Dinner @ Bacchus

Apple dipper - like replacing the banana with apple in goreng pisang

Lamb burger: grilled to medium (check out the blood stains on the burger bun....)

Cravings!

Don't remember craving any food in particular during my last pregnancy... but being away from home seems to bring about cravings for food from home (comfort food which sadly cannot be found here, sighz). I actually dreamt of them - fish noodles, ban mian, prawn noodles, popiah, just to name a few - almost every night during my 1st trimester! Maybe it's just my subconscious craving for the comfort of familiar faces and environment when I feel miserable ;p

Fortunately, baby seems to be just as satisfied with my "offering" of fruits - watermelons, strawberries, apples, pears, peaches, nectarines, bananas - in all forms (fresh, yoghurt smoothies, sorbet). They happened to be in abundance during summer, thankfully, and my hands were drawn to pick one of every fruit whenever I saw them at the grocery store. Probably nature's way of providing the nutrients I needed, except for the calories which I desperately lacked.

Thanks to the fruit cravings... I discovered the joy of eating home-baked banana muffins :) Never quite enjoyed banana-anything, other than goreng pisang I guess. But since having found my energy, Charis and I have baked 2 batches of it already!

Also thanks to the care packages from home... we finally had our yummy prawn noodles over the weekend! Goodness, I sound so greedy. Well, no more dreaming of food... hee... maybe I'll start dreaming of baby-Koh-the-second soon :)

Happy Mother's Day!

Had a "surprise" mother's day dinner at home tonight. Actually, mum was around, entertaining Charis, while I was in the kitchen but she forgot that it's mother's day so it became a little surprise.

Wishing all mums a Happy Mother's Day... especially to the new mums celebrating it with their babies (and hubby of course) for the first time!

Crispy butter oats and prawns

A trial before cooking this dish for guests on Friday. Miss this specialty dish at the seafood restaurants in Singapore. Guess it's lacking the curry leaves... I don't know where to find them :p Does it look right?

What we did on February 14

Simple yet quite memorable. I actually made my own birthday cake with my little kitchen assistant! One that I think looks right for a birthday but... erm, didn't quite taste right :p


She made her very own teddy biscuits too! The smiling creator holding up her smiling creation.





TK had a long day in school on Thursday and he made up for it by cooking us dinner the night before... his first in this kitchen.... Really, it's still February 14 right... it's 7 am Singapore time... hehe. Cooking with love :)





We celebrated this day twice actually... in both Singapore and Pittsburgh time! Finally, a family photo!

Happy Lunar New Year to All!

The Lunar New Year is definitely not in the American calendar of holidays.... so it's pretty much quiet. But, when we have a group of Chinese together, it'll be celebration time. Well, at least we try to ;)

We had our reunion steamboat dinner with fellow Singaporeans in CMU... and not missing out the "鱼生" (raw fish salad), tossing to "学业进步" (advancement in one's studies). What can be more appropriate a wish to have than this!



Charis went in her little Chinese top :)

Honestly, we do miss the reunion dinners at home, gatherings with close family and friends, and of course the many Chinese New Year goodies too. It's really times like this that reminds us of how far away we are. In fact, we celebrate it only 13 hours after :p  

Well, this is another of our little attempt to build up the festive mood at home...



Chinese New Year is also the Spring festival, isn't it? For the first time, we're experiencing the coming of Spring (erm... not yet but soon!). Despite the lack of celebrations, we're having fun too, with the four seasons!

新年快乐！

If it looks like it, smells like it, tastes like it....

then it must be it - 肉干

好吃，真好吃

Delicate production - 4 slices per day. Yes, 4. Just 4. Not more than 4. Have to ration until CNY comes....

A long week... ...

This is only the fourth day into TK's semester, but it feels like more than a week has passed... not because it moved fast. On the contrary, time crawled by so slowly that it feels as though many days went by (I am sure you know what I mean). TK has classes and seminars packed almost throughout the week this semester, from morning till the late afternoon. On some days, he needs to leave the house early, even before Charis and I wake, and comes home close to 6 pm. And yes, he is swarmed with work already!

Yesterday, as usual, Charis woke after TK left for school. She asked me, "Why does Daddy have to go to school everyday?" When he got home, she asked him, "Daddy, will you stay home with me tomorrow?" Sigh... perhaps, we are experiencing the withdrawal symptoms of the winter break ;p This morning, I had Bible Study in church so Charis was happy to be able to go out of the house and spend some time with other children in the church nursery room... and play with snow too, since it was a snowy day. I must say that it is quite an experience to drive or do grocery in the snow, which we did after church.

I guess, on a better note, Charis and I have more time to do things around the house. Play, jump, paint, draw, sing, read, snack... ... she has such an endless supply of energy to burn that it sometimes leaves me quite tired out! Maybe it's time for some food experiments again... this is the only time when she would leave me alone to prepare the food... so it can be quite therapeutic if the food turns out ok :D

Anyway, after enjoying our first Singapore laksa using the Prima pre-mix last month, I made laksa again. This time with another brand (I shall not reveal the brand of pre-mix publicly). We had high hopes, but... ... the taste did not quite match our expectations. In the end, I added vegetables to the remaining laksa soup the next day and voila... it transformed into sayur lodeh. Thanks to mum who gave me this idea. I must say that it tasted much better this way :)

Breakfast ala Kopitiam

Kaya toast, half-boiled eggs with dark soy sauce and coffee... ... how I miss the ambience of eating it in a kopitiam with the noise and all. Oh well, we'll have to make do with this to satisfy our cravings...

Last dinner for 2007...

We invited a Singaporean family over to our place for dinner on New Year Eve. Apart from enjoying Singapore's counterpart to the American turkey - Singapore style Hainanese chicken - we also recounted some of the blessings we received this year, especially pertaining to our coming over to the States. The children also had a good time playing together.

The chicken story.... To begin, we gave the American-born Hainanese chicken a hot bath.


Next, a cold bath.


To add some authenticity to this dish, we had a half-Hainanese to chop-choppa-chop the American-born Hainanese chicken. (P.S. The next time you order Hainanese chicken rice, make sure you check the authenticity.)

Apparently there are a few perspectives that one can have of an American-born Hainanese chicken.

Fresh from the kitchen...

We have been drinking quite a bit of coffee lately, especially over the last 2 weeks as I worked on my assignments... Now that the papers have been submitted, we realized that we have quite a bit of coffee powder left. Instead of just drinking coffee, we thought why not eat it as well? So Elaine used some of the coffee powder to make espresso cookies.


After having one espresso cookie too many, Elaine was full of energy and decided to make Green tea mochi... I must say it is very good. The green tea taste is just right, and texture is nice, the color is accurately green. Ya, I'm a bad food critic... as in I'm bad at giving food critic, and not that I am a critic of bad food... But really, it is great. The whole family likes it. Check out the recipe if you like to try it out...

"See, my gingerbread man!"

Yesterday, during the preschool class in the library, Charis decorated a gingerbread man!

The theme was FOOD and the children got to dip their little hands into real food... assemble a simple oreo pudding with gummy worms, finger painting with chocolate, and decorating their very own gingerbread man. It's probably a class that Charis enjoyed most... there was food throughout the hour-long lesson... and she ate everything. When we got home, she devoured her gingerbread man too!

FoOd, fOOd!

Not trying to show off my culinary skills here... just wanting to share my little truimph in the kitchen. Came across a blog of a full-time mother of two (a Malaysian living in Colorado) where she posted lots and lots of photos of mouth-watering Asian food she cooked for her family. Inspired by her photos and feeling a little restless that day, I decided to embark on a cooking spree... heh. Made some orange-dark chocolate cookies with Charis (since I've been wanting to use up the one orange in our refrigerator), and chicken curry for dinner, to compliment the prata that I've bought in the Asian supermarket (the same "Chinatown" brand that can be found in NTUC!!). The curry is something I've put off for quite a few weeks although I've bought the dry ingredients after some coaxing from a friend, but had no courage to try. Glad these came up all in one day :)

Well, TK thinks it's a little too coconuty and not spicy enough (so not quite up to standard) but a good first.

"Siew Mai" experiment... Hee

Looking as close as it can get in our first home-made attempt ;p My hats off to those dim sum chefs... so carefully crafting each piece with skill, and possibly lots of love! Creating these tiny delicacies is an art!

Kohs "ba chor mee"

Hmmm... after the Singapore Food Festival on Fri, our cravings grew! Finally bought ourselves a bottle of chilli paste from the Asian grocery store... to go with yummy dry "ba chor mee"... home-made :) Haha... it has to be yummy because there's no other choice. Charis enjoyed her bowl of noodles too, just without the chilli.

Our first roast in Pittsburgh

After waiting for 3 weeks, our oven is finally working! It is actually a new cooker-cum-oven provided by the apartment management but I just couldn't get it heated up. TK thought that it was me who didn't know how to use it... until we got the maintenance guy to come... haha. I was dying to try some baking with Charis!

Immediately after the maintenance guy came to replace the faulty part yesterday, Charis and I headed off to Walmart. Also inspired by the Martha Stewart recipes, I bought a huge chicken to try roasting one... all by myself. Was it a success? Well, got to ask my guinea pigs (i.e. TK and Charis) to rate it.

Anyway, here's the before and after photos of the chicken for you to make your own conclusions... heh.

Dad, I guess you would like to see the results of my experiment after sending me the weblink =)

Local Delights

An item on our "To Do" list is to enjoy as many de.licio.us local food as we can before we leave. It so happened that we had a free Saturday, so after a bit of packing and tidying up, we hit the road. On a pretty warm and stuffy afternoon, we travelled more than 40 km eastward and arrived at the East Coast Park Food Center.

One of our must-try items is the Wanton Noodle at this food centre. The chewy char-siew... the Q-Q noodle... the powerful chili.... my oh my oh my..... (Actually, before this wanton noodle, we had bak-ku-teh and pig's trotters from a nearby stall. We are now a little guilt-stricken to put up the photos of these dishes). We ended off the lunch with refreshing coconut and soursop drinks. Overall, it was a wonder-full Saturday well spent.

Other items on our must-try-before-we-fly list include sambal kangkong, chicken rice, seafood, etc. Must layer ourselves with some fat for the cold winter, right?