Thursday, November 29, 2007

Sights and Sounds of Hong Kong 5

After Ocean Park we headed towards the Avenue of Stars at Tsim Sha Tshui to experience the Symphony of Lights. The show starts at 8 pm every night. At HK Island there are at least ten major buildings wired up with lights to 'dance' to the music. Below is a 4 min. video clip to show how it's done. Enjoy!






And finally after the Symphony of Lights we headed down to Ladies Market at Mongkok .... Tung Choi Street. Actually by then I was already dead tired and didn't want to go there. But on dh's insistence ... he said ... how could I not visit Ladies Market when I'm in HK ????
Everybody visits Ladies Market when in HK .... OK ... I got what he meant .... no regrets ! LOL

So here ends our stay in HK. We flew back to Singapore on day 5 morning 11.30 am.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Sights and Sounds of Hong Kong 4

Day 4 found us heading towards Admiralty Station to take Bus 629 to Ocean Park. We took a 20 minute ride during off peak to Ocean Park and reached there about the time the Park opened.

We sat in a double decker air-conditioned bus .... a familiar bus to us :-)

Here's letting the pics do the talking ....



At this place we did a lot of walking and the only thing lacking are water coolers. The unique thing this year at this place were the live panda mascots on display. They had a huge display enclosure built for them for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. So the pandas are named ....
Bei Bei, Jing Jing, Huan Huan, Ying Ying, Nin Nin .... from the sentence Beijing Huan Ying Nin.


Below here is a 1 min. video clip of part of the Dolphin Show at the Ocean Theatre. To reach this place you need to take the cable car to the hill part of the park. There's also a bus shuttle from the lower main entrance too. Due to the popularity of the show, the theatre was already 90%
filled to capacity at 3 pm when the show was to start at 3.30 pm.




Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Sights and Sounds of Hong Kong 3

Day 3 found us transfered from Lantau Island to Kowloon. We stayed at the YMCA International House at Yau Ma Tei. The hotel is about a 3 minutes walk to the nearest MTR entrance. With 4 people in tow, we were upgraded to a Junior suit when we checked in. It's very basic in amenities and it's clean. This place has a history of more than 30 years :-)

Refreshed and all ready to go after a simple sandwich lunch. Took a slow walk to Shanghai Street where the bakeware shops are. Then we headed towards the MTR to Central to get to the Peak Tram Station. Visited the Peak.



In the early evening, we headed back to Lantau Island to experience the ride on the MTR Disneyland train cabin. It definetly has the luxurious feel of being transported to fantasy land. Then we headed towards Citygate at Tung Chung Station where the world of factory outlets are. Over at Citygate we dined at Food Republic. The name familiar to you? Even the concept is familiar :-)




Sights and Sounds of Hong Kong 2

Here are the snippets of what we did at HKDisneyland. There were at least nine must dos at the resort .....

At Adventure Land .... Take the Boat Ride; Visit Tarzen Treehouse;
Watch The Festival Of The Lion King
At Fantasy Land .... Watch The Philhar Magic Show; Watch The Golden Mickeys Show
At Tomorrow Land ... Do the Astroblaster; Do Stitch Encounter; Do Space Mountain
Watch the Fireworks and The Parade

However during our time there the Parade was suspended. We did see some of the parade characters walking around though. We didn't do space mountain cos' dh chickened out and ds J refused it flatly.


The video below shows the finale of the fireworks display in front of the castle. It began at 7 pm but the whole area was already packed by 6.30pm. We had a good 15 minutes show. It was really captivating with the lights, sounds and pyrotechnics. The video here shows the last 30 secs of the finale.

Monday, November 26, 2007

Sights and Sounds of Hong Kong 1

Booked a trip in mid October 2007 with Focal travel to Hong Kong for the period of
20th Nov(tuesday) to 24th Nov(saturday) 2007. Did a 5 days 4 nights free and easy there. The agency helped us to book the Cathay Pacific flights, Hotel acoommodations and the transfers to and from airport and also the hotel transfer to Kowloon from Disneyland resort. The rest of the time we used the HK MTR to reach all our other destinations for sight seeing. We bought the MTR day pass for tourist for the family of 2adults and 2 children.

Day 1
Reached HK at about 2.30 pm and took the airport transfer to HK Disneyland Resort.
We reached the hotel about 4.30 pm, freshened up and was at the Disneyland resort
by 5 pm.

Here's sharing with you snippets of the Hollywood Hotel were stayed in.




Rosemary Red Wine Chicken

Thanks to Jo who directed this recipe to me when I was looking for a red wine chicken recipe.
Thanks also to Ginny who shared this recipe in her blog.
http://mycookingescapades.blogspot.com/2006/08/coq-au-vin.html

The recipe looked quite simple to follow and the only change I did was to use rosemary herb instead if the bouquet garni of thyme and bay leaves. As for the marinating , I did allow the meat to season for about 5 hours instead of overnight.
The family gave the dish a thumbs up and I found out that it's even more flavourful if kept overnight.

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Dried Lavender Flowers

This is what dried lavender flowers look like. They smell heavenly fragrant.

Here's the website that tells you quite a bit of information on using these fragrant dried flowers.
http://whatscookingamerica.net/Lavender.htm


My Gifts for the Happy Holidays Party.

On the last day of the kindy school term, dd had her class party. I just did something simple for her to give to her teachers and also to share with her class. Here they are ... the brownie muffins and rolled oats cookies.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Parent's Wishes

To my dear children,
If ever you forget to be kind to us, please remember this ....

http://parentswish.com/site02/big.html

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Baked Tumeric Chickthighs

I adapted this recipe from the Kitchencapers website.

Here's sharing with you the recipe ....

Ingredients:

about 1 kg chicken thighs
1 tbsp tumeric powder
1 tbsp ginger juice
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp DOM
1 tsp salt

Method:

Marinate the chicken thighs for at least 1 hour or more.
Pre-heat oven at 220 degree C.
Place seasoned chicken thighs onto aluminium foil on tray.
Bake the chicken thighs for 30 minutes or till the skin turn a golden yellwish brown.

Baked Hickory Chickwings

Got to know about using this seasoning when my friend B shared her lunch with me sometime ago. I managed to buy this from Cold Storage and used this to season the chickenwing sticks.
The chickwings tasted good and dh commented that they tasted like the chickwings were BBQ.



Here's sharing with you the recipe ....

Ingredients:

1 kg chicken wings
3 tbsp light soya sauce
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp sunflower oil
2 tbsp chinese wine
1 tbsp Hickory sauce (liquid smoke)

Method:

Marinade the chicken wings with the above ingredients for at least an hour.
Pre-heat oven at 220 degree C.
Place seasoned chicken wings on aluminium foil on tray.
Bake chicken wings for 30 minutes or till skin turn golden brown.
Serve hot.

Brownie Muffin

I got the recipe from a fellow blogger and adapted it to make it moist. The family loved this and it's very easy to do. I even baked more of it for a class party and gave them out as gifts.


Here's sharing with you the recipe (makes 12 standard muffin cups).

Ingredients:

3 tbsp Valhorna Chocolate powder
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
2/3 cup AP flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup evaporated milk
1 tbsp Bailey's Irish Cream
2 beaten eggs
1/2 cup chocolate chips

Method:

Pre-heat oven at 180 degree C.
Sieve the flour , chocolate powder and baking powder together.
Mix all the wet ingredients together and then pour them into the dry ingredients.
Add in the chocochips and mix well.
Place the batter into muffin cups and bake them for 15 mins.
Cool the muffins and place them in air-tight containers.

Friday, November 09, 2007

Nutty Mochi

What can I do with some of the left over moonie filling I had? I made Japanese Mochi out of them and they tasted good. I couldn't stop myself eating them and my brother loved them too.
The filling was made of the white lotus paste with almond nuts and sesame seeds and dried orange peel. The skin recipe was obtained from Baking Mum's blog. Thanks LeeLee for sharing the recipe.

A whole lot of information and other Mochi recipes can be found in the website below ...


Below is the Mochi skin recipe I used ....

Lavender Cookies

My first introduction to dried lavender flowers was when I read about a fellow blogger baked cookies using them. I had a chance to purchase these dried flowers at Shermay's cooking school and they were expensive. I paid almost $10 for a packet of 20 g dried lavender flowers for cooking and baking. I searched the internet for a simple drop cookie recipe using these precious flowers and baked them.

Presenting the final product here. See the precious flower peering from just the cookie surface. The flowers are tiny but they really gave a lovely fragrance while the cookies were baking and after which the fragrance lingered on in the container where the cookies were kept. The recipe gave a soft and chewy cookie and the lavender fragrance gave a new experience to eating them.
Here is also sharing the website to know how to use these lovely dried lavender flowers.
Here's is the recipe I used ....

Ingredients:
2 tsp dried lavender flowers
2 cups AP flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
125 g salted butter, soften
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg, beaten
2 tbsp evaporated milk
1 tbsp Irish Cream Bailey

Method:
Pre-heat oven at 180 degree C
Sieve together baking powder and flour.
Whisk butter and sugar together till fluffy.
Add in the beaten egg, Irish Cream Bailey and milk.
Add in the dried lavender flowers and stir well.
Add in the flour and stir till well combined.
Drop tsps of cookie dough onto cookie sheets lined with baking mat.
Decorate with quinns.
Bake for 10-15 mins or till cookie turn a golden brown.
Cool completely on a wire rack before storing in an air-tight container.

Monday, November 05, 2007

Cornflakes / Rolled Oats Cookies

My family and my parents loved them to bits.. I managed to find the time to bake these last weekend. The recipe was adapted from Kitchencapers contributed by Gina here. Thanks Gina for sharing the recipe.

Rolled Oats Cookies



Cornflakes Cookies

Here's how I did mine .....

Ingredients:

180 g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
125 ml sunflower oil
90 g caster sugar
1 beaten egg
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 cup cornflakes or rolled oats
a couple of tbsp of milk to bind the ingredients if you still find it dry.

Method:

Sift flour, baking powder and soda together.
Mix in the sugar, cornflakes or rolled oats till well mixed.
Add in the oil, essence, beaten egg and milk and stir till a dough is formed.
Use a cookie scoop or spoon to form balls and place them on cookie trays.
Bake in a pre-heated oven of 180 degree C for 15 mins. or till cookie turns a golden brown.
Remove and cool on wire rack completely.
Store in air-tight container.


Beef Slices With Onion and Oyster Mushroom

This is one of my family's favourite beef dish. The recipe was adapted from The Chinese Pregnancy and Confinement Cookbook by Ng Siong Mui.


Ingredients:

400 g beef fillet
1 big onion, wedged
1 clove garlic, minced
half a packet of oyster mushroom

Marinade for beef slices ....

1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp light soya sauce
1 tsp oyster sauce
1 tbsp ginger juice
1 tbsp chinese rice wine
1 tbsp potato starch
2 tbsp oil


Method:

Heat up a cooking pot with 2 tbsp of oil and stir fry the onion wedges and oyster mushrooms till
fragrant. Put aside for further use.

Heat up another tbsp of oil and stir fry the minced garlic till fragrant.

Add in the marinated beef slices and stir-fry them for a minute and then add in the sauted onions and oyster mushrooms. Stir fry for another minute.

Add in about a quarter cup or less of hot water and let beef slices simmer for about a minute.

Ladle out and serve hot with white rice.