Setting the mood for the rest of the day

I love a good Saturday morning breakfast. It's absolute bliss to be able to sleep in a little later than usual. Then just potter lazily about the kitchen stirring up those yummy smells. And then later just sit down to a nice relaxing breakfast... just the two of us...

I always try to make Saturday morning breakfasts a little more special... whether it's hotcakes or pancakes, sausages or frankfurts, eggs sunny-side-up, scrambled eggs, or eggs any way you like.

I think it's because I have such comforting memories of Saturday morning breakfasts as a kid. I clearly remember all of us kids chopping and dicing and whisking to make egg omelettes in the morning. And I also remember dad making his "special" frankfurts using his ingeneous method of microwaving them in a bowl of water. And mom's pancakes have a magical way of turning out just perfectly every time.

The great thing about food in Australia is because of the great ingredients you can find easily. Like this morning, we went to do our grocery shopping and I bought fresh eggs, fresh mushrooms and fresh fruit which all went into making our breakfast later went we arrived home. Lovely.

But the best thing about Saturday morning breakfasts or any kind of breakfast is not the ingredients or the food itself, but it's sharing it with someone special you love. I know this sounds very corny, but it's the absolute truth.

The amazing "Oven Bag"

My mom was hankering after some new-fangled cooking tool which would help cut down cooking time. Apparently you can't find it anywhere in Malaysia. So one day as I was browsing the aisles of the nearby grocery store... I found this:

I wonder of this is it? Details of the amazing things this bag can help you do in the kitchen are here: Glad Oven Bag

Bargaining with salespeople

On Sunday after brunch with D&G, we all went down to Godfrey's together. Godfrey's is a store chain specialising in sales of vacuum cleaners. Both couples needed to get vacuum cleaners for our individual households and Godfrey's was having a major stocktake sale.

Now this was the part I didn't like... dealing with salesmen. As soon as walked in the door, we were greeted by this mousy-looking Indian salesman. And he just wouldn't stop talking. We told him our budget which of course he rebutted saying that we need to think LONG-TERM and buy a QUALITY machine that would last for years and years.

We were eyeing one machine that seemed pretty reasonable... so of course we bargained saying that we were going to buy two machines, so could he give us both a better price? And as usual, he would give us a pathetic face and say it was his best price... oh but please, could you just check for us?... Okay, he will try and see what he can do... moments later he came back and said he couldn't cut the price but he will give us both free steam irons worth $99 each. We don't need steam irons... but these are very special steam irons... but we really don't need one...

Finally we looked him in the eye and told him that this is our price. More whining and funny facial contortions from our mousy salesman before he finally relented.

So we left with two vacuum cleaners and I can bet that Mr Mousy Indian Salesman was happily rubbing his hands together and very pleased with the double sale he made that day.

Breakfast @ Bills

After church on Sunday, we had breakfast at Bills a famous Australian celebrity chef. Apparently, he was famous for his breakfast menu.

The place was packed... but turnover was relatively fast... we had a table within 20 minutes and quickly settled in to pore over the menu.

I ordered Ricotta Hotcakes which tasted heavenly... Bill actually posts recipes of some of items on his menu on his website. Here's the recipe for the Ricotta Hotcakes that I ordered.

Yummy!

Lovely afternoon tea

I baked this on Sunday afternoon for a lovely afternoon tea. It was quite easy to make, only thing is that the recipe calls for ricotta cheese which has gone up in price recently (I'm not sure if this is seasonal).



As you can see, my dear hubby couldn't resist taking a bite before I had a chance to take a proper picture of the whole slice.

I've posted thhe recipe here: Honey Cheesecake

AirAsia is sneaky

I had made flight bookings for Chinese New Year very early... but not as early as others... so the best flight out from Singapore will put us in KK at around 9.40PM.

Then out of nowhere, AirAsia bursts in with their new additional daily flights... and special promotion 2 million free seats up for grabs. I was so geram. Where does that put us early birds?

Anyway, it only occured to me recently that I might be willing to pay the RM100 penalty to take advantage of the new flights ang change our flight times to an earlier one.

Unfortunately, this bird missed the worm again. All the good seats were snapped up too quickly for me. So I'll look and the bright side and say at least I have more time to do my long overdue shopping spree in Singapore.

Anyway, we can always have our own CNY Reunion Supper.

So come and get us at 9.40PM at the AirAsia KK Terminal, Flight no. AK5622.

We can't wait to see you all again!

*Muaks*

[P.S. Sam, remember your promise... Get that yellow nien-gao for me!]

Funky stripes

Isn't this pattern funky?




Put it all together and tadaa!

A new year... a new beginning...

With Christmas over and done... next up on my itinerary was the new year countdown for 2006. Instead of the usual countdown in the comfort of our own home in front of the TV, we decided to be more adventurous and join the crowds down at the harbour front near the Sydney Opera House... and our couple friends, D&G; were all game for it as well.

So I packed chicken sandwiches, some cake, Kopiko sweets and bottled up some water and met D&G; at the train station. We thought it was better to take the train down to avoid the massive traffic jams and wasting petrol cruising around for parking spaces.

We found a nice grassy spot near the Botanic Gardens overlooking the Opera House and Harbour Bridge. We spread out the picnic mats and settled down... by that time it was around 6.00PM... still way early... but loads of people have been there since early this morning, and some even set up tents to camp on their spot for the whole day!

Unfortunately, we were quite ill prepared for the long wait... it our haste to get there, we forgot to pack something to help while the time away like a book or a pack of cards. Somehow we managed to pass the 6 hours without dying of boredom by playing some mind games, talking and walking around to explore the surrounding areas.

The final countdown was preceeded by some "test fireworks" which went off at 9.00PM... that was pretty nice already. Some people left after the 9.00PM fireworks, but we decided to stay all the way. It was perfect, except for a nearby building which partially blocked some of the view.

Photos are here: New Year's Eve 2006 at Sydney