Secret Ingredient: Salted Soy Beans

My dear friend Wini has just recently set up shop as a full time homemaker.

It got me thinking about my own domestic efforts. Allow me to share one of favourite secret ingredients:

It's magic. Sometimes after a long day at work when I come home, I'm just out of ideas of what to cook for dinner. This baby has been the key to make me seem like a domestic goddess. Somehow adding this to the mix of ingredients just turns it into something delicious!

Pork + Potato + 1 teaspoon Salted Soy Beans = yumz!

Chicken + Black Mushroom + 1 teaspoon Salted Soy Beans = yumz!

Pork Ribs + Bitter Gourd + 1 teaspoon Salted Soy Beans = yumz!

You only need a little bit, not too much because it's quite salty.

Anyway, hope this little tip helps someone out there.

Cleaning up messes

Work sucks at the moment.

It's extremely uninspiring to clean up messes made by idiots who are no longer here.

I am dragging myself to work everyday with a mill around my neck.

I wish I could go to sleep and and make it all disappear.

If I were the boss

A little bit of humour always helps the medicine do down...

If only work could start work on Tuesdays, end the week on Thursday, and every day work half day... if ooooonly...



If I were the boss
Even just for a day
I would change the station name
From Hitz to Radio Ean and JJ

If I were the boss
Work will start on Tuesday
We will end the week on Thursday
And everyday will be half day

If I were the boss
I think I could understand
How it feels to work on budget
And give a raise of 20 sen

Hang out with the girls
And be hard on the guys
Might dispatch me riding Harleys
Our trips will be to Bali
If we bankrupt I will break down and cry

If I were the boss
I will come up with a plan
Make everyone do all the work
Take the credit and look like the man

If I were the boss
My lunch break will be two days
I'd have PS3 in my room
200 inch LCD and play all day
My way... JJ

If I were the boss
I think I could understand
How it feels to work on budget
And give a raise of 20 sen

Hang out with the girls
And be hard on the guys
Might dispatch me riding Harleys
Our trips will be to Bali
If we bankrupt I will break down and cry

'Cause I will always come in late
Just to show who I am
And if I was a girl
I'd make them all call me ma'am
If you thought I would be nicer
Then you thought wrong

But we're not the boss
So we cannot cuti
Come to office really early
To try to make some money
So we can open stall jual nasi

Shivering

Sorry no update lately.

Just been feeling too sian to do anything much lately. Mornings are dreadful to wake up to... I just want to cuddle under the sheets all day away from the chilly air. Feeling so lethargic from the lack of sunshine.

Sun rises late so mornings are cold. Go to work. Work. By 5.30pm going home time, it's already dark and sun is gone.

Can't understand people who say they love winter. *shivers*

Almond sugee cookies

Following the success of my Arab Cookies or Kuih Makmur... this afternoon I decided to attempt making some sugee (almond) cookies


They look quite cute with the little cherry pieces on top, but I think the kuih makmur tasted nicer.

Recipe is roughly as follows:

70 grams butter (softened)
150 grams ghee
Approx 1 or 1½ cups plain flour
1 cup ground almonds
1 teaspoon bicarb soda
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 teaspoon almond essence
Glazed cherries for decoration

Beat butter, ghee, sugar, vanilla essence and almond essence in bowl.
Add flour, ground almond, bicarb soda and knead until it forms a soft slightly crumbly dough.
Roll dough into marble size balls, place onto a baking tray and flatten slightly on top.
Decorate with slivers of glazed cherries and bake at 170°Celcius for about 15 minutes.

Which gen do you identify with?

On Tuesday night, hubs and I were chilling out in front of the TV watching the new gameshow Talkin' 'bout your generation. According to the definition from the show's host, the three generations are classified as follows:

Born 1945-1964: Baby Boomers
Born 1965-1979: Gen X
Born 1980-1994: Gen Y

Hubby wanted to play the quiz against each other, him Gen X and me Gen Y. I refused to, because truth be told I didn't agree that I should be classified under Gen Y.

I'm glad I sided with Gen X coz' in the show, the Gen X team nailed the other two teams hands down...

I did some Googling afterwards to check on the definition of the generations classifications and I found that there was no precise definition because there is certain to be some overlap between the generations.

From piecing together a few of the disparate sources I came across the rough definition which seems to give a broader picture, something like:

Baby Boomers: Post WWII to around mid 60s
Gen X: Mid/late 60s to late 70s/early 80s
Gen Y: Late 70s/Early 80s to Late 90s/early millenials

This makes a bit more sense because I believe I identify more with those who grew up with NKOTB, Charlie Brown, Care Bears, Sweet Valley Twins and the like...

I didn't own a mobile phone until I was in university, the word iPod didn't register in my vocab until after I just started working, and I dO NoT LiKe tO TyPe LiKe tHiS.

...And (which brings me to the main point of my post) I can still vividly remember the era of the cassette tape...

A pic of one of my own mix tapes

Question: Have you ever made your very own mix tape of all your favourite songs?
If you answered YES: I'm sure you can relate.
If you answered NO: I'm afraid you must be very young... OR I must be getting old.

I would sit cross-legged in front of our stereo with the double cassette player, with cassette A on pause, fast forwarding cassette B to my favourite track, and then pressing 'RECORD' at the precise moment. The whole exercise was an art form in itself.

CDs did not even enter my life until I was about 14. I still remember one of the very first CDs my dad bought for us... MEGAHIT 6



Our favourite tracks would be playing on repeat mode... on and on and on...

These were the frequently repeated tracks because dad controlled the remote most of the time:

'Can't Help Falling in Love' by UB40
'Crying Game' by Boy George
'Go West' by Pet Shop Boys
'500 Miles' by The Proclaimers
'Come Undone' by Duran Duran

So I'm dedicated this clip to dad, in memory of all the mind numbing pop-techno beat songs you used to play on repeat mode, thus creating all the latent earworms living in our brains to this day.


'Can't Help Falling in Love' by UB40

Arab cookies - very easy to make

So during the couple of days off I took just to chill out, I spent one afternoon making arab cookies or kuih makmur. I had come across the recipe online before and thought it was relatively simple to give it a try.

I had to agak-agak the recipe, but it is quite easy really... only three types of ingredients:

Approx 2+ cups plain flour
Approx 1/3 cup icing sugar
Approx 5-6 tablespoons ghee
Extra icing sugar for dusting

Mix flour sugar and ghee in a large bowl until it forms a soft dough. I found the best way is to start with a couple of tablespoons of ghee, and then add bit by bit as you go along until you get the right consistency with the dough.

The dough should be a pale yellow and a just little bit oily, and be able to come together and not stick to the sides of the bowl too much. I couldn't take a photo of the dough while I was mixing it, but I found this pic online which I think is a good indicaton of what it should look like.


Photo from babeinthecitykl.blogspot.com

Roll teaspoonfuls of the dough into marble size balls and place in a baking tray.

Bake at 150°Celcius for about 15 minutes until the cookies have a very pale golden brown tinge to them.


Let the cookies cool completely before dusting with extra icing sugar.

Hubs was extremely pleased to come home to freshly baked cookies which were reminiscent of CNY and Raya style goodies.

Next up I'm going to try my hand at some almond sugee cookies... once I top up my flour stock... I seem to be using up a lot of flour lately.

 

P.S. More of my idiot proof recipes using four ingredients or less

Dining in the sky

The year following the Igor's birthday surprise, I planned a dinner in the sky for hubby's next birthday...

A three course dinner in a cable car!

This is on the cable car ride from harbourfront to Sentosa
Each round they will serve you a new course, and you carry on in the ride... I think thyey arrange it so you get to sit in the cable for about four rounds - one for each course, and extra one just to relax and digest a bit.

This was the appetizer I think...

It wasn't the best meal from a culinary view, but overall it was quite nice... something different, I guess...

I recently read that Singapore is going to do a major overhaul of their Harbour Front cable car, which includes a new special Swarovski-encrusted VIP cabin!

Bone-chilling fun!

I received a few comments (both online and face to face) from various people who seemed quite intrigued by the fortune cookie and star gazing surprise I had planned for hubby's birthday this year.

So I thought I share another idea of a past birthday surprise present I had planned for hubby a few years ago... I think this was in 2003 while we were working in Singapore.

I had scouted around for various ideas and activities for hubby's (boyfriend at that time) birthday, but I couldn't really make up my mind yet which one to go for.

So I decided to let hubby choose...

I made a list of a few mysterious possibilities and asked hubby which option he wanted.

I can't find the list I made, but I think I probably listed it something like this:

1. Sky high experience
2. Bone-chilling horrifying and scary fun
3. Let's go classy

I'm sure I phrased them way better than the above... but you get the idea.

Hubby chose the second option... and not long after that, he received this special invitation (I prepared the invitation myself)...


Up until the day itself, hubby had no clue at all of what was in store. We met somewhere and went to the mysterious location I had planned...

An evening at Igor's, The Main Event - (apparently) the world's most outrageous restaurant!


To enter the restaurant, all the guests had to pass through a haunted corridor... which was quite scary, but lot's of fun!

Every few steps something gruesome would pop out and the whole group would be all screams... hahaha, onviously I was too preoccupied to take any photos of that, but it was definitely a horror-filled fun experience.


We finally arrived at the main hall which was done up like a old medieval grand dining hall, with creepy red lighting effect.


And then, the next part of the experience began with a warm welcome from our 'host'...


Dinner was served, and the evening's entertainment began...

It was horror-comedy-musical performance, something like a Singapore version of The Adam's Family... but more funny with quite a bit of adult humour and local Singapore jokes.


During the interlude, the performers went around to see how the guests were doing...


We had more photo ops after the performance ended.


I would highly recommend the experience.


After this post, I quite sure I'll be receiving more remarks from you guys on how 'lucky' and 'blessed' MH is to have a wife like me! hehehehe...

I plan to share another creative surprise present I had planned for hubby. Just need to hunt up the old photos... so stay tuned!

An 'indescribable' experience

Now for the unveiling of the birthday surprise I had planned for hubby...

Hubby said he had already kind of figured it out... but he was still very pleased about the whole thing in general and said it was quite fun to look forward to opening a fortune cookie each day to read an inspirational quote.

So yesterday in the very late afternoon/early evening, we drove up to Bickley (somewhere past Lesmurdie) to the Perth Observatory.

An old telescope on display at the Perth Observatory vistor centre

As it was very dark by the time we arrived, I didn't take many pictures. So almost all the following photos were sourced through Google Images.

Here's an image of the observatory domes housing the telescopes used to view the night sky.

Earlier when we were driving up the hill toward the observatory. Our surroundings were almost pitch black with hardly any street lights and very few houses around. We had to drive quite far inside up into the hills and it was a bit scary because it was so dark. Plus there were a lot of kangaroos around randomly hopping on to the road in front of us. I can never understand why kangaroos are so stupid, I would think if they see the headlights of the car, they would be cautious and stay hidden away... but they still like to jump out on the road so dangerously.

Upon arrival at the centre, the moment I stepped out of the car, it became so clearly evident why the observatory had to be situated so far out in the darkness.

As I glanced up to the heavens, the view that greeted my eyes nearly took my breath away.

"The stars are constantly shining but often
we do not see them until the darkest hours"

We had the opportunity to view six targets using the different telescopes at the observatory:



1. Alpha Centauri - The nearest 'star' to our solar system, about four light years away. To the naked eye it appears as a single star... but in actual fact it's a double star. Through a telescope, this is roughly what we saw...



2. The Jewel Box - A cluster of stars in the Southern Cross. To our naked eye it appears as a faint dot in the sky. But through a telescope, we could see this...



3. The Planet Saturn - This is the typical image we see of Saturn



Interestingly, the image we saw with our own eyes through the telescope looked more like this...

This was due to the position of the planet on this particular night. Also, the image of Saturn we usually see through pictures are usually taken with satellite telescopes or space probes which is able to capture further detail of the rings

Also did you know that Saturn has 63 moons!


4. Omega Centauri - A cluster of stars located about 18,000 lights away. Again to out naked eye, it appears as a white smudge against the dark sky. But through a telescope we can see further detail of approximately 300 million stars clustered together like this...



5. The half moon - the grey patches are the low valleys, and the lighter colours patches are the high mountainous areas. The grey patch in this image below is the 'Sea of Tranquility' where the first landing of the moon happened.

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One person in our tour group remarked that it was a shame that it wasn't a full moon that night as she thought it would look even more amazing than this. But our guide said that actually a less then full moon view is better, because the shadows cast would enable us to see more details of the craters and terrain of the moon. A full moon view would simply be just a bright luminous disc because of the direct reflection of the sunlight on the surface.


6. The Tarantula Nebula - an active starburst 180,000 light years away. If you look closely, the edges of the nebula seem to be curling outwards with tentacle-like spirals, hence the name.

Hubby's chosen memorabilia to remember the evening and everything we learnt is his very own portable planisphere



The entire experience was simply indescribable!

After it all, all I can think of is truly this...

When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?

You can read about the fortune cookie surprised I had prepared leading up to this big event here.

Happy birthday hon!

Remember the fortune cookies I made for hubby's birthday surprise?

Hubby has been duly opening a fortune cookie each day to uncover clues leading up to the surprise...

I think the clues seem pretty obvious, but I couldn't reveal anything until the big day...

Which is today!

Happy birthday, honey. (*muaks*)

UPDATE: Unveiling of the big surprise posted here