ai xin zhao can

My 2nd post..hehe.
Ai xin zhao can by Yian.
Pancakes!
Woke up at 7am, make and mix the batter, fry it, top it up with jam and butter.
Yummy!


Yong xin de zai zuo gong ke.
Mrs Giorgio Armani and her 'lao gong'

first times...

My first post. haha.
I feel guilty letting the whole world know about my not contributing any words to the supposedly OUR blog.

Our attempts at western and chinese style fish dishes from the first fishes we bought in Milan.
Tastes wonderful:)


Making tangyuan has never been so fun and arty.
The more people the merrier!


Chocolat!
We brought Sixiu and Cindy to the nicest gelato shop that we have discovered.
Happy faces with our gelatos!
Pistachio.cioccolato fondente.arancia cioccolato.yogurt.nocciolo.casata di ricotta.ciocolato di latte...

Aperitivo@Bhangra.
RED walls and lighting.


Silly old fashioned photos.


Scary translucent heads.
Jumping with joy, full from aperitivo and cocktails, outside Cardona station.


Wanted to go church together with sixiu, cindy and yanling.
But..due to daylight saving, we calculated our timing wrongly and when we got out of the house, we were two hours late!
So, the initial picnic plans fell through and we had it in our cosy apartment using our table cloth as the picnic mat.


Nevertheless, we went to the park in the cold weather after the indoor picnic.
Our random posing shots along the way.






There were much lesser people this time round because of the weather, but it was great fun taking silly jumping and random posing shots, looking at cute ducks drink water, simply enjoying the nature.

To top off the day before our dear friends go back, we had yet another...
Feng sheng de yi dun wan can!
Finally cooked the pork chops that we bought at the start of the week.
Defrosted and marinated for a day.
Along with salad made from 'un kilo of latuga'(1kg of lettuce)and the other vegetables that we bought from the market.
Oh, and fried fries instead of the usual baked ones.

Finally one :) day

Throughout the week, we went to attend ALL the lessons we can one by one and wasn't too smooth in choosing what we want to study. One bad day after another.

So.. this saturday we decided to go explore Novate's weekend market,in hope of new findings.. ha.. at the sight of the fresh seafood and vegetables and fruits, all the week's unhappiness was gone..

SEAFOOD! Cheap somemore.. heavenly


Flowers and vegetables!


Food... some tomato fillings or ham and cheese fillings wrapped in a riso crust!
Delicious... and very very filling


TRying to clean the first fish we bought in Milan..


Stuffed refrigerator.. hopefully no more grocery shopping for a week!

Cindy and Sixiu attack to Milan

Couldn't bring them around in Friday as we had lessons to attend..
But, we brought them to our neighbour's birthday party at an Irish Pub at Porta Romana. There was belly dancing performance!

first guests..

Wei ann and zhiguang came over from UK to Italy to enjoy their Easter break.
Spent one day touring Milan with them before sending them off the next morning.

Discover some new places and i admit guys can navigate better!
Ha.. my husband...


The famous Bar brera and
A guy dunno why jus drove his car to Park Sempione to take a photo of his car and the scenery and attract darn a lot of attention and drove off..

Another 2 daring food attempts

Sweet & sour pork!
The colour looks too dark to be like our sweet & sour pork..
but the taste is really sweet and sour.. ha!


Our qing dan attempt: Porridge..
with Fergato (pork's liver!) something new in our diet!

Unexpected new findings in Milan

Visited the church for a 2nd time this sunday and finally listened to an English sermon by the female pastor of that Methodist church. It was good. there's even a welcome dinner at a member's house on the 29th! SOunds gd :)

In the morning, Meihua and I left gan and yan at home, thinking they will stay at home the whole day since gan had not woken up yet when we left.
Both of us in the end visited a park called Guardini Pubblici and the several musuems around it.
We feel like we are back in the first few days in Milan, being amazed at everything and triggered our cameras like mad once again. Finally we feel like tourist doing the sightseeing stuff once again, instead of feeling like housewifes doing the grocery shopping and cooking stuff.. so bear with the photos over load! ENJOY!

the park was very enjoyable cos the weather is good and it felt like a perfect place for family picnics and gatherings. Perfecto!




something we will never do in Singapore.


2 horses standing in the middle of the large park! Scary.
Planetario is a musuem for astronomy. Look at the long queue of people out there
waiting to go listen to a presentation on astronomy by a speaker!
First time i see a queue for a musuem! try queuing for our ACM! ha




Museo Civico di Storia Naturale is a musuem specially for natural creatures!
We specially waited for the free entry timing at 4.30pm! ha..
Went to explore the nearby area and found this hotel "for dressy events" (as described in lonely planet). ha.. ideas went wild about how we are going to get ourselves through the heavy black doors... Sheration Diana Majestic


Huge interior with amazing collections from minerals, to animal fossils, to plants, to analysis of mankind.. very worth the trip. Both of us felt wasted that they don't provide english explanations to their display. if not it'll be splendid!


Didn't eat lunch.. so as we see the minerals, we kept on describing them as food,
like "hey! that looks like chocolate flakes!", "hey! that looks like dragon fruit!", "that looks like chocolate chip icecream!"... ha...





We ended the day by taking the metro in hope that once we reached home we will have the table set and dinner ready. We were so wrong. We met gan and yan at the Novate train station. They too just came back from their tour to Parco Sempione. Oh man.. we still have to cook...........
Rice, fried vegetables, Honey glazed baked chicken &...


Steamed eggs! .. ha.. the darker and darker it gets.


We used our leftover caramel to coat our popcorns too! yummy!
didn't know it's so easy!!!


We always try to cook simple dinners... in the end.. it always end up in a multiple course meal.. can't help it.. ha

i-want-to-shop day

We have been holding back our shopping craving throughout the week until today!
It's really bad to shop on a weekend. all the shops are crowded and the fitting rooms
queue are ridiculous!

We arrived at Duomo and saw a large crowd with bright blue caps in the piazza.
Everyone was cheering and shouting.. in the end, we realised that they were watching
a rugby match between Italy and Ireland in the piazza! the atmosphere was really fun
and i could not imagine how packed Duomo was on the World cup's finals!


as usual, we begin with a hunt for good and cheap food first!



Off shopping! I bought a tee from H&M and Meihua bought a belt from a local departmental store called la Rinascente.

ha! a tribute to him! sorry for the "e" Meihua couldn't find an "o".
She specially photoshopped it for u! ha..
the puma shoe i really really like.. DROOLS...



Same routine: Go home cook dinner.
Aglio Olio spaghetti and linguine, honey lemon juice and baked blooming onion!

Food.. yes.. again

I m really sorry.. we didn't take any more photos other than our dinners & food.

This is to wrap up our tangyuan episode! white balls in the making.
We gave some to our neighbours and they love them and even how what it is made of.
Hope it is not out of courtesy or curiousity. hahaha



Our neighbours in Dahlia (our apartments have names of flowers running alphabetically, ours is Begonia), invited us over for dinner on Thursday.
Too engrossed in the wide spread of food, we didn't take any photos with them.
Ha.. there will definitely be more chances!

We cooked chicken rice to bring over as our contribution.
This is our spread the next night with some leftovers from the party.
The top left is my favourite! Lantiche i think. in english LENTILS with potato,
carrots, and sausages.
then stir-fried chicken, vegetables, leftover chicken rice, and qing dan pasta with
chicken broth!

Record breaking dinner preparation time

A bold attempt by all 4 of us. Mushroom, Sausage, Spinach Lasagna.
This summarises all the steps we took to make the Lasagna:

Squeezing Italian sausages out of their casings.
Boiling spinach and squeezing them dry.
Slicing one whole mountain of mushrooms.
Dicing several tomatoes.
Boiling the lasagna noodles.
Chopping basil leaves.
Frying the mushrooms and crumbling the sausages till dry.
Laying the layers of tomato sauce, cheese, meat, noodles.

1 hr plus of preparation & 1 hr plus of baking (till the oven is smokes).



Our dinner full of our patience and love. Beautiful and taste wonderful/


Our attempt at Caramel Apple Turnovers.
Supposed to roll grated cheese into white bread and cook apple with butter and sugar.
And drizzle caramel on it.
SOunds good? Everything is well & good, except for the bread being too dry and crumbling.
Taste wise, it's good.. :) the leftover caramel is still sitting on the kitchen top.


More indulgences. First Cream sauce pasta.
Red bean soup! Yanling is currently adding sugar to it now!
Will chuo tangyuan later and YEAh!


Successful half-boiled eggs! hurray!

Day 3 in Torino

We just can't have a day without some misfortune.
We tried to return the skis to JOLLYSPORT before 12.30pm.
to our horror, we realised they didn't open till 3.30pm on Mondays. (Laid back italians)

We carried all the equipment to their backyard, thinking of a solution to
pass time for the next 3 hours.
How optimistic can we be: Playing PSP at the backyd.

Clueless of what we should do, we decided to go for spirits-lifting
gelato in batches while waiting.
To our horror once again, the gate we get in by is locked!
Fortunately, a resident opened the gate for us as she's on the way out. PHEW!
Still optimistic, we left the scis there and headed for real this time to our favourite gelato. Since the gate will be locked, the left behind skis should be very safe.
Gelato at 1 Euros for 2 gusti (flavours!)
Super cheap, good variety and appealing flavours! SHIOK...


Once we stepped back to Milano, all 4 of us are really glad to be back in a
familiar setting and a safer one. In Torino, dunno if the people there are more
friendly or naughtier, a lot of random strangers will approach you to talk to you.
In metropolitian Milano, I guess the people here are more used to seeing people from
Asia, so they are less surprised to see such a big group of us together.
We need not worry too much about pickpockets here in Milano as compared to Torino
as well.. I have no idea why...


As usual, we are hungry during dinnertime.
A simple meal of onion fried with egg and fried cabbage, lettuce and carrots!
Invested in a apple pastry down our friendly neighbourhood. .5 EUROS! leh!