Oven-ed

Hello (:

We finally got our oven fixed so we can start using it to cook our meals or bake things! (: I think baking's gonna be more challenging than cooking cos we need to be precise so I'll probably only try that when the weekend comes along. For now, we're enjoying the (relatively easy) process of cooking with the oven! It's really quite simple -- just decide what you wanna eat and throw everything in. Tada! (:

Shall finish up whatever that I'm doing and go to bed! (: Have a great week ahead! (:

Learning to Cook

Hello (:

Things have been pretty quiet here cos I've been busy with a whole host of activities and I've only recently been able to catch up on some rest and to try to find a new routine that I am comfortable with.

Perhaps the most exciting thing that has happened of late is that I'm starting to learn to cook! (: Prior to the past week, I hardly ever cooked a proper meal because I simply do not know where the different things are placed in the kitchen. Now that we have our own training kitchen, I have no excuses to not learn to cook!

So far, I've made really simple dishes such as pasta with vegetables and mushrooms as well as a tofu and mushroom burger and thankfully they taste relatively okay! Haha I shall continue to endeavour to expand the kinds of food that I can cook and also to improve the taste and quality of the dishes!

I also need to work on my prep skills (because I take forever to prep) and my multi-tasking skills while cooking (cos I keep getting distracted by the need to do washing -- so either I leave the washing till later or that I learn to wash things more quickly); so I need to focus on doing the things that I'm supposed to be doing better!

Alright that's all for now (: Shall update again when I have the time! Busy week ahead but we'll take it as it comes! Have a good week, everyone! (:

National Day Cookout

Hello! (:

My siblings and I had a red-and-white themed cook-out on National Day to celebrate the nation's 45th birthday! (: My sister, Nette, is the resident head chef so she planned the menu and was in charge of most of the cooking! I'm usually in charge of logistics, which means I'm the one buying the ingredients, the one arranging transport and doing the packing up of left-overs.

We decided to start cooking a little earlier this time because we've learnt from previous experiences that we tend to overestimate our abilities to produce cooked food in a short span of time and since we wanted to watch the parade on tv while eating our food, we'd to start earlier!

We managed to get everything around/ slightly after 6 so we didn't miss much of the parade! (: This is the cluttered coffee table with our starters and mains.

Toasted pita bread which tasted good on its own but it tasted even better with home-made hummus (photo below)!

A bowl of extra cherry tomatoes on the left and a container of hummus on the right! Nette's hummus turned out to be extremely scrumptious! (: I loved the rough texture and the taste! We dipped our pita bread into the hummus and consumed it happily!

This is probably our least red-and-white dish because it has quite a lot of green but you can't really see the green because cherry tomatoes, feta cheese and smoked salmon are sitting atop the bed of green lettuce! This was our attempt to have some vegetables in our meal!

We also had cold tomato soup (on the extreme right) for starters but that wasn't very well received. I guess people generally prefer warm soup! For our mains, we had risotto (on bottom left) that is mixed with some red wine for colour. My friend told me that the risotto wouldn't turn out red and she was right! It looks more like purple. The risotto tasted good too! (:

To accompany our plain risotto, Nette cooked 6 slices of pan-fried fish fillet, one for each of us. I think she has mastered the art of cooking fish fillets because they usually taste great!

We bought two bottles of sparkling red grape juice for drinks instead of having the usual soft drinks! We tend to buy sparkling juice for celebratory occassions and this certainly called for one!

Because certain fussy eaters in our family don't consume fruits, they refused to eat the strawberry shortcake that Nette made so Nette has to come up with non-fruity desserts for them!

This was her 'failed milk pudding' that didn't harden! Think we need to try another recipe in future.

Red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. Initially, Nette wanted to make the cream cheese frosting on her own but I bought the wrong cream cheese (bought the ready made cream instead of the fresh one) so I saved her some work. The ready made cream cheese were a little too sweet for most people but I kind of liked it!

Last but not least, this is a shot of her strawberry shortcake! (: It tastes much better than it looks! There are still two slices left in the fridge and I'm thinking of having one later!

I felt contented after having this meal with my siblings (: Maybe we should consider have more themed-cookouts! (: Alright that's enough for my midweek ramble, off to the shower! Have a great week ahead everyone! (:

Instant Noodles

I've always felt somewhat uneasy about the fact that I can't cook proper food. "Proper", to me, means anything that's non-instant. Unlike my parents who are reasonably good cooks, I am a complete novice in the kitchen (okay, even novice is stretching it a bit because I hardly ever cook anything). Like one of my sisters, I can only cook instant food but unlike her, I don't dare to claim that I'm good at cooking instant food!

One thing that I know I can cook pretty well though, is instant noodles. I know instant noodles are unhealthy and should not be eaten too often but somehow I seem to find pleasure in being able to indulge in a bowl of instant noodles once in a while. My siblings and I have tried quite a number of brands of instant noodles and I think we've come to an agreement that Myojo's Chicken Abalone instant mee is one of the nicer tasting flavours around. In fact, it's so nice that I seem to only eat this flavour!

Anyhow, here are some photos of my instant noodles:

I love to add mixed vegetables to my noodles because I like my food to be colourful =) The mixed vegetables go well with the soup too so there's no clash of flavour. I always add pepper to my noodles because I like the peppery taste (even though too much pepper makes my face perspire a little at times).

In contrast, Jeffrey likes his noodles plain. He hates mixing anything (apart from an egg) with his instant noodles so I cooked him a less colourful version of my instant noodles! (: I usually don't add any pepper to his because I know that he'll probably not be able to take the spiciness. Heh.

Apart from instant noodles, I can only cook/ prepare simple dishes such as sandwiches! I really should start learning how to cook some day... but till that day comes, I will make do with my yummy instant food.

Home-cooked Food

For those who don't know, my parents own a small nonya kueh business so I pretty much grew up with food surrounding me. I used to sample and try the different kinds of nonya kueh that my parents (mostly my mum) gave/ forced me and because of that, I believe that I've maxed out my nonya kueh food intake quota (if such a thing exists). I seldom buy or eat nonya kueh when I'm out because I find it slightly ridiculous to spend money buying something that I can get for free. Occasionally though, I would indulge in a piece or two of nonya kueh when the craving hits but those times are few and far between.

Apart from feeding my siblings and I with nonya kueh, my parents also feed us with very yummy home-cooked food! It's really a pity that their talent for cooking didn't rub off any of us because I don't think any of my siblings and myself can claim to be good cooks. Maybe I should watch them cook as and when I'm free so that I won't be completely clueless if I had to cook anything non-instant for myself in future.

My parents follow an unofficial cooking timetable: Gumtoo cooks on Monday, Thursday and Friday and Papa cooks on Tuesday and Wednesday. In my opinion, my parents have very different styles of cooking and this may be a slight problem because my siblings prefer the way my dad prepares his dishes. As a result, they often choose not to eat when gumtoo cooks because they don't like the way her food turns out. Papa's style of cooking is more "hokkien" because it has a lot of flavour and his dishes are always so colourful and aesthetically pleasing. Gumtoo's cooking, on the other hand, is more "teochew" because the flavours of her dishes are not as strong Papa's. Generally, I think my family members prefer food with more taste and flavour so naturally more people 'support' Papa's cooking.

Here are some photos of the dishes that Papa cooked for us on Tuesday:

Fish slices with maize, some peanuts and tomato

Cod fish with black sauce (There were two plates of this dish)

Green vegetables with maize

French beans with mushrooms

Fishballs, tofu and prawns fried with egg and tomato

Honey-glazed chicken pieces with slices of pineapple

On Wednesday, he cooked us these dishes:

His amazing fried rice! We love his fried rice because it smells so good and tastes equally fantastic!

A plate of stir-fried asparagus

Sweet plum sauce chicken pieces

Cabbage with vermicilli and carrots

Fried fish marinated with some kind of chilli powder

Fried egg with tofu (a favourite among my siblings)

Big fried crispy fish with black sauce

Panfried fish slices and prawns cooked with mayonaise sauce and logans

I suspect my parents secretly want to stuff us to the brim after every meal because they always cook so many yummy dishes for us! Despite their different cooking styles, Papa and Gumtoo share the same philosophy when it comes to cooking: it's better to over-cook (in terms of amount) than under-cook because you never know when people are feeling hungrier than usual and it's not nice to have not enough food to feed everyone. I guess that's how I grew used to and subsequently fell in love with the idea of abundance =)

Alright, that's all for now! Will try to take photos of gumtoo's cooking soon! (: Have a great weekend everyone! =)