Thursday, January 24, 2008

Baking this week

Banana Loaf
Banana Muffins
Cheeze Pretzels


Everything turned out great except the pretzels were a little stiff and out of shape...i should have made them smaller
But the muffins and loaf were tasty...everything was wiped out on the day itself!

Next week is Chinese New Year specials so we'll be doing the mouth watering kueh tart and kueh lapis! yummy... i've been craving for it since Deepavali 07.
Finally my prayers have been answered!and all of u in singapore arent getting any til a few years later ;)then mine will be different form your recipes! so hang in there

Asian Delights

Who would have thought i would ever use belachan or cook cuttlefish?
I hated the smell of belachan but here i am using the paste in dishes...
I couldnt stand having any meat or seafood and here i am eating them almost
everyday...though its not much of an option for me

Its not about time changing people...its more like situations have changed...back home i was spoilt for choice with a great variety of veggies
Here they are pretty limited...or should i say they have some veggies which i dunno how to cook? :P i dun like stir fired vegetables...i cant taste anythin...anythin i eat must be spicy to give me a kick! =D lol

But on a more serious note i still i prefer being a Flexitarian or lacto-ovo-vegetarian!It was so much healthier and guilt free then.

I cant really cook and whatever little i do know is from recipes here and there...
So this week i tried making Indian Squid Curry which turned out ok...though i didnt like the rubbery texture of the squid :( while defrosting it i couldnt even stand its smell!

The Tauhu sambal a pretty simple dish was easy and tasty...recipe from my mum and got help deep frying the tauhu from alvin
so really i didnt do much here ;)


The Mee goreng was for lunch one of the weekdays...a pretty fast dish to prepare if you have the chilli paste on hand.
But i had to substitute the Fresh yellow noodles with Spaghetti :) The things you gotta do when you're in a foreign land :P



Mee siam was another dish i tried again...since i still had the salted soy beans on hand


Fried macaroni is a often cooked dish for lunch here...fast n hassle free

Sunday, January 20, 2008

19th January 2008

Finally i managed to gather all the ingredients for a dish...there is always some ingredient missing in every recipe i try to follow simply because i cant get them or i dont go thru the trouble of trying!

Today i went to the Malmo bus after a long long time.Surprisingly, it was very empty.
So with great ease,without people pushing or shoving i managed to gather all the ingredients n more!

Wat i bought-->
1.Galangal 2.Shrimp paste 3.dried prawns 4.Sotong 5.lemon grass 6.pandan leaves
7.Pandan Paste 8.yuko yuko(ointment) 9.tau pok 10.Taw kwa 11.tauhu(yeah =D )
12.canned fruits(longan n rambutan) 13.Glutinuos Rice

Wat i paid-->
471Kr!

Well not too bad i guess ;)anyway so i came home and got to work. Yeah this time i couldnt find bean sprouts...but i followed the recipe very closely and Wallah! it did taste like Laksa. Obviously not as good as the Famous Katong laksa but well Alvin loved it. It was a special occassion today-explains why i went thru all the effort?

It is the 19th January ;) Our monthly anniversary. We do it every month cuz this was the day we first went on and it definitely calls for a celebration =D it was the first step towards a great relationship!

So while i was cooking Alvin went to get Protective covers for our mobile phones...
Our new HP iPAQ Voice Messenger we got it this year as well!We both carry the same smart phone now! ;)@ 102grams and loads of functions including Wi-fi,EDGE,Windows live on the go and much much more!
This was another pressie from him to me =PCheck it out!
Cool isnt it?

When he came back he brought these along with him!


I was sooooo surprised :O

I named it Janu (pink fur tatty bear)(JANUary! The one beside her, is called "Gotie" i got him in September!Arent they adorable? Well together with her i got a stalk of red rose made of feathers but they smell niceeeeeee! and a keychain with my initial R!
Aint he sweeeeeeeeeeeet! :D Thank u honey! Wat can i expect for my birthday? hmmm....

He was rewarded with the yummy laksa! he loved it ;) effort paid off! we drove around for abit today ;) and watched Bride and Prejudice on tv. Its almost 1am an i should tuck in now.Good nighty

Monday, January 14, 2008

DeStressers!

Tandoori Chicken

I marinated the chicken breasts last night for best results... here my first attempt at Tandoori Chicken and it was a success!
Healthy food baked in the oven thus no oil needed and marinade did not contain any unhealthy stuff too! Alvin loved it...he said its tender n juicy!
The whole house was filled with the aroma of this dish! Its one i will definitely make again really soon!


I couldnt take a pic cuz it was finished almost as soon as it was served!
HEre is the mee hoon and macaroni soup i cooked this week!
Simple and very little prep time required!

Weekend Specials

This weekend we went to Kosta...it wasnt as crowded as the previous time we visited the place...
Before our winter break, we went to Kosta for the first time... the drive was an hour long but it was good as it was foggy and i didnt have to worry about the sun! i think it is a good place to shop. :) at least the stuff they carry cant be found in centrum all over sweden lol.Cuz all the centrums in the different towns carry the same ol things ;P
It was a good time to go, they had decorated the place for christmas and what a sight it was.. really the lights made it all look so beautiful!
Check out the pix...










My christmas Pressie!



It must have snowed heavily there cuz there were bits and pieces of land covered in really thick snow.
Anyway i was surprised to find a shelf of English books at the bookstore and obviously i had to get myself something worthwhile to read
I bought "THE GAME" it is a true story about pickup artists and i was already on chapter 4 by later that night...

We needed to get some rice...our supply from singapore has ended
Afterall all we brought were 3 packs of 10kg and we've been here for 6 months now.

Recently we bought a pack of Jasmine rice from Maxi. A 2kg pack. It is definitely more costly and it doesnt appeal to me. Very sticky after cooking
The grains of basmati rice are much longer than they are wide, and they grow even longer as they cook. They stay firm and separate, not sticky, after cooking.
The are also much lighter. So we decided to go to Frukt huset to check if they had any basmati rice..
Thankfully they had and it was a brand i had had before in Singapore. So we grabbed one of the two packs available and since there was no price tag on it and we desprately needed it we took it without much thought
It cost us 225KR which when converted to SGD is 52.32!!!! its like 25 bucks more than what u can get back home!

I was happy to have found some spices such as cardamom, cinnamon, black pepper,dried curry leaves,dried chillies, mustard seeds and such there.. at least they came with a reasonable pricing
So i know where to turn to when i run out of my spices!

We wanted chinese food for dinner but when we reached peking, it was overflowing with people went to lotus instead and glad we did cuz their food in my opinion was better :)
Had nasi goreng with fried cuttlefish. :)something local after a long while ;)

Cookies

This was the first baking lesson of the year :) we learnt how to bake Raisin & Oatmeat cookies and Anzac Biscuits...Christine taught the Anzac recipe on my request! I remember having made them when i was in Secondary School
It must have been pretty tasty for my taste buds to remember them til now ;) Not only that, it is a very healthy snack!It was a total success and why not when we're being taught by the best.

Here are the snaps of the cookies.I baked more over the weekend as i still had the ingredients. Oatmeal and raisin cookies!
Here is my second batch of cookies! I gave the cookies to Fayvier this time round...as i remembered she likes crunchy snacks

Dont they look yummy?
Alvin must have really liked it to have eaten quite a number...usually he doesnt take too much sweet stuff unlike me which is good in a way...Healthy! ;)