Hong Kong Roast Pork (Siu Yuk), Apples & Mustard Mayo Sandwich

Hmmm...

When life gives you bread...

...I'd say, ditch your low carb diet and make sinful sandwiches.
Did I hear amen?

There's a story to this loaf of bread.
Baby M wandered around a local bakery (A1 bakery), grabbed a bag of bread and dropped it on the floor. The bread slipped outta its protective plastic bag, lying helplessly on the floor, begging for us to buy it. Uh oh. The staff saw this, and she was being very nice. She offered to clean up the mess, never demanding us to buy the bread. But we are people with conscience, especially when we are trying desperately to find some excuses to eat carbs. So, we bought the bread.

On the way home, I simply bought a strip of roasted pork belly with crispy crackling & juicy tender melt-in-your-mouth meat *gulp*
So siu yuk sandwich it is!
Here's what I put together. I don't think I can call this a recipe, and I didn't make the roast pork nor the bread. We are spoiled with having numerous roast pork shops in Hong Kong. But if you wanted to make the roast pork, I am sure there's a good recipe online somewhere.


First, I generously buttered my bread and grilled them.


Pork and apples, they are best friends, right? Slice the apples thin and arrange them on the toasted bread.

Add the pieces of siu yuk. Lots of them.

For the dressing, I mixed mayo, mustard, and a touch of honey, then slathered it generously on the sandwich. You can leave the sandwich open, or top it with another piece of butter toasted bread.

What a beautiful sight!

I need to bring baby M to bakeries more often!

PS. If you're a Kpop fan and you love 2PM, I went to their Hands Up Asia Tour concert in Hong Kong last weekend. If you wanna see the pics, check it out here.

Healthy Yummy Breakfast - Green Apples, Grapes, Yogurt & Cashew Nuts

Just looking at this photo makes me feel healthier already. Heeheeee!
My second attempt of healthy breakfast, and my first time trying a sweet breakfast.

I simply squeeze lemon juice all over the cut-up apple, throw them onto a cup of yogurt together with halved grapes and cashew nuts.

Despite how yum it is, I am simply not used to having sweet breakfasts. It makes me feel so... unfulfilled.
I need to find a way to make this savory without adding huge chunks of bacon or sausage.

Help!

Breakfast - Green Apple, Cheddar & Smoked Salmon Salad with Lemon & Honey

In an effort to steer away from my usual (super unhealthy) eggs-sausage-cheese low carb breakfast combo, I am trying something new today. I simply cut a green apple into cubes, tossed them with lemon and a bit of honey, added cheddar chunks and smoked salmon.

Yum. But I'm gonna need a bigger portion of this ^_^'
Hungry!

Do you have any healthy low carb breakfast ideas? Please share them with me. I desperately need more :)

The Making & Behind the Scene - Hello Kitty Food Blogger Sausage Sculpture for the Cock Up

All the mess and madness before the cocktail sausage cook up.

I didn't plan to make a sausage sculpture before, I knew cutetifying food isn't my forte.


What did I plan to make?
Welcome to my Hall of FAILURES.

Cocktail Sausage Savoury Cheesecake. 
The idea sounded good in my head, I used Maid brand's honey cocktail sausages, they're a bit sweet, so I thought they would work. I thought of making tarts instead of a huge cake, topped with glazed apples, peaches, or grapes, or a mix of fruits...maybe garnished with a piece of thinly sliced, deep fried crispy cocktail sausage.

Wow. Ambitious, wasn't I?

Well, obviously, I failed. Hard.

I food processed the cocktail sausages into the cheesecake batter. The cheesecake ended up fluffy, more Japan than New York, which was fine, but the tiny bits of sausage made the cake super weird, and not in a good way. I probably should've left them sliced to give the cake bits of bite. You can see that I've failed the cream cracker crust too. I was too impatient waiting for it to set. Oppps.
I'll do better next time...


Apple, Pear & Cocktail Sausage Savoury Crumble
Again, the idea sounded good in my head, but the whole thing tasted so damn weird. I should've probably leave the fruits uncooked or pickled. Crisp the sausages and make the crumble separately and assemble them together in small shot glasses or something. This crumble topping was savoury, maybe I should've made the crumble topping sweet? I dunno, but I'll explore this idea and try again.

I realized I should stick to what I know instead of trying to be a smart ass, I'm a one trick pony after all. Heheheh. That's how I ended up with my dishes, sweet & sour sausages and the Indonesian sate sosis.

As for the Hello Kitty craziness...
I just wanted to have fun and create something mad for the event, instead of just bringing dishes.
I thought of making a whole table of food bloggers, most of them would resemble the bloggers who would attend the event, but OK, that's too damn ambitious, there's no way I could do that.

Then I thought of creating a mini me (a food blogger) out of cocktail sausages, but ok that's so damn narcissistic, I feel disgusted even as I am typing this up. Ugh.

So what's cute, somewhat relevant to Hong Kong, and relevant to the event?
Uh huh! Hello Kitty food blogger, my friend.

I used these light colored small sausages. A tanned Hello Kitty would be cute too, but I tried to be as close as its original colors.

I bought a variety of stuff to realize my Kitty ambition.

Seaweed and seaweed strands for the eyes and whiskers, cheese for the nose, maybe add some food coloring for the red bow. Crackers and cracker sticks in case I need to build a table...


I had to make a lot of plan Bs...it's hard to stick anything to the sausages as they're oily! Everything slides down and fall off when touched, especially after the oil's dried out. I ended up using rice for the nose, stuck it to the face using a toothpick. I used honey as glue, small sharp scissors and tweezers helped a lot!


What's a food blogger without food? This was pretty straight forward. Rice, seaweed strands, toothpicks and sliced cocktail sausages to resemble luncheon meat. Very Hong Kong la!

The camera's made of sausage wrapped with seaweed. This failed in the end, after a while, the seaweed peeled off..and I had a bit of a disaster with the bow too...the cheese melted. I was so upset. I tried to keep everything savoury, as if we're going to end up eating the whole thing (warning, food poisoning?), but in the end I gave up and made the bow and camera out of pink Sugus candies.

The slogan "my blog is cuter than yours" was made out of alphabet pasta and changed the banner to resemble a talk icon.

Whew! It's been so long since I've been so mad.
It felt so good, I look forward to more madness.

More pics are posted on my Facebook Page.

Weekend Picnic at Inspiration Lake

Finally! We've found a patch of grass we can sit on in Hong Kong! We were so happy it didn't rain yesterday, we had our picnic with Joe, Athena and baby Alice at Inspiration Lake.


The place is beautiful and it's easy to get to. Simply take the MTR to Disney station, and take the R8 bus to the Inspiration Lake recreation area.

We settled ourselves on a clean patch of grass, under the shade of a tree. We brought some simple food...sandwiches, hot dogs, shrimp paste grilled chicken wings, marinated meat and fish balls and Chinese sausages, and fresh melons.

There's a 7-11 there, so actually you don't have to bring any drinks or food. We didn't know that ^_^'

I made roast duck sandwiches...


I used mini croissants, store bought roast duck, slices of fresh pear, and mayonaisse.


The hot dogs had cheese sausages, sliced cucumber, mayo, ketchup and spreadable cheese in them. I used cocktail buns, the inner part buttered and lightly toasted.


I also made apple caramel sandwiches. They're filled with slices of fuji apple, which were lightly salted to prevent them from browning, and slathered with some butter and toffee caramel spread.


The babies enjoyed their own food...and some of our buns...


And it was too hot, we decided to let baby Marcus try some popsicle.

He was shocked by how cold it was...at first.

Soon enough, he grew to love it...


...and kept asking for more.

So much for trying to not let him eat anything unhealthy until he's 10 ^_^'

It was so hot, we were pretty much melted, sun burnt, and bitten my mosquitoes/various insects, but we enjoyed it much, we're gonna go back when the weather is cooler.

The full set of pictures are posted on my Facebook Page. Like it if you haven't already ^_^

Caramelized & Spiced Apples & Pears - Holiday Header Update

There's a big fat line between love and hate.

The Hate
Apples - yuck
Pears - less yuckie, but ew
Not a fruit person, aren't I?

The Line
Sugar and spice and everything nice, such as butter *grin*
...these stuff just make world a better place.

The Love
Caramelized & Spiced Apples & Pears

Recipe
- 2 apples, peeled, cut into bite sized chunks
- 2 pears, peeled, cut into bite sized chunks
- butter
- sugar
- cinnamon, nutmeg

Melt butter on a skillet, add apple and pear chunks, add sugar, a dash of nutmeg, and lotsa cinnamon, cook until they are caramelized. These babies turned my hatred to love....after all, this is the season for loving, aye?

Holiday Header Update
By the way, did you guys notice my new blog header? I consider it an all-in-one Xmas-Bday-Hanukkah-Thanksgiving-New Year gift from my sis. I love love love it!

The design brief:
- Something Christmasy
- Something vintagey
- Something ME

The First Draft - Mochachocolata Santa

Loving everything, except the fact that my cheeks are too chubby to be a sexy Mochachocolata-Santa.

More drafts - Sepia watermark

Love everything about it!...so vintage, so me...but finally I went for the red and green version, as it is more Christmasy, and we changed "Christmas Special" to "Happy Holidays" for everyone to enjoy, cos Christmas or not...HOLIDAYS ROCK!

So, here's a Christmas snap for you....I hope to be able to post one every day until Christmas ^_^

This is a picture of a decorative glass wall at the footbridge between Admiralty Centre and Far East Finance Centre, Admiralty. Hong Kong.

Apple, Cinnamon & Raisin Oatmeal Muffins – My Frugal Halloween

Halloween is near! Yay! Ehm, I love any excuse to celebrate anything, even if it involves spooky stuff. As always, I had lots of plans for this year’s Halloween…and naturally, none of it gets materialized.

Halloween Costume
What did I have in mind?
Something that reflects me or what I wish to be. So, something cute, girly, cheeky, mischievous, sexy, kinky, food-related, and the spookiness should only happen when exposed to culinary failures, or lack of food/flavor/wit/brain/chocolates, i.e. something like this:

*My illustration, colored by my talented baby sista*
That would be my ideal costumed self: an upgraded version of me, i.e. minus 20 lbs, after numerous sessions of liposuction, major face and full body plastic surgeries, and countless hair extensions, in a super cute, sexy, and kinky cook costume

What will I end up with?
But…due to rarity of such costume, lack of time, dedication and effort to find it, and global economic crisis….I almost decided to go with this good stuff I found in HK Magazine (my HK Bible):





It’s creative, user friendly, one size fits all, flattering for all face and body shapes, and most of all, it is absolutely FREE!

Let’s see if I will really wear it tomorrow (fingers crossed)

Halloween Treats
What did I have in mind?
Loads of things related to pumpkins…such as pumpkin + white chocolate/cinnamon cake/pie/pudding/muffin, pumpkin pasta, pumpkin casserole, pumpkin stir fry, pumpkin sashimi…you name it!

What did I end up with?
However…due to lack of time….I ended up with something horrific:
Apple, Cinnamon & Raisin Oatmeal Muffins
Why horrific? It’s too healthy for my taste, it pretty much scared the shite outta me.

Recipe
(yields 6 muffins)
Dry Ingredients
- 1 cup all purpose flour
- ½ cup quick cooking oatmeal
- ½ tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp baking soda
- ½ tsp salt
- 6 tbsp sugar
- cinnamon powder (up to you, but I use loadsssss)
Wet Ingredients
- ½ cup high calcium milk
- ¼ cup vegetable oil (I use peanut oil)
- 1 egg- 1 tsp vanilla essence
- 1 cup apple (diced into small cubes)
- a handful of raisins

Preheat oven to 180C. Mix dry ingredients in a bowl, make a well in the middle. Mix wet ingredients except diced apple and raisins, pour into dry ingredients, mix roughly. Fold diced apple and raisins. Pour mixture into muffin tray lined with paper cups until almost full, bake for about 20-25 minutes or until toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. I never thought something so healthy could be so tasty :p

I think I could get away with coming to tomorrow’s office gathering as myself, and simply scare off people by eating all the crappy party treats.