The key to 21st

I can't believe I had forgotten to post about Piglet. Yes, the baby of the family had turned 21 on the 8th of August. It made me feel old just thinking about it, or maybe it was because my own 21st birthday was a decade ago. So, due to this age gap, Yun (3 years younger than me) and I practically watch her grow up.

I know this is going to sound kind of silly, but when the birthday song was sang last weekend, there was a mixture of emotions for me. Of course I'm happy that she is finally 21, and all grown up. But there was also this tiny sense of loss... which I don't know how to explain it. I wondered if this was what Papa and Mama felt as they looked as us celebrating our 21st birthdays, and then getting married.

And since this is a very special year for her, I won't be digging out any silly-looking photos of hers like what I did last year. Luckily I was in the mood a while back to scan in some old photos, and looks like they have come in handy...

So, once again, happy 21st, piglet. May this new journey of yours be filled with love, laughter, fun, and good health.

"Sisters don't need words. They have perfected a language of snarls and smiles and frowns and winks - expressions of shocked surprise and incredulity and disbelief. Sniffs and snorts and gasps and sighs - that can undermine any tale you're telling."

~Pam Brown

To the cinema : Up

Before I start to talk about this movie, I want you to meet the latest love of my life...
(click here and here to see him in action - can't decide which one I like more so decided to put both)


Isn't he adorable??!! I can't think of any other animated film character who is as adorable and huggable as Russell here. Also, the boy who voiced him did a wonderful job.


Ok, now, back to the movie. And I got to say that this had to be the best animated film I've seen so far. I thought it was good because it touched on 2 extreme areas.


Fantasy : By tying thousands and thousands of balloons to a house and making it fly.
I felt that it somehow brought out the child in every adult, made us recall the impossible and childish dreams that we used to have when we were young.


Reality (1) : The story of Carl and Ellie.
Their dreams of adventure when they were young, when they grew up, fell in love, and got married. And then there was the part when they realised that they could not have any children, they still stood by each other and made the most of everyday. I think this was the first animated film that made me teared up more than once. The first time was when Ellie died, the second time was when the bad guy tried to burn down the house and Carl was torn between saving the house or the bird, and the third time was when Carl was looking through the adventure book and found that Ellie had put their photos in it.


Reality(2) : There was no happy family for little boy Russell.
Most animated films would have a happy family, with the father, mother, brothers and sisters and maybe a pet dog or two. However, for Russell, his parents were separated and no, there was no happy ending where the father comes back to the family.


Despite it being an animated film, I think this is much more suited for adults than children. There were so many areas in the film that sets me thinking about my own life, and how I could really relate to some of it. This is definitely one of those movie that everyone should watch it at least once.

To the cinema : G.I. Joe

A quick search through Wikipedia tells me that, G.I. = Government Issue, therefore, G.I. Joe = Government Issue ... Joe? Why Joe??

Ok, that is not important.

The important thing is, with a movie like that, where all the characters are all acting cool and super smart and almost Superman-like, why are there NO cute guys???!!!!!

And the more I thought of it, the more I felt that the movie somehow resembled Transformers in some way, and so the husband mentioned it too. To me, it was also a mess of fight scenes, except in this movie, there were real people using sophisticated and a little unreal technologies and equipment. And honestly, there is really nothing else that stands out in the movie. Somehow, not even the ending builds up any anticipation for part 2. I'll patiently wait for the DVD release.

The only interesting thing about the movie is, with the use of such high-end technologies, it makes me wonder if some of it are not already being developed. I could use that invisible suit if there is one to spare.

Da Vinci Exhibition

We finally found time to visit the Da Vinci exhibition at the Singapore Science Centre, with one more week to go before it ends. Though the $15 entrance fee, in my opinion, was a little on the steep side, the experience was a good one. I would recommend a trip down to the Science Centre soon (exhibition ends 16th Aug 2009) coz this is something that is not to be missed.

I have to admit that I don't know much about Da Vinci, other than him drawing Mona Lisa, The Last Supper and the Vitruvian Man, and whatever I had learnt from reading The Da Vinci Code novel. So what made me want to go to this exhibition? I might sound like an idiot here, but honestly, when I first heard about this, I thought it would be like an art exhibition, showcasing all his paintings. However, thanks to the power of advertisements, it made me realised that there were much more than paintings to Da Vinci.

I was really surprised by the things that he invented, and the husband was just as impressed. Da Vinci's inventions didn't just focused on one particular area, instead, many of the things on show were widely spread and somehow related to our daily lives. Like the pulley system, the hang glider, a parachute, a bicycle, a very big and bulky odometer, the flippers and the diving suit, weapons and machines for war, and even the skiing equipment used today were an idea from him, though Da Vinci's initial idea was to be able to walk on water instead of ice. No wonder he was called a genius. Click here to see more of this inventions.

The only disappointing thing about the exhibition was that no photography was allowed.

Note : Discovery channel is coming up with a show : Doing DaVinci, where a team of expert builders will try to construct these unique inventions using only materials available in da Vinci's own time.

The Kop Comes to Asia (26th July 2009)

Thanks to Sam for giving me the ticket, and to Sam's kind friend who bought the tickets as his birthday present. :)

Spaghetti with Parmesan and tomatoes

As the recipe looks simple and fast enough, I decided to try it out one evening for a one-person dinner. There was no need to make any trip to the supermarket as I had everything on hand, including the cherry tomatoes I had left from the garlic toast previously. I was quite surprised that, despite it looking quite plain from the photo, the dish was tasty. As for the pecorino romano cheese mentioned in the original recipe, I did some research for a substitute and, what did you know, grated parmesan was the chosen one.

Spaghetti with Parmesan and tomatoes (Original recipe from here)

4 servings

- 1 (14.5 ounce) package multi-grain pasta
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
- 3 cups halved cherry tomatoes
- 1/2 cup finely grated parmesan cheese, plus more for garnish
- salt

Directions :

1) Bring 4 quarts of water to a boil. Cook according to package directions. Strain pasta but reserve 1/2 cup of the water.

2) Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat, add pepper. Cook 1 minute. Add tomatoes cook 30 seconds.

3) Pour reserved pasta water into the skillet. Return pasta to the skillet, sprinkle with 1/2 cup parmesan cheese. Toss continually until cheese melts. Add salt if desired. Cook 3 minutes, the water should absorb. Sprinkle with a little more cheese and serve.

Note : I didn't add any salt to this dish as I know the cheese will be salty enough for me.

To the cinema : Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

Is it just me, or what? It seems like the movie blockbusters of late were quite disappointing. First was Transformers 2, now is the Half Blood Prince. I got to admit that I felt Ice Age 3 was slightly better than these two, even though it was a little non-sensical (ice age together with the dinosaur age?!), it was still quite funny and enjoyable.

I got to admit that I missed the Order of Phoenix (which I didn't know if there's any continuation from that movie to this), and I didn't read any single book of Harry Potter. But I did enjoy the first 4 Harry Potter movies, and my favourites are The Chamber of Secrets and The Goblet of Fire. Compared to those two, Half Blood Prince seemed to have lost all the magic, suspense and thrill. Oh, and did someone forget to pay the electricity bill for the movie? Coz it was all so dark and gloomy most of the time, that I guessed that was why the boy sitting behind me found it more interesting to kick at the back of my seat rather than to watch the movie.

But there was a first for me when watching this movie. I kept turning to the husband and asked for the time. When I realised that there was about 30 mins left, I thought there might at least be a climatic ending to make up for the almost boring previous 2 hours. But there was nothing! It was not until Professor Snape came up to Harry Potter and said in his usual monotonous voice, "Yes, I'm the half blood prince.", that I realised that I already didn't care who was the half blood prince anymore.

The focus also seemed to be lost, or rather divided between the budding romance among the teenagers and the problem with the bad guy. I do appreciate a little romance in a movie, but somehow in this case, I felt that it was a little too much that it bordered on irritating. Or maybe it was written like that in the storybook? Only the Harry Potter faithful reader at home can tell me. I guess for the next few movies, I would have to depend on her reviews to see if they were worth the $10 ticket price.

Tomato Garlic Cheese Bread

For this quick breakfast, I didn't really follow any recipe. I took a bit from different recipes here and there to come up with this. Actually, the tomatoes should be the big ones, instead of cherry tomatoes. However, the tomatoes at the NTUC at my place were all green and unripe, so I had to make do with cherry tomatoes. And for the bread, I bought the Gardenia Multigrain Country loaf for a change instead of a baguette. The multigrain loaf might not turn out to be as hard as a baguette after toasting, but I really like the final taste of the whole thing.

Tomato Garlic Cheese Bread

serves about 6 slices

Ingredients :

- 1 tablespoon of garlic and herb spread
- 1 teaspoon of mayo
- a handful of cherry tomatoes, cut into cubes
- bread
- shredded mozzarella cheese (amount depends on how cheesy you like your bread to be)

Directions :

1) Preheat the oven. (I did it at 100 deg Celsius)

2) Mix the garlic and herb spread together with the mayo, and spread it onto the bread.

3) Scatter the tomatoes onto the spread, and then cover it with mozzarella.

4) Lay a sheet of aluminium foil on a baking tray and place the bread on it to toast. (There is no specific time for this, but I took the bread out once the cheese melts.)

Strawberry Sorbet

I've been wanting to try making strawberry sorbet ever since I stumbled upon it on My Kitchen Snippets, a blog I read regularly. But it's not easy to find cheap and good strawberries in Singapore. So, when I saw the US strawberries on offer in NTUC, I made a grab for 5 boxes immediately.

I must say the sorbet turned out good (at least for my own standard), and not too sweet. As I didn't have an ice-cream maker at home, I had to follow the instructions to stir every hour to get rid of the ice at the sides for 6 hours before freezing it completely. I found that this method, though abit tiring, worked quite well for the final texture of the sorbet, as compared to the Cantaloupe Sorbet.

Strawberry Sorbet (recipe from here)

Ingredients :

- 1 cup water

- 1 cup sugar

- 3 pounds of strawberry

- 1/3 cup fresh lemon juice

- 1/3 cup fresh orange juice

Directions :

1) Put water and sugar in heavy saucepan over high heat until sugar dissolves. Boil 5 minutes. Leave it to cool.

2) Puree strawberries in food processor until smooth. Add strawberry puree , orange and lemon juices to cool sugar syrup; stir to blend. Cover and refrigerate until cold, about 2 hours.

3) If you are making the sorbet in ice-cream maker process strawberry mixture in ice cream maker according to manufacturer's instructions or place mixture in shallow container and freeze, stirring every hour until set, about 6 hours.

Chicken Meatballs with Spaghetti

Since I had some unexpected off days this past week, I decided to try something new instead of the usual spaghetti with sausages and ham. And so, here are my chicken meatballs draining on a kitchen towel...


Chicken meatballs may not sound as tasty as beef or pork meatballs to some, but this is really quite good though abit dry as expected. I don't really know how to cook beef, and there is this really 'piggish' kind of taste in the packaged pork selling in supermarkets, so I always go for chicken.

However, I felt that meatballs are not that easy to be pan-fried. So the next time I try this again, they will be in patties, not balls.

Chicken Meatballs For Spaghetti (from : Recipezaar)

4 servings

Ingredients

- 1 lb ground chicken
- 1 egg
- 1/2 cup parmesan cheese
- 1/2 cup breadcrumbs
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 teaspoons fresh oregano (or the equivalent dried)
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 2 tablespoons olive oil

Directions

1) Place ground chicken,egg,1/2 cup Parmesan,bread crumbs, garlic,oregano and 1/2 tsp salt in a medium bowl.

2) Knead mixture together with hand till evenly combined.

3) Form mixture into 1-inch balls.

4) In large non-stick skillet,warm olive oil over high heat.

5) Place meatballs in pan,up to 8 at a time,and cook until all sides are browned,approximately 8 minutes for each meatball.

6) Remove with slotted spoon,and add to your favorite spaghetti sauce.