Saturday, February 27, 2010

Congratulations Kenny + Audrey!


One for the history books in the Sim and Shen family. I was waiting for the professional photos to come so this post will look good. Haha.

To Kenny and Audrey: May you two have love abundant for each other and that love carries on forever. Everything else will follow behind it. :]

To Jia Mei yan: I wish you all the best and your new family! Thanks for listening to my stories and then falling asleep after that. And somehow, I always remember this one particular time during Junior Soldier class, the older ones were teasing me and then you stepped in and said, "Hey, don't bully my brother k!". It has been 10 years since you said that? Hahaha. Though you spoke little compared to Mark and myself who were always shouting in the house, your presence in the house was always felt. The family and I will definitely miss you but remember we'll always be there for you. :) Take care and I love you Aud. Now you're the odd one out! You're married! Hahaha.

Monday, February 22, 2010

Burdgert King

Disclaimer: All prices mentioned below are in US dollars.

The last day at Lake Tahoe, we took our lunch at Burger King. Fast food ain't cheap and one meal cost about $6.95. But on the whole menu, there was a section that wrote "BK Value Menu" and everything under there was super duper cheap! I got really excited when I saw the Whopper Jr. going for just $1! Many items were also going at $1 like Double Cheeseburger, Spicy CHICK'N CRISP Sandwich, small onion rings, small fries, small soft drink and Chicken Tenders (4 pieces).

What awesome deals! We wanted to fill our stomachs, so budget we did! Many many of this and that burgers, many many fries, rings and tenders, and was it 1 small soft drink? Hahaha. Every fast food outlet has free flow drinks.

I ordered a double cheese burger and the chick n crisp burger and stacked them up!


So it's equivalent to a Mega Mac? No la. Burger King's burger volume is smaller than Macs. That's how I managed to eat the 7 patty one last time. But it felt good having so much to chew. Satisfying you know. I went Ikea once and had Grilled Dory with cream sauce. With fish being soft and easy to swallow, it felt like the food portion was very little. :(

We spent about $24~ for 6 of us? Nice. Super budget. Wish they have these $1 deals in Singapore too! :)

Monday, February 15, 2010

From Holland?

At last, it has been made! For weeks I have been looking for the day when I can make this. I first saw it in the movie Julie and Julia. The main character Julie Powell made hollandaise sauce and used it as an artichoke dip. She briefly read out the recipe and I thought, "Wow, so little ingredients, not complex, and looks really good! Must try!"

I used this recipe. There were others that said to use a double boiler but I did not want to do it that way. It felt too troublesome. I'm sure it can be done if you have good heat control. It was because of this recipe that I bought my mixing bowl! That will be covered in another post. :)

The main ingredient is butter. Loads of butter! We melted 1 and 3/4 sticks of it! We're clarifying the butter here.

Oohh! Fattening natural butter!!



Joel and I were holding up the pots during the mixing of butter to the sabayon. So our forearms kinda ached a bit after that. Hahaha, we need more training.


The colour of hollandaise sauce is very nice. Light yellow cream. However, I felt it should be less yellow but Dora and Joel said it's okay! Maybe I try another time with less yolk. We added 4 yolks instead of 3 because apparently my eggs were not "large" enough. I'm going for 3 the next round. I'm also going to try more pepper and less lemon.
Well, that was dinner. Eggs Benedict without the bacon and English muffin. Substitute by Wagyu beef patty, wholemeal and white bread. Hehe. :D

After dinner, we still had leftover sauce to do this! Port wine courtesy of Joel and a Big Bag of Calbee Hot and Spicy Potato Chips!

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

What's this?


Pedxing!

At first, I couldn't understand it. Stared at it longer and I saw the light.

I'm sure you can too. Interesting sign.

Mini Frosty

On the last day at Lake Tahoe, we decided to go and visit the lake. The shore's sand was covered with snow. White Sands? Hur hur.

It was HUUUUGE!


The mountains in view were magnificent. So vast and big! The snow makes the mountains look more exciting. Imagine just green slopes. Will the snow melt at such altitudes?

We strolled around, attracted attention from others by "zhi lian"ing. We also saw some snowboarders making a low ramp for themselves. Afterwhich they filmed themselves tackling it. As we left the beach, we saw snowmen (2 only) standing in the open patch, and then we decided to make a snowman for ourselves too.
I could pretend I'm making a snowman but secretly preparing ammo for a fight.

Packing ice is simple. Just collect shavings and plaster it over. I tried combining 2 balls together but it doesn't grow.


Frosty needs to look good.

Frosty: "Voila! In view a humble vaudevillian veteren, cast vicariously as both victim and..."

If you focus your attention to the top left, you'll see big daddy snowman there. He is a whole lot bigger than what we made. And it took us 20-25 minutes making this puny fella. It would probably take an hour or more to fatten him up to big daddy's size. We couldn't spare the time.


After we made good use of him, we killed him off. Run before David Caruso shows up! (~You won't get fooled again!~ music plays)