the mister, he bakes!

it was the mister's turn to go on a baking spree last weekend and ohmyy he whipped up two dozen pita pockets in double quick time. which means we've been nibbling pita like there's no tomorrow. the organic hummus helps, and the OJ and fresh coffee (for him) all helps the bread go quicker. and pita on its own isn't a balanced diet so we usually throw in two soft boiled eggs, drizzled with truffle oil for good measure. monday morning, let's goooo!

comfort food

posted this on insta awhile back and F commented it seems to be something that 'overseas singaporeans' are always whipping up. seeing how it was a dear family friend, who's based in bristol herself, who first shared the recipe and so kindly sent me a 'starter kit' of the necessary ingredients, F might well be onto something there :) i suppose the sheer ease of making tauhuay (or soy bean pudding for those unfamiliar with it!) makes it a popular dish for overseas singaporeans to make. in less than half an hour, i was savouring the warm, comforting goodness and felt that i should've made more than one portion because i ended up devouring the mister's share before he even woke up. tell a lie, i did leave him one spoonful...

empire saturday

people often ask what we get up to on the weekends and i'm never able to come up with a short answer. and that's a good thing, i think! every weekend is different and i like how being footloose and fancy-free means we've the liberty to meet as many friends as we want to, or not at all. 

we'd a late start to the weekend, rolling out of bed in time for dinner (i know right!) and a little map reading situation that was entirely not my fault saw us at a completely different part of town than intended. thankfully, back up was close by and while we're loathe to do repeats, a spot of japanese did hit the, well, spot.

after a refined dinner, we went to watch my very talented little brother break dance his way to fame and fortune. well, not exactly but you get the picture. he's got a pretty fine day job so if the dancing doesn't work out, he's got options :P and i didn't manage to get an action shot (darn you slow iphone shutter!) but here's one of him on the rare occasion he's standing still.

after the concert - which made me nostalgic for the times i used to perform - we went for dinner round 2, a perfect reminder of why ballet wasn't for me. but that concert, oh, it threw me back to when i was in dance. ballet, tap, modern... to be honest, don't think i ever was very good at it but heyy i was willing. then there was rag as a fresher (mere shadow of what other people call 'cheerleading') and adult ballet / contemporary dance when i was in final year. good times, more happy memories than not, and it's a little known fact that the mister fell for me when i portrayed a desperate housewife at a fresher event. now let's just hope life doesn't imitate art.

and here's a bad photo of our very yummy hotdogs and sweet potato fries, washed down with a bottle of champers. i like how they roll!

sigur*ros

is just about our favourite band on earth. it's one of the first things the mister introduced me to when we first started seeing each other. he'd a thing for them, and for iceland, from the very beginning. since them, we've roadtripped around iceland twice and had sigur*ros on repeat while we did. through no magic or trickery of our own (i mean, hello, it's ipod shuffle!) our song started playing just as the mister popped the question two years ago, and last summer i walked down the aisle to the very same song. so you can imagine how when we finally watched them live in concert, and they played our song, how overwhelmed i was and how pinch-me-i-must-be-dreaming happy that this time we were playing for keeps.

my local

T was done with his research paper weeks before the rest of us were. this, of course, warranted a celebration and i managed to arm-twist him into going to my local. one of the perks of living 30m (i google mapped it!) from the pub is that i'm generally well-watered. but drinking alone is reserved for very specific occasions (like when i want some down time with a good magazine) and thankfully there's usually someone who's up for a pint or two. the mister says this photo of the local in daylight is very telling. but hey, don't blame me, blame the increasingly long day light hours ;)

burger*lobster

if you're the faddy type, you'd have heard about and possibly even been to burger*lobster. where it's GBP20 for a lobster, served with salad and fries. the burger costs the same so if you do go, please don't make the tragic mistake of ordering a burger. however, we finally made it to our little neighbourhood diner that serves all that, plus a margarita or beer, for GBP15. with way better service too! made friends with our lovely waiter and he comp-ed an extra margarita. woot! the way to my heart and to ensure my undying loyalty is clearly with free alcohol. that's precisely how the sneaky E  got me hooked on pollen*stsocial i.e. with bubbles the moment i waltzed in. disclaimer: it all sounds more glamorous than it really was in person :/

level up!

when i first invited A and R over for dinner, ever the considerate guest, A asked if there was any occasion. telling him it was a celebration of being alive (albeit true) was just too cheesy, so i went with "we're celebrating my new deep fryer". and that, my friends, is the unfortunate truth. so continuing on the birthday theme, my present to myself was a "cheap cheap" mini deep fryer i found on amazon. this is something i have yet to tell my healthy living parents so please be gentle and withhold judgment. 

it's easter break now and i've one glorious month to while away. last easter break (well last st paddy's to be precise) i was being kept awake by drunken revelers in a tiny 6 bed dorm in manhattan. this st paddy's i was feeling all grown-up with a spouse and a house, enjoying a very refined japanese supper club dinner with my charming changmoh cousin and his wife. what a difference a year makes!

to further cement this new-found status as capable young wife, i felt the need to learn to cook. and as a product of the internet generation, what better place to start than online. so i googled a few recipes, got the mister to drive me to the asian grocer's* and armed with hope and a freezer full of frozen lasagne (just in case!) i set about this latest domestic blitz. truth be told, i'd been mulling on the menu for almost a month now since i first sent out the invite and envisioning my little action plan as to what to cook and when. hey, when you're simultaneously prepping and cooking six dishes in the span of two hours, organisation is key! thought canto-style would be the most crowd-pleasing and thankfully our wonderful friends 1) ate lots 2) complimented loudly. behaviour that secures them an open invite to future 'dos. 

i attempted the list below, served with steamed rice. nothing fancy, no bells and whistles. really should have done a dry run because there was this heart-stopping moment** just before they arrived where i thought the said fryer was. not. working. turns out i was using it wrong and after jiggling it around a bit, it cranked into motion. disaster averted but oh so scary nevertheless.

so we had: 

steamed egg

salt & pepper chicken wings

beef stew

spare ribs with black bean sauce

sweet & sour pork

wonton soup

"lao ban" style tau huay and fresh fruit for dessert

and because their mamas taught them well, they came laden with cakes and sweet wine. be still, my sugar-craving heart. in fact, we were so full that they graciously left the goods behind and the cakes are now mine all mine for breakfast, lunch and dinner today :D

for the aspiring home cooks out there, the evening's cooking order was as follows.

1730h prep stew and marinate chicken wings, spare ribs, sweet sour pork

1800h put stew in oven for 2h, mix eggs for steaming, prepare tau huay, make sweet & sour sauce

twiddle thumbs till 1930h

1930h put egg dish and spare ribs (separately) in steamer and steam for half hour, steam rice too

1940h fry chicken wings

1950h fry battered pork in deep fryer then stir in sweet & sour sauce in frying pan

2000h pop frozen wontons into soup (boiled pork bones with dried shrimp earlier in the day) and simmer for 5mins 

(and bob's your uncle!***)

*funny story here, indulge my little brag! tried to buy beer for them boys but GOT CARDED. and because i'd run out of the house with just the mister's plastic, i had no ID. tried flashing my wedding band (hmm, maybe counter-productive) and insisting that i've been legal for longer than i care to admit but the cashier wouldn't budge. didn't know whether to laugh or cry but unabashedly thrilled i look underaged :D in fact, every time i'm NOT carded, a small part of me dies on the inside.

**yes i shouldn't joke about these things. but if that had happened (CHOY!) i would've been in good hands because incidentally, R is a totally bad*ass neurosurgeon who once casually CPR-ed a man back to life on the streets of london. no big, just your friendly neighbourhood doctor-man.

***cantonese as dinner might've been, anglophilic i still am

maturity

so my birthday came and went with barely a whimper. phew :) had a lovely dimsum lunch with the grads somewhat belatedly, what with us all having commitments of the family kind over the weekend. one of the nice things about being back in school is that my coursemates are in a similar place. some are married, others have children (!!!) and when it comes to weekends, everyone respects that everyone else has 101 things to do. things like hanging out with +1s who've been sorely neglected during the week...

what i'm trying to say is this would be so much harder if i didn't have this core group of wonderful wonderful people who know what it's like to be a graduate medic but don't take themselves too seriously. it's crazy how between the 6 of us we've already something like 10 degrees. #firstworldproblems, much?

and they surprised me with a lemon drizzle cake that T baked. the photo really doesn't do it justice but i'm tickled by how J manages to make a kawaii moment of everything. for a finnish army man who later taught english in japan before finding himself (and his medical tendencies), guess you can take a finn outta japan but the japan in the finn hangs around a bit longer.

spontaneous sundays

the sun came out and so did we! the mister and i excitedly brought our good white out without realising we couldn't drink in the park :( we were good and respected that rule and apart from the many many dogs that came charging at our little cheese platter, it was a good afternoon trying in vain to top up our tans.

on a roll

home made butternut squash and home made bun with home grown basil. oh so smug. but as always, pride before fall and halfway through i realised i'd also cooked, blended AND CONSUMED foil wrapper from the butter. oh the horror.

notting hill

we'd an atypically early breakfast with a dear friend who was passing through london. i'd the pleasure of meeting T 4 (!!!) summers ago when the mister had banished me from leuven. made the most of being based smack in the centre of europe to visit my cousin who was in dublin. and guess who was there the same weekend, fresh from a posting at the great ormond street hospital? T was ever-gallant and i still remember he bought a round of baby guinnesses when he saw me balk at the real guinness. +points in my book! we kept in touch and i'm amazed by how much he remembers of his month in singers when he doing a stint at K*K, right down to who we met at brunch (edinburgh medic) and where the mister hadn't joined us (reservist). minutiae that has long slipped through my sieve-like memory. this was also just before i left for stockholm and T brought me to a swedish embassy 'do and showed me my first midsommar celebration. yes i realise i've said about the same thing in an earlier post and there you go, evidence of my wonderful memory.

sent T to paddington after our aussie brekkie and then went back to notting hill for round two! the mister had some shopping to do and i entertained myself with selfies. mature...

and because it was my birthday the next day, the mister let me pick a present that i've had on high rotation since.

we also fell hook, line and sinker for some coconut water and only later realised our fridge stocked just bubbles, sake and coco. so much for growing up!

one of those days

and just the pick me up i needed.

sometimes it's hard to deal with the lack of visibility. i'm admittedly OCD and need to know what's going to happen and when. i mean, i can't even watch a movie without wiki-ing the plot first. spoiler alert, much! sometimes if it's a complicated movie i draw mind maps too so i can follow without being that moviegoer who asks 101 stupid questions during the show. so it's really only natural that i don't like (most) surprises. but since i started going out with the mister, i've become better with spontaneity. and he's probably the only person who manages to surprise the already ever-suspicious me. 

it was one of those weekends where the mister nudged me into being sociable and meeting new people. while i was initially uncomfortable when someone i'd just met persisted in stating the obvious, it got better as the evening wore on.

strawberry sponge

had some time on my hands and decided to modify the blueberry sponge recipe. strawberries were the natural, economical alternative and they seem to be in season! got a bit brave and tried to tweak the recipe as i went along. of course, i forgot to take notes and that's that - unreplicable :( but it was fun seeing how the sponge rose and semi-submerged the strawberries i'd painstakingly sliced and arranged. didn't halve the recipe this time and baked two massive cakes which went down too easily and were well-received, if i may say so myself :)

self-invite

was at covent garden with my sweet friend M and after a highly satisfying tea at la*duree, i must've been drunk on their special blend that i invited myself over to hers. dodgy as that may sound, M was ever indulgent and didn't mind me hanging at hers while our men were at work. yep, we're fun like that :) and it's a nice story, really, because when M was first accepted for her LLM, i commiserated with her housing woes. little did we know that she'd eventually be given accommodation and of the most luxurious sort! her 450sq ft studio is every student's dream... well, it'd definitely have been mine! and she's got a lovely view and almost 360degrees of huge windows with plenty of natural light. if you squint, you can even see the shard in the distance. what a gem of a place! and what a gem of a friend :)

"breakfast for dinner"

is one of our favourite things but this time we decided to shake things up and have "tea for dinner" instead. although in the UK, "tea" is used interchangeably with "supper" and "dinner" so it does get confusing at times. question of semantics aside, had booked afternoon tea in the city with a friend who's on a flying visit to london en route to geneva for a skiing holiday. can i say how envious i am?! we met five summers ago. the mister was in leuven studying for his final exams and had banished me to dublin where i visited my cousin. as luck would have it, all her friends descended on her at the same time. T was doing a month at great*ormond street and hopped across to dublin for the weekend. we got along great, and have since kept in touch although that's more to T's credit than mine. in fact, swedish-canadian T spent a month at k*k hospital in singers and introduced me to my first swedish midsommar, just before i left for stockholm on exchange. so much as i was looking forward to an elaborate english tea with T, we rescheduled for notting hill brunch. not one to let a hard-gotten reso slip through my fingers, i went nevertheless and the mister joined later. what made things more interesting was that i happened to get talking to the charming gentleman next to me, who turned out to be paddy*renouf. P was more than fascinating and the best accidental date i could ask for and my goodness i only wish i could be a fly on the wall during one of his private tours of london.

truffle gruyere and chorizo egg cup

spent a day up north last week and this little baby sure perked up my train ride :) while i'm not a creature of habit, neither am i big on rituals, it's nice to have a little train routine. it usually involves the biggest hot chocolate possible (because calories imbibed in transit don't count!) and trashy magazines because neither guilty pleasure is as enjoyable without the other. when i'm feeling particularly industrious, i do try to get some work done but more often than not i cherish the time to kick back and decompress.