Baked pasta (1)

After a failed attempt at baked pasta quite some time back (coz everything became too dry), I decided to give it a try again after reading through some recipes. I also realised that it's important to have a mixture of cheeses when it comes to baked pasta. And I was so glad that everything turned out good this time, though the amount was a bit too much for the 2 of us. So, here is my own (successful) baked pasta recipe.

Ingredients :

- 250g of fusilli pasta
- 1 onion, cut into strips
- 4 shittake mushrooms
- 2 sausages (I used garlic pork sausages)
- about 370g of pasta sauce
- 1/4 cup of water
- shredded mozzarella and parmesan cheese, amount depends on how cheesy you like your pasta to be

Directions :

1) Preheat the oven to 150 degrees Celsius.

2) Bring a pot of slightly salted water to boil and cook the fusilli according to instructions on the box. It is good to overcook the pasta a little, maybe about 2-3 minutes so it will not be too tough after baking.

3) Add a bit of oil into the frying pan and cook the sausages for about 4 minutes. Remove from pan and set aside.

4) In the same pan, add in the onion and cook till it starts to soften and add in the mushrooms (I did it this way coz the mushrooms will get cooked faster than the onion). Return the sausage to the pan and stir to combine. Add in the fusilli, pasta sauce and water. Mix well. Remove from heat.

5) Using a glass baking dish, I spread out half of the pasta, followed by a mixture of the two cheeses, then cover it with the remaining pasta, and some more cheese on top.

6) Put into the oven and baked till the cheese on top turns slightly brown and bubbly.

Chicken stir-fry with red capsicum

As you can see, I've been bitten by the lazy bug and haven't been blogging for quite some time. So, it's not surprising that it has been a few weeks since I made this dish and only decided to post it now.

This is quite a simple dish and I made some changes from the original recipe coz I didn't want to buy a whole pack of peppercorns just for this. And also, you can use red, yellow or green capsicum for this, it's totally up to individual.

Chicken stir-fry with red capsicum

Ingredients :

- 1 tablespoon oil
- 1 pack of chicken breast fillets, cut into strips (the pack I bought had 4 fillets in it)
- 1 onion, cut into wedges
- 1 red capsicum, cut into strips
- 2 tablespoons oyster sauce

Directions :

1) Heat the frying pan over high heat and add the oil. Add the chicken strips and stir-fry for about 3 minutes, or until browned.

2) Add the onion and capsicum and stir-fry for about 2 minutes, until the vegetables have softened slightly.

3) Reduce the heat and stir in the oyster sauce.

One-month old Natalie

In a pretty pink outfit bought by the her Papa

A few unexpected times when her eyes were opened this big


Relaxing on Mama's thighs... is the hairstyle stylo or what...


with great-grandmother

with grandpa

with grandma

and the first boy (the husband's nephew) to ever hug her

The Buns

Happy children's day... to me...

People often said childhood is the one of the best time in a lifetime, and I have to agree. Ok, maybe minus the studying, homework and exams, other than that, there is nothing much to worry about as kids. And I have to admit that my sisters and I were very lucky and blessed to have a fun and memorable childhood...

- When we were very young, my sister who was 3 years younger than I am, was still learning to walk, I would, once in a while, felt impulsive and just snatched her hand over and bit her fingers. Then, I would warn her not to tell anybody.

- As both my parents were working, I spent most of my times with my grandparents. My grandfather would play masak-masak with me all the time, and brought me to drink Milo at a coffeeshop, where he would poured it onto the plastic saucer to cool, while we waited for my grandma to do marketing.

- When I was in Primary 1, my form teacher made us line up according to our register numbers and I was paired up with this very fat and disgustingly dirty boy with sweaty palms. To further scar my young innocent life, the teacher made it compulsory that we had to hold hands whenever we lined up to go out as a class.

- My sister and I would try to finish up our Chinese writing homework as fast as possible because our father, being a Chinese teacher, is very strict when it comes to our Chinese character writing. More often than not, he would find our writings not to his liking, took up an eraser and clear the whole page that we had spent the past 30 minutes writing, and made us re-write all over again.

- One day, I forgot to bring my English writing book and the teacher made me call home to get my Grandma to bring it to school. I tried my very best to describe the cover of the book to her, and in then end, she arrived in school with my Math workbook.

- My mother used to cut our hair, up till our secondary school days. There was once (when I was about 7 or 8) when my mother accidentally cut my ear. I didn't feel anything until drops of blood dripped onto a magazine I was reading.



- I was one of the last few to finish a Math test. My classmates were all handing up the papers and leaving the classroom. In the end, I managed to finish the story sums while trying to prevent my tears and snot from dripping onto the test paper.

- My father used to pick me up from school after lessons everyday and most of the times, I was the last to leave (right before the school attendant) because he was always late. So, one day, I felt rebellious (I was having a cough then) enough to buy an ice-cream and was confident that I would finish it before he arrived. He was unexpectedly early on that day.

- We used to stay in Bedok North, right opposite a stadium. One day, I followed my older cousins to the stadium and while they were playing on the tracks, I found myself wondering if my tiny head could fit through the gaps between the railings. And the next thing I knew, I was crying while my father and cousins tried to pull out my head which was stuck between the railings.

So, here's to a happy 1st October to all of us... especially to the child that is living in our hearts.

Again, Natalie!

Things have been slowing down considerably these few weeks, or maybe that's just an excuse for the lack of postings for September. ;p But whatever it is, there will always be updates of little Natalie! :)

Welcome, Natalie.

Forgive me if I can't stop talking about the latest addition to the family, Natalie. I've updated my facebook status 3 times since she came in on 16th Sept 2009. Such is the excitement of being an aunt (大姨妈) . With little Natalie's arrival, everyone in the family got "promoted" to a new "position".

And here is the proud grandma...

Back to Mama-ville

The husband has been called up by the country to do his duty to protect and serve for 2 weeks in Thailand. So, I've moved back to my Mum's place to stay while he was away, since it just takes about 20 minutes from here to reach my workplace compared to our place which will take about an hour or so. And another reason is becoz I'm a scaredy cat, I admit. My imagination is too wild for my own good, especially if I'm alone at home at night, and moreover, it's the Chinese Lunar 7th Month now as well. I think sometimes my mind is out to torture me. When I'm alone without anybody around to distract or entertain me, those past horror movies I had watched will suddenly start to go through my mind. I tried to think of better stuff, but the evil side of me wins most of the time. I think if I were to write a horror story, I might be even more famous than Stephen King.

Anyway, it's kind of nostalgic to be back staying at my parents' place, and especially with my sister and I making a hell of a noise, and according to my mother, which each and everyone of our neighbours can hear. ;p Also, there are some things that had been lying around forever, and some that had been used as decorations for my marriage about 4 years ago and are still there. Needless to say, I think about 40% of my stuff are still stuck in the messy corner of our study room and my father had been nagging at me to bring them all back to my own place but I always pretended not to hear it. Haha.

And look what I managed to dig out from my old drawers...

Used to be something Yun and I were dying to have when we were young coz apparently, it was too expensive ($6.90, I think) for us to afford about 20 years ago

The furry (expensive) stickers


A much cheaper sticker book. I keep all the ugly stickers in here coz once you stuck them in, they are stuck there forever.

My Nokia 8250, Western Bar game belonging to the husband, some friendship bands I made, and a packet of tissue paper with such cute packaging that I can't bear to use since the husband gave me during our Poly days.

Birthday present from the husband when making paper stars were all the rage.

One of my favourite piece of work done during my time in the Art Club during the secondary school days.

Incident for thought (5)

Just something to think about : some time into the future, when you are old and wrinkly and is officially a senior citizen, and happen to hop onto a train with no vacant seats, would you stand right in front of the youngster who is occupying the "Reserved Seating" for the needy and proceed to try to stare him/her down for the rest of the journey?

Or maybe I was thinking too much, maybe the old woman just find the youngster handsome to look at.

And the all-in-one award goes to...

People often asked me why I didn't want to be a teacher, after having gone through contract teaching for almost 6 months, is currently working in a school (but not a teacher), and giving tuition for the past 10 years. And my answer to them is always the same : the times have changed, and so, the role of the teacher has also changed. With both my parents being teachers, it's not difficult for me to see the change as the years went by.

When I was younger, I remembered that my parents would reach home almost about the same time I did from school most of the days. My father still had time to check through my 习字本子 (a book to practice writing chinese characters) and would erase off one whole page that I had just completed coz he thought the characters were badly written. My mother had time to go through my Math homework as well, and sometimes, there were still work from the assessment books.

Back in those days, to be a teacher is to just teach, as what we all thought it should be. But for the past few years, though my mother (now retired) was teaching in the morning session and classes should end about 1 p.m., she would not reach home until after 6 p.m. most of the days. This was one significant change I noticed as the years went by in the teaching world. Teachers have more and more things to do and to take care of. And with the introduction of school rankings and other such things, teachers have even more work to do instead of just concentrating on teaching. I know that to improve, there must be competition. But this also brings out a lot of other problems for the schools, teachers, and even students. Problems that only those working in the sector will know. Problems that the highest of the highest authority will never understand.

Besides school rankings, there are still other awards for CCAs, SYF (Singapore Youth Festival) awards, etc, for the schools to compete among themselves. And when the students take part in such competitions, teachers are the ones who will be 'sacrificed'. Of coz the students will have to endure part of the stress and having to miss lessons. But I personally feel that teachers got the most of it. The teacher-in-charge has to find time to train the students, be around if there are external trainers, make sure the students work hard enough to win. If the school wins gold this year, the expectation is there for the teacher to win gold again the next year, the following year, and so on.

And then there is the competition for best class performance inside the school itself. Again, the stress is on the teachers. Besides worrying for the class, there is still the teacher's work performance review, promotion exercise, etc. So, for those people who do not work in schools, do not think that there is no office politics in school. There are much more going around than you can imagine.

One of the most important thing, is the change in the behaviour of the students. I believe that the streaming of the students is one of the causes of such behaviours. And also, the mindset of the teachers for the different streams of students. Do not think that all students in the special/express streams are angels, and that all students in the normal technical streams are devils. The special/express students can be good-mannered and smart, but they can also be scheming and shrewd in the bid to compete to be a top student. The normal technical students can be irritating and rude, but they are street-smart and can be really nice, with no hidden agenda or whatsoever.

And I believe that it's even worse when it comes to dealing with the parents. Kids nowadays are like princes and princesses at home. Whatever they go home telling their parents about the school, the teachers, the classmates, they will always believe that their precious babies are right, and the whole world is in the wrong. They will never believe that their precious babies will lie to them, and when they are being punished in school, these parents will demand to know the who, why, how, and still think their precious babies could do no wrong. I've even heard of cases of parents helping their children to cover their lies.

Which is why some people who did a mid-career switch to teaching get a shock when they start teaching proper. I strongly believe that nobody in the 'outside world' will ever understand how tough it is to be a teacher. The definition of a teacher had changed much over the years. Honestly, if I had a choice 20-30 years ago, I'll definitely choose teaching. Coz a teacher at that time is a 100% teacher. Nowadays, a teacher is more like 30% teacher, 30% administrator, 10% organiser (CNY celebration, Teachers' Day celebration, Sports Day, etc), 10% student (to clock the number of training hours needed), 10% counsellor, and 10% miscellaneous worker.

So, to all teachers out there, hang in there! Have a happy teachers' day. You all have my utmost respect.