Healthy Lifestyle

And so one month after the last post was spent:

• working in the office mon-fri
• having classes after work (twice a week)/dinners
• or struggling to stay awake on my sofa after work

Pfft. My weekends are equally burnt with smelly having classes on sat and me snoozing in dreamland all day on sundays.


The conclusion is: I'M SO LAZY!


I've been trying to keep up with a healthier lifestyle which has kinda failed miserably and smelly has been complaining about how I'm becoming super unfit compared to 2 years back when we just met. I've still being going regularly for my classes, twice a week (dance & yoga) but my diet has still been as usual, very unhealthy. I can survive a whole day with just a packet of chips and binge eat the next day on a salmon buffet, which is a really bad habit to have.

Me and Lala after dance class all flushed and happy in our banana outfits. heh. 

I've told smelly I'm going to change my diet starting from today. This means:

• More veggie and fruits
• More water
• Limiting the amount of fried food
• Less fried food and unhealthy carbohydrates
• No fast food, junk food or carbonated/sweetened drinks!

So, usually the first day starts in all full glory. You're more enthusiastic about following the rules, you definitely eat 10 times more healthier than ever and you try to exercise more. I say try 'cos 2 days back I tried jumping on my new skipping rope and after 50 rotations I flopped on my sofa and continued watching my drama. I did however used this new tool I got for toning my flabby butterfly wings which after 500 counts ached a lil and today, I ate a super healthy bowl of yong tau foo beehoon with no fried items, mostly veggie and some items with fish paste. I did however, ended up tabao-ing a bowl of ginko barley beancurd dessert for tea. Drats.


Hopefully, this motivation holds! I'll be updating more regularly on how I'm keeping up with this healthier lifestyle habit! :)

Reading joy.

I've been up reading books ever since I walked into the library a few days back. Borrowed a few books to read and have been trying to read them on the bus and moments before I sleep. The last time I've read a proper book was during my Europe Trip in May-Jul 2011. So it has been ages since I've had a book in my hands aside from all the magazines I've been reading.

It's been interesting picking up a hobby I once enjoyed so much but lost touch when I found out about the wonders of the internet TV. I still love my occasional Korean variety shows (Running Man & Infinity Challenge Fighting!) and the on-off Korean, English & Mandarin dramas but nothing beats having a quiet time after a bath at night snuggled in the comfort of my warm sheets in bed.

I do hope this interest lasts long enough. :)

Dinner with the boy @ Woori Nara

So the boy and I went exploring around my area one night for food to eat. Usually we would settle either for teochew porridge, the prata store or my all time favourite korean food restaurant in the west. However, I've been dying to try Woori Nara for its Korean Fried Chicken ever since I tried the fried chicken in Korea and at Four Fingers.

We ordered the Fried Chicken Sampler Platter consisting of (3 pieces per flavour):

- Original (The light brown coloured pieces)

- Soy Garlic (The darker brown pieces)

- Spicy (The pieces covered in dark red sauce)

Personally I don't really like the chicken. The original tasted pretty average and instead of raving over the chicken after eating it, all it did was made me yearn more for my authentic Korean fried chicken. The spicy chicken was meant to taste sweet and spicy at the same time but barely after finishing the first slice all it made me felt was "jelat". If I really had to choose a flavour I liked, it would be soy garlic but having said that, I might had gone in with extremely high expectations judging from the chicken I ate in Korea.

We also ordered the Seafood Pancake and instead of being filled with octopus and veggie, it was filled with too much batter and too little seafood. Little words are needed to show how disappointed I felt at that point of time. By the time the Dumpling and Rice Cake Soup we ordered had arrived, I was in no mood at all for pictures and all I wanted was my Mao Shan Wang ice-cream from udders. Sigh. I think I'm suffering from major redrawal symptoms from my Korea trip in August. :(

Dinner with the family @ Chao Shan Cuisine

So my family went for dinner on a weekday since YS was home for the CNY season. YS wanted to go to a Teochew restaurant along Beach Road which was recommended by her friend. The restaurant turned out to be pretty empty despite it being the dinner hour probably most people ended up visting the numerous steamboat/grilled steamboat buffet restaurants nearby.

Pork Jelly

Cold dish consisting of bits of pork trotter solidified in its own collagen. Really yummy! Definately one of the highlight dish that night.

Fried Prawn Balls

This dish is served based on the amount of pieces ordered. (There wasn't any minimum amount to be ordered written in the menu.) Anyways, my family ordered 5 pieces, one for each of us! We have this habit of ordering many dishes but all in small quantities so that we get to "sample" as many items as possible in one place.

Salted Fish with Beansprouts

Not a favourite dish of mine as I've never liked the taste of beansprouts but as YS was rarely home she insisted on ordering this which so happens to be her all-time favourite dish. Did snitch a few pieces of the salted fish which was surprisingly tasty. Maybe the dish will appeal more to those who can fully appreciate its worth.

Cereal Prawns

An all-time favourite dish of mine! However the highlight for me is usually the ending portion when all prawns have been eaten and I'm left with the big plate of cereal crumbs with bits of chilli and my big shiny spoon ever ready to dig in. By the way, does anybody eat the cereal prawn together with its shell? Because I eat the whole thing and I always thought that if the chef was a good cook and the prawns fresh enough this should be the way to consume the dish. Just a thought.



Oyster Omelette

Wasn't a much anticipated dish for us but this tasted really good compared to those bought from hawker centres. It was crispy and wasn't as oily as I had expected plus the oysters were fresh without any fishy taste to it.

   

Yam Paste (Orh Ni)

Despite eating the items above with rice, no meal can be completed without ending it with desserts. We settled for Orh Ni also known as Yam Paste that had a layer of oil on top of it. As unhealthy as it sounds, the oil makes the Yam Paste taste smooth and not dry and lumpy. We were very happy and left with round tummies that were so bloated we had to forfeit the ice-cream session across the street.

Chao Shan Cuisine (潮汕林)
85 Beach Road
Tel: 6336 2390

Timings: 11.30am to 2.30pm, 6pm to 10pm Daily

First Note.

Deleted my old blogs, for a much needed clean up of unwanted memories and childish embarrassing moments not worth EVER mentioning. (Truth is, I didn't want colleagues to ever have the chance to rumble around and find such embarrassing details that a childish teenager once wrote. ohai.)

Anyways, the irony is having said that above, I've gone ahead and created another new blog. Mainly this place would be where I document memories, thoughts, recipes I've been dying to try once my mom fixes the oven and travel trips (hopefully tons to come!)

Here's wishing that this enthusiasm holds up and that it motivates me to write better and to take and share more photos (keyword: PROMPTLY).

Anyways here's sharing some photos taken recently. Have taken a liking to instagram recently and am surprised it took me so long to get hook onto this app.

This is really how my face lights up when I camp at my uncle's dining table during CNY. Nothing beats the good old fried chicken wings famous among the family since as long as I can remember. In the past, it used to be cooked by my aunt but has since been taken over by my cousin who is doing a pretty good job taking over his mom.

 

Family photo before YS heads back to Brussels.

Can't help but notice how much taller I am compared to the rest of my family. hehehe.

 

He came by after school famished from not eating dinner so I whipped up some instant dumplings with chinese cabbage. Not sure how it tasted but I took the picture only to say that I was being a 贤妻.

Aside from that, can you spot the cool Flintstone coaster I have beneath the pot?

 

And to mark Valentine's today, he bought me a rose and bears despite tons of warnings not to. The action was super sweet but my aunty self emerged when I realised the two items cost nearly $50. OMG. This is why I refuse to have gifts on Vday, all items are priced at such ridiculous amounts. blah. But anyways

 

HAPPY VALENTINE'S!

 

Am looking forward to the throngs of girls/women who will be holding huge bouquets priced at ridiculous amounts beaming with pride and doing a "secret" comparison of the size of their flowers with the rest of the women population. Lucky for me, I'm going to be sitting the car home. My heart goes out to the lonely souls who not only have to put up with the packed public transportation home, but also having to endure getting the bouquets stuffed in their face during rush hour. Good luck.