Souperlicious

Dh and I had R&R at Suntec last weekend and was surprised to see this new eatery that was just opposite Carrefour. It served mainly soup, salads and sandwiches. There were about 8 varieties of soups, 4 variations of sandwiches and salads. A combo of a half sandwich and a soup came up to about $12. I ordered the wild mushroom soup and had a tuna sandwich while dh ordered beef goulash soup and had a Waldorf salad which mainly had fruits in it. If you like soup, salads and sandwiches ...then I would say ...go for it!

This was the ice lemon tea drink I had. Notice anything that's unusual in the drink ... dh said that it's the first time he saw ice lemon tea served without ice and I didn't even noticed it LOL

Henderson Waves

I was recovering from a cough and a flu during the Deepavali weekend and was house bound for the entire week. Feeling that I needed some fresh air to cheer me up, dh suggested we make our way to the the Henderson Waves to sink in the latest and newest happening in Singapore.

Here's the link to read all about the Southern Ridges and their LINKs ....

Pasir Panjang Heritage

We parked at the Telok Blangah Hill Park and took a short walk to the bridge before the rain came pouring down. It was a refreshing walk for me to greet the wind, the rain and the sun too.

Xin Wang at Kovan

It was one of those rare weekend that the whole family of six got to eat together. So we all headed towards Kovan to eat at Xin Wang ,a Hong Kong Cafe. Ambience here is pretty good and we got to sit at a cushioned bench at the window seat. The food variety served us well enough as the variety allowed us to eat dim sum and western food together. So here you see ham and egg sandwich, baked pork chop, curry chicken, wanton mee and dim sum like har kow, siew mai, prawn paste chicken, glutinous lotus rice, spring roll and fried chive dumpling.

For dessert we ordered a mango ice cream ice kacang to be shared by three of us. The bill came up to be $90. It is a tad expensive eating dim sum here but it was comfortable and the ambience was good! The service was good too as we went there early before the lunch crowd. I won't mind going there again once in a while as a family.

Steamed Leather Jacket in Hot Bean Paste

I found this paste being sold at the supermarket recently and used this to perpare a steamed fish dish. It is really convenient to use this as I just needed to get a fresh fish , put in 2 tbsp of oil, some sliced ginger pieces and added a quarter cup water to dilute the paste before pouring the paste onto the fish. I let the fish marinade in the paste for about an hour before popping the dish into the microwave oven to be steamed. For the fish, I used Leather Jacket cos the fish is meaty and smooth and has minimum bones.

Here's a pic of the fish. It is an ugly fish but the meat is very suitable for steaming. Usually it's sold in the supermarket with the head chopped off.

Banana Oatmeal Loaves

For the past two days, I had the chance to supply some of my bakes to a food kitchen in Upper Serangoon near the Nativity Church. A friend of mine volunteered to give her bakes for the week to the charity and I became her baking associate LOL (that's what she calls me :-))

Tried out this recipe from the website Recipezaar and it was good. The two loaves here plus fifty vanilla honey cuppies made their way to the centre.





Here's sharing the recipe for a loaf ....


Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups plain flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
2/3 cup sugar
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup rolled oats
1 cup mashed banana mixed with 1 tsp of banana essence
1/3 cup UHT milk mixed with 1 tsp apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 nos. medium eggs, beaten

Method:

Pre-heat oven to 180 degree C and grease a 8x4 inch loaf pan.

Combine all dry ingredients in a large bowl.

Combine all the wet ingredients together.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and gently stir till the batter is well mixed.

Pour batter into the loaf pan and bake for about 50-60 minutes or till skewer comes out clean.

Remove pan and leave on wire rack to cool.

Remove the loaf from the pan and cool thouroughly on the wire rack before storing.

Vanilla Apple Cake

Here's another challenge from Sweet and Simple Bakes and here is the recipe . I found the sugar content to be too high and reduced it by 50 g. As the batter I got was pretty stiff, I added about 4 tbsp of Irish Cream Bailey's before topping the batter with the sliced apples.

Here's sharing with you what I did .....

Ingredients:

250 g unsalted butter, softened
200 g raw sugar
4 eggs, beaten
250 g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp vanilla essence
4 tbsp Irish Cream Bailey's
2 green apples, cored and cut into wedges
2 tbsp brown sugar
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

Method:

Pre-heat oven at 180 degree C , greased and line an 8" round springform pan.

Beat the sguar and butter together till light and fluffy .

Add in the eggs, flour, baking powder, baking soda, vanilla essence and Bailey's and stir till a smooth batter is obtained.

Lay the cut apple wedges on the top of the batter and sprinkle the cinnamon sugar onto the apple wedges.

Bake for about 60 minutes or till skewer comes out clean.

Remove cake from pan and leave to cool completely on a wire rack before cutting the cake.

Keep cake in air-tight container and refrigerate cake if keeping it for about a week.

Please click HERE for this month's round-up.

F1 Grand Prix Sunday in Singapore

It was Sunday evening and dh and I were down at the Padang this time to watch the race live in front of the big screen set up near the Cricket Club. Armed with a mini TV we were able to barely hear the commentary given live. The crowd here watched the race with the thundering roar of the twenty F1 engines blasting at the back of us. Here now to enjoy and relive the race again ....

Let me have the videos here do the talking .....


The race here began with all the cars jostling for better positions. It was great to see how the cars bunched up and then scrambled out. Massa lead the pack here.

A chance to see Lewis Hamilton face to face or should I say face to helmet LOL. See if you can spot his eyes through his helmet. He was leading the pack with 51 more laps to go.

What made the F1 race more exciting for the evening were the thrills and spills of several incidents happening which upset the top favourites and resulted in the underdog to win.
Here was the crashed car from Piquet and the stalling of Barrichello's Earthdreams car.
As a result the two were out of the race.

The Team Ferrari blunder at the Pitt Stop that dashed Massa's hope of ever winning the race in Singapore this year. When watching this I could feel the hopelessness of the driver who couldn't do anything except to wait and wait ... a good whole couple of minutes before his Pitt Stop mates arrived to remove the fuel hose. And even then when they arrived, they struggled for sometime before they could remove the jammed fuel hose. All that precious time lost and his race seemed at this moment to have stalled till the end. I felt so sorry for him.

With the last 4 laps to go Kimi lost concentration and therefore lost control of his car and crashed out of the race. This incident finally sealed the fate and dashed all hopes of Team Scuderia Ferrari winning the race here.

The winner of Singtel Singapore Grand Prix 28th September 2008 is .....
Fernando Alonso from ING Renault F1 Team

He was the underdog who started last in the grid position because during the qualifying round his car stalled and he had no timing. He went into the race saying that his race was already lost at the last grid position as chances of him overtaking in the Singapore Street Track was tough. For him to win at his position a miracle must happen in the form of the appearance of the Safety Car. And the miracle did happen for him .... three times during the race!
So do you believe in miracles? I do! I do! I do! :-)

F1 Racing in Singapore

Dh managed to get tickets for the event and mind you, they were costly. Three days walkabout tickets for 2 persons at $320 would not be affordable for people below a certain income group. Anyway, dh and I spent the Friday night having our ear drums almost blasted away. Thanks to ear plugs which we managed to buy at the gates, the noise for the night became more bearable.

As we parked our car at the Golden Shoe carpark, I could already hear the deafening sounds of the sports car blasting and screeching away. It was already a deafening experience LOL.

Here you see evidence of my existence at the race LOL. A night race with a city circuit and daylight lighting condition. Many of us just stood behind the barricades to watch the cars zoom past and I had hardly any time to make out who was driving that car.

For those who are braver, you could book a standing spot at the dangerous turns and here the drivers have no choice but to slow down their cars to avoid collisions into the wall barricades. Only at these turns did I have a chance to at least make out the color combination of these sports cars.

Here I managed to snap some cars zooming away and maybe one of them could be driven either by Lewis Hamilton or Felipe Massa or even Kimi Raikkonen. A chance to also be in the driver's seat? Just look up into the gigantic screens near the grand stands which were projecting information about the race live!

Hands up ..... steady .... listen .... shoot! Here's the most common stance of the species with cameras during the night!

The fire fighter standing and hoping that the unexpected will not happen!

And finally what is attending an F1 Race without a sports car parking next to our car LOL.