Interesting Packaging

Saw a Japanese bento meal at Isetan packaged in a Chinese takeaway box and I just had to get it as I am a sucker for such things (as mentioned). I thought it was just the whole bento box just filled with food, however, upon opening it, I realised it was made up of 2 parts. The top, which also acted as a lid, held all the food that contained liquids. Under that was the rice and a piece of fried chicken, both of which were considerably dry. It was really cool packaging and I wondered where I can get my hands on some. 

Grand Public Thrones

I had to blog about at least once about the toilets in Japan and since I found one nice enough to take a picture of, today's post shall be it. This toilet, like the majority of them in Japan, are installed with bidet and washing functions. I'd say majority because out of the many public toilets I've been using, I've only encountered one squatting pan, and one without a washlet installed. 

Not only are the toilets installed with washing functions, some even have seat warming functions, and there were 2 that even had a button to air dry your privates. The water is even heated so you don't get a shocking blast of ice cold water. What I don't understand is why there isn't a bit of warm water at the taps to wash your hands. 

Big Results From Simple Contraption

I've been looking forward to today ever since Angie mentioned a Ramen Museum and I even thought about the cup noodle I wanted to make for myself. However, after going through the Momofuku Ando Instant Noodle Museum, there was one display that showed how sometimes simple things can be spectacular, just like a pack of instant noodles. (You'll learn more in the video at the museum)

We walked into the room and found shadows of trees just moving, making the viewer feel as though they're traveling through a forest. The simple thing about it was how it works. It's just a light, mounted on a track, with miniature trees "planted" along the track. As the light moved, the miniature set up created a moving shadow movie. It's amazing that something so simple can be so mesmerising. 

Something to keep in mind!

Tiny Helper

The weather has changed slightly, probably since the start of Spring. Although Singapore doesn't have the four seasons, there are slight changes in the weather that usually coincides with the same time that the seasons are supposed to change. The change this time has raised temperatures and winds have died down, leaving me feeling hot and sticky. 

Sleeping is a bit tough but I've got a tiny bit of help from a fan my mom had. It's old, but still running alright, and it's a good thing she didn't throw it away during the move. It's propped laptop cooling fan, which is sitting on a dry box cover. This is what happens when the room hasn't been properly configured. 

Test Kitchen 03

After getting the cookie scoop, along with the rest of Bake It Yourself, I decided to try making cupcakes to use up a Nutella buttercream I made earlier when testing out the Nutella dream cookies. Also to top them off with some moulded sugar decorations.

I looked for a recipe which would use coconut flour so it would be easier on my blood sugar levels and managed to find one that was diabetic-friendly. Furthermore, I had a sugar-free maple syrup! So I went off baking the cupcakes, which were true to their name - fluffy! Only thing was that the sugar-free syrup seem to have lost all trace of sweetness and I ended up having fluffy, dark chocolate cupcakes. Great for my pairing with the Nutella buttercream and sugar decoration I guess.

Today, I got Adi over to mould the decoration and help with frosting the cupcakes, as well as make some cake pops. The cake pops ended up a bit too soft and needed a bit more time in the fridge, so we managed to only get weirdly frosted square cupcakes with tiny baking-themed sugar decor.

Bought The Whole Store

Dad and I were looking for an ice cream scoop, or cookie scoop, as we wanted to try making cupcakes. After searching around for one, I finally found that Bake It Yourself had it in their stock, and it was priced affordably at $9.90 instead of $20. 

Going around, and up and down, the store, I found more and more things inspiring me, and fit some ideas I had for a while. Soon I was grabbing cake pop moulds, sugar paste moulds and fondant. Not only was everything so cute, they were nicely priced and I hope this store doesn't have to raise its prices. 

Oh, and when I couldn't find the cookie scoop, they were nice enough to run up to their storeroom to get some and stock up the shelves right away. Now that's awesome service!

The Knife That Broke

Things seems to improve with technology but seems like they also start to get more fragile. So we can now look at the people calling us over the phone, but a hard knock and there goes the screen. 

Today's hard knock seem to happen to the knife I was using to try cutting off a piece of nougat. The nougat wasn't tough, but if I broke it off, it would have been too big. So as I was trying to cut a piece of nougat, the handle of the knife broke off, leaving the blade stuck in nougat. Not sure who bought this knife, or if it was some freebie, but it's crap! 

Air Fried Snacks

We've been using the air fryer to experiment with a lot of things ever since we brought it out of hiding for our CNY reunion dinner. Air-fried whole prawns are one of the best things to come out of that gadget, but not everything comes out as nice as it would out of a hot oil bath. The good thing about air fryer is cooking meat with fat around it. Most of the fat liquifies to help make any skin crispy, and the excess drips away. However, things like mantous don't turn out with soft and fluffy insides when you finally get the skin browned enough. What turns out good are chicken tails and necks. Low heat and slow cooking just makes the fat drip away and turn the skin crispy.

So good I only got a picture when it was half gone.

App Testing

Was a little bored and decided to play around with the app, Photo Grid, which I've been using when I need to get a collage of pictures to post. I've been using the app for a while but have yet to try the 'Template' function in it. So I open it up only to find a very limited number of templates which were definitely not what I'd ever use for the photos I take. Then I found the list of new templates which I could download and started clicking on a whole load of them. 

As I was going through the templates, this one caught my eye and I decided to give it a go first. It started out with just a few pictures from London, and in the end, it ended up as a little summary of Adi's trip to England! Guess I'm happy with the result and it's obviously something I would use with the kind of pictures I take. 

Marathon Time

Mom took a nap after her babysitting gig and woke up around 10 to catch the latest episode of NCIS. All of us then seemed to be wide awake and with no other new series on tv, mom finally decides to watch the stuff I've got on the computer. Basically, this would be the first time we've used the Apple TV since my sis left. Now it's time to get the drinks and snacks, sit back and get comfy for the longhaul.

Spreading Some Pepper Love

During this year's reunion dinner, my cousin Javier took a liking to my battery-operated pepper grinder as it was quite easy to use and was just as simply designed. My pair was bought while on my trip to Australia and it really has come in handy, especially with you need to pepper your food while cooking, or even when marinating, and you don't have 2 hands to work a manual grinder. The best thing it is for is actually for pasta and soup, when you just need that bit of freshly ground black pepper to add a lovely hit of earthly spice

So while out with Angie at JEM, I was walking in Robinsons when I saw them being sold there, and with a discount to top it off. Since I was looking for another one myself, I ended up getting Javier a pair  instead of waiting till his birthday in November. Goes to show how much he liked it as he sent his dad to pick it up the day I posted it out to him online.

New Toy

I saw this Instax Share  printer before christmas and was thinking of looking it up but totally forgot about it with all the preparations that had to be done for Christmas and Lunar New Year. Then as I was looking through  Yahoo news, I saw an advertisement for this on Qoo10 and decided to check it out, only to find that it was available at the shop I go to for all my polaroid needs. So got on their pre-order list and they texted me yesterday saying that a shipment had arrived and that I could come down to get it. 

Dad had wanted to go get some things today and so I decided I might as well get the printer since we were heading out. So here we are, my new toy printing some really old photos I dug out from my iPod.