Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Father's Day

I love my Daddie loads.
I can think of many moments when my daddie was the greatest dad ever, many times when even though I'm such a lup sup daughter, he still accepts me, albeit after poking fun of me. Since young, I hadn't had much to worry about, and I always got what I wanted, as long as I really wanted it. Between me and my sister, I think life was better for me, I had more clothes, more toys, and I always win.

Ya, with such a daddie, it was no wonder that I turned out to be quite a spoilt brat.

So, to thank my daddie for the past twenty-blahblah years of nurturing, and spending truckloads of money on me, including my education, I decided quite impromtu-ly to make my dad some egg salad for him to make sandwiches with.

Because my parents currently are residing at Serangoon Gardens and only come back to our abode occasionally, I didn't know when would he be able to eat my stuff, so I had to make something that can be refrigerated. And there was a loaf of bread at home, so it was quite convenient. Since that was an impromtu decision, I made that egg salad at 6.30am in the morning, before I slept. Ya, me and my warped sleeping hours.

egg salad
The first decision was how many eggs to make.
I reckon that my dad could eat two, I CAN eat two a day, so make that enough for two days, so four eggs for me, my sister can eat another two eggs, and I can save the rest for Someone, so I picked ten eggs to work with. Then I had to choose a pot big enough to contain all the eggs, but the right sized pot didn't have a lid, so I had to work with the lid-less pot, possible, cook it for a longer time.

One of the eggs didn't sink after I added water, and I was seriously contemplating throwing that egg away since bad eggs usually float. But I didn't in the end, I thought I'd just boil it first, peel it, then see if it's bad before throwing it away. In the end the egg turned out pretty fine that I couldn't remember which was the bad egg.

I think I overboiled the eggs since I never boiled ten eggs before on a pot without its lid somemore, the eggyolks had this grey ring around it. I dislike boiled eggs with grey rings, it's the sign over overcooking, but well, luckily after mashing them, there aren't anymore signs of greyness.

Peeling eggs is a chore I enjoy, I don't know why but I like peeling eggs, I like to peel my eggs until it's nice and soft and smooth and bald. But I tend to waste a lot of water when peeling eggs since I wash the egg to cool it, and to remove of all the remnant egg shells.

Mayo and salt are must haves for a nice egg salad. I wanted to try a special ingredient too, but sadly, my special ingredient was expired so I didn't dare put it in. Maybe another time, I'll try it with the special ingredient see how it would taste. haha~ Mashing the eggs was tough since there were ten eggs, but after my hard work, it's finally done.

I tasted a bit, acceptable. Then it's off into the fridge to chill~

My daddie didn't have it immediately the next day on father's day, but he had it on Monday before he went to work. He had it for breakfast. He ate quite a lot of it, filled up four slices of bread with the eggs. haha~

Other than making egg salad for my daddie, me and my sister thought of taking him out for dinner, and have his favourite food, xiaolongbao!

My daddie loves xiaolongbao, especially the Crystal Jade Lamian Xiaolongbao ones. He fell in love with it after I brought him there to eat my favourite little juicy buns. After his first mouthful of that little bun of juicy goodness, he was sold to the xiaolongbao fandom. So we decided to eat there.

Then as we conspired about where and when to go, my sister was like, let's ask him, since he's the one driving. -_-" So much for a Father's Day Dinner.

So we went to ask him when and where he want to eat, and made all sort of grandeur plans, the mother chupped in and asked, "So who's paying for the dinner? You two pay ah?" Me and my sister looked at each other sheepishly when my dad on seeing that stupid grin on our faces said, "Aiya, I pay la, I pay la..." Ya, my dad paid for his own dinner himself. So much for a celebration. lol~

cj lamian xiaolongbao
But because the daddie was paying, we were uninhibited to order what we liked and we ordered a whole lot of food. We usually would order stuff to share between all of us, but we'd still order some main courses if we wanted it. And because my mum doesn't like pork, she ordered her usual fried rice. My sister the greedy one also ordered her usual double boiled chicken soup lamian. Me and my dad's the eat everything kind of people, and we love the xiaolongbao so much that we can just eat that.

But we still ended up ordering lots of stuff which we never tried before, like the guotie. I don't know why I wanted to try it, my dad went ahead and ordered two of it, think he wanted to try that too. Then I also requested for my favourite salted egg yolk prawns which I know my sister loves it too. My dad then went ahead and ordered a lot more other stuff like the wanton, hotplate xiaolongbao, and the spicy chicken. After the orders, I spotted the sign showing the Fathers' Day promotion, Double boiled chicken soup with sharks' fin and vegetable going for $26. So we got that also. We had wanted to later add on two more baskets of xiaolongbao but we were too full to eat any more.

The wanton was nice and juicy and value for money.

I didn't eat the fried rice because I ate it before, my mum would ALWAYS order that. I like the fried rice a lot because the rice is long-grained and chewy, and the prawns are generous and bursty.

The double boiled chicken soup with lamian is also another goodness. Double boiled soups are always yummy, and this when eaten with lamian makes the taste more flavourful. I didn't had any lamian though, I just koped some of the soup and a piece of the chicken. The serving of chicken is always adequate for sharing. It's a very value for money dish.

The hotplate xiaolongbao is a novelty of Crystal Jade. Ad long as the xiaolongbao doesn't leak, it will always taste good. Eating it with the egg, and a crusty bottom give the xiaolongbao a more interesting taste.

I love the salted egg yolk prawns. It's one of those stuff up there in my header under my wo xi huan stuff. This version of the prawns is drier than earlier versions, think it's fried for a longer time that the salted egg yolk dries up, so it's less creamier but more crispier. My sister was comenting that egg yolks being high in colesterol when mixed with prawns which already is a very high in colesterol food, the dish is doubly high in colesterol. But she still ate it, so really, bah~

Going to Crystal Jade Lamian Xiaolongbao MUST definitely eat xiaolongbao. We ordered two baskets even though we initially wanted four because we know that the xiaolongbaos always come out together, so we didn't want four baskets out at the same time and we didn't want to end up eating cold xiaolongbaos. But luckily we only ordered two baskets because we ordered just too many other food that we were so stuffed for anymore, not even xiaolongbaos.

The sharks' fin soup was actually the double boiled chicken soup from the earlier lamian dish just that there is extra vegetable and sharks' fin in the soup. A tad bit disappointing in terms of taste but the amount of sharks' fin inside was quite generous, so it wasn't that no value for money. But still, we expected something different...

My dad ordered the spicy chicken, I think he ordered it for my mum since she didn't eat most of the other food. It was a very generous portion with about six chicken wings inside that pot. And apparently the gravy was nice too. I didn't try it because I don't take spicy stuff, but the parents liked it a lot.

The guotie was a wonderful surprise. When I ordered it I thought it was like vegetable and a bit of meat inside, but turned out it was just meat inside, with the meat juicy inside. Anything with meat juicy inside IS definitely a yummy dish. I ate four of them, my dad had two because he was too stuffed. My mother as usual didn't want to try anything.

more food close up
As usual I took lots of pictures of food and pissed my sister off. She's at the teenage angsty age which she's so self conscious that she doesn't like me taking photographs with flash because she thinks that people will look, and she doesn't want people to look at her. I still went ahead despite her protests. haha~

My mum was also very funny, she said that I have many many photos of the same dish already because everytime I'd eat the same stuff and take pictures of the same stuff. And post up pictures of the same stuff on my blog. haha~ Okay la, at least everytime I try to make the pictures look somewhat different, and the blog post itself is also about something different.

I love my family~

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

hello!!

Just wanna ask how much did the dinner cost. I really wanna try crystal jade lamian one day but due to my friends and their finacial constraints (excuses lol!) we almost always get scared away by the prices stated outside. so blah- heh.

xxoos said...

that dinner cost $119, but there was the sharks' fin soup and the prawns, the only two items that went into double digits.

most items on the menu like the rice and the noodle dishes are less than $10, and if you buy xiaolongbao to share, each meal should come nicely to less than $15. to save money, don't order drinks, iced water is always free, or have chinese tea which is $0.80, i think.