Pizza Flavor Baked Mussels (kind of)

I was supposed to cook the green mussels tinola style but Leng wanted clams instead. So we bought half kilo of both (para walang away hehe). I decided to bake the mussels but  instead of using garlic-butter mixture I experimented with tomato sauce-garlic mixture. Here’s the result.

Ingredients:

green mussels
grated garlic
tomato sauce
Italian seasoning
grated cheese
1 tsp. sugar (optional)

Before cooking, soak the mussels in water for 20 minutes. Clean the mussels by removing the beard, additional sand and other organic attachments. Rinse the mussels under cool water then towel dry.

Combine tomato sauce, garlic, sugar and Italian seasoning. Simmer for 2 minutes. Set aside.

Bake mussels in a pre-heated oven for 10-12 minutes until partially open. Remove half shell. Top mussel meat with tomato sauce mixture and grated cheese. Bake for 3 minutes until cheese melts. Serve immediately then devour!

In my kitchen…

Blog backlog

Hello there!

It's been a long time since I've updated this blog. I was thinking of work as an excuse (again!) but I'll just admit it. I've been LAZY this month. Did'nt even play badminton, exercise, read a book or even shop except when I heard about the CK sale. I figured it will be a first time for me and my only chance before this year ends. And so I went and burned a couple of hundred bucks. Tee hee!

Anyway here's a list of what I've been up to this month of November. I think this will be my longest post so far.

- Went to the Asian Food Expo in Singapore expo (where else!)

All I can say is it was pure gluttony. We came out full, grossed out (some weird foods), and penny less. We came to the expo unprepared. We forgot to withdraw some money before going. We only found out that we only had $20 dollars when we were already inside!

- Put up our Christmas tree after all souls day. The light came in late but was right on time for my big day.

- Made my first home-made puto with the help of my favorite food blogger’s recipe.

It turned out good actually. I didn’t have beater so yeah, my arms hurt after beating the egg whites. She did gave a warning about it but I didn’t have a choice. I wanted to eat puto so badly that night so I had to make sacrifices.

- Went to Charles and Keith sale. Bought 6 bags, 2 pairs were of the same kind but in different colors and a shoe and a belt for Leng

- I had a surprised birthday party at the office. I received a pair of shoes as a birthday present enclosed in a cute yellow shoebox which only cost 2 dollars according to my officemates. I’m now planning to buy more of them for my other lovely shoes (woot woot!).

 

Officemates and friends, you are all so sweet. Again a big thank you!

- Celebrated my birthday with friends and officemates again on my actual birthday. We were supposed to be on a holiday in Thailand but our trip was cancelled (boo hoo!) due to… I don’t want to talk about it. So we resorted to inviting everybody in our team for a small dinner and for videoke session here at home. My birhtday handa were Beef Caldereta, Chop-Suey, Pansit Bihon, Lumpia, Embutido and Buko Pandan for dessert. We (Adette, Jong and Leng) started cooking around 12pm and was finished by 4pm. Guests started arriving around 7pm (filipino time, nyek!). I had a fun night. I enjoyed every bits of our laughing, singing, story-telling and eating session. Although I was very exhausted by the end of the day, I figured I will probably do this again next year. 

Thanks to all those who came and to those who remembered my birthday! and to those who forgot hehe.

- And lastly, today I made my first ever doughnut coated with Sugar and Cinnamon.

Can anyone remind me to buy a doughnut cutter next time?

***That’s all folks!

Reward thyself

Yesterday i had no breakfast, no lunch. Work was toxic as usual. I was so tired and hungry. I knew right then and there that I MUST and I WILL have to reward myself with a sumptuous DINNER no matter what happen. I was already starving at 4pm but I resisted eating small snacks because it would ruin my appetite (bad, i know). And because I didn't want to eat dinner alone I waited for Leng until 7:30 pm.

To save money without sacrificing our love for food, we have this unwritten rule to "not to eat in an expensive restaurant twice in a week. When I say expensive, i mean the is bill more than 10sgd. So most of the time you can find us in eating in KOPITIAM or Food Hawkers. But last night eventhough we've already had our expensive dinner last Wednesday, I was able to convinced Leng to eat again in Hot Tomato Express. How? I just told him that I would foot the bill.

Hot Tomato Express, is a small American Italian restaurant in Plaza Singapura. It's also one of our favorite place to eat aside from Hongkon Cafe. I have not tasted all their specials but so far i liked everything I had-American Beef Stew, Spring Chicken and my new favorite Sirloin Steak which was what I had last night (with rice of course!).

Yummy Steak

Roasted Chicken, I kid you not it's only 7.50 Sgd

Our dessert. my reward

I can't live without RICE! and bow...

What the?

Dare to wear this in the Philippines?

Books still rocks!

Yesterday after having lunch at Lucky Plaza we revisited Kinokuniya in Takashimaya, our favorite bookstore here in Singapore. We weren't planning of buying any book or anything, we only planned to just check the store.  BUT the crowded store and the long queue the cashier made it very inviting (nakakahawa in short). Not that we don't want to buy books anymore it's just that when we computed our spendings last year, books surprisingly belonged to the TOP 5. We had to save for our monthly remittances to our family so we shun away ourselves from buying books for months and became satisfied with INTERNET, TV shows and movies as source of entertainment. But yesterday, we gave in.

I so love Artemis Fowl Series. Didn't expect there would be a 6th book.

Books still rocks!

Long queue

And oh, i heart the smell of books (sniff!).

Burger Steak and Odor in our cabinet

I love Jollibee's burger steak. Back home in the Philippines it's my second best favorite fastfood lunch next to chowking's beef Braised Beef. So last night I decided to make Salisbury Steak with Mushroom Sauce. It didn't taste like Jollibee's but it was close enough. And it had lots of mushroom which is Laleng's favorite. I got the Mushroom Sauce recipe from Bigoven. Before whenever i make Burger Steak i used the instant Mushroom gravy from the grocery. I wasn't satisfied with the taste. I find it too "instant".

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Lately i'm obsessed with getting rid of the strong musty odor in our cabinet. Who wouldn't be? It made our freshly washed clothes smell "kulob". So the other day, I started looking for solutions to this irritating household issue.

I read on Daphne Paez's blog that she uses silica gel to fight moisture in her bag and shoe storage. I thought It was a great solution my cabinet problem and to my other issue-mildew on my rarely used handbags. However, I didn't thought that silica gel would be hard to find here in Singabore. According to the SG forums that i've read it should be available in Mustafa and Carrefour. I went to both stores last Monday and unfortunately found none. So for the meantime, i bought some of these as a remedy.

moth proofer, hang it fresh from glade and
naptaline balls which i did not use (I hate the smell).

If anyone out there knows where I can buy silica gel, please please let me know.

im back and full!

but only for today.

Work was just to much for the past 3 weeks. I'm burnout, we are all burnout. We only get a day of rest (none for others) and I had spend it doing my laundry and cleaning the house. So technically i haven not had a decent rest day for 3 weeks (day off lang po mam and sir). I just hope I can reclaim my weekend off soon or else this blog together with my laundry would end up in the trash bin.

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On the lighter side of my life here in Singabore, i just want to tell you guys about our team's new favorite  dinner place - Hongkong Cafe. It became an instant hit to all of us. First because of their superb food which is mostly Asian with a western touch and second their reasonable price-less than 10sgd per order.

It didn't really taste like papaya. But it was so milkygood. The porkshop was so tasty and tender. Below is a picture of the actual soup that we ordered (yeah yeah the picture on the menu was so much better :-p)

my favorites

French toast smothered in honey

(oh so) tender pork ribs with fried rice

Let me just clarify that I didn't eat all these in one day okay? All of the above were a part of my dinner, except for french toast which was reserved for our midnight snack, for the last 2 weeks. I think that with all the stress at work, our each and every one in the team deserves a rewarding meal once in a while.

My ears have fully recovered

My ears were tortured was supposed to be the original title of this post but due to the integration of L to B (go figure) our schedule and the work itself has been crazy (literally). Going back to Grand Prix, YES we had a great time! Even if it was only for a day and even if we didn't get to watch the finals we still enjoyed the whole Grand Prix thing. I don't know, could be the painful sound of the cars which made the race more exciting by the way or could be the drivers. Enough said, time for pictures!

bird's eyeview of the circuit

the kit counter
Luckily the weather cooperated that day. We didn't have to use the poncho. I just wish the kit included a portable electric fan (hehe). It was so hot that day!

Circuit up close, taken during practice session

i survived the race because of this

the crew and the frienimies.
i wasn't able to take any decent pictures of the cars because of those 2 guys. They wouldn't let me stand to take pictures or let me near the fence even if i told them that i just want to take a 2 shots (booohooo!!!)

lucky them

Bay Grand Stand

That's all for now. And oh, videos are here.

YES, it was that loud!

Look! Look! Look!

We'll be going to the race in an hour, did a little research about the drivers and look what i found out!

hotness!

looks kinda like Leo

he's only 23.

pang teleserye shot?

All pictures were borrowed from here.

Mood: Excited but sleepy

Grand Prix

we couldn't afford the 3 day pass so we just got ourselves...

enough to experience what it's like to watch a GP "night race".

SINGAPORE is excited.

botanical garden shots

sorry for the delay but here they are!

i love the sky!

when you're new in Photography, first thing you have to
learn is how to get that nice depth of field.

this one is better.

my favorite

All shots were taken by yours truly at the Singapore Botanical Garden.

Still on the learning stage.

What's aperture again? :-p

tonight's dinner

i love pizza hut's sweet and spicy drumlets.

yum!!!

Toast Box

If Starbucks is THE coffee shop in America, then I would say Toast Box is THE coffe shop here in Singapore (setting aside TCC that is). Whenever I'm on the A.M. shift, my breakfast composes of either orange marmalade toast, kaya toast or peanut butter toast with Teh and sometimes Kopi from toast box. It makes my morning lightly full and goddamn awake! The kick of their teh and kopi i must say comes with a punch. So if you need a major caffeine intake in the morning, go to toast box. Everything is relatively cheap compared to TCC and STB.

If you're planning to go there, below definition of drinks (applies to all coffee shops here in SG) might come in handy (Singaporeans, pls feel free to correct me if im wrong):

kopi - dark coffee with condensed milk and sugar
teh - tea with condensed milk and sugar (cold/hot)
teh c - tea with evaporated milk and sugar (cold/hot)
teh o - just tea with no nothing
kopi o - just dark coffee with no nothing

Where i learned all these? From local colleagues of course. Meanwhile here's a picture of their huge mountain of butter!

There are some terms that you need to used if you want your teh and kopi to have more or less sugar or less water but they are all in Mandarin so my reliable memory can't remember them anymore. Can anyone help?

Sunday is picnic day...

...for Filipinas here in Singapore.

On our way to the Botanical Garden last Sunday, we saw a flock of Filipinas with big plastic and paper bags. They all seemed to be heading to a place. Since i had my new toy with me, we pretended to be a paparazzi. We followed them. And these are what we saw:

with their packed lunch

they were having sinigang na bangus and adobo

the place was located at the back of WISMA Atria. It wasn't a park but every Sunday it becomes one