American Home

Happy Sunday! (Well, it's probably already Monday for you guys in Singapore!)

A piece of good news: Monday here is a public holiday!!!! Cuz it's Labor Day! :D

But the bad news is....I have no plans. :(

Bus services here mostly do not operate on Sundays and public holidays. Plus the fact that we're without a car in North Carolina, we're technically handicapped.

BUT! It's not so bad after all cuz I had the best Saturday since I arrived in Chapel Hill. Although it's only the 3rd Saturday, it's definitely a day that will stay vividly memorable to me in a long time. 

Gwen and I linked up all the Singaporeans and organised a cooking day @ Gwen's apartment! So we made a trip to the asian market here aka Li Ming's Global Mart for lunch and grocery shopping! The place is absolutely AWESOME because they sell mixed veg rice and the serving is really huge, no joke!

Fishball soup that looks super appetizing! The soup is pretty good (besides being super oily) but the fishballs are nayyyyyyyy!

Steamed white rice // Braised Tofu // Long Beans // 古老肉 

(Can someone enlighten me on the english name??)

I didn't take much pictures of the mart because I was too engrossed doing grocery shopping (like always). They really had tons of asian stuff like Yeo's canned drinks, pickled veg (菜心), pork ribs (which we bought for boiling bak ku teh!!), japanese pastries, KHONG GUAN BISCUITS (getting excited only because it's such a homely brand. I'm not a fan of khong guan biscuits), vitasoy drinks, hello panda, canned milo etc etc. I was so tempted to make sweet corn and carrot soup if not for the fact that we are already going to make bak ku teh (spices flown all the way from Singapore here, credits to Louise!).

After shopping, we headed to Gwen's place feeling happy and half-accomplished. Her house was a really nice, old-fashioned southern home. We sat around in the living room, played my all-time favourite go-back-jump game and we moved on to Bridge after some of the girls started the preparation for dinner. & Our menu for the night??

Sous-chef Eunice working on the sugar syrup for desserts!

 Masterchef Gwen

 Sous-chef Rebecca working on Garlic

 Sous-chef Samantha working on vegetables

Sous-chef Louise in-charge of Bak Ku Teh 

 Can't remember what was it that needed 3 chefs to be crowding around the groceries at the same time.

& a group shot of happy girls working in the kitchen!! (Ok till this point all I did was to take pictures but......)

These are my babies!! I suggested making Enoki Mushrooms wrapped in Bacon & Baked with Swiss Cheese & I did!!

And.......

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Here comes our sumptuous feast!!! :D

Bacon-wrapped Enoki Mushrooms Baked with Swiss Cheese

Shrimp Omelette

Stir-fry 小白菜

Stir-fry Broccoli with Carrots & Mushroom

Pan-fried Tau Gua with Homemade Chilli Sauce

All-time-favourite Bak Ku Teh

Fried Rice w Mushroom, Asparagus & Sausages

& a can of milo for each person!

I'm honestly getting hungry blogging about this @ 1.46am. It was so good. The food, the company, the heat due to our prolonged cooking and overcrowding in the house......

And not forgetting.......dessert!

Fried Banana Chocolate Springroll w Pineapple Salsa, served with Vanila Ice Cream

This is SO good. I swear I'm gonna make this when I'm back home in Singapore.

Thanks to Gwen & Eunice for this classy dessert!

After dessert, we attempted to have some wine cuz Navin bought some cheap wine in. Unfortunately, there was no corkscrew. And we had to find creative ways to do this....

Navin tried using screwdriver, nails, keys, card etc etc etc to get the dam cork out but nothing worked. We were just all staring intensely at Navin while he fiddled with the bottle. Since nothing worked, we had to used the most blatant method -- Jake broke the bottle. 

After dinner, we all sat around the living area again. Navin was on the guitar, Gwen was on the piano and we started a heart-warming singing session in a nice American home.

This is defnitely better than any K-sessions I've ever had. It was such a simple evening. Just us, musical instruments and songs. We sang Bruno Mars, Westlife, Backstreet Boys, Collin Raye, Singapore's National Day classic theme songs, Disney, Taylor Swift... ... ... I really wish the night would never end. 

I recorded one of the many songs we sang which I really felt was in context with where we are, who we were with and how we feel. :)

I know I'm going to remember this night for a long, long time... Enjoy! :)