Picnic@ East Coast Park

It was such a nice weather to go for a picnic! No reason to back out last minute even though I woke up later than I should be to prepare the bento for our picnic. :P

When I'm done, it was almost noon but we had the whole afternoon to relax at our leisure on a Sunday.

The weather was windy and coolingon that day, you could spot people flying kites. We initially wanted to get off our lazy butts and do some cycling but the weather was really so good that we ended up reading newspapers, eating off our bentos and simply lazing around.

This is the bento that I prepared on that day. The worst part was frying thr chicken fillets. I did not take note of the fire and it got burnt. I managed to salvage it by cutting away the burnt portion with only a much smaller portion left :(

The maki sushi sandwiches was taken from Happy Homebaker's and it was really nice! Even my dad who NEVER eat any of such "sushi" stuffs also said it's nice! dd commented I could have use less rice so that the maki sandwich would be thinner. Lastly the two swissrolls were made during my baking class. I got it distorted while trying to put into the bento box. The tiger swissroll was only half of the original slice cos' it was too big a slice to be squeeze in!

It was fun but I'm still not pleased enough with my bento. Will try out other varieties next time! :)

Two "Yammy" dishes

Have I ever mentioned before, that I love eating yam. I love the taste, and the texture that's similar to sweet potatoes, potatoes, chestnuts, etc.

Yam desserts such as Orh Nee (a chinese dessert where yam is mashed and cooked into puree, usually with pumpkin and ginko nuts) or yam fritters are usually too sweet for my liking even though I like it. I love yam rice or some very good yam cakes where I can bite into chunky bits of yam. However my mum never cook yam at all cos' she says it is not easy to clean and peel it.

Recently I bought this food magazine 'Food & Travel . Kitchen Culture' from the supermart. This magazine has quite an extensive number of articles on cooking tips, recipes, food reviews and travel articles of personal accounts from travel writers revolving around food and culture. It's quite interesting. I just bought another issue of it yesterday and shall see if this is worth my monthly read. ;) Heh ok what I wanna mention about is this fried yam rice in the magazine.

I bought a packet of pre-packed yam which had been peeled and washed. Great! Heh, good for lazy people like me. I did'nt know things are so convenient now. :D On that very day itself, I made this steam yam cake, for my mum to bring to her karaoke sessions with my aunties (hoping it'll be successful) and my myself and dd to try. I followed Happy Mrs Kwok's recipe. However, for the seasonings, she only mentioned "as desired" and I'm poor at gauging how much I should use as I don't cook often. So the yam cake turned out too bland! Heh... luckily with some sesame oil, sesame seeds and soya sauce, it was still edible. Haha! My mum said my aunties were hungry so it was still well received. LOL!

Do note that you've really got to wait till it's completely cooled before slicing as it was very soft and mashy immediately after steamed. I did not pan fry it, too much of a hassle for me, but I believe it would taste much better.
I saved some of the yam for my bento fried rice the next day. As long as you prepare the ingredients in advance, cooking time took less than 20 minutes. The yam rice was very fragrant and I really like the chunky yam. :P

Fried Yam Rice (Serves 2)

Ingredients:

1 tbsp finely chopped garlic
1 tbsp finely chopped onion
1 cup cooked rice
1 tbsp oil
1 1/2 cup chicken stock
1/2 cup cooked yam, cut into large chunks
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 tbsp oyster sauce
35g toasted dried shrimp
55g sliced Chinese sausage
20g dried scallop, pre-soaked in water to soften

For garnishing:

10g coriander leaves
10g toasted sesame seeds
10g sliced red chilli

Method:

1. Heat oil in a wok, then stir-fry the onion and garlic till fragrant.
2. Add in the rest of the ingredients one by one, except the rice.
3. Toss the mixture while stir-frying for 2 to 3 minutes.
4. Add the rice to the mixture and mix well.
5. Garnish the fried yam rice and serve immediately.

Recipe Source: Food & Travel - Oct 2008 Issue (Pg 43)

Note: Do add the chicken stock a little at a time. I do not know how much their 1 cup of rice constitutes. 1 1/2 cup stock intially seemed too much for my 1 cup of rice so I only added about 1/2 cup. However, as I was stir-frying the rice, I found that the stock actually absorbed well into the rice (probably because of the yam), hence I added more sesame oil to make it less dry. I also omitted onion, dried scallop, and coriander leaves.

Worth giving this simple one-bowl dish a try!

A Day of Bird Watching

Does the title makes you think of sitting on a patch of grassy field, holding a binoculars and watching a flock of birds flying across the sky? Haa... that's just what comes into my mind when I wrote this title. Nah, we didn't held any binoculars to watch birds in action, my dd and I were just watching birds at Jurong Birdpark, a tourist attraction which boosts a huge collection of over 600 species of bird collections over the world. It was first opened to public 1971. To know more about Jurong Birdpark, please click here.

Despite being one of Singapore's tourist attraction, it was both our first time here. We had this opportunity as my company offers this corporate card which we could rent over the weekend to enter the birdpark for free. If not for this corporate card, guess at this age, we would never have thought of going! Well, this is something different for us at least since we are always trying to find more interesting and varied activities to do. :)

dd said he like this photo cos I looked chubby! :( This doesn't make me happy, but still I quite like this photo as well. So, ok who cares. :PI made 2 sets of bento. I don't think this looks very colourful as I do not have enough "accessories" to dress up the bento. Nevertheless most importantly it filled up his hungry stomach. :) It consisted of tuna mayo and egg mayo sandwiches, chicken karaage, chicken sausages with cucumber, baked sweet potatoes and crabmeat. Not in the picture were strawberries, cherry tomatoes and mooncakes. Yes I brought mooncakes cos' it happened to be Mid-Autumn Festival that day. But the weather was too hot. Before we could eat the mooncakes as our snacks, the poor mini champagne truffles and white ganache mooncakes were already melting away.

There were many species of birds and it's really an eye-opener for us.

We paid S$2 to feed these little lories with nectar. Just hold the cup in your hand and these little things would fly to your hand to feed on the nectar! Only on that day did I realise I'm actually terrified of birds! :P I was screaming when these birds flew onto my hand. I couldn't help myself not to be so fearful of flying creatures near me. So embarrased when children younger than me ain't afraid. :P

My favourite would be these penguins. They were so cute, just stood there and seemed to be enjoying the air-con and relaxing themselves. I actually sympathese with them not being able to be living in their true natural habitat. Hmmm well but who knows they could be happier since they would be safe from any natural disasters or predators that comes along in their harsh environment.

Back home, we lighted up lanterns and candles, my favourite childhood activity! Who say grown ups can't play anymore? ;)

Le Deli Potato!

Does this look familiar to you? If it is, then probably Delifrance had been successful; or I was successful in creating this potato dish. :P For those who are frequent patronisers of Delifrance, you would probably know that a few years back, Delifrance had this potato dish where the centre was stuffed with egg mayo, tuna mayo or seafood mayo, the usual fillings in their sandwiches. I remembered that time, I went for this several times at Delifrance. I really love this dish because I like potatoes. I don't think Delifrance now has it cos' I don't see this in the menu...I wonder why. Probably it's not that popular i guess :)

Anyway, not sure either how I suddenly have this thought of replicating this myself. Made this for my lunch and thought this was really simple. Baked the potato, scope some flesh out from the centre to make a 'well', and fill it with your favourite fillings. Top it with bacon chips and some dash of pepper..and there you are! I would suggest not to boil the potato as it would be wet and moist and won't taste as good. Baking it also makes it easier to remove the skin. For a medium potato, I took about 25 minutes. Not sure of the exact time needed, cos' I need to constantly check for its softness.
If you like potatoes, give it a try! :)

Healthy Non-green Salad

As much as I would like to add variety to my bentos, usually the time spent in preparing and freshness of the bento to stay are some of my considerations. I've tried preparing salad greens as a side to my main meals but they usually turn soggy. They really need to be eaten fresh, including the drizzling of the dressing. So no salads for my packed lunch. I'm running out of ideas...!

Happened to see this roasted pumpkin salad in the recent issue of "mindyourbody" The Straits Times. Recently they have been publishing articles on baked recipes! Some of them looks really good. :)

This pumpkin salad is an alternative to salad greens and is a really healthy dish! I don't have any likings for pumpkins in the past at all, probably cos' my mum don't introduce this dish in the house so very often, it became a dish we steer clear of, not really cos' we hate it. I think she only cooked pumpkin once in my lifetime, to my recall! I only started to know about this vegetable as I read more about food and healthy eating.

This roasted pumpkin turned out surprisingly tasty, as compared to my mum's. :P Made this for one of my lunch the other day. :) Below is the recipe for one serving.

Ingredients

1 purple onion (I used half big onion as I did not have purple onion)
Freshly squeezed lemon juice
About 0.4 kg pumpkin (including the skin)
6 cherry tomatoes
Some salt and pepper
Olive oil
1 green chilli (I omitted as I did not have)

Method

1. Preheat oven to 200C.
2. Peel and slice onion. Squeeze lemon juice over the sliced onions. Add a pinch of salt to season and leave aside.
3. Peel pumpkin skin, and cut into large cubes. Add 1 tbsp olive oil, some salt and pepper to taste and mix well.
4. Place marinated pumpkin and cherry tomatoes on a baking tray and roast for about 30 minutes, till caramelised and burnt in parts.
5. Top with pickled onion rings and sliced green chiilies. You may add a swirl of olive oil.
6. Serve.

This is a versatile dish and you may add any dressing to your likings, or I would suggest some pumpkin seeds or nuts.

Took some pictures of my recent bentos. The lunch case looked cute and Jap hor...hehe. Bought from Daiso. it's supposed to keep packed food warm/cold cos' there's this aluminium foil layer underneath but it doesn't seemed to work though.

Tuna Mayo Sandwiches; more tuna; cherry tomatoes; orange. (The bread was my Hokkaido Loaf!)

Potato Salad with mayo, spring onions and bacon bits; fruits