Goodbye 2009 and Hello 2010!

Was spending some time with God today and suddenly this picture came into my mind. That when the winds of life are blowing, I need to hold on to the Rock, the one who won´t be blown away no matter what. 2009 has been very difficult for me in many aspects. I get discouraged very often and wonder if God hears my prayers and cries.

I can´t tell you how happy I am that 2009 is over! Am really looking forward to a better 2010.

Am listening to Joel Osteen now and feel so inspired in my spirit.

I am not down and defeated, I can rise up in God. May you have a great start to the New Year 2010!

Snapshots of our Christmas

In front of the huge Christmas tree in church. I was wearing my new "Chanel-lookalike" suit from Pimkie that was bought at 50% discount!

In front of the Christmas tree at my in-laws with a sick hubby. My hubby was sick the entire time that my friends were in Germany. Don´t ask me how I managed to hold the fort by myself. Perhaps that´s why I´m sick now. Have a fever at 38.6 degrees and slight cough. Such a bummer! I was sick last New Year´s Eve too! Really hope it doesn´t become a tradition that I fall sick on the last day of the year!

Raclette with a bit of twist. This time we had 2 raclette sets so we decided to have an Asian side and a Western side. Needless to say, the Asian side had seafood like prawns, grilled vegetables etc. The western one had the typical grilled pork. I really love my new raclette set!

The present opening took forever! This was the first time we saw SO many presents under the Christmas tree! I bought a Nespresso coffee set for my sweetie, knowing that he literally adores this! If only I can grow to like coffee....guess for now decaf. would have to do for me.

Look at the immense number of presents under the tree!

Had a great time with you! Thanks for visiting! Till London!

The joy one derives upon seeing the expression on peoples´faces that they like their presents is priceless!

This is the coffee machine I bought. Its red and comes with a milk foam machine.Now I just need to read the instructions on how to make Latte Macchiato / Cappuccino...

Yet another Christmas with my beanie

German Christmas Markets

We had visitors over for Christmas. Belinda, who came last year, visited us again - her 2nd time. :) Other than my Dad, she´s the only repeat visitor to our little Stuttgart city. Cynthia and her hubby decided to spend Christmas with us, so they popped by our place in the middle of their honeymoon. Ain´t that so cool? For the first time, we had 4 Singaporeans and 4 Germans at one dining table.

Above: A shop that sells "wild boar specialities"

We brought them to the Esslingen Christmas market which has the medieval theme. Its smaller than that in Stuttgart, but more interesting in terms of the choice of food and things you can do. There´s even a play section where children and adults alike can take part in fun-fair type of games.

A rare photo of all 5 of us. Pity that the photo was a bit shaky

Enjoying a cup of Glühwine (warm herbal wine) with my sweetie. The Glühwine warms up your stomach immediately! Sweet, warm but very lethal!

One of the many beautiful stores there

All that medieval pottery and hands-on tools. The little boy was giving the man a helping hand in sawing the wood 

Me and my dear friend Belinda at the Christmas market in Stuttgart. So thankful it wasn´t  freezing on that day - about zero degrees.

That´s super yummilicious desserts! The one on the left is some fried potato pancakes with apple jam-custard (Kartoffel Puffer mit Apfelmus) and the one on the right is some dough with vanilla sauce and cinnamon sprinkled on it (Germ Knödeln) Must-haves at Christmas markets!

That´s the massive Christmas tree in Stuttgart, in front of the city hall

As I said, German Christmas markets are world-class. Never get tired of it, even though its my 4th Christmas here now. :) The smell of cinnamon, roasted nuts, crepes, barbecued sausages, Glühwine permeating the air is enough to send you to 7th heaven! And its such a respite from being cooped up in your house in the evenings because everything´s cold and dark after 5pm! But yeah, hubby said that the shortest day has already passed and it will only get brighter from now on!

We wish you a (belated) Merry Christmas

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

This is so funny, you got to turn on your volume. :) Thanks Dad!

Oatmeal Chocolate and Raisins Cookies

How was your Christmas? Mine was awesome! Had 3 guests over from Singapore and everyday was lovely! Went to the Christmas markets, ate a lot, opened a lot of presents.... can´t believe the week just passed like that! I have lots of photos to process, so before that, here´s a superb recipe for cookies! Easy as pie, chewy and delicious. Only tedious part is perhaps the rolling of the dough into balls.

How do you like the 2 shots? Belinda taught me how to use the macro function on my camera - focussing on the foreground and blurring the background. It´s so fun and the photos turn out so artistic that I´m definitely going to experiment with it more often.

This recipe yields around 150 medium-sized cookies. Great to wrap in transparent bags as small gifts or just to eat it yourself!

Ingredients:-

- 500 grams softened butter

- 225 grams castor sugar

- 400 grams brown sugar

- 4 eggs

- 1 tsp vanilla sugar

- 500grams flour

- 400 grams blended Oatmeal

- 1 tsp salt

- 2 tsp baking powder

- 2 tsp baking soda

- Chocolate bits from normal chocolate

- Raisins

1) Cream butter and 2 sugars. Pay attention not to make it too dry. Mixture should still be a bit wet and sticky.

2) Add the rest of the ingredients

3) Roll into balls and place 2 inches apart on cookie sheet

4) Bake 10-15 mins at 180 degrees

I made 3 different types - Raisins, Chocolates, Raisins and Chocolates together. My fave has got to be the last one.

Revamp of my blog.... it´s about time!

As you would have noticed, I changed my blog template and finally managed to upsize my photos to XL!!!! Ohmigosh. I have my sister to thank really. It was through her that I realized that there´s such a thing as "XL" photos. The old template only offered S,M,L sizes but no XL. That´s when I went on the hunt for updates of blogger features and went to change my template too!

Can´t tell you how much joy and excitement I have right now!!! Its ALWAYS been my dream to have BIG photos! However, there´s too many photos to upsize. Hence, I´ve only changed the sizes of my holiday photos.... Do take a look here! They look awesome! Suddenly the pictures almost look 3-D!

How do you like the new look? Enjoy the last few days to Christmas! We´re picking up 3 of my friends tomorrow who will spend Christmas with us.

We went to the Porsche Arena last week to watch "Holiday on Ice". It has always been my dream to watch ice-skating shows live and this was a superb first-ever experience for us.

Even the hubby who had to be persuaded to go for this show agreed that he was impressed by the overall performance of the cast. The storyline was blah-blah, relating to some futuristic finding-an energy-source inside of you theme, but the other stuff was great!

Great performance, props and sound effects. This reminds me of Christmas in Singapore when I would usually watch Ice-skating shows on TV. So its really cool that I get to do it in real-life in Germany. :)

It´s beginning to look like Christmas

A few more days left to Christmas!

I have bought all my Christmas presents and sent all my overseas cards yesterday. One more day of work on Monday and I´ll be welcoming 3 of my Singaporean friends - one from London and 2 from Singapore, who´d be here for their honeymoon.

This would also mark my 4th Christmas in Germany. I´m getting used to the cold - slowly but surely. That doesn´t mean that I don´t freeze though. I still shiver in the cold, but I know that the coldest months WILL pass and give way to spring.

In the meantime, snowing makes Christmas even more magical!!! :) Here´s to a white Christmas!


What it looked like this morning....

... it´s snowing cats and dogs here!!!! Wee.....

The Advent wreath that we bought in church, to support JAM

My birthday bouquet of flowers from the hubby, which completely matches the colour of the Advent wreath and Christmas tree in the living room!

Our beautiful live Christmas tree, with lots of presents underneath. Half of them are still unopened from my birthday, since I´m relinquishing the joy of opening my 24 presents from my "birthday wreath".

Oh and in case you haven´t noticed, I managed to post a different blog entry every single day for the past week! :) Yippee. That said, I probably won´t be able to post much over Christmas since we´re having guests over.

Here´s wishing all of my blog readers a really Merry Christmas. May you enjoy this festive season knowing that God loves you and Jesus was born on this day to show us what love is. His eyes are upon you! Wish you a wonderful time with loved ones! :)

Fried Vietnamese Spring Rolls

For my birthday party, I tried out something new. These rolls are called "Imperial" since they used to be eaten by royalty.

It was soo tempting to buy them from the Asian store in packets of 50 rolls for about 18€. Everything would have been done and I would only have had to deep-fry them. Plus they came directly from Vietnam, so they would have been authentic.

However, there´s no satisfaction in eating ready-made stuff, so I decided to roll up my sleeves and try out this new recipe.

I have no idea how Beaulotus does it, but oh boy! It was sooo much work! The rolling mainly.

The filling which I seasoned overnight in the fridge

Wrapping them up individually - took forever!

What they look like wrapped up. Not bad eh? Very neat.

The rolls ready to be fried. Looks so nice here, but its just one big mess later, with all that oil!

Frying in the hot oil

I forgot to take any photos of the cooked rolls as they were gone so quickly. I didn´t fry all of them (hoping to keep some for myself) but my guests liked them so much that when I offered to give them some food to bring back home, they requested for the rolls so there went my "leftovers".

Still, it was great to see my first attempt so successful!

Ingredients:-
- Carrots (juliennend)
- Minced pork (500grams)
- Rice vermicelli (250grams)
- Crab Meat (250grams)
- Black fungus mushrooms
- Chinese mushrooms
- Onion (diced)
- 2 Eggs
- Salt
- Pepper
- Light soy sauce (I used generously, 5-6 tbsp)
- Dry Sherry (2 tbsp)
- Sesame Oil (A dash)

Dipping sauce
- 8 tbsp Fish sauce
- 4 cloves minced Garlic
- Carrots (julienned)
- Chilli (chopped)
- Lime Juice from 1 lime
- 6 tsp white wine vinegar
- 6 tbsp sugar
- 1.5cup water

1) Marinate everything together overnight in the fridge

2) Prepare the dipping sauce in advance to let the taste of the ingredients soak in the liquid

3) Wrap the ingredients in the Vietnamese rice paper - You need to soak them in warm water before use. This takes a bit of getting used to, but it becomes easier with practise

4) Fry the Nems in hot oil

5) Eat the Nems wrapped in fresh lettuce, dipped into the prepared sauce.

Almost done. This is the last photo I have of the rolls

Tip: If you prepare them in advance, like I did, you can simply remove them from the freezer and grill them in the oven for about 15-20mins at 200 degrees celsius til crispy / fry them again.
Recipe adapted from http://www.beaulotus.blogspot.com/

Singing for Africa

Last Tuesday, we did something good!

Together with our German cell group, the young people we´ve been meeting up with regularly over the past 3 years, we sang Christmas carols along the busiest shopping street in Stuttgart to raise funds for charity.

We´ve been celebrating Christmas by having your usual potluck and gift exchange. Its always nice to end your year like this, but we decided that we wanted to get off our butts to do something different this year.

The option was either to visit a Children hospital or sing carols to collect donations for JAM - the organisation adopted by our church to feed children in Africa. The latter won since we would have had to come up with a proposal for the former and we didn´t have enough time for that.

Just before we started - Boy, temperatures were sub-zero and I was shivering from both the cold and the apprehension. Christmas hats, posters, tin cans, flyers in hand and off we went!
Doesn´t my sweetie look cute in his Christmas hat?

Overall I must say that it was a good experience. Good because we did something together as a cell group that required us to get out of our comfort zone to do something for a good cause and for God too!- Since we did sing of the birth of Jesus after all.

Some tourists from South Africa were so overwhelmed that we were raising funds for Africa that they joined us in our singing for a while! Really hilarious!

That said, we met some not-so-nice people who were rude. But that´s understandable since there are so many people asking for donations around Christmas time.

There were 12 of us in total and everybody gave their 110% effort. :) Perhaps next year we might opt for something more "effective" like baking stuff and selling them at the one-day Christmas markets in smaller towns.

We sang in the middle of the Christmas market in Stuttgart. If you think this photo looks nice, wait til you see the photos I´ll take when my friends come over for a visit. The German Christmas markets are seriously world-class!

Happy birthday to me

So today´s my official birthday, even though I celebrated it last Saturday.

Truth be told, I really feel old this time round. I don´t know why. Up till 26, I still felt "young" but the 7 in the 27 makes it feel like "late twenties"....yikes!

Okok, I don´t want to offend anybody, but just had to express how I feel.

Still I had an awesome birthday party! It was a pretty cozy group, about 20 people and I cooked Asian food. I forgot to take a photo of the food, but we had Vietnamese imperial nems, ginger and turmeric chicken wings, beef stew, Singapore chicken curry, parma ham and melon, cheesecake and other desserts.

I spent Thursday and Friday cooking, so the entire Saturday was spent cleaning the entire house and making the place beautiful.

Really enjoyed the company of close friends during this special time. :) Makes me feel more at home in Germany.
My beautifully-decorated table! Notice me in the mirror?

Notice the utensils placed in glasses lined with blue serviettes? I learnt that here...

Stephan was in charge of buying wines so he got the entire "Gallo" family and one yellow tail wine from Australia

He´s got to be the cutest baby in a jumper suit! He´s turned 6 mths so quickly and is going back to Japan for Christmas.....

The Nishimura-Wong family / Serene and Olav, Serene´s Singaporean too

Kerstin, superbly-cool gal / The Kallenbergers (new friends we made this year)

Some of our guests! Its becoming a tradition to take photos in front of our door!

This is a basket filled with presents - like an Advent´s calendar except that instead of chocolates, there are little presents with accompanying messages. Isn´t this sooo sweet?

Present given to me by Serene and Gerline! Serene knitted this herself! Awesome! Its so nice and warm. Thanks a LOT! :)