Sunday, 9 November 2014

Cooking Day!

Guess who's done with school for the year! /excitedly points at myself/ :D

With the completion of the filing of my Project Work, I have officially concluded my school year and started my year-end holidays. The past few days of the week had been pretty awesome. Class lunch at Fish n Co (where I had some delicious Fish and Chips), karaoke session, pasta, spontaneous museum hopping (and got scared at Singapore Art Museum), another spontaneous visit to Juliana's house in The Land of Woods where I watched them play Five Nights at Freddy's and then myself totally failing at a game of Monopoly. Yeah, just a brief summary of all the fun things that happened. I will not go into details because 1. I don't want to bore you guys and 2. I am slightly lazy to type so much.

Oh yeah where was I.

Right.

So since now my weekends are pretty free, I've decided to be more adventurous and try out new dishes! And this week, I've decided to make a Potato Salad and a Bacon-asparagus Brunch with Eggs! I can proudly say that the Potato Salad tastes rather legit, and the Brunch was delicious too :)

For the Potato Salad, here are the ingredients I used (for 4 servings):

  • 500g of mini potatoes (not too sure what  their proper names are...)
  • 3 hard-boiled eggs
  • 3/4 cup of mayonnaise
  • 1/4 cup of coleslaw dressing
  • some salt and pepper

The reason why I used coleslaw dressing is because I was afraid that the taste of mayonnaise might be too strong and heavy so yeah...not sure if it's the correct thing to add but it tasted okay so... :D

Here's how I made this dish. It's really simple!
  1. Washed the mini potatoes. Placed them into a pan of salted, boiling water and cook for around 15 mins. (the potatoes are ready when you can piece through them easily with a fork!)
  2. Place the potatoes into cold water for them to cool down. Once cooled, peel the skin off and diced them.
  3. Time to cook the eggs! Place cold water into the pan, along with the eggs, and cook for around 5 minutes or so.
  4. Next, remove the shell on the eggs and dice them too.
  5. As for the dressing, mix the mayonnaise and coleslaw dressing together in a bowl.
  6. Sprinkle some salt and pepper over the diced potatoes and eggs, then mix in the salad dressing.
  7. Leave the salad in the fridge overnight for the flavour to really go into the potatoes and voila!
Below are some photos of the ingredients and stuff!


Potatoes, washed but uncooked!


Mayonnaise and coleslaw dressing


Potatoes and hard-boiled eggs diced!


After leaving in the fridge overnight!




Yummmm.


Another dish I tried making is the Bacon-asparagus Brunch with Eggs! This one is equally yummy and a great start to a day.

For this, I used:
  • a few pieces of bacon
  • some asparagus
  • eggs
  • a lemon
  • salt and pepper
There is no definite amount to use for each ingredient because you can add as many bacon strips as you like :D

Here's how I made my yummy brunch:
  1. Fry the bacon in a pan with some olive oil. Drain off the excess oil with kitchen towel.
  2. Drizzle some olive oil and sprinkle some salt, pepper and lemon zest over the asparagus (remember to break off the hard ends!)
  3. Place them into a pan to fry them. Squeeze some lemon juice over the asparagus to add some flavour! (It would better to use a grill pan instead, but I don't have one and hence I had to fry the asparagus with a frying pan)
  4. Poached the eggs and serve them with the bacon and asparagus.
  5. And Bon Appetit!

 I forgot to take photos with my DSLR so iPhone shots shall suffice/inserts sheepish grin/



That's it for this post. I can't wait to try on more new dishes!

Elsa :)

Saturday, 11 October 2014

Into the Woods!

Hey everyone!

I know I haven't posted for really long, that's because I was busy with my exams. Now that I'm done with all my exams this year, I will start posting more on here. :)

So last Wednesday, as I had no school, I went to Tampines Eco Green with Juliana. Tampines Eco Green is a park situated in Tampines (yeah, I just stated the obvious). It is made to look as natural as possible, with carpet-like grass replacing the traditional concrete pavements you find at a typical park. It is rather accessible, as long as you follow the park connectors from Sunplaza Park. We took the long way and ended up walking a lot more...so much for being geography students.

It was a nice experience just strolling around the park, feeling the (occasional) breeze and listening to the chirping of the birds. There are a few joggers, and some shutterbugs every now and then. Overall, it is still a very tranquil ambience and you feel really close to the nature. :)

I've also made a short video! Click here to view it :)

All right, enough with the words. I'll let the photos do the talking now!
(Photos below are mostly unedited. :)




Channelling our inner Bushman!


My giraffe camera bag HAHA.


This is the "ouch the grass is really prickly and I can't sit still" face


Me taking photos of the giraffe camera bag hehehe. Photo credits to Juliana.



Before! See the expanded version on my Flickr.



My slightly-ridiculous looking bow...photo credits to Juliana!


Edited with Lightroom. :)




Found a bush of wild flowers and that made me very very happy.


The pretty legit golden hour.

That's all for this post! Sorry that it's a bit short, as I'm in a rush to finish and submit my school assignment by today. :(

Elsa :)