Babies and Toddlers' Friendly Recipe: Eggless Vegetables Nuggets for the Family (Main Ingredients- Chicken, Zucchini and Mushrooms)

I made my own variation of homemade vegetables nuggets today and was really pleased with how it tasted. Miss Kwek finished four nuggets for lunch!

These nuggets are so vasetile. They can be made in many ways with different ingredients to suit different tastebuds. Great for everyone in the family.

Eggless Vegetables Nuggets:
About 250g of minced chicken meat
1/2 zucchini
12 slices of fresh mushrooms
3 TBSP bread crumbs
Frying Oil

Seasoning: (A dash of everything)
Parsley Flakes
Dill
Paprika
Ikan Bilis Powder (made my own too!)


Instructions:
1. Wash and grate zucchini. Squeeze out all the water.
2. Wash and chop mushroom finely.
3. Place all the ingreients together and mix well.
4. Shape them into nuggets shape and pan fry till both sides are browned.

Any type of oil can be used for frying. I used olive oil.

I pan fried my nuggets on low heat to make sure the nuggets are cooked through before the outer layer browned.

These are great for freezing. Partition them into serving portions and place them in freeze-friendly bags or container for storage.

Hope you liked this recipeas much as Miss Kwek and I!

Food Review: High Tea at LIME restaurant (Parkroyal on Pickering)

Sis treated mum and I to high tea on a fine wednesday afternoon. After much consideration, we decided on having tea at the LIME restaurant at Parkroyal on Pickering.

Location: 
Located just a stone throw away from either Clarke Quay or Chinatown MRT, the 5-stars hotel was easily located. The nature-like structure pretty much stood out from it's surrounding. It's central location is a plus for those who don't drive and for those heading for some shopping after their high tea. Address: 3 Upper Pickering St S058289

Atmosphere:
Themed around nature and greenery, the atmosphere of the hotel was pleasingly calming although there weren't much view to talk about, considering the restaurant is facing the buzzing road. The restaurant was surprisingly empty when we were there.

Service:
Despite the restaurant being relatively empty, the staff took some time to attend to us. Also, there were staff polishing/cleaning the floor with the machine while we were there. Doesn't feel like the most appropriate time to be doing such things in a hotel setting while guests were eating.

On the other hand, although we only ordered one set of high tea, we were left in peace for the next three hours without being pressured to order more food from their ala carte menu/display counter.

Food:
The high tea set for two is priced at $38++ with unlimited refill for coffee or tea. The 3-tiers consists of sandwiches, sweet pastries and macarons. By the side, freshly baked scones were served with jam and cream. Although the set was for two, the restaurant allowed a set to be shared among three of us.

Serving size was pretty value for money as it was more than enough for three of us. We agreed that the pipping hot scones were the nicest among all the food. The rest were too forgettable with the sandwiches being the most homemade kind that you won't pay to eat given a choice.

Will I be back?
Probably not in the near future. Not quite convinced this is worth the sugar rush and calories intake.

Other Information:
For those interested, here is the photo of the ala carte menu and display counter offerings of other food the restaurant serves.

Happy Hitched Day!: A year as Mr & Mrs.

Woah how time flies! It's exactly one year since we tied the knot! Life have been great! Nothing much has changed, still pretty much feels like we are dating, not married!

Am very grateful for all beautiful things in life! Looking forward to many more beautiful years together! :)

Happy Hitched Day to us! <3

Roses are red and violets are blue:
Yearly SOP! Love love love red roses! Flowers are overrated on Valentine's day but not on our day! :)

Celebrating with Onicupcakes:
What's "birthday" without cake? :) For the sweet tooth us, I got Oni cupcakes to customize four regular cupcakes. Lovely design at affordable pricing! *Happy Birthday to US!!*

Going back to one: Movie date
First outing was to the movie, first date was yet again, to the movie. We had a movie wedding theme. What's more should we not do on our special day but to catch a movie? :)

We caught Maleficent and it was so good! :) Angelina Jolie's acting was awesome! :) Every moment was so enchanting, the movie didn't feel like it was 1.5hours long.

Dinner at Alkaff Mansion:
Mr Kwek brought me to this lovely mansion situated on Telok Blangah Hill for dinner. The mansion with its colonial structure, gave the place a lovely vintage vibe. Atmosphere was pretty romantic although food was only average.

Concluding this special day with a night visit to our future home! :)
Just a mere five days to key collection!

XOXO

Dim Sum HuaTing @ Orchard Hotel

Mr Kwek and I brought his parents to have brunch earlier today in lieu of Mother's Day. After reading some reviews online, I decided that we should have dim sum at Hua Ting.  This turn out to be a really good choice!

Complimentary appetiser. Some kind of thinly sliced meat but not sure what is this though... :p

Polo with bbq char siew bun. This came in an unexpected form of a crispy pastry because as the name suggested we thought we will be eating buns... nevertheless, this was yummy. The pastry was crispy yet soft and thin. The char stew tasted fresh unlike the stall bought which often tasted still.

Chicken tartlet with mango. Signature dish of hua ting which lived up to its name! The tartlet is very flavourful. Somehow the tender chicken bites go very well with the mango sauce.

Steamed prawn dumpling with baby brassica. This was less memorable though it was better than average with its thin skin that melts away in your mouth.

Siew mai with goose Liver pate. This is one siew mai I enjoyed a lot as it does not carry any meaty smell, if you know what I meant. Once again the skin was thin and melts in your mouth too! 

This is seriously da bomb! Oozing load of custard with salted egg. The bao skin was also of a perfect thickness. It remained soft even after leaving it to cool.

Prawn chee chiong fun.  Silky smooth thin skin with lots of fresh prawns.  

Fish and century egg porridge. S$10 per bowl which was the only overpriced dish we felt not vfm.  The porridge is smooth but very blend.  Not recommended. 

Discounting away the not-so-good customer service, the dim sum at Hua Ting was simply awesome! Every dish was good. I especially loved the custard salted egg bun which I sinfully had two!!!

Hua Ting pricing is generally on the middle range for hotel's dim sum.  Our brunch costed $107 inclusive of gst and service charges.

Also another love for hua ting is that they allows customization of quantity for per dish. The added flexibility allowed maximum enjoyment of each dish, doing away with the need to share or eat extras just so every one can have a taste of the dish.

Do give it a try! Remember to make reservations! The place can get quite crowded. :)

Philip Avance Air Fryer XL: Baking Muffins

With some tang vouchers we won from a wedding competition, Mr Kwek & I decided to purchase Philip's Air Fryer for our future kitchen!

The Philip Air Fryer should be pretty well known by now. It is a multi-cooker that uses rapid air technology to fry, bake, grill and roast. Sounds amazing isn't it?

We were both excited yet skeptical about the air fryer being able to aid kitchen dummies like us in preparing meals. However, since we have the tang vouchers and the latest model was on sales, we decided to get it.

Philip Avance Air Fryer XL has a larger capacity of 1.2L as compared to its older generation in the viva collection which only has a capacity of 0.8L. Also, it uses a digital screen to control the temperature and timing. It can remember your favorite temperature and timing with its preset feature. The feature which we felt was the deciding factor to choose Avance over Viva was the basket and pan design.

As you can see, the pan is attached safely inside the roller drawer (which can be detach for washing) while the basket is a part on its own. On the other hand, the Viva collection has the basket attached to the pan which is easily (in a bad way) detachable from each other with a press of a button at the middle of the handle. This makes the pan prone to dropping when plating the food. Personal experience with the dropping while seeing the display set make us decide quite immediate to say no to the Viva air fryer.

Happily we paid up and had it delivered to us the following day. As the Air Fryer is famous for air frying fries to be as crispy as the traditional deep fried fries, by right, fries should be the first item to be tried in the air fryer. However, we went left and tried baking muffins instead.

Its been close to 4 years since I last baked anything and sine my recipe book is deep hidden in a corner of my room (reads: can't find!), I decided to use Betty Crocker's premix and try baking with the Air Fryer.

This is as easy as ABC. All you will need is water, vegetable oil and eggs, stir and ta-da! The mixture is all ready to be spoon into the muffin cups and bake.

 

The air fryer XL can fit up to eight standard sized muffin cups.

For a start, we tried baking one muffin, as per Philip's instruction, at 180degrees for 15minutes. The muffin burnt on the outside but the inside was still great, though a little dry.

We continued experimenting with different set of temperature and timing before landing ourselves with the perfect combination of 170degrees for 10minutes. With this combination, the muffin turn out to be golden brown on the outside, soft, moist and fluffy on the inside.

Top L-R: 180degree 15mins, 180degree 12mins, 180degree 10mins

Bottom L-R: 175degree 10mins, 170degree 10mins

I do not think there is any difference in taste and texture for the air fryer muffins compared to those from the traditional ovens. The only difference will be the appearance. Oven baked muffins will puff up nicely in the middle, where else air fryer muffin doesn't.

Other than the not-so-appealing appearance,
Air Fryer is definitely dummy-baker approved!