Secretaries' Week

Ok, so I am a little un-PC. But I don't understand all the nonsense about calling them admin executives and what-nots. Anyhow, a couple of us from work took the chance to go out together for a nice lunch at Lenas in Bugis. Yes, since Evelyn and Joanne joined us, it seems that eating is what we do all the time! It will be a challenge not to put on weight when I am constantly assailed with offers of home-made fresh garlic toast, biscuits, pots of tea and nachos with cheese dip!

Alright enough words. On to pictures of my lunch. Everyone thought the way I tried to capture memories of what I ingested was très amusant. How else would I remember if a place was good?

The salad came with a really tasty creamy cheese dressing and more than one of us were dipping our toasted bread in the leftover sauce. I had spicy aglio olio smoked duck linguine for my main course.

Coffee which came in between starters and my main. Without the oreo. That's when all of us approached the waitress to ask why the rest had one but I didn't. She was very apologetic and promptly served me my cookie in the middle of my meal.

I did NOT eat this alone. As you can see from the number of spoons, this was a shared dessert. Brownie with marshmallows with chocolate sauce a la mode in a hot pan.

 

Marutama Ramen

This is one of the first places where I remember having ramen. Yup, my noodle obsession grows by the day. I have been here a handful of times and quite liked the place at first. Now that I've had ramen in a couple of other places, this would not be my first choice in ramen shops. In general it was still good and the noodles were springy, just the right texture. I must say though that the soup is a bit more oily and salty than I'm used to.

The Ugly Truth

I like romantic comedies. I like Katherine Heigl. There were lots of stereotypes in this movie, but it was good for a bunch of laughs. Not like it's a manual in how to get and keep a relationship. In the end, I think they were just 2 clueless people who ended up falling in love with each other. That's good enough for me.

Brioche

After months of researching, reading and mulling over it, I finally got enough nerve to try baking bread. More specifically, brioche. While I was at it, I might as well make the most finicky version right? So here is the "rich man's" brioche. More like cake than bread and probably similar in artery-clogging effect.

 

For once, I decided to be like the food bloggers and have my mise en place instead of haphazardly running about the kitchen gathering ingredients. Most likely inspired by the first attempt at making bread which resulted in the discovery at 2am that there was no yeast in the house. Thankfully adding yeast to milk is the first step in the recipe.

Attempt #1 aka the trial run - it tastes good! A little more like cake than bread but there was a nice crumb.

Honestly, anything with that amount of butter would taste good. Satisfied that it was of sufficient quality to give to J&C and Pastors, it was on to batch #2. What I actually did was to make one big batch and halve it. The first batch was tested on family, friends and colleagues. The other half batch was frozen and defrosted so I could bake it on the weekend I wanted to give it to J&C and Pastors. That turned out to be a better idea as the dough was able to proof for an extended period of time and resulted in a better texture.

This time I remembered to take a photo before the bread was baked! Well. sort of anyway, this was taken through the glass of the oven door.

I had some nice chocolate ganache left over from another baking project, so that went into the bread. Pain au chocolat. Yum! The remaining dough was shaped into pull apart buns. *just in case, say, someone didn't like chocolate bread.* Don't ask me why I thought anyone would not like chocolate bread. In any case, here's what the innards of a loaf look like:

 

Sorry for the crap image, my phone doesn't work well under low lighting conditions.

Finally, all prettied up and ready for gifting!

Surrogates

Caught the sneak preview of the movie. Yay to competitions and free tickets!

Good thing too that the tickets were free. While the movie wasn't bad, it was fairly slow-moving at times. At one point I even leaned over to my friend and announced that I was going to sleep.

It was mindless entertainment and I spent most of the time trying to identify the surrogates from the real people. Which was not that difficult. After thinking about it just a little, I realised that all that pseudoscience babble in the show just totally does not make sense. Well, as my boss aptly put it, it's just a movie, it requires you to suspend belief in the basic laws of reality. Let's just say I preferred watching AI or Simone, watching this once was enough.

At least I had fun hanging out.

Work weirdness

I was out yesterday at bugis with some friends at this art, craft, gift & stationery shop. There I saw a cute stuffed yellow duck. Yup, if you're reading this you probably know my weakness for bright yellow stuffed ducks. This particular one had a rather oversized head which was tilted to one side. Almost immediately I started describing the poor duck's dysmorphism to my friend. Yes, work weirdness.

By the way, if you really wanna know, there was macrocephaly with a right torticollis. I'm referring the duck for physio!

Girls' Night Out

A couple of us girls had a chance to hang out with Cheryl for dinner. Woot! I'm constantly amazed how our leaders make the effort to take time out and catch up with us despite all they have on their plates. Speaking of plates...

First up, the obligatory shot of the tableware. I think I do this to distract myself when I can't decide what to order from the menu. My friend used to call it a displacement activity.

Cheryl's dinner

Janice's dinner

Jill's dinner

My dinner

For some reason I missed out Jie's meal. Think I didn't want to cause a ruckus by reaching halfway across the table just to take a picture. If i do find a snapshot of it, I'll put it up later.

Now for an honourable mention. Shan and her dinner.

Now you see it.

(Sorry the computer's not co-operating and  won't let me upload the picture!) Now you don't!

Oh... she's so gonna kill me!