Happy Valentine's & 拜天公 day!

I guess the people who will be smiling away all day and saying "Huat ah!" would be the restaurant owners, hotels, florists and chocolate retailers. The SO and I have never celebrated valentine's, not even while we were dating. SO says it's too commercial, or maybe he's just stingy...keke!

As a kid who lived in an old shophouse among the mostly Hokkien community, praying to the sky God was a very fun, boisterious event. It was really 兴高采烈! Both sides of the street would be lined with red colour tables, each tied with a pair of sugar cane branches by the side and filled with lots of goodies, including the obiquitous roasted 猪头, an assortment of meat, fish (to be converted into fish floss), fruits and candles. Old men playing flutes would come by to visit every household to play a short, auspicious tune for a small red packet, and lions would come dancing and add to the festive air! We kids were happy to stay up late till 12am, and that's when mom will sliced up the long-awaited, yummy home-made Ngoh Hiang (五香) and chopped up the sugar cane for us to sup on! Yoohoo~!

I'm reminiscing, but those were really memorable days. Once we moved into HDB flats, the feel of the celebration was never the same.

:-)

ps: Ok, ok, I must attempt to learn to make the Ngoh Hiang this year; must not let the yummy home recipe be lost. Mom has probably forgotten the exact recipe, but I shall try to re-create it by trial and error. :-P

Fuji apples

After having eaten the Fuji apple from Japan last Sat (for the first time), the PRC's Fuji apple I'm eating now taste blah!....so bland. The one from Japan has an intense apple flavour and was very sweet, definitely not a taste which I had tasted before. I think I will not buy PRC's Fuji apple from now on.

I saw the Japanese Wong Bok (pek chye) at Cold Storage earlier and was tempted to buy it. One whole cabbage costs about $5, perhaps $1.50 to $2 more than the PRC one. Luckily, the PRC's Wong Bok at this time of Spring (called 元宵白）usually tastes very sweet, so perhaps I'll try the Japanese version after Spring is over.

LHL can try to convince us with his "bread is bread, rice is rice" talk, but I am not convinced lah! If that were true, then there would be no such thing as 一分钱，一分货, would it? Even the Sunday Times' ranking of bread has proven that bread is not just bread, regardless of price, ok? That ranking/taste test by Violet Oon published last Sunday was like a spoof on LHL's theory...haha! And the funniest thing is that "Aunty Lucy" house brand of bread did not even get into the top 10 ranking.

Tsk, tsk, so malu!

Do you like to lo hei?

Or more specifically, do you like to eat the yusheng salad (raw fish salad) from the lo hei? I've never really like this dish, as I find it has a weird taste, machiam too sweet and too citrusy. I like to eat salads but I think the overpowering taste and smell of the preserved orange peel and perhaps nutmeg, and what-have-yous thrown in kind of turn me off a bit.


So, it was to my surprise when I had a very pleasant home-made yusheng at the SO's cousins' home recently. The yusheng had lots of fresh vegetables (mainly shredded cucumber & carrots) and did not have the overpowering taste of any one herb or seasoning, so it was quite tasty. They'd even added thin slices of abalone in the lot.

The vegetables were very finely and evenly shredded, and when I asked if they were chopped up by machine, cousin's hubby pointed to his FIL and said: "There! That's the machine." LOLs!

Cousins' mom says they would make and eat this dish several times over the CNY period. Lucky, lucky cousins!

First cooking for the year

After feasting on too much rich food, one of our favourite comfort food to tuck into is porridge, eaten with simple dishes that helps to clear the jer-lard-ness from all the fattening, sugary food consumed.

On Sat (3rd day of CNY), I cooked 2 vegetable dishes, which are a bit too much, but I had to use them up before they wilt and waste away in the fridge. :P



Stir-fried Beijing cabbage with carrots and fresh Shitake mushrooms




Ti Hwang Miao (帝皇苗 or 帝王苗?) stir fried with Taiwanese vegetarian (mushroom) oyster sauce



Instead of being simple, the meal was made slightly "complex" with the addition of CP brand Pepper Kicks (black pepper chicken)...coz we are greedy. :P



The CP brand of ready-to-eat foodstuff is quite excellent; the other superb frozen product being the CP wanton soup with crunchy prawn wanton....yum!



In the end, what was meant to be a simple meal to clear our system ended up as too much and too filling!!

>_<