Focaccia

I’m back and still counting down the days! I baked from my new bread book over the weekend. I learnt a couple of things, including the stretch and fold method, illustrated very nicely here in step by step photos.

It involved loads of olive oil, this was proofed in 1/4 cup of olive oil and the aurbergine was precooked in another load of olive oil.

The texture was amazing though, the dough soaked up the oil while proofing and made the bread super moist without any hint of oiliness on your fingers. The richness and moistness was all in the dough. It was soft and chewy and the savoury topping made the bread good on its own.

There was something wrong with my eyesight the day I took these photos, with most of my photos turning out blurred. Or perhaps its been some time since I used by 50 mm manual lens. I cut the bread into roughtly1.5 inch squares for easy munching for hungry stomachs during the evening break fast meal.

 

This bread is the best focaccia recipe I’ve tried ever, I don’t think I’ll go back to any other.

 

The recipe is available as a book preview here  go to page 164.

OK, so my blogging break lasted for a couple of days till I found something to say. I will still be away for some time but I wanted to write this post for the reference of parents-to-be since I found so much information from friends, blogs and sites which I think would be useful to share.

Firstly, as a first time parent, everyone tries to tell you that you need a million things and as soon as you step into a baby store, sales people try to promote various items as must haves. Since most of these purchases are large purchases and cost a few hundred dollars, it would be wise to do research before jumping in. We considered a couple of factors before we made our purchases. Our flat is small, so we wanted things that were compact and fold away, if possible. Also because of the size of the flat we didn’t want too many items that would possibly end up underused and take up space. We decided that there were some things that we wouldn’t mind getting second hand and there were some things we wanted brand new. This meant that we didn’t mind getting a bath tub from a relative but decided a car seat should be brand new. We bought a second hand wooden pine crib in excellent condition for S$50 which we repainted and rematressed and upholstered but bought a playpen/cot brand new.

We didn’t want things that the baby would outgrow in a couple of months so we bought a 0 month to 4 year old convertible car seat. We would not buy a baby carrier that an infant would outgrow in a couple of months and decided we would get carriers later which we could try with the baby. We listened to advice but discarded some. We changed our minds later, like with cloth diapers and lately with a baby box.  We decided since there’s not much room for a changing station, we would pack all the toiletries, some clothes and diapering stuff in a box with a handle that we could easily move around or store away.

We bought baby books from Amazon and some great titles from goodwordkidz available in Islamic bookstores. I found good buys at Kassim Mosque and Darul. Amazon is cheaper than local bookstores even with shipping and some titles are not available here. We have mixed emotions about flashcards, and though I crafted some as they were so much fun, we did not buy any nor have solid plans to flashcard our baby on a regular basis as we believe that lots of play, speech, cuddles and kisses are what babies are about. Elimination communication makes sense to me but sounds like a whole lot of work and something I imagine to be difficult at night.

Some resources:

For second hand items which you could be lucky to get in brand new condition:

singapore expat classifieds. We bought a momsinmind sarong carrier, brand new for S$10, a whole bundle of newborn clothes (carter’s, mothercare, target etc, 60 pieces for S$120) and the crib. All from a really nice Australian couple. 

 

For our carseat:

babymeadows, we bought the maxi cosi dori for S$238 though we received the whole sales pitch on buying something 3x the price. Saying NO is not an issue for me, but if you’re a little soft hearted and easily swayed, please go with someone who can say NO NO NO. We viewed the item online then went to the store to pay a deposit before collecting it a few days later at Katong Mall. Katong Mall also has a 24H Cold Storage with easy parking and an awfully chocolate, great for midnight groceries and a chocolate fix!

For playpen:

Toy’s R Us, they have a “we’ll pay you the difference if you find our items cheaper somewhere else”. We bought a Graco. (PS. Yati, the cot looks familiar rite?? Imitation is the greatest form of flattery!!)

For books:

Amazon and goodwordbooks. I’ll post some great titles another time.

For the baby box:

Mothercare on sale S$45 (this was really difficult to find and I still thought it was overpriced for a plastic box!)

For cloth diapers:

whoopikiddies for diaper covers and prefolds. Its so much cheaper than bumwear. I bought the infant size from Bumwear than decided I needed a larger size so I bought the premium prefolds and a couple of diaper covers. Erm and some rainbow leg warmers. I’m happy with my purchases and whoopikiddies, I received my order by mail after a week of ordering online. When the package was mailed out I received an email to make the payment by bank transfer. The package arrived in perfect condition the very next day after I received the email.

The size of the infant prefolds compared to the larger premium prefolds.

 Who wouldn’t want rainbow legs?

Baby clothes would take another looooooooooooong post. I stumbled upon some really really great little shops and pushcarts with some special finds.

 

Now I really have to wash the dishes and sort the laundry.

Blog break

It will be a couple of weeks till the start of my maternity leave and an exciting new phase in our lives. I will leave this space for a while. Perhaps I’ll be back when I’m on leave, perhaps a little longer than that..

 

 

Meanwhile, for my Muslim friends, Ramadan Mubarak!

Eating out

H and I have generally come to a consensus that Arabic food in Singapore is pretty much awful unless you are willing to pay thru your nose for meagre portions of meat at a high end restaurant usually with a huge and colourful bar, blasting Arabic music and a fat belly dancer. Having said that, there are places which we do go to and quite enjoy though they have received mixed reviews from food bloggers.

Having had to increase my meat intake due to iron issues and anemia in pregnancy, we’ve been having more than our usual dose of kebabs lately. I am completely intolerant to chilli right now due to heartburn and a growing belly so spicy Malay meat dishes are ruled out. Its been kebab, kebab and more kebab eating out, much to H’s carnivorous delight.

Our usual haunts are:

Anatolia Turkish Restaurant

-I actually secretly go for the kanafeh, rather that the meat, a sweet shredded phyllo pastry filled with stretchy turkish white cheese and drenched in syrup. I usually ask for the syrup to be served separately and get a huge bowl of it served on the side. The chef tends to be a little generous. I asked for some tomato sauce and yogurt to go with my kebab once and got two huge soup bowls of each sauce. If you don’t ask for the syrup to be served separately, its really drenched with syrup, it is literally swimming in it and is really really sweet.

Photo from a greek food website

-The service has improved over the years. We didn’t go for a long time as we were really disappointed with the slow service and cold food. But things have changed recently and service is prompt, the food is good and the portions fair for the price paid

-I discovered that they started selling Turkish cheese in the small display counter by the cashier. Haloumi is so much cheaper than at Cold Storage and they sell Turkish white cheese which I’ve not seen sold elsewhere in Singapore. The cheese is sold in 250g-1kg packages and all have turkish words on them. Ask the manager and he’ll recommend their best sellers, which I still have not figured out the names, he describes them as mild, a little stronger and similar vague words. You’ll find it helpful to ask him, which cheese goes on the pide, and which is in the kanafeh, to get a rough idea how the cheese tastes. They only accept cash for the cheese and use a separate invoice from the main restaurant’s so be prepared. We didn’t have enough to pay for the stash we bought, so the manager actually let us take the cheese without paying at all asking us to return when we had the cash. We came back a week later to pay.

Kebab Station

-we usually go to the Parkway branch so I can’t comment on the one at East Coast Park which is the main branch. You can check out this review

-At Parkway, they have a makeshift kiosk which is open air so would be hot in the midafternoon

-I love this dish called the “gravy potato” which is slices of kebab drenched in toamto sauce served with mashed potatoes covered with cheese on a hot plate. Its always well done by the same chef, this young turkish guy who seems to run a one man show in the tiny open kitchen.  You have to be prepared to wait for our order though. H always runs over to buy some fries from Macs to go with the meal. Fries isn’t on their menu if I remember correctly. Since we’re quite regular, they don’t seem to mind us eating something not bought from the kiosk (we’ve not been kicked out so far..).

 

The above food kiosk is currently closed ?due to surrounding construction works outside Parkway when I last passed by on 11/8/09

Shiraz

-this restaurant at Merchant’s court also owns two small kiosks in Merchant Court. One sells kebab and is just a couple of shops down and opposite the Hagen Daaz. The kebabs are good though a warning, do NOT order the spicy chicken kebab, it is so spicy, it kills the taste of the entire kebab.

-the down side is there’s no proper seating, its a place you grab the kebab and go. There are a few tall chairs and 3 small round tables in front of the kiosk but its almost always occupied. Though the kebabs are good and the portions generous, the location is not such a pleasant place in the evenings. They start selling only at 7 pm and as the night progresses, this place gets packed with pub crawlers and blasting music.

 

These are my random thoughts on places that we often visit and a reply to the question I’m always asked, where can we eat good Arabic food? Let me know your thoughts if you’ve tried any of the places.

Black and white and cloth diapers

Clear cellophane is a nice way to show off what’s inside your gift box. Recycled giftbox as shown in previous post.

Place a card with your message on the items before you wrap the box with cellophane. Punch pinpoint holes onto card with a handy pinpoint craft puncher, one of my most used punchers and thread string to secure card in place. Ignore grammatical error and ugly handwriting on card.

More baby talk:

H and I recently decided that we were going to cloth diaper our little one when she came along. I remember cloth diapers vaguely in childhood as my younger two siblings were cloth diapered. I remember them in “plastic pants” or diaper covers which were basically yup, plastic underwear used to waterproof their diapers. As a child I had no recollection of how they look pooped in or how my mom or the Indonesian helper cleaned them.

Cloth diapers popped up when we were out with Husaini one day and he bought a diaper cover for his new baby. Now Husaini may be a serious looking family doctor but H and I know he’s a little loopy and he’s description of cloth diapering was just too strange. I remember asking him how he cleaned the poo off. And he replied he “brushed” it off in the toilet before laundering. This puzzled me greatly. I remember asking H later, what do you mean he brushed it off, like with a toothbrush? My sense of logic couldn’t figure it out, like poo=sticky, brush it off sounds like it was dry? Then again, maybe its a man thing. When he describes how to cook something I always look at him strange too like ..?

Cloth diapers popped into mind again when I remarked to my mother in law how expensive disposable diapers are. She then said that newborns should be cloth diapered as it was better for their skin. I brushed the thought away as I had so many negative ideas about cloth diapering, the largest thought that loomed in my mind was the LAUNDERING. I hate washing up, its one of the things I detest about cooking and the thought of WASHING diapers was even more repellant. Among things that are in capital letters that I dislike are cleaning and ironing.

Then somewhere along the way, I bumped into bumwear on a blog. There’s a detailed article on “why cloth diaper?”. I read the stuff on the site, wasn’t entirely convinced that I could do it and wandered into the store one day. What really really sold me were how incredibly soft the diapers were. If you would choose between cloth or plastic underwear, which would you choose?

I feel that this picture summarizes my diapering plans for the first month. You start with a rectangular cloth thats called a prefold, this is a specially sewn cloth diaper with a three panels, the middle panel being the thickest panel of 8 layers and the side panels of 4 layers of cloth. You then fold it as demonstrated or simply into 3, parallal to the panels so you get a long strip and stuff it into the diaper cover as in the bottom left picture. You then velcro it on the baby and its done.

More diaper covers from Bumwear, we bought white and hot pink:

If you want to just leave the baby in cloth diapers without the diaper covers in the day time, you don’t have to use safety pins to secure the diaper, use a Snappi instead.

If you’re worried about poo, which I am, very worried about (remember all the capital letters above), there are nappy liners:

 These are disposable. thow them away when there’s poo on them. And if they’re just peed on, you can run it in your laundry with the cloth diapers and reuse them.

 We also bought a couple of onesize pocket diapers from Bumwear because the designs were so cute. More about pocket diapers soon.

The total costs after shopping at Bumwear was:

24 white prefolds (these are the cloth diapers shown in the first picture) + 2 free (1 free for every dozen bought)

-S$2.70 x 24= S$64.80

100 sheets Tollyjoy nappyliners

-S$9.90 (i bought 2 boxes in Carrefour later for S$11.90!)

2 diaper covers, hot pink and white

-S$20 x 2 =S$40(I plan to get more of these cheaper here, its S$13 each, not sure of the quality tho so will keep u updated)

2 Snappies in a pack

-S$6.50

2 one size pocket diapers (more on pocket diapers later)

-S$27 x 2= S$54

6 inserts for the pocket diapers

-$7×6=S$42

 

The total cost was S$217.20 which I think can tide us thru the first few months though we still need another 2-4 diaper covers. Considering that using disposables will your baby is potty trained is estimated to be about S$2000 and the investment in cloth diapers is estimated to be about S$700, its still more economical to cloth diaper.

 

Of course being a first time parent, I have no idea if my diapering plans will work out, but I think with a little bit of information, its do-able. I don’t think I would ever have thought myself of being a cloth diapering parent but with the modern cloth diapers available, its easier and more convenient than it was in the past. Even parent who used disposables have made the switch.

 

For my food loving friends, I’m sorry this post has no food in it, but with all the posts on happygrub, its about something I believe in, and would love to share!

I eat two eggs a week

And thats during a weekend breakfast. Breakfast was eggs scrambled with tomato and two slices of toast. The bread is called “Singapore Local Bread”. Cute.

 

Its August and I have 3 weddings, 3 birthdays and 2 other events to attend in the next 3 weekends and then its Ramadan!