Belated Birthday Dinner at Tony Roma’s, Dessert at MOF

After a long day @ Suntec on Sunday, I met up my siblings for my belated birthday meal at Tony Romas @ Suntec.

We were hungry and each ordered the combo meal consisting of 2 different types of meat and 2 sides. Average price of our combos (before all the surcharges) was $30.

Starters- Free bread with garlic spread

Mine- Steak and southwestern chicken combo

Val’s- Chili ribs and BBQ chicken

Her chicken looked GOOOOOD close up….

But she felt that the meats were a tad too dry for her liking…

Jas’s BBQ chicken and ribs. She was VERY proud to show off that she could not finish up her food.

And the hubby ordered steak with fish fillet thinking the latter would be a healthier choice. But he was wrong…

I would rate the food an average of 6.5-7/10.

BTW, something very random. I bought myself a bag holder from Mini Toons for only $5+! Very useful if you do not want to dirty your bag by placing it on the floor when you eat!

Next stop, Ministry of Food (MOF), which was a few units away.

Here’s the assurance from the Jap restaurant.

I must say we all felt that the desserts at MOF here had maybe dropped in standard…

The Japanese Sweet Potato (Imo) used to be a must-eat here with it’s piping hot exterior and sweet mushy interior. But it was not the usual crispy ‘lil thing that night… Disappointing.

What we enjoyed most was the low fat, Hokkaido gelato flavors. Tasty, refreshing and good to know it’s low-fat :)

What a week of feasting… Put on almost 2 kilos this week! :p Dieting starts today!

Julien’s jetplane

Not! It’s his new baby walker cum rocker.

Doesn’t Julien look too proud of his new toy here?

We were quite hesitant initially about getting him a walker because of negative reports regarding baby’s safety. Babies gain excess speeds, heights and accesses to multiple hazards. Read more about it here. In fact, they say walkers does NOT help your baby to walk faster.

OOPS! So why did we buy the walker?

I guess because mummy has run out of places/things to entertain my little boy. Some days, he seemed bored with lying on the bed, the bouncer and sitting on the armchair propped in between 2 huge cushions.

And so off we went to Kiddy Palace and got the $70+ Lucky Baby walker! I think he likes it for awhile….

I will have to make sure that I do not leave him unsupervised. Anyway right now, Julien does not know how to ‘fly in his jetplane’ yet. We still have to move him along.

When he knows how to move around on his own, we’ll have to decide again whether or not to continue putting him in this walker.

If you noticed in one of the above photos, the little desk in front of Julien is supposed to have a detachable plate of toy gears for the jetplane.

But because his neck is still not strong enough, he tended to knock his face onto the front. *Ouch!*

So, we had to put a cushion toy in front of him instead.

If he falls flat literally, no problem now!

Enjoy the ride while you can babe!

Japanese Buffet in the East

After some research last night, the hubby found Momoya - a Japanese restaurant offering ala carte buffet in the East… near Bedok Simpang!

It cost a very affordable $30/++ per pax for dinner and there are (if I didn’t remember wrongly) 127 items on the menu, excluding drinks and desserts.

We were ordering so many dishes from one side of the menu and got a shock when we flipped the menu over to find some MORE dishes available!

The place had a cosy, dim-lighted interior. Restaurant was half-fiilled for a weekday night.

The staff were friendly and efficient.

Here are some of the dishes we tried.

I like the black pepper beef as compared to the special sauced one.

Very delicious cod roe spaghetti.

Sushi was slightly above average…

Smoked pork and cheese wrapped with rice paper. Too much rice.

Soft shell crab with cheese and some crab roe sushi.

Soft shell crab handroll.

Octopus… after I cleaned it from the excess sauce and placed it nicely on my pretty plate!

SASHIMI! I only eat the salmon ones…

Honestly it is not dee best but fresh enough! And the best thing, it’s FREE FLOW!

Round 1…

Round 2.. This time they served me the fatty, supposedly more premium part of the fish.

Smoked salmon salad. I like salmon!

Sinful pork cutlet.

Potato gratin.

And more!

From top left: Chawanmushi, ebi tempura, baked curry katsu don, plum soda, deep fried chicken cutlet, omu rice.

From top left: Deep fried salmon skin, mushroom tempura, udon, egg plant and sweet potato tempura, some baked cheese spaghetti and tori teriyaki.

And all these while, my little boy quietly played with his little feet! He was such a good boy! :)

But he was so glad when Gong Gong finished eating and went over to carry him! “Finally you guys remember me!”

What a great time of fellowship and food with family!

21st Birthday Cake

I had offered a friend to help him source and buy his 21st birthday cake.

It’s no longer an easy task.

During my time, cakes were just about all the same.

Something like this.

Not anymore….

Now, budgets are BIGGER, expectations are higher and bakers are getting more creative with their cake flavors and designs.

I will be getting my cake from Pine Garden since my sister-in-law had tried them before and she was not disappointed.

They have unique flavors including Brandy Cherry, Lychee Martini, Bailey’s Chocolate Crunch (which I was tempted to get) but in the end, I decided to get the very safe and recommended Triple Layer Chocolate cake.

As for the design, I surfed the Internet for ideas and came across many super creative cakes!

From rozziescake.wordpress…

So many to choose from!

I wanted to custom make the cake but in the end, due to budget and time constraints, I chose one of Pine Garden’s Mastercard Key design and it turned out like this:

Almost $150 for 3kg. Taste wise, I still prefer the Chocolate Classico from Four Leaves and Guanaja cake from Rive Gauche.

Baby’s first foods (puree)

If you had read my previous post on feeding cereal to my baby, I am happy to let you know that it’s getting better!

I wanted to whip up something different for my boy to try as promised. 

Wanted something not as sweet as fruits for a start because he might not like the vegetables later. And yet I didn’t want to turn him off with the greens right from the start...

I pondered over it and decided it would be the PUMPKIN first. :)

I got the Australian pumpkin (the usual one is from Indonesia I think) which looked more orange and brighter in color.

I was excited to try my Avent steamer cum blender.

It should be easy right? Instructions say dump in the cubed ingredients, turn knob to the left to steam, then turn knob to the right to blend. If only cooking is always so easy!

But things did not turn out well. The steamer didn’t seem to work properly and after half an hour of trying to steam, the pumpkin was still not cooked! It was supposed to be nice and soft after 15 minutes… :(

In the end, I had to transfer the pumpkin cubes to my faithful AMC pot. After steaming, I mashed it easily with the help of a metal spoon and small siever.

Thank God it turned out so nice in the end. It looked so good I feel like eating it myself!

And so Julien had his first REAL food in his life! How did he take to it?

As usual he cried and struggled when he sighted the feeding bowl. But thank God he began to calm down when he tasted the puree.

And soon he finished up half of the 200g of pumpkin! *BURP!*

Mummy was OVERJOYED!

Feeling encouraged, I decided I will be whipping up more purees for Julien. Next, I’ll be mixing mashed bananas (the short, sweet kind… not the del monte please!) into his rice cereal (Hopefully that will help him swallow his cereal!). And then the broccoli, sweet potato, apple, carrots and more. It’s kinda fun to experiment with more foods!

I am not sure if it’s my imagination but it seemed to me that my baby has grown a little bigger and longer these days! :)

A few tips I’ve learnt about this exciting new phase of my baby’s life:

1. Introduce solids one at a time, waiting for at least 3 days after each new food. This is to help identify any allergies that baby might have.

2. Some people prefer to start with greens instead of the sweeter yellow fruits and vegetables. But yet some people say the latter is easier to digest. You decide!

3. I realized Julien’s stools became harder and firmer after starting on solids. I read that it’s normal especially if you feed rice cereal and/or bananas. So try putting baby on other fruits and vegetables and get him to drink some water. It’ll help!

4. It’s good to expose baby to a wide variety of foods. But if baby seem to not like a certain food, don’t give up too soon as it takes time for him to develop his taste for it. In fact, baby might eventually end up loving it!

Happy experimenting!

UPDATE: I found a great website about introducing baby first foods. Do check it out.

http://www.wholesomebabyfood.com/