Mama Mia!

20 March 2010 - Cloudy

Since I have been spending the last few days unpacking boxes and reorganising the house (obviously), I have decided that we will take a walk through the farmers market just to get outdoors and get some fresh air. Stalls are beginning to sell strawberries and more stalls are being set up to sell 2nd hand items (from their New Year spring cleaning do no doubt). We reach the end of the street within 10 minutes and Jem made this remark "My god... Emirates Palace is bigger that the main street of Morges!"

The hard life....

Since there are no more room service, automatic top up of mini bar, we have to slave our the stove.. and Jeremy stepped up to the plate by offering (for the 50th time this week) to make pizza for lunch.

Here is the master at work...


He is pretty good with his hands!


Tomato paste with basil - yumms


My favourite... good ol' Hawaiian pizza


The last remaining piece!

It was actually very good pizza and I am mighty impressed with the husband for learning!! Next on the menu - breakfast in bed..

Bollywood Night

Friday - 19 March

We decided to go Indian tonight. Jeremy have declared himself as the KING OF FLOUR (after he CLAIMED that he can now make the yummiest pizza in the world) and was fairly determined that he can make any type of bread - hence NAAN. I then decide to make my version of butter chicken and dhal.

My dhal is to die for - Indians would be crying and kissing my feet if they tasted it. And since I hardly praise my own food, you gotta trust me on this one. It is also the easiest dish I have ever made! So here is the recipe....

Dhal



Split Mug Beans (a small bowl)
Vegetable Cube or Broth
Onions (diced)
Chopped Garlic
1 teaspoon Turmeric Powder
1 Tbsp Butter / Margarine / Oil
Dash of Chilli Flakes

Stir Fry Onions and Garlic in Oil / Margarine / Butter
Add in turmeric powder and dash of chilli flakes
Fry for a few minutes & add in beans
Add water / broth / vegetable cubes
Boil for 45 minutes stirring constantly till beans are soft


I went to my favourite "always-dependable-and-always-there" Vietnamese supermarket and bought a pack of frozen prata JUST IN CASE the naan turns out to be anything less than satisfying... but to my surprise the naan turned out pretty good! Now Jeremy is very very smug and have offered to make pizza for me tomorrow... hhmnnnn


We had Garlic Naan, Herbs Naan, Black Pepper Naan and Plain Naan!


My version of butter chicken...

Heavenly Bliss

After 4 days of heavenly bliss – we went back to our hard life in Morges…

Jeremy and I were in Abu Dhabi courtesy of Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority who were kind enough (and rich enough) to put us up at Emirates ohh-la-la Palace Hotel. We were spoilt rotten in the hotel and feel right at home with the room service, turn down service, turn up service, turn left service, chocolates delivery before bed time, water delivery before bed time and browsing through the pillow menu!

You name it – they have got it. Hard, soft, firm, down feather, gold feather, chicken feather, goose feather, coconut husk, Japanese bean husk, slimming pillow, relaxing pillow, hard as nail pillow… the list goes on. Ok – I made most of it up BUT they did have a pillow menu.

They also have some fancy-smancy-touch-screen-gizmo that controls just about everything in the room except the temperature of the mini fridge.

So it was a sad day when Jeremy and I had to pack our bags and leave.. so we decide to make ease our sadness by bringing back a piece of Emirates Palace.. 3 boxes of chocolates (we might get hungry), 2 bottles of water (we might get thirsty), laundry bag (we have dirty clothes), shower gel (we might want to shower on the plane) and little what nots… shame that we couldn’t fit the 56” plasma TV in our suitcase. That would have made us feel a whole lot better!



A picture of Heaven at night...Looks grainy? It's cos my smarty pants hubby brought his fantastic camera but left the batteries behind.. so all the pics are taken with camera phone


A little bit of sunshine and POOL before we head back to dreary weather. I swam a total of FOUR x 20m laps.. hahaha enough for the year!


Fancy smanzy gadget...


What Heaven looks like...


Real food.... for Jem!

Cam Whore

15 December...

some photos from our life in Morges..

Some warnings:
~ It contains a lot of pictures of mountain, lake, inanimate objects, trees and duck
~ Camera hates us. It makes us look fat although we are really 5 kg lighter than we look
~ Most photo have been digitally enhanced (another excuse why jem "thinks" he needs a new camera lens...) "It is all about the camera, not the photographer. Let's drink some wine"

X'mas in Morges

Coffee, tea or cheese?

25 Christmas - SUNNY!

We start the day with great anticipation of opening presents... yes, call us shallow and materialistic and what have you not...

This is what Jem got for me!

~ A table top grill with raclette! So guess what Jem will be having for dinner tonight?!?!

~ Raclette is a kind of chesse and also refers to a dish using this cheese. Raclette originates from Swiss (Valais) and very popular during winter. Heat up sliced raclette cheese till it is soft and then mixed it with boiled potatoes, other vegetables, charcuterie, and perhaps seafood. Raclette party is very popular in this part of the world - shame I don't like cheese :)


This is what I got for Jem!


~ A single served, capsule system, coffee machine - the Nescafe Dolce Gusto Circolo

~ It looks uber cool (kinda like a spaceship invading earth, one kitchen at a time), 1 coffee capsule cost SGD 0.50 and readily available in supermarket, makes great cappucino, chococino, mocha, expresso, long black and latte machiato...

~ This beats nespresso ANYTIME!


~ All the lovely capsules...



~ Demonstration of the machine in Italian...

We are gonna get high on coffee and cheese tonight..

All we want for Christmas is - PRESENTS!

24 December - CHRISTMAS EVE

Christmas is one of our favourite holiday every year. For me - mainly due to presents. I am honest.... I get extremely excited when I buy someone a fantastic gift or when I received one.

Yes, I know Christmas is the time to cherish your loved ones, make peace with the past, spending time with family & friends etc etc but like most people I know, Jeremy and I spend time a lot of time with our family (before we move to S'land). We have dinner, talk on the phone, chat on msn, web cam chat etc so Christmas is like any other day.

The 2 things that sets Christmas apart from other "normal" days are the FOOD we eat and the PRESENTS! Jem and I decided that we will be opening our stash of presents tomorrow!


My present to Jem are wrap.. his to me are in plastic bags with scotch tape! The Olive Green present came all the way from Singapore!


We decided on a somewhat more traditional dinner tonight... as ALL the shops will be closed tomorrow, today was a major grocery day for us :)



Oooh la la....



Rocket Leaves salad with Mango and Balsamic Vinegar Dressing



"just-right" heated Escargot with sinful herb butter



Heavenly pieces of Ham top with Lingonberry and Brown Sauce and Pâté en Croûte


We had a nice quiet Christmas eve dinner.. each lost in thoughts wondering... What are in those nicely wrapped up boxes?!?!

The mighty has fallen...... ill

Jem is ill........ he has fever and the flu... he has been going to bed at 9.30pm yesterday night and tonight...


Photo taken @ 9.35pm

Despite being ill... he is very determined to go IKEA tomorrow to get his WINE! "It will kill all the virus"... er yah.... sure.