Picnic at Singapore Botanic Gardens

We visited the gardens on Saturday morning and it was raining quite heavily. We sought shelter near the NParks HQ under the sheltered walkway and had our picnic. Bam made yummy pepper tuna with parsley and basil to go with crackers. FR made salad of beans and lettuce and also Ikea's swedish meatballs. Jerl brought the ingredients (picnic ham, beef pastrami, lettuce, cheese, bread, thousand island sauce) for sandwiches and I just came with strawberries, grapes, kiwis and bought some tartlets from the bakery near my place.


After a sumptious meal, the rain stopped and we could take a leisurely walk. At the Palm Valley. we were surprised to see a cat resting near a Malay family at the field. When I went near her, she was friendly and let me stroke her.

We wonder whether she was abandoned. Bam's sweetie was also interested in the cat and probably the cat reminds her of their pet cat at home.


We made our way towards the Bukit Timah core of the garden as we would like to check out the new Jacob Ballas Children's Garden. On the way, there were lovely flowers

squirrels (my friends were admiring the squirrel they spotted)


When we reached the Bukit Timah Core, we all felt very hot under the great heat of the sun. The lake with the black swans looked very peaceful.

The garden is really a good place to teach children about nature and they will be curious and ask questions about the interesting things they see.


The reception area leading to the entrance of the Children’s garden is nice.

The butterfly glass window next to the drive-in.

The tree structure.

The small chairs for the kids at the café.

I followed Bam and her sweetie into the garden while the others rested outside. I’m glad to have done so. The child in me was and still is awed by the different beautiful parts of the garden

– the maze,
flowers, the lamp posts, interesting activities for the kids,
shelters (perfect for future picnics), mini house.
The slides looked nice in the tree house setting but you won’t find me going down a slide. Bam’s sweetie did try the slide twice and she looked a bit scared but seemed to also like the experience.

I don’t mind going to the Children’s Garden with my friends again or ask my parents to bring me there :)

Magic and laughter

I tried Lawry's The Prime Ribs @ Paragon for the first time just now. A friend had some promotional 1-for-1 sms and asked me to join her, her hubby and another friend for dinner.

After 2 slices of bread and some salad, I only had enough stomach space for a medium done beef of the smallest cut and also ate some creamy spinach, mashed potato and pudding. The best part of the meal is the tender beef.

What's even better is the company of my friends. Our friend called the fatty parts of the beef "magic", excitedly described to us the mating of her 2 syrian hamsters and looked forward to their babies. The couple friends were sharing their retirement plans and I laughed at them poking fun at each other.

This is a good start to the weekend :)

Angel and a pink ball

A friend was commenting earlier that she hasn't seen photos of Angel on my blog recently.

I took a few of Angel about a week ago and this is my favorite :)

Cartoon community cat

Something I drew the other night while waiting for my turn to shower. Mom said the eyes look strange. Well, it's a cartoon community cat :)

Baking - ups and downs

I was on leave yesterday to spend time with Mom and also bake ginger cookies. I hope to be able to give some to my friends to enjoy over the weekend. I got a shock when the first tray of baked cookies tasted dry, powdery and salty. I followed the ingredient amounts and the recipe
instructions. The only slight change is instead of adding the warm mixture of melted butter and golden syrup to the dry mixture of other ingredients, I only put the wet mixture in a few hours later after I went out for lunch and grocery shopping with Mom. I think that may cause the dough not to be binded properly and hence the texture of the cookies. I also reduce the sugar content as the cookies tasted quite sweet the last time. I feel so disappointed with yesterday’s cookies I tried to save them by adding some chocolate chips but they are not the same as the yummy soft ginger cookies that my family, friends and I ate and raved about a few weeks ago.

My family said they are edible and told me they will help me to eat. After spending yesterday afternoon baking them, I can’t really bear to throw them away. I shall freeze them and slowly eat them over a month. I will try to bake my nice cookies again after that.

Luckily, the shepherd pie I baked turned out nice.

Mum helped to prepare the ingredients (mushroom, pumpkin, potato, carrot, etc) while I was mourning over and making the cookies. The pie was for dinner yesterday and the leftovers can be kept in the fridge for other days when we feel like having it as a meal.

I stir-fried the mushrooms, carrots and minced beef with the can of vegetable soup. After pouring the cooked stuff into the pyrex dish, I layered the mashed potato and pumpkin on top before sprinkling the cheese.

Mom also stir-fried some udon and bee hoon. The seafood chilli added a zest to the dish and reminded me of curry crab but Dad didn’t like the smell of lemon grass.

World Animal Day @ Marina Square

I spent the weekend with the volunteers to help Cat Welfare Society to raise funds and awareness about community cats.


Action for Singapore Dogs (ASD) organised this World Animal Day Exhibition at Marina Square and invited CWS and Noah's Ark CARES (NANAS) to participate too. Our booths were located at the foot of the escalators leading to the food court so there was good human traffic. A wedding show was also going on at the same time.

Although I had a bit of sore throat and cough which affected my energy level, I enjoyed the company of the volunteers and those from ASD and NANAS. I'm also touched that 3 CWS committee members, my sis and dad came down to help too :)

2 of my volunteers got 2 free cupcakes from the wedding show for me and sis after they ended their shift. So sweet of them.

It's nice to see 3 different animal welfare groups coming together and I hope the presence of us at the malls help to remind the shopping crowd at Marina Square that animals need our love and help too.

Grapevine

Sis gave us a treat at Grapevine Cafe Bar & Restaurant (along Upper Serangoon Road) on Sat evening.

Dad was deep in thought while waiting for our food :)


Sis had iced creamy milk tea while the rest of us had iced honey lemon. Nice.


We waited about 15 mins for our food.
Cod with mashed potato for mom
Medium rare steak for dad
Beef stew for sis
I chose chinese rice wine chicken which I had more than a year ago. It has a nice red date smell.


Mom commented that the combination of cod and potato is not good as both are quite rich. I like Dad's steak - a nice fragrant BBQ aroma. Mum's cod is quite interesting.

As I have tried their milk in dream (something like custard/milk pudding) before, I ordered that for mom to try and Dad has a chocolate sundae which wasn't fantastic.

I still think Grapevine is quite a nice place to hang out with interesting food.

Baking many ginger cookies

On Fri night, I started preparing the ingredients and mixing them to make the dough for my ginger cookies. Some of them will be sold at Food for Thought and the rest will go into the stomachs of mine, mum and some friends who like them.

I kept the cookie dough in the fridge and rolled and baked them on Sat morning.


I managed to bake at least 150 cookies. I felt quite tired after all the baking and washing up but I'm happy that mum likes the cookies. This time, the cookies turn out soft instead of crispy - similar to baked moon cake skin or gingerbread men.


If you are visiting Food for Thought cafe this week, you may see this label on a cookie jar. I shall wait to hear from the cafe on the response to my cookies. I'm not sure whether people take to soft ginger cookies but it's fun to bake something that my mum, friends and I like :)

chewy dessert

My friend let me try this interesting dessert the last time I went to the hairstylist with her at Tanjong Pagar Plaza. On Fri afternoon after I did my hair treatment, I decided to find the dessert stall and buy some home for my family to try. It wasn't too hard to find and Chocolat N Spice muffin stall is just next to Chewy Junior. Sis likes the muffins so I bought 4 muffins (Double Choc, Cheese, Cranberry and Blueberry). From Chewy Junior stall, I bought 6 pieces (2 Chocolate Madness, 1 Oreo, 1 Blueberry, 1 Coffee Muesli and 1 peanut) at $5. The chewy dessert is similar to a cream puff but the pastry is soft and chewy.

Homecooked dinner and dessert

I'm really lucky to have Mum who can cook yummy food and dessert.

Last night's fried brown rice was delicious. The hairy gourd soup was also nice.

Today mum made her version of tau suan with peanuts and sago. I had a bowl and it's good.

Pebble the Syrian hamster

Of the 4 hamsters we have, Pebble is the only girl, the most good looking and haughty hamster. She used to run away and made it difficult for me to hold her in my palms. Now she seems a little more tame and I can quickly grab her and hold her for a short while.

She also likes to run inside the exercise ball while the other hamsters may choose to just rest in their houses.

One of Angel's favorite spots

Angel likes to sit near the kitchen sink.

She can rest there and even get her water direct from the tap.

We try to remember to run the water from the tap before taking the water for our use.

Angel and orange peels

Mum has kept the orange peels as Angel doesn't like the smell of them. The peels are useful when mum puts them at places we don't want Angel to jump on. An example is the TV console and behind the new plasma TV Dad just got. We don't want Angel to be fried. See the containers of orange peels?

Sis' yummy toast

Sis always seems to be able to make her toasted bread with margarine and marmite look so delicious. I think it's because she's generous with the spread. These were Sis' dinner yesterday.

I must bake!

I didn't let my headache stop me. I had taken the butter out of the fridge to soften despite a dull headache. By the time Dad and I came back from the vet for Angel's 3rd vaccination, my headache felt quite bad and I felt a little nauseous. It must the hot afternoon sun. But I so wanted to bake and try this new recipe. Almond cake -using ground almond and simple ingredients like butter, eggs, sugar. I improvised by using half of the ingredients as I only have half of the required ground almond. I also used the mini paper cups instead of a cake baking tray and sprinkled some mini chocolate chips on top. Mum wanted hers topped with her dark chocolate bar.

They looked quite pretty before entering the oven.

I took the hour plus of baking to shower and cool down and sat in the kitchen, leaned my head against the wall to take cat naps in between checking on the cake. I had a bit of heart attack when I saw the cake mixture overflow the cups like lava and oil oozing out of the cups. But I'm used to see my creations not turning out the same way as the recipe describes or looking like the photo in the recipe book because I don't always follow the ingredients and instructions exactly. Hee.

Surprisingly the cat naps did seem to help and my headache slowly disappeared. Mum said I'm crazy and obsessed :)

The almond cakes/cupcakes hot from the oven:

The pieces that fell off and landed on the baking tray became cookie-like and tasted quite yummy.

The almond cake itself is like some dense, rich sponge cake and tastes quite good but not good enough for my friends to try. The chocolate chips added a nice touch to it. I think I will put less butter the next time and use a cake baking tray.

I think beside being able to eat what I bake, I enjoy taking photos of them. It's also a bonus if my family and friends like to eat them.

Food for Thought again :)

I was looking forwarding to my 2nd visit to Food for Thought cafe as I really had a gastronomical experience early this month.

I brought my 2 friends there and we ordered the sampler platter for 2 as I had dessert 3 hours ago. The platter comes with 2 choices of sandwiches, 2 soups and 1 salad. The 2 guys had shitake mushroom fennel soup. I wanted to try their watermelon mint freeze but it wasn't available so I had lychee sage freeze which was refreshing like the last time.

The salad we had - Chinese Chicken Salad - was yummy. The sauce tasted like kong bak gravy to me - very tasty.


The sandwiches - spicy pork (kong bak), Cuban ham and steak and roasted beef steak - didn't disappoint us too. I like the kong bak best with fats and all :)


I had space for dessert and we shared chocolate banana malteser cake. It's really good. I think my friends enjoyed their dinner too.