Jane's birthday cupcakes decorcated with fondant

Wow!  I've not been blogging the food for a few days.  Well... you have not missed much.  pretty much the same food everyday.  We had a nice spicy curry 2 days ago though.  :D 

It's Jane's belated birthday and Jane had celebrated at school with her classmates...those cute small boys and girls.  Pat ordered a set of nicely decorated cupcake to celebrate at school.  The characters on the cupcakes are Jane's favourite - NumberJacks. 

The colourful decoration on the cake is called fondant.  Before this, i just understood the term as a kind of decoration and thinking that it is something similar to marzipan.  Today, out of curiousity i have done a small research online to findout exactly what fondant is.  and ... it is ... merely sugar with cornsyrap ... and other binding material .... and not forgetting.... colouring ... and of course safe to be consumed.

according to ww.allrecipes.com, fondant is made of:

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon unflavored gelatin
• 1/4 cup water
• 1/2 cup corn syrup
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 2 tablespoons shortening
• 8 cups confectioners' sugar
• 1/4 cup cornstarch, for rolling out the dough

Directions

1. Place gelatin and water in a small saucepan over low heat. Stir until gelatin is melted. Remove from heat.
2. Combine the corn syrup, vegetable oil, shortening, and confectioners' sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer. Turn the mixer on low, and add the gelatin mixture. Beat on low speed until a paste is formed. Refrigerate for 15 minutes to let harden slightly.
3. To use, roll the fondant to 1/4 inch thickness, using cornstarch to coat the work surface and the rolling pin. Transfer fondant by rolling it around the rolling pin. Place fondant over cake and unroll it, stretching it into place as necessary. Use a paring knife to cut away the excess. Store unused fondant in an airtight container.

The cupcake we ordered each cost $4 (ya... $4 a piece :O ) and it's ordered online at http://cupcakedivinity.blogspot.com/.  It's pricey but i guess we paid for the craftmanship.  it is nice.  ...profit margin must be that...THAT ...high.  Next year we try to make our own, ok?

:D

Happy Birthday Jane girl.  Papa and Mimi love u!!

Tempura - The homemade way

To spice up life, it is interesting to make something different.  How about making Japanese food.  It's not so difficult... try our little home recipe.  It's quick and it's home made.  It's cheap also.

For jump start, go to any supermarket and grab these 2 item:

They are tempura flour and concentrated tempura sauce.  After u get these, then think about what we want to fried.  We can pratically tempura anything.  Prawn, squid, fish, crab stick, and most of any other seafood.  Tempura vegetable is also very good.  We use to fried carrot, lotus root (yum.. good), pumpkin, asparus, ladies finger, mushroom etc.

Last Saturday, as there were only Pat and I eating, so we made it very simple.  We only had prawn, tofu and oyster mushroom.  To make it, it's very simple.  Just make the tempura batter as per the tempura flour mix instruction.  We use Nissin tempura flour.  It's pretty good.  never tried other brand anyway.  for the sauce, we use Hinode concentracted tempura sauce.  We only need to mix one part of the sauce with 2 part of hot water. 

It's a simple enough to make, and very delicious.  It may not look as good as those from restaurant, but guarantee to taste good.  We also made a bowl of Japanese potato salad.  To make this, just add mayonaise to boiled potato (cut into cubes) and bunch of boiled baby carrot.  Just add in some boneto flakes for garnishing.

To make the meal complete, we also served miso soup, salmon sashimi and roasted seaweed.



3 days roll up

oppss... have not been updating the blog for 2 days and as i compiled, i realized that we have consumed quite a fair bit of food.  I cannot say they are the healthiest food, but mostly home made. :P

13 Jan:
Lunch:  Office packed lunch is the same food as the previous day's dinner.  Fried bean with sambal and sweet pork. 
Dinner:  Chinese sausage ommelette and fried brinjal.  Pat had some kimchi as well. 

14 Jan:
Lunch:  Again is the same as the dinner from the previous dinner.  Mom will usually cook extra for dinner and pack for next day's lunch.  I will then reheat in microwave oven in office.
Dinner:  We had fried kangkong, steamed fish and "hairy melon" soup.  The fish is steamed in somewhat teochew style. 

15 Jan:
Lunch:  Simple lunch, adults had fried beehoon while the small little girl had her favourite organic rice pasta soup. 
Dinner:  Only Pat, Jane-nat and I at home for dinner.  We had home made tempura dinner.  We fried prawns, fresh mushroom and tofu.  The sauce is not really home made though.  It's bottled concentracted sauce.  we also made Japanese potato salad with boneto flakes and miso soup.  To make the dinner more complete, we bough 1 serving of salmon sashimi.  yum!  The little girl is not feeling well.  She ate steamed egg with minced pork and carrot in the Japanese potato salad.
 

All the craps I have eaten

While promoting healthy diet and minimizing intake of processed food, I myself have consumed quite a fair bit of unhealthy processed food which are high in sugar, sodium, and carbo.  ...I'm trying to find an excuse for myself... emm....may be on 80/20 basis it is OK.... :P... no it is not OK. 

On 11 Jan, i started with waking up late... and i mean really late.  Woke up in total shock at 6:45am.  I was so late for the company bus.  So Pat had to drive me to the MRT station and board the company bus at Admiralty instead of Sengkang... and lets not even talk about not being able to bath.  Then back at the client's place, i had the typical Singaporean breakfast... fried noodle, and i added a sunny side up egg (with broken york :( ).  Thank God i convinced myself not to take sausage.  :P .... other than, i had 2 instant teh tarik (with artificial creamer and high in sugar... and a packet of Corntoz Aiwah bought.  Good God!!  what was on my mind.  BUT... lunch and dinner were good.  Summarizing for the day for 11 Jan, please see the chart below:

Then on 12 Jan, more craps into the stomach.  In the morning, instead of just eat my whole meal bread, i also ate a slice of soon kueh.  Packed lunch at office was superb.  The rated "A" fried rice my mom made is delicious as usual.  Back home, everyone had plain purple rice porridge for lunch and steamed minced pork and chai sim to go with.  In afternoon, had another coffee.  It's a waste of calories, the coffee taste ....then it is worsen with another pack of Corntoz and a piece of kueh chap...ohhh... Dinner was great. We had ginger soya sauce fish head, fried bean and sweet pork, and brown rice as usual. 

My 2 days were basically spoiled by the rubish i consumed.  I must control!!!  But i did resume my exercise regime.  :D

爱心靓汤 - 玉米红萝卜莲藕煲排骨 Soup of the day - Maize,carrot and lotus root soup with pork spare rib

I've been waiting for soup since we return from Hongkong last Thursday night.  Finally, today we get to drink some nice soup.  Hurray!! This is one of our favourite soup of all time, especially my little Jane.  It's very delicious and nourishing at the same time.  it is known to be very 滋补.  Anyway, for me, the most important thing is it is very tasty.  It's my mom's specialty also.  Little Jane drank a big bowl this evening and ate 5 pieces of the lotus root and not to mention so much of the carrot and sweet corn.

below is roughly the recipe.  Please pardon me, my mom do not have exact measurement of how much is each ingredient.  It's all by "feeling" and "experience".  It's just "a bit of that" and "a handfull of this" :D  You just intelligently balance the ingredients to your own liking.

Ingredient:
Fresh sweet corn (whole corn)  - 2 nos
Carrot - 2 nos
Lotus root - 1 no (about 1' long)
Pork spare rib / soup bone - 250g
Salt for seasoning

Instruction:
1.  Clean the pork rib and blench in boiling water to get rid of the blood.  Clean the blenched pork rib with cold water.  This will also make the soup clearer.
2.  Cut the sweet corn into 4 or 5 pieces short sections, carrot into large pieces and lotus root into thick pieces. 
3.  In a big stock pot, boil the pork rib and the lotus root for 30minutes, then add in sweet corn and carrot.  Slow boil the soup again for about 1 hour over low heat.  Add water if necessary.
4.  When all ingredients are soft, season the soup with salt.  No MSG required.  The soup is naturally sweet.


Sometime we also add a few pitted red dates.  But watch out, add red dates sparingly because it is heaty and make sure it is pitted as the seed is more heaty.  A Hainanese colleague of mine cook similar soup with ginger.  It taste quite good too, but i do find it heaty too.  Not very suitable to drink during hot day.  You can also make this soup without the lotus root. 

OK.  enjoy cooking.

10 Jan - food

It's another day and looking back at the photos of what we have consumed over the entire day is in fact quite amazing.  The food we ate today is more or less self explanatory.

Overall, i rate as below:

Breakfast - "A" for the egg sandwich which both Pat and I had; "B" for little Jane's bring-to-school snack box (peanut butter bread).  All bread are whole meal though.

Lunch - "B" as kueh tiaw Pat, mom and little Jane consumed is still some what processed, but not too bad.  At least it's not oily.  "A-" for my "frozen" chicken rice lunch.  Still very tasty and cucumber pickle is refreshing.

Dinner - "A".  Not a great dinner.  In fact quite simple but again home cook and all ingredient are mostly fresh.

Overall, it's good.  All... and really... all the food for the whole day are home made... and made mostly from fresh ingredients.  I'm trying to say no to my favourite sausage and instant noodles.  Trying to set a good example for my little girl.  emm... i promised to return to my exercise regime tomorrow.  I will try...

Lets be healthier everyone!  I think the most important thing is to reduce processes food and say no to food which contain XYZ ingredient that sounded like NASA code which we have little/no knowledge about.  They could be colouring, conditioner, stabilizer, thickener, preservative, flavouring, binder etc... you name it, they have it.  They are just chemicals in a nut shell.

Mek..mek...fresh goat's milk in Singapore

Mek...mek.....Yes, in Singapore, and yes, the goats are all holding Singaporean passport and living in Singapore :D 

It is amazing isn't it? I think this is one of the very rare argriculture industries in Singapore.

My little Jane has been drinking fresh goat's milk from Hay Dairies since several months ago.  She will consume 1 serving of fresh goat's milk and mix with another 2 servings of formula goat's milk.  Goat's milk is known to be easy to digest and good for those who are allergic to cow's milk.  The milk come in normal white milk or chocolate (but not sweeten). 

I really prefer this fresh milk than formula milk because i just cannot understand why must the formula milk manufacturer add in so much additive AHA, DHA, Omega-3 etc...into milk powder.  I was shocked when my vegetarian colleague told me that they could not drink some of the common milk powder because the omega and DHA is from fish oil.  Fish oil in cow's milk powder? emm....

I earn nothing from Hay Dairies and really not promoting for them.  Just like to share something good with everyone.  The only thing that i would probably recommend to Hay is that probably they can consider recycle their bottles.  It's quite a waste to throw away the bottle everyday.

Hay Dairies Pte Ltd

No. 3 Lim Chu Kang
Agrotech Park Lane 4
Singapore 718859

Tel: (65) 6792 0931
(Office Hours: 9am to 4pm)
Fax: (65) 6794 1580

http://www.haydairies.com.sg/

Week 01/2011 roll up

Still not quite use to my new activity, i.e. blog about my family's daily diet yet.  Some of the pictures were taken when we were half way through the meal.  Please pardon me for the quality of the photos.  Anyway... here is the the roll up for the pass 2 days since i decided to blog about it.

8 Jan:We had our lunch at home as usual.  Well... not too much of fresh ingredient in the fridge since we just return from Hongkong, so mom made chai-po ommelete and pork with kiam-chai, and we had purple rice porridge to go with it.  Both chai-po and Kiam-chai are preserved vegetable...i didn't read the ingredient on the packaging ... so i have no idea what were the "chemicals" added.  Too bad i didn't take any picture.  On scale of A-E, i rate the lunch "C".  But it is still a healthier home cook meal as it has reduced oil and no MSG.

Dinner was good.  I rate it "A" with a minus sign since we dipped the cucumber with sambal belacan.  We had brown rice for the lunch

9 Jan:
Simple lunch.  i have to give it a "B" because we had our favourite canned Sardine.  It's a processed food.  man!  Forgoten to read the ingredient again.  Vege was good though.

 Then we had my mom's best chicken rice for dinner.  I have to rate it "A".  Not only it is delicious, it is also healthy as the rice is not so oilly, and everything are made from fresh ingredient including the chili dip (of course not the soya sauce).  We also had my mom's special cucumber marinated with lime as side dish.  I packed the same food for lunch, tomorrow, i'll try to remember to take a picture of the cucumber.

Here is a minus point for the day.  Pat and I had a curry puff each for tea break.  I'm not promoting for anyone, this curry puff is the famous curry puff from Ang Mo Kio, which some said the owner was the one who were jailed due to failure to file tax correctly.  I donno...it's just yummy... but oilly and full of carb.  :P  on 80/20 basis, i guess it is ok :D

and ya... that summarize what we ate for the pass 2 days.  Simple food, but home made.

Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution

After just watched the 1st episode of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution on Travel and Living Channel on 6 January 2011, I completely counting my blessing more (and more) for having hot home cook food everyday .  And appreciate the food more.  As a parent myself, i feel sore to see what children are being fed with everyday in school.  It was really an eye opener.  Thank God i have a loving mom who cook hot meals for us almost everyday.  She also prepared lunch box for us to bring to office.  It may not be the most delicious or interesting meals, but definately the healthiest choice. 

The fact that my little 4-year old daughter, Jane-Nat eats her nai-nai (granny)'s cooking everyday is a true blessing.  At least she eats healthy food everyday. 

I've decided that i will create a blog about my lunch box and hot meals everyday.  I hope this will inspire the people around me to cook and go home to eat.  Eat-out less and reduce consumption of heavily processed food.  May be share a few home cook recipe.  Start to live healthier.  It's a matter of choice.  Start the little changes and we can and will regain the healthier life.  Feed yourself well, feed our children well. 

To start of, allow me to share this amazing wake-up-call video of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution.  It has inspired me, i hope it moves you too.

All 6 episodes are on You Tubes and each episodes is splitted into 3 parts.  I hope all my friends and relatives will watch all of them.  It is not a religious preaching, nor direct sales.  It is just a TV reality show... so real.  I trust it will change your life, change your kid's life  ... if it doesn't move you at all, then ...i guess i just "buang karen" talking to you.  :D