Mum's homemade chili

Every now and then, when my mum feels the chili mood, she will make hainanese chili from scratch. She's made some for this year CNY. Being the good daughter, I helped out in the chili making process (other than cutting and adding of seasoning) the rest is I do one.. LOL which left using the electric grinder. Faints.

First you will need chilis. If you want it hot, you can just put chili padi alone. If you are not a big fan of super spicy hot, you can mix it with normal big chili. You control the spiciness. 

Chili padi, chili, garlic and Ginger (below)

All set in the grinder!

Mix it up real fine and add some lime juice if you have on hand. Otherwise, you can choose to add vinegar... But trust me, the better option is to add lime juice.

Done!

Valentines celebration

This year, we celebrated valentines later in the weekend as usual rather than the actual day. Its Alvin's turn to plan the day! Whee. Teeheehee. 

I wanted a trim for my hair but I thought since Saturday we are on a date, might as well trim on Saturday before the date then I will have a nice hairstyle right? Half right and wrong! I ended up being late with a nice and  neat hairstyle. Went to usual salon and they were nice to curl my hair for my date. 

I have the best boyfriend who doesn't get angry for waiting for me holding the flowers for 30 mins at citilink entrance. heh. 

We had early dinner at Canele cos we are going to catch Wicked!

My pretty flowers! =D 

His carbonara

My ham & egg crepe

Our show is at 7.30pm at Marina Bay Sands. So we took circle link and slowly shake over to collect tickets. We thought the tickets will be special so he opted to collect it at the counter. But, it ended up to be a normal ticket.

Good seats!

There is some time before the start of the show and we explored Marina Bay Sands. Didn't know there is so much shops there. The jewellery shops alone are from all over the world! And TWG is everywhere in Sands. We settled at one of the TWG outlet to rest our feet.

TWG is super atas lo. Even the service staff spoke so softly. Had some teas and order 2 macarons to try. Didn't take photo of the macarons but anyways, macarons taste pretty much the same everywhere. And so paiseh, plate so big, only 2 pathetic macarons. But hey! One macaron costs $2, ok! Expensive. 

My imperial rose tea. 

We were damn suaku on how to use the strainer (bottom right item). Then we sought advise from the service staff. Hope we didn't appear stupid. Alvin had some ginger infused tea which they recommended for him as he is having flu. And we think TWG don't do refills of hot water to the tea as the couple next to us requested for that and the server looked at them blankly and mentioned that the taste won't be good after that. 

TWG cup.

The musical was great! People really dressed up for the musical. The only minus point is that the ang mohs seated behind us are too self-absorbed and noisy. The lady kept singing together with the stars VERY loudly and the guy kept whistling. So irritating. Its like having dual sound system, the stars sing in the front and the irritating person behind. And she kept gushing "Oh, I like this song". Feel like slapping her. The the girl beside me kept digging into her bad for snacks. The plastic bag sound is equally irritating. I thought its some atas place where the people are supposed to be much more civilized?

Anyway, the musical is superb. I'm so hooked on the song "defying gravity" now. Nice.

One epic happening when he sent me home on train last night. This china woman holding onto the hand grips on the train is exposing her armpit of HAIR! Holy shit. Its not small stubble, you know. You can actually measure the length. O-M-G. After she alighted, Alvin together with some other XDDs bursted out laughing. I think the FT workers laughed too. OMG.

Today, I removed the wrappings for the flowers. By my usual standards, I would have already dismantle and cut the flowers out for drying. But, its only 2 days. abit wasted to cut it out. Still haven't even see long enough. ha ha. So I got a glass bottle and put the flowers inside. Added some sugar and panadol which is said to prolong the lifespan of the flowers.

Random note, tissue flower I've gotten from a colleague on valentines.

Happiness is where..

CNY/weekends are spent meaningfully with friends and loved ones....

.. and eating the food I like..

... bliss :)

Marutama Ramen

After many raves and recommendation from my colleagues, I have finally went to try the always-long-q ramen restaurant at Central Mall.

Perhaps due to the fact that we are early, the queue wasn't very long. In around 10 minutes, we are in.

The menu isn't very extensive. Just very basic minimal items focusing on what they are best at - ramen. We chose our ramen and we ordered an additional egg each. Surprisingly, the spicy and non-spicy noodles are all of the same color. You can't really differentiate them unless you tried it. I always thought that spicy ramen should always be red. Ah, stereotypes. ha ha.

Nevertheless, it was yummy.

Ordered dumplings as sides and it wasn't too bad either but it wasn't really a must order item to me. Long queues start to form after we were in and I suggest going there at non peak hours to reduce the waiting time.

Address
#03-90
The Central @ Clark Quay

Huat ah!

On the last day of CNY, hope all of you had a fat fat ang bao year. Stay healthy and happy.

Brunch: Jones the grocer

Some time ago, had brunch with Superfriends (minus AK) at jones the grocer at Mandarin gallery. Initially was deciding between jones, Antoinette or Wild Honey. But eventually because of the queue, we decided on jones. 

Not a very good move. The selection was not very great. Not a very interesting menu. The food don't look tempting especially when I had seen a breakfast menu much MORE interesting than this on xmas. Tsk Tsk..

We have unwillingly gave this place a try since we had already seated inside. Yap basically had to ate the things he ate in US considering that he had just came back.

The interior is quite homely.

The thing i don't understand is that they displayed their products to near to the customers, don't they afraid of "missing" items at the end of the day?

 My Mint hot chocolate. Very minty. Not bad. 

Rong's ice coffee with ice cream

Flavored sparkling soda for the guys. 

Very unique bottle for the sparking soda. Wondering if the patrons can keep it.. hmm.. We can't find the recommendations that AK recommended us to try. So we tried other things instead.

English breakfast with sunny side up. Yap had similar set as well.

My english breakfast with poached eggs. Aren't all poach eggs supposed to have some sauce on top of it?! And seriously, the eggs look so.... unappetizing. :( The things are so tough - toast bread and sausage. Disappointing.

Alvin's beef burger with chips. According to Alvin, the beef wasn't very nice. meh. 

Lynn's sandwich with avocado and bacon.

Overall, food are quite disappointing. Don't think I will visit them again. Bear in mind that the price is the higher side compared to hotel room service.
Keen to try out Wild Honey and Antoinette.

Address
333a Orchard Road
Level 4 #21-23 Mandarin Gallery
Singapore, 238897

New Phone for the New Year

Happy Chinese New Year!!

For this new year, I've gotten myself a new phone! Yay. Yippee.

Its the Galaxy Note.

Wheet! I eventually gotten Note instead of iPhone 4S mainly because of it's size and also to try something new since there are many good reviews on the phone. The size doesn't pose a problem to me. In fact, I like it big because I could view a wider screen to surf net, play games, whatsapp etc. Also, I don't put my phone in my pocket, so this is no issue to me at all.

So far so good with my phone. I find it of reasonable speed and not slow at all compared to iOS 5 on a 3GS. Much much much better.

Fiddling and still exploring the phone. The games selection is not as wide as iPhone's but still reasonably ok. Tried watching video on the phone and its great! Big screen! And transferring file over is a breeze!

The minus point could be that you can't really write a sms/message single-handed due to it's size. Well, unless you have longgggg fingers. Yea, longer than mine, that is.

I'm waiting for the screen protector to arrive from Gmarket. Hope nicer casing for Galaxy note will be out soon. The current ones are so ugly!