well as a smaller tube which I found more comfortable for floating on the river while having most of your body submerged in the water. Or you could just grab a life vest and use that. Caelyn really enjoyed being able to float around without us holding onto her hands (tho little did she know we were still holding on to the back of her vest). These vests have a tendency to make u float either straight face down or on ur back. So for the little ones you need to hold on to them so they remain upright. The difference with this river compared to those at other waterparks is that this one actually has waves turned on every so often which makes it so much more fun. And in some of the areas they make it into a river rapid where the water jets underneath propel your tube. I could've probably stayed there all day.

The Yakult Professor's Playground was also very good. There were several fun and winding slides that we could go down on with our child sitting on our lap. At least if we couldn't go on the big slides, we still had fun going on the small ones :p And the smile on Caelyn's face when she was going down the slide was just priceless.

Too bad I wasn't able to take more photos cos of the locker situation, I didn't want to leave my camera lying around unattended. So was only able to take a couple of snaps just before we got changed as we were too keen on getting into the fun. Maybe next time. We'll definitely go back.