weekends and public holidays are meant for enjoying the little things in life

like spending time with my family - travelling around the island; having 4-way conversations in the car or over meals; the whole family ending up in one bedroom reading the papers (what can i say, we are environmentally conscious)...

and like photo-blogging. :)

last saturday was really spent as a family. as mentioned before, my parents took me to the Garden of Remembrance before we swung by to St Luke's in Bukit Batok to visit my grandmother. She's getting better because now at least she can open her eyes. No one in my family knows if my uncle has broken the news to her yet and we have no idea if she has realised anything amiss.

and since we were on some round-the-island rod trip (haha), we stopped at Adam Road Hawker Centre to have the famous Nasi Lemak. now i know that almost every other stall sells Nasi Lemak but this guy has pulled ahead of the rest by winning the Makansutra MasterChef award (or was it some STB/Food Festival tied-in thing?).
although i do have to say that i paid $4 for that... and the egg looks tiny, not to mention the dismal amount of ikan billis... but the teh tarik was mmmmmmmm...

after that we swung by Braddell to visit my other grandmother. when i was a kid, i loved visiting my grandmother because she'd ALWAYS ask me if i want to eat "i-see-ka-lim" (ice cream) and then give me some money to go to the stall around the corner to get what i wanted. AND she lived near the super nice cantonese roast stall at the hawker centre on Lorong 1 (though after they moved their standards have dropped). and she let me first play with the price-tag gadget, before i progressed to using the plastic bag sealer. i remember when i was in Primary 6 and had the week off during the PSLE marking, my mom sent me there to work because she couldnt entertain me while she was involved in the marking exercise. it was a good chance for me to practise my mental sums since i was made the cashier (and we didnt use a cash machine in the past, just a drawer below the desk that contained all the money). and for my grandmother to show me off to all customers. my uncle gave me the option of being paid $15 a day or $10 + 2 Ritter Sport chocolate bars. and of course i took the chocolate bars because the price of 2 bars was more than $5 (although on hindsight i should have taken the $15 because his cost price for the bars probably wasnt $5).
my uncle and grandmother have since closed that shop and opened a smaller one nearby which is fantastic anyway because i get loads of chinese groceries for free. my grandmother sees it in another light - that i cannot possibly survive in the UK without eating chinese food everyday and everytime i go to see her she offers me packets of noodles, dried shrimp, dried chinese mushrooms. she even used to try to get me to take some canned food but thankfully my mom stepped in.
all the lovely stuff that i cant take... :( dried octopus... dried cuttlefish...

weekends and public holidays are also about enjoying the luxury of being able to cook meals for the family...

on National Day I roasted chicken which was marinated in garlic salt, black pepper, lemon and pepper seasoning, paprika, and stuffed with garlic and an entire lemon that was cut into wedges.
my mom doesnt like the sharp taste of leeks but in my last trip with her to the wet market i mentioned that leeks are really delicious, especially grilled. she subsequently decided to buy a bunch which i HAD to figure out a dish to cook all at a go since i figured she probably wouldnt cook them and they'd go to waste. i didnt feel like having them grilled so i scoured my mom's collection of cookbooks for ideas and found a recipe for hearty vegetable soup in an old FEMALE Cookbook that i tweaked to use what i had.

All you need to do is coarsely chop an onion, 3 stalks of leek, 1 carrot and 2 tomatoes. stir fry the onions in some olive oil, adding the leeks and carrots. pour in some chicken stock and the tomatoes, seasoning with salt, pepper and oregano. let it simmer for 30mins (or longer). the recipe actually called for potatoes but i had already sliced them up for a crispy potato dish.my mom had seen some lovely cuts of beef at the market that she ended up buying for dinner last night which my brother grilled on the griddle pan we have. the key to them not sticking, he says, is to oil the meat rather than oiling the pan. *good tip to bear in mind* after grilling, he poured a bit of red wine into the pan to create a glaze for the steaks wth the juices and flavour left in the pan.
i made a honey mustard dressing for the side salad using honey mustard, thyme, balsamic vingar, pepper, salt and oilve oil.

a few weeks back my mom and i watched an episode of Party Dish where Trish Magwood made Crème Caramel. and we were so psyched about making it that we bought all the ingredients. but because of the insane work schedule i've been having the past 2 weeks, we kept putting it off until yesterday when i realised i had better make it or else the ingredients would go bad.
it's a really simple recipe:

1) preheat the oven to 160 degrees Celsius, prepare a tray filled with water for the ramekins to be placed in.
2) heat 1 cup of sugar and 1/3 cup of water in a pot until it caramelizes.
3) quickly pour a bit into each ramekin, swirling it around to coat the bottom. this forms the top layer of the creme caramel when it is turned out.
4) beat 3 whole eggs and 2 egg yolks with 1/2 cup of sugar.
5) heat 2 cups of milk, 3/4 cup of, a teaspoon of vanilla extract and some lemon zest in another pot without letting it boil.
6) slowly spoon the milk solution into the egg mixture, whisking continuously so that the hot milk wont cook the eggs.
7) pour the mix into the ramekins, about 3/4 full.
8) sit them in the water bath (the water should come halfway up the ramekins) and pop the tray into the oven.
9) bake for 20mins, or until a stick pierced in comes out clean.
10) serve either warm or cold, turning out onto a plate by first using a knife to loosen the sides.
the lemon zest made it taste a bit like lemon custard (yum!). the custard bit of the recipe can be used to make Crème Brulée whereby sugar can be sprinkled on top and caramelized with a blow torch to create a crispy top.