A Perfect Xmas Dinner @New Ubin Seafood

Ah Seng asked if we would like to have dinner together this evening. Since we did not have any plans, we said ok and we went to New Ubin Seafood for dinner. The humble restaurant is at Blk 27 in Sing Min Road Industrial Park A. It is hidden among rows and rows of single storey car workshops. One would never think that a food paradise is hidden there!

Sotong coated with salted egg yolk. 9.5/10. Superb but the sotong can be slightly more tender, in my opinion.

Special kye lan. The leaves were finely chopped and deep fried with ikan bilis. The children thought they were seaweed and gobbled them down with their rice. Must try!!! Very unique dish! 10/10.

Juicy fried Hokkien mee garnished with generous bak you poh. Wah.... 9/10. I am a bit overwhelmed by the crispy lard.

Prawn paste chicken wings. Very crispy skin. 8/10 compared to the other dishes. But if you ask me to give another rating, I would say this is definitely better than the ones served in Holland V XO fish head bee hoon (yes, that infamous rude boss with broccoli styled hair)

Kong bak bao. 10/10 if you are a KBB fan. Do not order if the sight of pork belly meat puts you off.

P/s: the gravy is superb. Goes so well with white rice!

Jaimie says 10/10.

"We tried to count the calories but iphone hanged when we try to input the amount of food consumed..."

Ah Seng brought a white wine. Lovely.

BBQ beef with onions and potato wedges. 11/10. Shiokadooooooooo. The beef cubes were tender and juicy. Best of all, they did not have the "beefy" smell or taste!

This fried rice comes with the BBQ beef. The juice that runs from the BBQ beef was saved and used to fry the rice. Juicy. Fragrant. Flavourful. I thought I was eating claypot rice.

Pork knuckle. So crispy. 2 choices of sauces to go along -- peanut and sweet chilly. I think peanut sauce is better!! 10/10!

When Clement went to New Ubin Seafood 2 weeks ago, he told me that was the BEST dinner ever. I thought he was exaggerating then but now I totally understood what he meant!

Must try!!!! Must try!!!

HappyCall Pan- Muah Chee

My Christmas present from Clement this year is a HappyCall pan! I have been thinking about this toy for quite some time but was hesitant to make a purchase because I hardly do any proper cooking. And to be honest, my cooking sucks. So when I unwrapped the present and saw a HappyCall pan, I was thrilled!

The package comes with a handbook with a few recipes. Unfortunately, it was all written in Korean. Ajuma doesn't know Korean... so I shall have to figure out what makes the HappyPan happy and what makes it angry...

Delicious looking food with recipe. But sorry, I do not understand a single thing.
Since Clement bought this for me, I must try to make something for him too. My blogger friend Mamabliss is a superb cook and has posted quite a few recipes using HappyCall pan. I looked through them and decided to try making muah chee, which looks relatively easy.

I have nothing in my kitchen so I went to get all the ingredients I needed. Today is not exactly a good day to make something with grounded peanuts because today is 冬至. All the grounded peanuts in the supermarkets were grabbed up to make glutinuous rice balls for the festival! I walked to several places before I found my grounded peanuts! Yippeeee!

And so I did as Pauline demonstrated in her video. First, toast the sesame seeds.

Next, prepare the shallots.

Prepare the coating-- sugar, grounded peanut and sesame seeds.

Here comes the exciting part-- preparing the batter. 1 cup of glutinuous rice flour to 3/4 cup of water. Add the water gradually and mix well.

Brown the shallots.

Then, I scooped up 3/4 of the shallots (another recipe suggested doing so) and poured in the batter evenly into the HappyCall pan. Pauline's recipe says cover and cook for 30sec but another recipe says 3mins. So I opened up at 30sec, not sure, cover up, and cook for 3mins.

Roll the mixture into a dough.

Alright, I know this looks successful and good but in fact, I threw this away. That was because I didn't mix the flour well and when I poured the batter into the pan, I realised there was a lot of undissolved flour at the bottom of the measuring cup. I added more water to get them out and I knew it was not going to be successful. Indeed, it was too soft and sticky. Not nice.

It's ok!! I quickly did everything from step one again, this time extremely careful with the batter.

Mistake number 2: I overcooked the dough. I was washing up some of the utensils while waiting for it to be done and overshot the suggested cooking time. The side of the dough which was in contact with the pan became cripsy!!!! ALAMAK! I quickly rolled it up (actually, it was flapping it since it became crispy...) and removed it from the pan. The crispy side of the dough wouldn't stick much of the coating but generally, it was an OK attempt. At least, the texture was nice.

Phew~~~~~

Definitely not an easy task for an idiot like me. But not a bad try too! *gives myself a pat on the back*

Not a bad bento idea, huh!!! We can prepare the coating the night before. In the morning, we only need about 5mins to prepare the dough. Nice and easy!!

First Xmas Party in 2011

It's Christmas season again! How could we not have a party? But this time, we only planned the food, we didn't plan the games. Dress theme? Green and red.
Viv is such an excellent host and cook! She homecooked all the food by herself! Even the salsa dip, the salad dressing and the garlic spread on the toast! That is why we love to go over to her place for parties... :)))


This baked mushroom is the best-est dish, in my opinion!

The kids enjoyed the food too. Then, they invaded into Ezra's room to play and poor Ezra was left out in the girls' game. It took some time for him to break into the girls' circle.
We started on the Pictionary game.

Loads of creative drawing, fun and laughter!

Make your guesses.

Parent-Child Bento Making Workshop

When Rosalind from Mad about Kids left me a message to ask about the possibility of conducting a parent-child bento making workshop, I wasn't optimistic because I had to turn down a few of such invitations due to logistic problems. But Rosalind went all the way out to help me with my constraints and I was able to do this workshop with 14 pairs of parent-child workshop today.




The workshop was held at the Family Lounge at Plaza Singapura. I was quite nervous because I wasn't too sure if I was able to manage a class of adults and children. Will the children be engaged? Will the adults find the workshop lack of useful information? ... and I was quite pleased that it turned out quite well.

Quite an experience for me!! I hope the participants had fun too!

感恩的心

媛媛：

有一颗感恩的心，你会满足，你会快乐，你会宽恕，你会宁静，你会心灵富裕。人生的道路肯定是凹凸不平，顺利的时候，低下头看看路边的野花，说：“感恩！谢谢你们把我的道路映得更加漂亮！”，跌倒的时候，不要急着爬起来，躺着休息一下，仰望天空，说：“感恩！要不是我跌倒了，我不会从这个角度看到美丽的蓝天白云！”

宝贝，无论遇到什么事，都记得说一声“感恩！”。用谦卑的态度面对人生，你的人生就永远不会偏离轨道太远。

我亲爱的孩子，愿你永远有一颗感恩的心。

家书抵万金

在电子邮箱时代里，传统的信箱已经成了账单和传单的专用箱。从前打开信箱时，看到蓝色信封的那种喜悦，恐怕现在的孩子已经无法体会了。所以，很早很早以前，我就想等媛媛会读、会写的时候，跟她来个“母女信箱”。 我们可以通过信箱交换一个简单的问候、可以感受写信与收信的喜悦、可以让孩子练习写字、可以表达一些情感、可以问一些尴尬的问题。


今天，终于给媛媛做了这个专属信箱。用包装盒子割开一个缝就可以了。


这是我给媛媛投递的第一封信。

Hello Kitty的夹子是我的“信箱”。

绿色的篮子是爸比的信箱。

媛媛通过信箱给我的第一封信。

同一天的第二封信。

我原本以为是“一天一信”就好了。但是媛媛非常非常的兴奋！她一直跟我拿纸写信，一直问我某些字怎么拼音。

“我的头快爆炸了！”她说。

“为什么？”

“因为我写信给把拔和马麻，你们很开心，我也很开心！我就一直写一直写，我满头大汗了！！”

“你喜欢写信吗？”

“喜欢！！可是我写了3封给你，你只写一封给我。”

于是，我又写了一张便条给她，投进小信箱里。

媛媛难掩脸上的喜悦，抱着信箱到床上去读信，又神神秘秘地趴在地上再给我回信。我竟然要劝她停笔，留着明天写。

我小心地把媛媛写给我的信收进文件夹里。

等我的小天使长大，我或许可以坐在摇椅上，慢慢细读品味，这值万金的家书。

媛媛给我们的一封信

媛媛在奶奶的指导下，写了这封信。除了最后一张图是媛媛自己画的，其余的是奶奶协助，媛媛上颜色。

收到这份信，我和媛爸满满满满满满的感动。

不论将来这样的承诺会不会兑现，都不重要。重要的，是孩子现在的心里自己种下了善的种子。