Xmas Home Party 2014

#throwback to Xmas 2014 when I had my first xmas party at the new home! 

It was a fun filled night with yummy food, gifts exchange, log cake and alcohol. This group of Derp's friends have been with him since the good old army days, helped him out in his proposal and also attended our ROM. And the soon to be customary wedding!

They have witnessed our major life events and now our housewarming cum xmas party. Our first xmas party was held on the weekend before Xmas. 

This is the red wine and white wine we bought prior to the event. 

All of us finished the bottle of red wine that night because it was oh-so-good (one of the better ones I drink to date, easily beat those I drink at weddings). Derp and I settled the white wine on the actual xmas eve and new year eve. I'm so gonna hunt down the red wine again :)

On the xmas party day, we went to had our lunch and also to get a log cake for the event. A Christmas party is not complete without log cake!

I started prepping to air fry the fries and also nuggets 1/2 hour before the expected arriving time of the guests. But most of them were late! 

My cajun fries. 

I bought the cajun spice (in a bottle form) on the day itself to test it out. It's really yummy and I've been making cajun fries since then. It taste good even without having to dip chilli sauce. 

The spread of food on the table. 

Derp ordered 100 pieces of chicken wing/dumlets Four Fingers from Food Panda. They were prompt in delivery and it arrived half an hour earlier (Derp ordered the food in advance and gave them instructions to deliver at a specific time). As expected at every housewarming (after having 5 housewarmings), we hardly have any guests that are on time. 

The chicken wings/drumlets got quite soggy by the time most of the guests were here. 

Derp and I decided to throw it into the airfryer and re-fry it to see if it's crispy again. After putting it into the airfryer for 8 mins or so, it did turned out better. In the end we send in batch by batch to re-cook the chicken wings/drumlets. Those who were came even later (close to 10pm) were the lucky ones!

Another food pic!

The xmas tree at our house is finally filled with presents :) 

The guys chilling around our room with full blast air con before the gifts exchange session. I do admit that night was quite hot! 

The exchange present session started quite late and it started because one of them has to leave soon.

Derp is the first one who star the ball rolling 

All the gifts after unwrapping! You can spot some really lame stuff there lol.

And it's time for logcake :) 

We were deciding between this red velvet cake or the traditional log cake and they are priced the same. But we eventually settled on this as we hardly get to eat red velvet cake :) The decoration is very cute too. 

2 of them left first and the party continue till midnight. We drank Bailey's Hazelnut which doesn't look like alcohol at all. It looked exactly like milktea lol. We also ate Pat and Stick's sandwich ice cream which were bought by 1 of them. It's soooo nice and everyone had different flavour. There were some leftover for us to slowly indulge in it hehe. 

So so nice but it's really expensive! $6.90 each and it's only sold at Providore. 

One of the leftover ice cream flavour were the Peppermint Chocolate Chip and this has got to be the nicest peppermint ice cream I ever ate. I'm never a fan of peppermint but this is probably the only one I accept till date.

The aftermath of the party. 

Last photo of this entry has defintely got to be this..

A group picture with everyone! 

I'm definitely more than willing to organize a xmas gathering again for this great bunch of friends. 

Not sure we will be jetting off to our honeymoon at the end of the year, but even if that's the case I still hope to organise a early xmas meetup with the same group of people again :) More than okay to do all this before the arrival of additional family member!

Afterall it's your own place, and friends can just chill out till late as long everyone is happy.

Next event happening at the new place has got to be CNY :) Have already start prepping for it because it's offically less than a month from now. Looking forward to it!

Rochor Original Beancurd @ Selegie Road

Saturdate with Derp to run errands for our wedding prep! A need to go to Art Friend to get some art related stuff. I used to frequent that place very often during the good old uni days and same goes for Derp. 

Nothing new for us and Rochor Original Beancurd @ Selegie Road is always part of the itinerary whenever we are near that area :)

#OOTD - Wearing a old piece from FMTP for a casual day out

The Art Friend @ Peace Centre close at 4pm on a Saturday hence we rushed down upon knowing that. We gotten our stuff quite quickly and we cross the road to have tau huay! 

They are just 1 road apart and the Art Friend @ Peace Centre used to be located at the same building as the bean curd. No idea since when they shifted though. The very last time we went there was in 2012 for a photoshoot @ Cheezz Studio.

The shop front. 

There wasn't much people on a late afternoon hence we manage to get a seat outside the shop front. They have more seats on top but to take your food and climb up and down the stairs is pretty risky. I do remember the steps of the stairs is quite steep.

Our orders which is not little at all! It was meant to be a high tea. We ended up having our dinner pretty late that day.

I definitely prefer the tau huay here over the one at Jalan Kayu. Not sweet and it's very 'q'. But oh well, both of them are traditional tau huay so I like them all :) 

Rochor Original Beancurd @ Selegie Road

2 Short St (Selegie Rd), 188213

Review: Xiaomi Mi Band

Xiaomi's Mi Band has been added to my collection of Xiao Mi gadgets. I bought my first Xiao Mi phone and portable battery last year and just lately I bought their Mi Band. 

It was meant as a Christmas gift to Derp. I also bought one for myself since it's not that expensive as compared to those similar bands produced by big brands. A Mi Band only cost SGD $19.99. No harm trying it out :)

I told myself if I wear it for one month consecutively it's already considered as good enough and value for money.

I will first talk about the hardware of this Mi Band.

It comes with this USB cable for you to charge the mi band to your computer. The battery lasts up to 30 days after every charge.

After wearing it for a week (I took it off during bathing time even though it's water resistant), the back of the band start to turn white. 

It can be scratched off quite easily and the reason behind my band turning white is due to sunblock! No idea why too but oh well, at least stains can be easily removed so I think it shouldn't pose much a problem.

The recommended number of steps to take each day is 8000 and so I set my daily target to be 8000. You can set up to 20k steps if I did not remember wrongly. They have this light indicator to indicate how far you are from your goal everyday. You can set the color of the light too and I set mine to pink! 

2 lights means you are almost reaching your daily target.

And this will means I've reached my daily target.

When you have reached your daily target, it will vibrate and the lights will blink to inform you. It's not difficult to reach 8000 steps and achievable whenever I go for a more than 2km run after a day of work. 

Anyway, I wore my Mi Band to my yoga lesson and I do wonder how it will turn out. So here's a screen shot of it..

19:44-20:00 is the time I walk to my yoga lesson venue. I didn't took that long to walk because it's around 5 mins away only, rest of the time I'm probably hanging around and it's being recorded. 

From 20:15 to 21:08 is when I'm doing my yoga. Before that I'm probably warming up hence no much walking about too. Can't believe that just walking from front of the yoga mat to the back of it for that 1 hour I walked nearly 373m. lol.

After which, I walked home again and the steps are being recorded.

I bought the Mi Band mainly to track my sleeping pattern. I've always wanted to find out how much sleep I'm getting and whether are they deep sleep or light sleep. Did some research and found out if your alarm rings when you are in deep sleep, chances of you finding hard to wake up is very high! No wonder some days I feel extremely tired the moment I open my eyes.

Moving on to the downside of the Mi Band. There's one downside of this Mi Band which I think it's common among other similar type of bands in the market. If I leave It there too long, they will think I went to sleep and start recording my sleeping pattern.

Forgot to wore it after I bathe and this is what happen. -_-".

Another time was after I woke up in the morning, I brushed my teeth and took out this band before bathing. The Mi Band recorded me as going back to sleep -_-",

In short, whenever you are not doing anything or just leave it there, it will record you as sleeping.

Below are some of the other interfaces of the Mi Band app which I installed onto my IPhone (yes Mi Band do work with iphone and at least ios 7 if I'm not wrong)..

You are required to key in your weight, height and age at the start so that they will be able to count the calories you burn through your activities. Not bad eh, I burned 404 daily lol. In order to lost one Kg you need to burn 500kcal a day! 

The app has a page to show the battery life of the Mi Band

Earlier on I was talking about setting your daily steps goal and the color of the light indicator you want it to be. This is the page which you can set your daily goal, and the color of the light indicator all on this page too. 

That's all for my review of the Mi Band.

All in all, I think it's a good buy and it is value for money. The app for the Mi Band is very user friendly and not difficult to use at all. It may not be very precise because Derp tried moving his hands, the steps count did increase even though he was seated while doing so to test the Mi Band.

We wore it out for our run before and it's actually quite accurate in counting the amount of steps we took. If you are looking for something not complicated, you can try out the  Mi Band :)

For more information about the Mi Band, you can go to http://www.mi.com/sg/miband/ Do note that only the black color Mi Band are being sold here for the time being. 

Nene Chicken @ Seletar Mall

I first tried Nene Chicken @ Star Vista in 2013 and I didn't really had a good experience back then. It was mainly due to the very little seats they have at that outlet. The food we ordered that time was so-so and I didn't really look forward to going back there again. 

Just recently, they opened a outlet @ Seletar Mall which is so close to me. I went to take a look and to my surprise the outlet is actually quite big. Much bigger than the one at Star Vista and could probably sit up to 20 people or more. 

One of the weekends, Derp and I decide to give them a chance again. We had a late lunch there after our weekly grocery shopping.

The menu

I don't understand why they didn't print this menu up and place it on the board on top so that everyone can see. Instead, you can only see this detailed menu when you are about to order your food. Some people will take a long time to decide what to eat as it's their first time having it which in turn jam up the queue. 

This time round we ordered something different from the other time. The other time we ordered the 2 piece chicken (freaking hot) and I couldn't finish it because it was too spicy! We had the tenders meal this time round. Tenders meal is for those who want to eat boneless chicken meat. 

The flavours we choose were Green Onions (the one on the top which has little wasabi taste in it) and Spicy (more towards sweet and spicy) 

We also changed the side dish to coleslaw. The default side dish is pickled radish which we find it not really nice or maybe we can't appreciate it haha. 

This tender meal cost $9.95 each. I think it's not bad, the chicken is soft enough but perhaps if you are a love spicy chicken then don't go for this because none of them are spicy enough. It's more for the non-spicy lover to enjoy some Nene Chicken.

On one of my off days in December, I was out for some grocery shopping and I packed Nene Chicken back home for lunch.

I only came to know they have the 6 pc double fried wings and sticks meal which is somewhat similar to that of four fingers not long ago lol. No idea why I didn't notice it on the menu when I were there the very first time.

They provided me with gloves but I still use my bare hands since I'm at home. :)

I ordered the Hot double fried chicken.

It actually taste very yummy! Slight spicy but good enough for me as I can't take too spicy food.

Though the concept is similar to that of Four Fingers, but one can still tell their difference. If you are one who always think Four Fingers queue is very long and never ending, Nene Chicken's double fried chicken is not that bad too.

Just don't order the 2 piece chicken (freaking hot) because it's really spicy! Unless you are out to challenge something spicy.

They have a on going promotion for passion card holders. I was entitled to 10% discount which in turn my meal cost less than $9. Cheaper than Four Fingers!

I will definitely go back there to have (or pack home) 6 piece hot double fried chicken again in the near future.

Nene Chicken (The Seletar Mall)

#B2-10/11, The Seletar Mall, 33 Sengkang West Avenue

Derp's Birthday Part 2: Homecook Mee Sua, Movie Date & Dinner @ Chomp Chomp (Macpherson Seafood BBQ Branch)

On the actual day of Derp's birthday,other than cutting the cake at 12am, I cooked birthday mee sua for him :) 

I told him that I will try my best to hold this chinese tradition till I'm old. Which means I will cook this for him and our kids( if there's any) on every of their birthday. Hopefully I keep to it!   

When we just moved in, Derp tried cooking it once while I watch. Afterwhich, I start to go online to find better recipes and tried it out on his birthday. 

Ever since then, I've been using the same recipe (I did improvised) and cooked mee sua for both of us when we are just too lazy to go out buy food (and there's minced meat in the kitchen). 

The mee sua I cooked is simple, lightly salted and just nice for our taste bud. A comfort and yummy food indeed! (Derp finished every bit of it including the soup!)

Hereby presenting to you the mee sua I cooked for Derp :) 

On normal days, I don't really add eggs but because it's birthday so it's a must to eat 2 eggs. I'm traditional at times!

Easy and cooling #OOTD because we are going to Chomp Chomp for Derp's birthday dinner

We went to Nex to watch Exodus before our dinner. The storyline is similar to Mosses: The 10 Commandments. It's a cartoon (as told by derp) and you can find it on youtube.  

I didn't even know there's such thing and ther's people sitting behind us who is 'predicting' what's happening next lol. Derp know the storyline and he did whisper to me what's going to happen next. Interesting show for people who never know about this story before. 

We took bus to Chomp Chomp thereafter. It's been many many years since we last went there. Ever since Derp went into NS till now if I never remember wrongly! We decided on going Chomp Chomp because we moved to a place that's much nearer to it so it's time to revisit it again.

Actually nothing much has changed, it's still the same as I imagine what it should be. The only change will be some stalls that I used to frequent are gone. And it changed to something else.

There were a few seafood stalls but we eventually settled on ordering from Macpherson Seafood BBQ( Branch). I can't remember which stall I usually order from but as according to Derp, those facing the outside are the more popular ones. 

The menu.

We ordered a total of 3 dishes. 2 seafood and 1 vege. At first Derp wanted 3 seafood and I gave him the "no" face because I think that's too much seafood in a day lol.

Baby Kai Lan - $6 

Just like any normal other veggie as expected it's oily. Nothing beats home cook vege lol. Ever since I start to cook myself, I've also become more picky on the quality of food provided by eateries. 

Sambal Squid/Sotong- $8

The sotongs were good.

Sambal Stingray - $12 

It's been awhile since we ate such a thick stingray. It's really meaty and totally value for money! At the very least, you don't feel so cheated haha!

#onthetable

The birthday boy! 

My hair looking really messy after being blown by the strong wind fans there. Chomp Chomp is famous for their sugar cane and now they have a even bigger cup which price at $2.50! There's even a 3 dollars one if I'm not wrong. 

We were seating very near to a bbq chicken stall and it seems to be really popular. The customers are non stop and many came there to ta bao from them too. I went to order 2 bbq chicken wings for fun to try it out too even though I was damn full.

It's really good and if I never remember wrongly, it should be $1.20  per wings :)

Sad to say, after all the feasting that day, I was down with sorethroat the very next day and the next thing I know, I'm on MC and it took me quite awhile to full recover. 

It may be many years since I last went to Chomp Chomp and I've heard the food standard has drop but I do think likewise. I think it's still affordable though the price may have went up a little but definitely not alot. 

I'll still go back there if I craves for any bbq food again since I've shifted to a place nearer to Chomp Chomp :) 

Chomp Chomp Food Centre

20 Kensington Park Road, Singapore 557269

Derp's Birthday Part 1: Homemade Cheese Cake using Air Fryer

When the clock strikes 12am on 17th December 2014, it's time for Derp to blow the candle because it's his 26th birthday :) 

I took leave the day before since I'm clearing my leave and also to start preparing for his birthday. He loves cheese cake with biscuit crumbs at the bottom and he have been telling me to learn to make it. So for the sake of his birthday, I shall give it a try.

Somewhere in November, I did the first attempt and it was quite a failure because there were too much melted butter added to the biscuit crumbs. The biscuits crumb ended up very oily and when I poured the cream cheese mixture it, the oil floats up.  

So this time round, I decide to slowly add in the melted butter and mix it first before deciding to add more butter to it. The other time I poured in everything lol.

The digestive biscuit crumbs. This time round I bought the roller pin from phoon huat and it works wonder. Within 15 minutes, all the 8 pieces of biscuits become biscuits crumbs just by rolling to and fro a few times. 

This is the cream cheese mixture which is used to pour on top of the digestive biscuits crumbs. 

Bought this non stick mini baking tray from NTUC. 

The ingredients prepare were enough to make 2 more cheese cakes and this paper holder is from Tao Bao. In total, I made 3 cheese cakes.

Took it out from the fridge at 12am and it's time to sing the birthday song. 

Bought the candles from Phoon Huat too. Derp's favourite color is blue :) 

After singing the birthday song, it's time for Derp to try after he made his wishes and blow the candles. 

Here's how the internal of the cheesecake looked like.

Close up look of it. 

Derp finished the whole cheese cake by himself that night (I only took a few mouths) because it was good! :) Though there's still room for improvement but it's really not bad and got the commercial standard. Yay!

Glad that I'm able to make him a birthday cake that's of his choice instead of buying. After all, I spent nearly 1 hour just to make these cheese cakes. It's the effort that counts and come to think of it, it's the first time I made a birthday cake for him from scratch after being together for so long haha! 

And if you are wondering, here's the recipe for the Air Fried Cheese Cake:

For the biscuit crumbs:
1) 80g digestive biscuit crumbs (around 8 pieces, good to have more!)
2) Mix with 125g melted butter. ( This is definitely too much, I will suggest to use 80g/90g instead)
3) Scoop and press it firmly onto the base of your baking tray/silicon mould

For the cream cheese mixture: 

Ingredients:

250g cream cheese in room temperature (I would recommend you to leave it there as long as possible so that it will be easier to mix afterwards)
80g sugar
2 tsp cornflour
2 tsp vanilla essence
2 tbsp lemon juice ( I didn't add any at all)
2 Eggs

Instructions:

1) Beat cream cheese till soft and fluffy and add in sugar, cornflour and vanilla essence
2) Pour Batter into the baking tray/silicon mould (previously used to store the biscuit crumbs) till 80% filled.

Air Fried Instructions: 

1) Preheat airfryer at 140 degrees for 5 minutes
2) Put in the cheesecake and air fried at 150 degrees at 10 minutes and then change to 140 degrees for 6 to 8 minutes till the cake look firm and lightly brown.
3) Afterwhich, take it out and cool it before placing into the fridge to chill it.

Just a tips to share, I will highly suggest you to use something to cover the top of the cheese cake so that it will look less 'burn'. I personally feel that the top part is a little overcooked because it's being expose to the outside whereas everything inside seems fine.

That's all for my recipe sharing and I'll be back for Derp's birthday celebration part 2 :)

Hello 2015!

It's back to the first blank page of a brand new year! Time to look back at the resolutions I've set for 2014 and plan what's in for 2015.

My resolutions for 2014 were: Keep fit, Stay Healthy, Save Money

I'm glad that I kept to it and in 2015, I'm aiming for the same resolutions but on top of that, I'm adding one more resolution.

Resolutions for 2015:  Keep fit, Stay Healthy, Save Money and Do what You Love, Love What you Do. 

Being healthy means everything hence I'm not going into it. Keeping fit is a life long goal and having no time is just an excuse. It's the effort that counts and I don't want to regret when I'm old.

Save money and that's because there's so many things I still want to achieve in life (for example travelling, taking up new skills and etc). Now that the house is settled which makes me feel less stressful, it's down to the actual wedding expense and then I'm free-ed!

Do what you Love, Love what you do is a mantra I wish to keep in mind from now on. In 2014, I discovered more things that I love to do and I wish to do it more often. After all, you only live once. #noregrets isn't it?

So once again, Hello 2015! I'm going to make you as awesome as 2014 :)