Cooking for Cheats - Poached Egg Over Ham and Toast

My kitchen has seen a fair bit of activity lately.

with JJ taking up most of my time and no additional help, i now have even lesser time for chores and caring for the household.
since i breastfeed, nutrition is a major concern. i didn't want to resort to reaching for chips and cookies to curb my hunger pangs, so i have been on the prowl for speedy recipes that put food on the table in less than 20 minutes.

i have always been a fan of simple, straightforward cooking because anything that takes more than 5 ingredients and longer than an hour to prepare is really best eaten at a restaurant.

these days, in addition to taste and speed, the amount of time needed for cleaning up after has become another important requirement when i cook.

meals that taste great, cook easy and clean up fast after are certainly not easy to prepare, but i realise that with a little bit of cheating, the challenge becomes pretty enjoyable.

i have been wondering about eggs benedict ever since i saw them on television, but in my present state there would certainly be no pottering around the kitchen for hollandaise sauce.

so my curiosity led me to make the best of whatever i had in the fridge, and the results were fast, dead simple and very delicious.

1. i started by toasting two slices of bread while browning two slices of ham in a frypan.

2. in a small pot filled two-thirds with water, i added a tablespoon of vinegar when the water came to a boil and reduced the boil to a gentle simmer.

3. after cracking an egg into a bowl, i gently slid the egg into the pot of water before covering the pot and waiting for four minutes.

4. i then stacked the ham on top of my toast, and topped it with my poached egg.

with some freshly cracked black pepper, this made a quick and yummy breakfast!

Note to Self

2013 has come and gone, and we've all succeeded in rolling over into a new year.

this year i won't be making any (lofty/ambitious/unrealistic) promises or resolutions, but i would really want to remind myself to love my family.
put more specifically, to love each and every one of my near and dear ones as equally as possible.

put even more specifically, to love my husband every day of our days together and not have the daily grind eat away at the foundation that was us, before JJ came into the picture.

the married-with-kids will probably know what I'm getting at.

once a baby comes into the picture, a husband is somehow relegated to the bench.
he becomes the one-with-the-heavy-diaper-bag, the why-arent-you-doing-as-much-as-i-am part of the marriage.

it's all very sad, so i swore to myself when i was pregnant that i won't be one of those who ended up relentlessly picking on her husband post-baby.

but i fell into the same rut.
i would very much like to blame it on my changing body shape, postpartum hormones, the fact that we now have a screaming infant in the house, but there really isn't a good enough reason for constantly finding fault with your own husband.

i realised how monstrous i had become last christmas, when i was searching for JJ's lost sock and my eyes wandered over to the foot of the christmas tree, where ken had left a present for me.

i used to be the one with the surprises, but last year, i bought ken's birthday gift 5 months ahead and handed it to him at the shop register, and i neither planned nor did anything for our wedding anniversary and christmas.
i became icy and snappy, and ken was made the convenient victim of all my thorns and prickles.
the baby had become the excuse for my forgetting our marriage, and his gift made me remember.

it reminded me that we existed before JJ, and our love is the reason why JJ ever made it into the picture in the first place.

so this year, this monster of a wife will try to be nicer. there will be no equating the number of times he changes JJ's diaper to how much he loves me. there will also be no faulting him for not being home more because of work.

and if the husband wants five eggs in his breakfast omelette, so be it.

Fleeting

It's 12.30am and he just fell asleep in my arms.

the husband is away at work so it's just me and the bub for the night. the lights on the Christmas tree are twinkling, and the television turned down low. I see the soft rise and fall of his chest, the gentle flutter of his eyelids as he finds his way into deeper sleep.

he feels both light and heavy at the same time cradled in my hands. how soon it has been, he has already turned two months old. I remember those trying first nights when I wished he would grow up faster so that I would have it easier and be able to have more uninterrupted hours of sleep.

funny but now I am already missing him as a newborn. I wish it could always be just us both, him small enough to fit in my hands and always looking up at me with that disarming toothless smile of his.

very soon his tiny hands will no longer be mine exclusively to hold, his head will no longer seek my chest for comfort. his legs will grow strong and wander into the world beyond and away from me.

and that day will come sooner than I think. so let me always remember tonight, with the fairy lights and the way you look and the way we are.

it won't always be this way, you and me. how fleeting this all really is.

goodnight my dear, and see you in the morning.

An Ode to Our Grand Dame

We finally decided to let her go.

13 years. ken and i have been together for ten, and when i first met him she was already in his life.
back then she was just fresh out of adolescence, still shiny and new.

no one knew us as well as she did. our entire love story literally unfolded within the space that was her, and she was part unwilling witness to all of our petty lovers' squabbles, teary confessions and romantic expressions of love.
she helped mark every milestone of our time together - from friends to lovers, lovers to husband and wife, wife to expectant mother.

i always thought i would have the chance to introduce JJ to her, to let her have the glory of carrying the fruit that came from all those years of silent observation.

it wasn't always smooth sailing though. we've taken turns at hurting her; she suffered her worst injuries ever under my hand when i dragged the entire left side of her body across a concrete wall when i was still inexperienced.

mounting injuries and years of relentless wind and rain slowly robbed her of her beauty. she became battered, chipped, dented and rusted.
her back window didn't work and we always had to pull up the glass by hand.
the speedometer and gauges stopped working and the air conditioning gave up.
rust created holes in her carriage, and rain found its way into the interior.
the melodies stopped floating out from her radio and speakers.

but she never once complained. she never begged to be fixed and she bore all of her scars like a proud horse out of battle.
and when life handed her lemons, she made them into the best lemonade. like the time when she was made an innocent victim of a collision while she was waiting for us to finish our shopping at a downtown mall. (we ended up making an unexpected windfall from the insurance claim.)

it was a sunny day when they came to pick her up for good. we took pictures, talked about the glory days and cleaned the past out of her.
we told the man who came for her to be gentle when the time came to lower the axe.

and we stared and stared until the truck that carried her away from us went out of sight.

she was my first car and i loved her so.

farewell my dame, you've had a good run.

Saying Hello All Over Again

I can't believe it's been so long.

in my long absence life remained pretty much the same, although

some old friendships were strengthened and renewed while others quietly faded into the past
a few old mindsets gave way to a set of new perspectives
i put into action the thoughts in my head and co-started a store in japan
and then another in singapore a year later

and now, our family of two has become three.

meet JJ.

life has changed indefinitely. some changes are good, others not so.
but the richness of the experience has taught and moved me in ways i never expected.

there really is a greater love.

お初。。。

。。。の「アンデスメロン」です！

値段はそんなに高くなかったが、「果物に400円もかかるなんて」と思いがちのシンガポール人のわたしにとって、かなり大きな買い物をしちゃった気分です＾＾

アンデスメロンは、実にアンデス山脈と全く関係無い。栽培しやすいことから、「作って安心」「売って安心」「買って安心」より、「安心ですメロン」というネーミングで売り出す予定だったそうです。しかし、名前にセンスがないとのことから、略して「アンデスメロン」となったらしい。

まっ、名前はどうであれ、おいしければなんでもいいや。
明日のおやつタイム、楽しみだね～

Summer Skies.

Iced tea.

Fireworks.

Cicadas.

Sun.

Blue skies.

We're Famous!

Imagine my surprise when I saw this on TV.

five old japanese men collectively known as SMAP (one of the biggest boybands in japan) having a good time at our very own MBS.

smap shot a series of commercials (four in total i think) in singapore for softbank, one of japan's fastest growing cellular phone companies thanks to their monopoly over the sale of iphones in japan, cheap subscription plans and ads featuring a white dog as the father of a very dysfunctional family.

watch for the end of the commercial...the merlion gets turned into mr. white dog!



here's another one:



and here's one of the white dog and his off-kilter family:

Summer's Here!

The sweltering heat is back.

the best part? the green mobile's air-con isnt working so the both of us sweat like pigs every time we sit in the car.

that aside, it's the third week of work and so far things are pretty interesting. although it's only a part-time job, i help administer scholarships and summer exchange programmes at the university's foreign students' centre and the work isnt repetitive, which is something that i like. plus i get time for myself in the afternoon since i leave work at 3.30pm every day. it's my idea of a good compromise between earning some pocket money and still having the leisure of spending (late) afternoons at home.

just this afternoon, i was on my way home from dropping ken off to a work dinner when i decided to make a quick detour to the department store.

the following is what happens when i am left to my own devices. two belts of the same design in two different colours. i just got too tired trying to figure out which colour to buy.

just allow me to say this: hurray to pocket money!!

PAP Economics

The fever swirling around GE has begun to die down, but here I am getting all riled up.

the following equation is from a man who graduated with a first-class honours degree in economics (incidently, he also possesses an M.A. in development economics):

Unhappiness + Others who are happier = Net Happiness

a formula coined by sm goh chok tong in response to concerns raised by singaporeans with regards to the (over)heated property market and the policies of hdb.

in sm goh's words:

"for those who missed out, who can't buy this, can't upgrade and so on, they are really feeling the unhappiness. question is, was the policy good? unhappiness plus those who are happier, in total there's net happiness. there's no such thing called total happiness. i mean, don't believe in it. it's whether we can create net happiness in all of this."

for the old man's sake i really hope what he meant to say was that the government cant please everyone with their policies.

but to the untrained ear, it really sounded as if our ex-PM was telling us to build our happiness on the misfortunes of our fellow citizens, to wise up and not expect to have everything that we want. that we can only be marginally happy at best.

sm goh's remarks naturally resonated with many singaporeans, some of whom were so inspired that they proceeded to make a song out of his words:




funny but i never learnt about the economics of net happiness in school before leh.

Budding Addiction

Meet Serena Stone, budding fashion stylist.




one mention in vogue was all it took to pique my curiosity. i think fans of online shopping may already know shopstyle.com for its extensive range of designer labels, but what really got me going was the stylebook application that allows you to pull any item available on their website to create your own personal look.

before i knew it, i was adding giuseppe shoes, throwing on stella mccartney jackets and spritzing prada perfume (all virtually of course, but still very very fun nonetheless), and this - ladies and ladies, is the very first look that i came up with.

this could well become an all-consuming addiction. maybe i'll try to control myself by creating just one look a day?

Cooking Up A Storm

I think I am on a roll today.

i rose bright and early this morning, thinking i should make the best out of my final week before work at the university begins next monday.

since i probably wont have much time for idle pursuits like pottering around the kitchen in future, i decided to put an end to my years of procrastination and get round to making my own gyoza.

gyoza are the japanese adaptation of chinese pot-stickers, little pan-fried dumplings filled with minced pork, chives and chopped cabbage. personally i am a huge fan of the japanese version because the dumpling skins are much thinner, which means crispy goodness and juicier morsels.

the cooking book said i could make 20 dumplings, and that was exactly what i ended up with (you really have to hand it to japanese recipes for their sheer precision).


fried eight of them to go with a bowl of chinese vermicelli soup for lunch:



i then proceeded to bake a lemon gateau cake with lemon sugar frosting for tea.

the recipe was dead-easy but the frosting was a little tricky because i didnt have any icing sugar at home. googled for substitutes and realised that i could actually blend regular granulated sugar with corn starch to create my own icing sugar.

the frosting turned out to be a little rough for my liking, making the cake five points short of perfection, but still it was moist with just the right amount of tangy sweetness. perfect with a hot mug of tea on a rainy afternoon!

Technical Update

Been having one too many blogwalkers spamming the comment box these days so I decided to remove it altogether from the page.

it's going to take a little more trouble leaving comments from now on, but at least we'll be free from spam : )

well, hopefully.

Fit For Royalty

The Dress has been revealed.

not to brag, but i had a feeling that sarah burton would be designing it (okay, there have been reports of leaked information from alexander mcqueen that kate middleton was very keen on having burton design her wedding gown after she saw the dress burton designed for tom parker bowles' bride in 2005), since it would have been the best way to pay homage to one of britain's most shining beacons of fashion.

perhaps the duchess of cambridge's choice was cemented by burton's first womenswear collection for alexander mcqueen last fall, which i thought brought some much-needed reprive and sensibility to mcqueen's satorial antics.

two thumbs up for burton, who succeeded in not only inheriting the best elements of the fashion industry's enfant terrible, but also designing a beautiful, timeless gown that is truly fit for a queen.

the duchess's choice may have been a tad conservative, but i liked that she didnt overdo any of the dress details or go with a ridiculous 10m long train. and the veil was simply elegant.

kind of reminds me of grace kelly's gown though, which to me is still the best wedding dress ever.





however, what really caught my attention was the long column sheath worn by pippa middleton, which was also designed by burton. simple, form-fitting, understated - now that's what i call a dress!

Long Overdue

We've been married for four months but our wedding pictures only arrived in the mail this week.

it's a small shame not being able to look at the photographs at the height of our nuptial glow, but we had fun trawling through the pictures anyway.

ken and i arent the posey-posey sort, so we decided to forgo the de-rigueur pre-wedding photo shoot in favour of a short picture-taking session after the wedding (considering how we were blanching at some of the poses our photographer had us do during the shoot, i'd say that was probably a very good move).

surprisingly though, most of the posed shots turned out pretty okay. here are a few of my favourites:

Basil Me Silly

On a whim, I brought home a huge bag of them from the fresh fruit and vegetable market in downtown naha.

i didn't know what i could do with such a mammoth pile of leaves, so i tried making my own basil pesto.

40 basil leaves, two tablespoons of finely grated parmesan cheese, 100ml of olive oil and 4 cloves of garlic were blended to yield quite a handsome portion of homemade pesto.



tossed in a saucepan with some penne, shiitake and bacon, the basil pesto made for an effortless, lip-smacking lunch.

the rest of the larger leaves were left to dry in the sun. i figured dried basil could come in handy for soups and oil-based salad dressings. plus, they'd make good company for the jars of rosemary and lemongrass sitting on my kitchen window sill.





when all the work in the kitchen was done, i caught up on some overdue reading (i know i know, it's a magazine and not quite such an intelligent read) over a hot cup of lemongrass tea.



best way to combat a headache, if you'd ask me.

Last Weekend

Turned out to be a pretty lovely one.

okinawa heralded the arrival of spring with the nation's first fireworks display of the year. we make it a point to attend the festival every year since it's held at the beach just ten minutes from our apartment. usually, the streets leading up to the venue would be flanked by food and game stalls and the place would be thronged with visitors, but this year, such pasar-malam gaiety was nowhere to be seen.

despite the shadows cast by last month's earthquake and tsunami, we had one of the best (free) seats in the house. beer, fried chicken, great company and an hour and a half's worth of man-made stars exploding across the sky. you can't possibly ask for more.



the day after, we marked Qing Ming by trooping down to the family grave for some tomb-sweeping. okinawa is the only prefecture in japan that still observes chinese customs such as lunar new year and qing ming, and the similarities with the practices carried out in singapore are uncanny. tombs in okinawa are huge and tortoise-shaped, making them very similar in appearance to some of the older chinese graves back home. offerings to ancestors consist of paper money (yellow in colour too!), joss sticks, brewed tea and お節-like food consisting of stewed pork, fish tempura and rice cakes. what's most interesting about qing ming in okinawa is that everyone sits down to a picnic at the grave after tomb-sweeping is complete.

i went armed with a camera to fulfill my intention of chronicling the day with photographs, but that task had to be set aside when i was handed a pair of workgloves and a small parang. the next time though, those gloves are coming off for some picture-taking!

two hours of grass-cutting and a short picnic later, us and the rest of the extended family ended the afternoon by settling down to a fancy japanese lunch at one of the city's fanciest hotels.

To Feel Good

I think music nowadays has become disposible.

with the advent of the digital music movement, along with mp3s and ipods, people tend not to listen to the same things too often. play something you've downloaded cheaply off itunes five times and you're ready to buy a new tune online again.

and so to cater to fickle consumers, music factories have had to churn out more artistes, more songs and more albums just to keep up.

jay-z calls them "auto-tunes", and i think i'll have to agree. there are less golden melodies and more forgettable white noise dominating the airwaves these days.

i miss the days when i made my own mixed tapes, and when i mulled over which cd to buy because they were too expensive for a 15 year old.

some feel-good songs that you hardly hear on the radio these days:

Lenny Kravitz, "It Ain't Over Til It's Over" (and here he is, looking incredibly good in this live performance)



Mark Morrison, "Return of the Mack"



The Cranberries, "Linger" (i can still remember all of the lyrics!)



East 17, "Deep" (i loved east 17 before i ever began to like take that. my idea of the best boy band from england.)



PM Dawn, "Set Adrift on Memory Bliss" (i think i only ever liked spandau ballet's "true" because of this song)



ah, the simple bliss of nostalgia.

Of Cubs and Hindi Movies

Of late, the mood has been sombre.

cherry blossoms are close to blooming but this year, people are worried about celebrating in the face of misery and suffering.

to lift spirits (and also perhaps in line with media guidelines in times of crisis), there's been a bumper crop of light-hearted variety programmes showing evergreen song specials and funny video clips.

here are two that really made me laugh out loud:

this little cub, abandoned at birth by his mother, is terribly shy and doesn't quite mix well with others. watch what happens when zookeepers place him with other animals in a bid to help overcome his fear.



always wondered what will happen if you match a hindi movie dance sequence to a traditional japanese marching band song? here's a video to satisfy that curiosity of yours:

Married (Again)!!

So now you are no longer registered as a swinging single in Japan.

the day we got married all over again at the city office.