Thursday, September 20, 2007
Yesh Operation pasta rice was a roaring success tonite! Haha at least my housemates thought my maiden attempt was quite good lah... thanx Jack for giving me the idea and the recipe! Wen Seen decided we should all start taking turns to cook, which was what led to us racking our brains for foodie ideas! Jieli did well with his Stir-Fried Chicken with Mushroom, Four Season Beans Roasted Meat (well well at least dis is wat they're supposed to be in the cookbook), so of cos I was not about to lose to him! Haha Jack cooked this dish last week and I thot it was really nice, so I persuaded him to divulge his trade secret. I din follow exactly though.. rummaged thru the fridge and dug out all the raw materials that were left... amazingly they fitted together pretty well. I added mushrooms, mixed beans, unsmoked bacon, sausages, tomotoes, mixed herbs, red wine, olive oil, pepper and salt (not in this order though!) to the fried onions and garlic, then threw in the overnite rice and the bolognese sauce with half a bottle of water, then kept on stirring till the water had more or less boiled off. It was quite nice in the end... so its going into my new personal recipe book! Yesh I've decided I'm interested in cooking, so I'm gonna start creating and collecting my own recipes!
^ Freshly cut tomato
^ All the components to my pasta rice
^ Stirring and frying and posing for a piccie!
^ Almost done
^ Dinner served!
Oh yups by the way I owe evrone an apology for taking so long to update my blog! Sorry I've been pretty busy with work and various household chores after work... I managed to upload more fotos too... so u can go to my multiply site to take a look k... I've also started adding captions to some of the pics!
Yesterday I went for another Lonza soccer session after work. Amazingly of the players in my adopted Fermentation team, only Kelvin and I, both of us NOT from Fermentation, turned up! In fact, 3 other guys were oso there, but they'd decided they were gonna switch team to the other Fermentation2 team to help them in the top-of-table clash. It was a good decision on their part, becos they did help Fermentation2 to thrash the table toppers 11-1 (yesh they thrashed the league leaders by dat margin!!) and leapfrog them into top spot with 2 matches remaining. The fate of our team left much to be desired though.. another loss.. din even have enuff players to start the match so it was a 10-0 walkover. We did have a kickabout session with our opponents though, and I finally derived a tactic to do well agst the big angmohs! I tried my trick of pressuring and harrassing them again, and it worked! Managed to steal possession off them quite a few times.. then with the ball it was easy to lose them by running and switching direction. Then in defence I realise need to use body one.. use hand hold them back then use leg to kope their ball away... haha hopefully next week this will work in an actual match! Haiz but I was really unlucky again... had 2 shots saved by the keeper, and 4 came off the post!! How suay can one get... luck of Liverpool...
Oh yah tokking about Liverpool... super suay lor... lose Alonso and Agger to serious injuries picked up from internationals!! Now its really a test of their depth liao... and I seriously worry for their defence! The situation does look worse for 1 other team though.. Chelsea! Finally the cracks are forming... in fact wat a big gash we've seen in the past week... Lampard and Drogba injured.. and now Mourinho shown the door!!? Well done Chelski!
Meanwhile.. work at Lonza has become more and more on-job recently. we've been going down to plant more often, and started helping out in the actual processes. I signed my initials as the checker for one of the processes for the first time ever today! And I was lucky to be put together with some very experienced seniors who were so good at teaching me! This week has been alot about reading the batch records as well... the documents which govern how the products should be manufactured, from start to finish. If we dun read these documents we'll not be able to take part in the manufacturing process.. so bo bian gotta doze thru em!
Friday evening we had a gathering amongst the Strats to celebrate Chloe's birthday. Went to the Thai Orchid restaurant at Slough Central, where the phad thai was just about the only thing affordable. Jieli, Carine and I ordered 2 of those and another chicken dish to share, and it was pretty filling in the end. It was a good meal though, and a good time. Chatted alot amongst ourselves, and Chloe thoroughly enjoyed herself too I thot. She was so touched she even cried when we brot out all our presents for her! Hope she likes wat we bot for her! Elaine put in some hard work too in baking a birthday brownie cake just for her, and it turned out great in the end!
The weekend was super happening for us as well! Saturday brought the long awaited Thames Festival! I went with such high hopes, having found the event myself and done so much research, and indeed I was not disappointed! This was truly a taste of London!
^Inside the British Museum (we had a short visit bef heading to the Thames)
^Instead of Roman columns.. how about some British columns?
^ Ironman
^ Mannequins come to life!!
The fact that they planned it along the river was one big success oredi... then there was so much going on at the same time lor... games stalls, food stalls, food sampling, charity stalls, stalls promoting eco-friendliness, street performances, and so many stages and focal points with planned performances. I thk the most important thing that made it a success was the crowd which turned out. Throngs of people busked in the afternoon sun... shiny but yet breezy.. people were so spontaneous.. joining in performances and dancing along to music... totally enjoyable! I bet we'll never find pple letting loose lidat in S'pore! There was this travel fair on Eastern European countries, and how glad I was to see that! I was just planning a trip to Eastern Europe in Dec, and I ran towards the booths in glee, grabbing all the brochures and free guides I could! Finally got something to start planning from le! Then there was this game stall with a balancing ladder which kept swivelling about the hinges.. super hard to maintain balance... if u managed to climb to the top u win 20pd.. but in our 30min standing there no one did it at all.. the boys running the stall must have made at least 50pd in this time lor! Jack tried his hand (and his legs) at it... but got thrown off as well.
^Even the young were excited to join in!
^ Sphinx by the Thames
^Riverscape
^Bridge busker
^ Pai Gia haven!
^ Fly-by!
^ Road hogs I'd call them (road giraffes perhaps?)
^ Wayang show!
^ Lost in the big city
^ Save the earth, make plasticbag bouquets?
^ Eerie faces
^ I need a drink!
^ Riverside view
^ This was how packed it was
^ Jack trying out the balancing act. The angmohs were no better!
^ Picnic by the river
^ Hotdog buns!
^ Tango all the way!
^St Pauls' Cathedral and Millennium Bridge
^ Weird art pieces in Tate Modern.. too modern indeed!
Then there was the Southwark Bridge, which they converted into a themed dining strip. There was the beach section, with fine sand all over the road, beach chairs and seafood! Then there was a garden party section with trees and carpet grass. Not forgetting the couch potato section, with big sofas and couches on the road with small coffee tables for dining. Then there was this gingerbread house, with gingerbread cookies attached all over the exterior of the house. All of a sudden in the evening, we saw kids and adults alike start tearing at the walls and roof of the house.. the "guardian angel" had in fact given the green light to start tearing her house up! Aiyah dun eat oso throw away mah the biscuits. So evrone started eating the house! We joined in the fun as well.. randomly tearing chunks off the wall. We even brot some back for Carine the biscuit and bread fanatic!
^ Super cool drinks bar
^ By the beach, on the bridge
^ Couch potatoes
^ Fine dining?
^In the barn
^ Performance on the bridge
^ The dusk sets upon us
^ Gingerbread house!
^ Relaxing on the "beach"
^ The ultra expensive seafood noodles!
The food along this strip, however wasn't impressive. Burgers and salads and indian food. I was most interested in this great looking seafood noodles... but the price and the super long queue and the small serving totally put me off.. 7 pound for a small plate of noodles!!? In the end we headed to the big field outside the Tate Modern where tonnes of other pple were just sitting on the grass, relaxing and picnicking. I bot the cheepest good food I cud find.. some French sausage cooked in white wine gravy in bread (jiam tao roti!) Aiyah but I couldn't taste wat while wine at all lor... just normal supermarket sausage mah! They did use a pretty impressive (big enuff to cook a whole cow inside) wok to cook the sausages though... conned so many pple into buying. Sitting on the grass, enjoying the view of the Thames, the Millennium Bridge and the St Paul Cathedral, and listening to the Tango music drifting over from the all day tango fiesta, was quite some experience though.
^ Big wok sausage and big wok mash!
After the tango session ended at 8pm, they started playing some really nice dance music! Jack and I were so tempted that we went over to join in for awhile! Super spontaneous sia.. outdoor club by the Thames! We din have much time to savour the experience though.. we had to rush off to take the tube and transfer to the last 702 bus which brought us back to plain old Slough.
^ Another weird limo
Sunday we headed to Elaine's house again at her invitation for another cooking session. This time I went prepared with paper and pen, to copy down the techniques of Elaine's housemate Kaleel. He cooked a dish called Dal this time... a thick bean curry gravy which went perfect with rice, or bread. I put in hard work learning from the basics.. basics here meant deboning the countless chicken drumsticks and thighs Kaleel bot.. he taught me a technique and I got pretty good at deboning and cutting chicken in the end! Kaleel marinated some of the chicken I did not debone, and left them in the oven to bake.. Elaine used my deboned chicken to cook Satay Chicken! I laughed when she put peanut butter in, but it really made the dish taste good manz! Sinful meal, but totally enjoyable! Elaine baked an apple cake as well, and that was great too.. Jieli, Yingyi and Carine got their hands dirty helping Elaine make curry puffs, and these turned out really nice as well! At least the shape was there lah haha... Charles brought some of the Swedish biscuits he bot from his trip to Ikea, together with a few funny looking tubes of cream cheese and cream salmon... but they really went well with the biscuits! Another perfect meal at Elaine's... once I graduate from Kaleel and Elaine's cooking and baking class mebbe I can invite evrone over too hor... haha but that will be in a long long time loh! Well at least now I noe how to do fried rice, carbonara, bolognese spaghetti, meatballs, omelette and PASTA RICE! Hopefully I can add something even more exciting to the list soon!
^ Deboning machine!
^ Curry Pok aunties
^ Buzzy in the kitchen
^ Learning hard
^ Pre-baked puffs
^ Big chef in action!
^ The spread!
^ Reduced-to-clear cheese I bot from Asda and Charles' Swedish biscuits
^ Chicken I deboned - became satay chicken!
^ My mentor - master chef Kaleel!
^ While poor Eric was washing dishes himself...
^ Cheers mate!
^ Glass of wine
^ Makan gang
^ Happily on our way home
Alritey I noe I've written alot again... hehe hope the pics make the entry look more presentable.. and remember to go to my multiply site to look at the fotos too hor... pics can depict my experience more than my words can narrate them! Have a good weekend guys... miss all of u!
senz posted at 10:46 PM
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