An affair with mooncakes

Mid-autumn festival ~ time of the year whereby mooncakes are making their presence in the society. As I used to grow up in a kampong (yes, you're reading it correctly, i stayed in Lim Chu Kang area since birth till aged 6), mid autumn festival is one of the festivals I have fond memories of (beside CNY) .... lighting candles in the courtyard, hanging paper lanterns on the tree branches while I carry the battery-operated hello-kitty (with music) lantern and playing with my cousins.... eating mooncakes and pomelo, awww, those were the days :)

Anyway, started this year's mooncake "appreciation" with a sample packaging from Raffles Hotel

Baked (mini) mooncake with pine nuts, macadamia nuts and lotus paste. I love the crunchiness of the pine nuts though I am not a fan of traditional mooncakes. However, Raffles Hotel nv fails to impress me with their Snowskin mooncakes with Champagne Truffle & Ganache :)

All courtesy of Leecher :) At this point, you guys must be thinking he is sooooo sweet rite? No lo, he bought it for my mum, cuz my mum likes the mooncakes, wa ha ha .... ok, to give him credit, he bought a box of Raffles Cognac Truffle for me to try too (awww....so sweet :P *pukes*) I totally love the snowskin, ever so soft though it has been in the fridge for 2-3 days. Packaging-wise, not so impressive but my mum likes the purple box (given that its her fave colour)

Raffles Hotel even hopped onto the bandwagon (apart from Goodwork park hotel and many more) to introduce environmental-friendly bags for their mooncakes, not a bad idea @ all, walking advertisement all year round if people chose to use their bags.

I bought the fairmont snowskin selection for my mum to try out

Nice packaging, in the cheongsam series. They comes in 2 different colours - striking fuschia and turquoise boxes (for the youngsters), red and gold (for the older generation). The box even comes with a mirror, pretty pretty :)

8 mini snowskin mooncakes selection, the colours quite pretty rite?

4 flavours to choose from - strawberry & dark chocolate, Rum & Rasin, Champagne Truffle & Chocolate Ganache and Bailey's chocolate. Hmm... have to say that though the packaging looks impressive, but mooncake-wise, there's still room for improvement. The snowskin tends to harden in just 2 days. Champagne Truffe was not bad, but pales in comparison with that from Raffles Hotel. Bailey's and Rum & Raisin was a tad too strong for my liking. My vote will go to strawberry & dark chocolate, though it tastes quite sweet (perhaps due to the lotus paste).

Besides the snowskin mooncakes, I also placed orders for traditional baked mooncakes for Leecher's family and my corporate clients (thanks to FMQ for the corporate deals)

Red & Gold packaging for my corporate clients - decided that it will look more presentable :)

Mooncake from swissotel, shaped like a peach :)

Peach-shaped Single Yolk & Macadamia Nuts in White Lotus Paste

The only thing I like abt tradition mooncake - egg yolk! High in cholesterol, but heck ... :)

Another box of mooncakes that I got for Leecher's family: Kia Hiang snowskin selection.

Wooden packaging somehow stands out differently amongst the crowd of paper/aluminium packing. It sure weights a lot more though. My hands nearly went numb carrying 4 such boxes back to the office

9 mini snowskin mooncakes in 5 different flavours - durian (as per Leecher's request), green tea, blueberry & cheese, chocolate with macadamia nuts and rum, black & white sesame mousse. Apparently, they're quite famous for their durian mooncakes (though I didn't know of this brand till FMQ introduced it to me). Very generous with their fillings as well, it literally oozes out once you sliced the mooncakes :)

I got a box of Kia Hiang traditional low sugar mooncakes for my great-grandmother

3 different flavours - red lotus paste with yolk, orange lotus paste with walnut & yolk, rose lotus paste with macadamia & yolk.

The FENICS team got a box of mooncake to call our own, courtesy of Eric :)

Had to rack my brains to think of what mooncake to get from the booths @ Change Alley. Finally, settled on Peach Blosoms

4 flavours - Jap sweet potato, durian, black sesame and avocado. The black sesame rocks while Andrew prefers the avocado.

It's time for me to leech on others' mooncakes .... (just borrowed them to take pics, hahaa)

Bakerzin Mooncakes

Tower Club Mooncakes

Think I have had enough of mooncakes for this year, till next yr :)

Picnic @ Botanic Garden

Leecher & Blamer are off for their 2nd picnic :) decided to try something different on a lazy Sunday afternoon, so I suggested going for a picnic @ Botanic Gardens

This outing doesn't come easy though....

*rewind back to 2 hrs before we actually meet up*

First, when Leecher was making his 爱心 "Leecher Sandwich" @ his place (using the ingredients that I paid with MY money), it was raining over @ my place. So I told Leecher to take his time since I needed time to get ready too.

1.5 hrs has passed ... Bright & sunny @ my place. I was all set and ready to go off ~ Leecher called ...

Leecher: eh (didn't even bother to call me darling or what-so-ever), it's thunderstorm @ my place leh
Me: hmm, I set off first, since my journey time is longer than urs. You just continue to wait for the rain to become lighter.
Leecher: ok, see u
***********
The rain decided to play another trick on us by choosing to rain (slightly) just when we're stepping foot into the garden :( how to picnic like that? so we walked to the food court and waited ... take pics first den talk, hahaa

looks botanic garden-ish in the background? :P

Waited for 1/2 hr before we decided to venture into the park, but which direction to go?

Of cuz it's back to the same spot whereby we picnic-ed last time ... can feel the peaceful aura?

Normally, there will be a lot of pple picnic-ing on this huge patch of grass, but due to the rain previously, everyone retreated to the pavilions. However, the trees are there for a reason, rite? So we continue to picnic under the tree and surprisingly, well-sheltered from the slight drizzle :)

See, so empty behind us. Heck, we can have the whole field to ourselves, haha ... We're super hard-core in picnic-ing :)

Unrevealing our picnic "basket"... comes equipped with forks, spoons, plastic glass, napkins, knifes and a bottle opener, which Leecher has decided to put it to good use

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to open the bottle of beer that he brought along

The mini radio & UNO cards that we brought to have some fun. I decided to be healthy and go with my orange juice

It's time for the 爱心 "Leecher Sandwich" to make its appearance :) *I didn't have a clue on what it contains nor looks like at this pt*

so excited ~

Unwrapping the aluminum foil with caution, dunno if it looks nice/edible or not??

Gasp, surprised that it turned out so well! *utter shockness*

Posing with my love sandwich, wa ha ha

Taking the first bite, YUMMY!

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Leecher decided that he also wants to act "surprised" at receiving the sandwich, LAME duck.

Ok la, give him credit for making the sandwich looks edible (in fact, pretty good) *heehee*

Wa, the sandwich got 层次感, not bad sia ....

In case you guys think I went empty-handed rite, you're so wrong - hahaha

I got asked my mum to help me prepare this prawn & egg treat... LOL. Supposed to be a salad thingy, but we ran out of salad sauce @ home, so have to eat it just like that, hahaa :P

Prawn wrapped in vegetables with egg ...

Leecher decided to go healthy after finishing his beer, DUH?

Enjoying the after-rain sun underneath the tree, playing UNO with the loser having to finish up the left-over food, lying down and reading magazines side-by-side - simply bliss, esp with Leecher by my side *shy shy*

We spent the whole afternoon just lazing around (aka nua-ing), so relaxed ^_^ ... wanted to walk around the garden but nua-ness took over our hearts/minds and we decided to just pack up and go home, hahahaa ...

However, we did visit the Swan Lake on the way out ....

only 2 swans left in the lake .... I wonder if the swans are cob (male) or pen (female)? If not, how come no cygnet(s) around after soooooo long?

Pics with the swans (who decided to turn their backs as soon as we wanted to pose for pictures, idiot rite)

And lastly .....

Leaving our footprints, once again, at Botanic Gardens :)

*YEAH*

Chef Leecher

Last weekend, decided to do something different with Blamer.

Ta Da, all the ingredients for a wonderful picnic.

A step by step guide to making the "Leecher Sandwich"

Step 1: lay out the soft white bread

Step 2: line the bread with gourmet picnic ham

Step 3: Cheese for strong bones!

Step 4: Button mushrooms for the "mushroom swiss" feel

Step 5: pop into the oven for 5 mins. Woo... just look at the melted cheese : )

Step 6: cut up the pan-fried egg

Step 7: Onto the bread

Step 8: Time for the veges, by the way, I cut the vege myself ok...

Step 9: Plus the cucumbers, oso cut by me ha ha

Step 10: More greens... ...

Step 11: Bread toasted to perfection with the grill marks and a nice golden brown color

爱心 "Leecher Sandwich" beautifully wrapped and ready for our picnic! (Blamer will write more abt our outing later, too tired after making the sandwiches)