Took an afternoon off last Friday for a Fortune Teller/Fengshui consultation! LOL. A lunch kaki said that this was an extremely "un-Si Yi" thing to do. Haha. I don't think so leh. I do whatever I damn well feel like doing! But more about the heavenly secrets of my life next time.

Last Friday was also my little sister's 14th birthday and being the nice sister I am (cough) I thought I'd bake a cake for her. Also because I don't want to spend too much money buying a cake from bakeries hahaha. (Turned out that I spent almost the equivalent of a store-bought cake at NTUC on the ingredients bleah.)

So I last minute-ly trawled the Internet for a easy-to-bake cake recipe, and out of all the Nutella related recipes, I found this relatively simple one from Hearty Bakes - Nutella Butter Cake!

Le ingredients

On hindsight, THAT'S TOO LITTLE NUTELLA!!!

Trying to create pretty swirls but quite #fail

A bit chao tah but hey! I think it looks a lot like the original from Hearty Bakes!

 

See? Not enough Nutella (and all my swirls disappeared!)

If I were to recreate this again, I'd add double or triple the amount of Nutella, reduce the cake batter and mix in the walnuts in the batter. The walnuts tasted a little bitter. Probably coz they were chao tah. Heh.

Anyway the parents are away for 10 whole days, living it up in some part in China, and that leaves us to make sure that the house doesn't collapse while they're away. My mom, especially, left lots of notes around the house in typical kiasu fashion. And the post-it notes have truly displayed their sticky power for they are still there after 10 days! (Mainly coz we can't be bothered to take them down LOL.) Yes! They are finally coming back tonight! AND I CAN BID GOODBYE TO HOUSEHOLD CHORES!!!! *throws confetti*

Hokay so the point is that since we have no cooked food at home, dinners and meals are usually settled haphazardly at the food court or something. And this has unleashed my Domestic Goddess persona! No better time to mess up the kitchen right? Decided to experiment and whip up some dishes over the weekend.

Found some one-dish recipes over at Noob Cook, so I had this for lunch on Saturday.

Butter Sauteed Spaghetti. Actually it's just stir-frying the pasta and throwing whatever random ingredients in and then giving it a fancy name hurhur.

Next dish! I first saw this on Ade's blog and decided to try it coz I wanted to eat some fish and it looked pretty good! Roasted White Fish wrapped in Smoked Bacon with Lemon Mayonnaise and Asparagus from Jamie Oliver. I thought it'll be a lot of work but surprisingly it was pretty simple!

I anyhow-ly bought a white snapper fillet from NTUC because I don't know how to tell the difference between various fish species. Here it sits in a marinade of black pepper, rosemary and lime juice! 

Speaking of the lime juice. My attempt should be called Fish with Lime Mayo instead because there were no lemons at NTUC. What kind of supermarket has no lemons?! I thought of substituting it with oranges coz it's also a citrus fruit right? (haha I would imagine that the end result would have been disastrous) but luckily I found some wrinkly old limes in the fridge! Why didn't I think of limes in the first place I don't know. But the limes were so dried up I had to use a lot of them to get sufficient juice. Good thing no stomach ache from stale limes.

Wrap fish with bacon and watch it sizzle for a minute or two, then chuck it into the oven! Easy peasy!

Looks good and I assure you, it also tastes awesome!

After devouring that marvelous looking dish, I made pizza for dinner.

My chapalang everything also throw in pizza

Although weekends allow the luxury of time to cook and clean, I managed to whip up this stir-fried macaroni in half an hour last night. I have a picture, but it's in my phone! It's similar to that butter sauteed spaghetti dish, except that I used olive oil and threw in some bacon. EVERYTHING SMELLS NICE WITH BACON!!! Yeah and I also suspect the olive oil makes everything taste nicer.

Recipe here: http://www.noobcook.com/macaroni-with-basil-chilli-garlic/

That's all I have for my culinary adventures. I think my blog is turning into a photo blog with photos that I take of my cooking and baking. Haha. All pictures taken with my awesome Olympus E-Pen Mini!

PS: Not fond of the new Blogger layout that they forced on us. :x

I remember uploading this video with the intent on posting it on my Project 365 blog last year, but somehow it was unsuccessful in posting.

Well better late than never! I present to you my 才艺表演！Sambaaaaaaa~~~


Ok, I remember now. Even more remarkable is the fact that I had painful warts on my feet while learning Samba. *puffs up chest*

Anyway, I signed up for Salsa classes and it's starting this Saturday. Hurhurhur. More feet stepping and awkward gait in store.

What happened on Good Friday:


Drove in to JB and was stuck in a Jam at the Tuas 2nd link for 2 hours :x


The look and feel is the same, but the size is only about 1/3 of the ones in US




Coach is super expensive there





I am the official photographer hahaha

Oh and I finally bought the Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 pancake lens after much deliberation!
According to the guy at the camera shop (I was bombarding him with lots of questions haha), it's a good lens for potrait shots. With a lower F-stop (hence shallow focus - I think?), you can achieve the bokeh effect!

I haven't really had the chance to play around with it, so here are some test shots that I snapped.


Those out of focus lights in the background produce the bokeh effect!


My new buys at the Mitju sale. Cheap man! The silver glittery wedges were only $8 and the mustard flats $15!


Shinhwa's 10th album! <3 Collected it on Saturday and lugged it all around town. :x


My favourite test subject hee :)


My new pancake lens! Costs a hefty $545 but I managed to save $200 thanks to Capitaland vouchers + StanChart credit card cashback :)


The original lens that came with my Olympus Mini. The pancake lens definitely shaves off some of the bulk.
The flip side is that I can't zoom at all with the pancake lens. :( Guess I need to do "manual" zooming - i.e. walk nearer towards my subject!


This wasn't shot with my new lens but here's a nice photo of us at Canton-i! :)
Sad that the long weekend is over just like that. WE NEED MORE LONG WEEKENDS PLEASE! :x

Feeling crushed.

Worse than a cockroach.

Why are human beings made to be put through such torture?

Last weekend.

Since the friends wouldn't come to the panna cotta, the panna cotta had to go to the friends. And so I self-invited myself and Empress on the pretext of force feeding them my panna cotta and interfered with Saint's brownie baking (she had to bake some for a party). Heh.

(24 March, coincidentally happened to be Shinhwa's 14th anniversary and comeback concert in Seoul. HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO THE MOST LEGENDARY K-POP GROUP OF ALL TIME!)




Rocky walls


Artistic much? LOL
April's Fool. Dinner to celebrate my dad's birthday.


The food is good so I would definitely "再来"!


Their specialty. Yums slurps.


Tofu with cai pok


Har cheong kai
I'm still slow at trying to take nice pictures because there are too many knobs and buttons to press on my camera. By the time I get the settings right...

-time passes-


Every dish was good! I liked the prawns with salted egg yolk but the close-up photo of it was overexposed :(


Not a morsel left
Then we went to see my sister's new house! Or rather, the showflat. :D




I'm gonna come and use their pool, their gym, their BBQ pit... LOL