Glamabox, a surprise every month for your partner!

Have you heard of Glamabox?

I have only recently heard about it and thought what an interesting idea it is! Most ladies I know love surprises. I also noticed that ladies love to receive packages! Put them together and most ladies will be so so pleased indeed.

I was asked if I would like to give a surprise to the wife. I was given the link (www.glamabox.com) to see what it is about. I took a look and thought if I subscribe to this, the wife might be pleased with me. I am one who is not good at surprises. I was also quite shocked that for beauty, women would use snail cream!

I said why not to Glamabox and got the following package sent to the house!
I should have posted this just before Valentine's Day, but the wife flew to Beijing for a romantic Valentine's Day getaway.


The wife was excited when this box arrived. (I blanked out the address)

I am wondering, are most ladies as excitable as my wife to open boxes? I let her open all my presents that people give me!



The rippppp!



Oh wow! A box inside another box!
Must be double happiness to get to open another box!


I exclaimed it was so pink! and I got a stare from the wife.
Me:  So girl I said!
Wife: Of course it is! It's meant for ladies.


A welcome note from Lisa S, the founder of Glambox. She's a TV host and the wife of Daniel Wu.
(Yes that HK actor, director, producer Daniel).


For $18 a month, 5 items - skincare or beauty products and services from luxurious and reputable brands all selected by Lisa S from around the world are packed in a box and delivered to your home.


Current beauty partners include Perfective Ceuticals, Revlon, Talika, Elishacoy, Enprani, Crabtree & Evelyn, Thann, Bioessence, Sleek Makeup, Nail Nail, Private i, YMCK Nail, DrD, Suisse Programme, Capra Latte, Marine Elements.

What's in the box for February?


Something for the teeth and lips and also the hair.

I hope this hair product works for her. I know women usually change their shampoo, was told it's no good to use the same ones all the time. 

Talking about teeth, women will endure pain to have nice teeth! Both my sister and wife both went through the torturous process of putting on braces. KopiKosongGirl, to have nice teeth for our wedding, she endured 2 years of painful braces. Things ladies will do to look good!



Face mask and oh... an energy bar too!
If KopiKosongGirl doesn't want the bar, I will gladly have it!


I wanted to laugh when I saw the little bottle of cream! It says bust lift!

It reminds me of something we saw on Beijing TV in the hotel (Raffles Hotel Beijing) that we stayed in. We were initially watching ChannelNewsAsia and it made us felt really at home, but we decided to switch to some local channel. What did we see? It was advertisement about having bigger bust and it went on and on and on! We could not believe it and we laughed and laughed.

So this is BIG business it seems.
The extra gift for February, the little charm for either the phone or bag.


For those who wants to read more about the products, you can click on the photo and it will bring you to Flickr and you can select the biggest resolution photo to read it clearer.

So that's the surprise box!

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For Guys:

Hey hey guys... do you think this is a good idea to give your wife/girlfriend a surprise every month?
If you think it is, you can get a subscription for her. Here's how:

Step 1: Visit www.glamabox.com, click “Get Started Now”, and register for an account.
Step 2: Subscribe Glamabox and choose "Gift Option". Enter your billing details, recipient’s email address and gift message.
Step 3: She will receive a Glamabox gift email with a link for her to activate her account and fill in her own beauty profile. She is now ready to receive her first Glamabox the following month!

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For Ladies, a Giveaway!

Ladies out there, do you want to get a Glamabox surprise too?
You can subscribe to the service too yourself or you can participate in the Glambox giveaway!
The kind folks from Glamabox are giving 2 readers each a Glamabox!

What do you have to do to get selected?
All you need to do is:
Step 1. Like the Glamabox Facebook page.
Step 2. Leave a comment here, letting everyone here know which item you think is the most useful in February's Glamabox. Use a 'nickname' if you wish to remain anonymous.
Step 3. Send an email to me at keropokman @ gmail.com with your contact number and 'nickname'.

A random number generator will pick the winner on 10 March. If you are the 2 lucky ones, I will pass your details to Glamabox who will deliver a Glamabox to you.


Update:
The winners are  Candy and Whatevergirl!
I have passed your details to Glamabox PR, they will contact you shortly.

Volunteers Food @ YOG

As YOG Volunteers we get free food when we are working. You would probably have read about the food that one volunteer ate. Hmm dog food? I personally don't think so.

Depending on where you are based, you get your food differently.  I was based in some tent that did not have many volunteers, so there was no catered food. We were just given food vouchers. (Koufu or Kopitiam). That's the easiest logistic wise.

When two other volunteers and I had a day out to one of the venues, we wanted to try the 'famous meal'. On our way to the 'workforce lunch tent', we saw the food being pushed in. The smell was very good!

This was our meal. We queued up at the 'buffet line'. A very simple 3 dish meal. Corn rice, fried fish fillet, teriyaki chicken and french beans.



Corn rice - we asked for 'less rice' because we saw they gave so much to the person in front.


Fried fish fillet - the usual fried fish fillet.  I was given 3 pieces, a bit too much. The other colleague had 2 pieces. It's not over fried as you can see by the colour.


Terriyaki chicken - smell and look better than it tasted. We call it the 'healthier option with less sodium' version. Did the Health Promo Board had a part to play? LOL.

The french beans - served in a semi starchy gravy. It was still crunchy but like any other food cooked with more water than oil, it does not 'look' so nice.



We concluded it was OK lah. The food was a bit bland because they had to cater to all the entire workforce. You probably would have know that half the people in Singapore loves bland food, half loves salty food. (You can poll it amongst your colleague or friends). So they picked the middle.

Oh yes, there were free flow of soft drinks. We realised the drinks were all from the same company,  you can guess which company right? If not, visit http://www.singapore2010.sg and scroll all the way down to look for Olympic Partner Worldwide. LOL

I wonder if they provided it free or at a reduced price.


(Posted on a personal capacity and also a tax payer and not as a YOG Volunteer)

Pretty Fruit Tarts. Looks Pretty Only. Tasting it you feel cheated

A busy week, so here's a short filler.

These two slices of fruit tarts looks really good doesn't it?
It's not cheap too! Each slices costs around $8.

But when you eat it, it does not taste good at all.
The fruits does not taste fresh or sweet, only the glace is sweet.




It's not only me, the 5 of us at the table all took a little and 'bleh' it.

I remember this same shop has good cakes. They used to have long queues too!
I wonder what happened?




Not putting up the name here hoping they will improve.

Come to think of it,  I think I probably would not go back there again.

Cake Boss premieres tonight (7 PM) on Discovery Travel and Living (Starhub Channel 16)

Thanks to Julia of AromaCookery.com for inviting me to be her partner to the Discovery Travel and Living Cake Decorating session.

A new television show - "Cake Boss" airs tonight on Discovery Travel and Living at 7 pm. To help promote the show, the PR folks at Discovery invited members of the media and some bloggers to a Cake Decorating Session. (The bloggers could bring a guest, and I went as Julia's guest).

The cake decorating session was held last night at Creative Culinaire. We had Chef Judy Koh as the demonstrator, teaching us how to decorate cakes.




We had two tasks last night. To decorate a cupcake and a cake. Chef Judy demonstrated how to decorate a cupcake and this is her sunflower cupcake. Look how cute the cupcake is!




We had 15 mins to replicate it or come up with something nicer. All of us had 2 cupcakes each to decorate.

This is what I did. Not too bad right? (It's ok, if you think it's bad, leave a comment. I can take it.)





After the cupcakes, Chef Judy demonstrated to us how to make those beautiful cakes that you get to watch on "Cake Boss". Ooo... How exciting! I have never done anything like this before!




So the adventure begins:
All of us got a cake that has been baked earlier and cooled down. (There's no time to bake a cake from scratch and cool it down in 3 hours)

The first thing to do is to trim the top of the cake so it's even. After trimming, we overturn the cake. The bottom is nicer and flat, and it nicer for cake decorating.




The cake was then cut into two and spread with a layer of chocolate ganache.
Ooo... everyone put in a thick layer. Mine's too thin compared to what others spread on!




The cake is then assembled back. You might have noticed that the cake is now glossy.
Well, that's a layer of apricot jam. It acts as glue so that our fondant will stick to the cake.




The fondant we used was the instant kind! Just open the package, knead it and roll it flat with a rolling pin. ;-)




That's me rolling the fondant over my cake.
In the background is Julia's. She's so fast!




I cut off the extra trimming and this is the cake ready for decorating.




Oh, this tool is to further smoothen the surface. Chef Judy said, if we fail miserably in this, we might want to consider being a brick layer. LOL..




Everyone had started to decorate and I was still wondering how to decorate it. After going around taking photos, I decided I should start thinking! Aha! Yellow flowers. It seemed that on one is using yellow! Everyone was making pink hearts!

(It's the fondant trimming leftover that's added with some yellow food colouring and rolled out flat)




Ah... something's beginning to take shape. Randomness!




I was thinking, randomness makes it hard to cut the cake later.

How can I make it easy for people to cut the cake? So I thought putting flowers at the sides would make it easier! It can be used as a guide to slice the cake later. Each slice gets a flower!

I think I went overboard with yellow. Yellow flowers in the middle too? Eeewww....




I decided to change the middle flowers to blue. It brightens the cake up!
This is me using royal icing as glue for the flowers. Pipe out some icing and stick the flowers.




To make the cake look nicer, I put in silver balls in the middle of the flowers. Hey, cake decorating is not that hard after all!

(In reality, we took over 2.5 hours to decorate such a simple cake! As a Hokkien phrase goes, 'buay tan jia' if I am going to be a pâtissier.)




After spending so much time decorating it was photo taking time.

This is my cake posing with Bobby Chinn.
Hey, wait a minute. Bobby does not eat cake! He just loves being nasty to people on his show.  Wrong show, wrong show....




The correct show is "Cake Boss". This is the cake posing with Buddy Valastro, the famous American pastry chef. That's the photo of his bakery: Carlo's City Hall Bake Shop in New Jersey.

Look he thinks my cake "can make it"!



Cake Boss premieres tonight at 7pm on Discovery Travel and Living.
(Channel 16 on Starhub if you are in Singapore / Channel 707 on Astro if you are in Malaysia)


P/s, you can watch it online if your  computer's IP Address shows that you are in the US. You can purchase it on iTunes too.



(I brought to cake to work today and used it as a belated birthday cake for a colleague hehe)

Away for a week - Blessed Lunar New Year

Wishing all who celebrates the Lunar New Year and very very Blessed, Happy and Prosperous Lunar New Year!


I was away for a week and I am back!
Regular programming resumes! ;-)

I won a cookbook from Mr Migayi's Christmas Chocolate Giveaway...

There's this Willie Harcourt-Cooze’s Willie’s Chocolate Factory Cookbook that Mr Miyagi and Discovery Travel and Living is giving away.

My little bar fridge that sits beside my couch at home nagged me to join the competition. It even asked me to take away the fridge magnets on it and replace it with the words below!

I relented and joined the contest. Guess what? I (or rather the LG Bar Fridge) won the book. You can refer to the contest at :
http://miyagi.sg/2009/12/christmas-chocolate-giveaway/

As a condition of winning the cookbook, the fridge had to pose! 



This fridge is shameless! It even decided to bare it all show what it has inside!
It's kinda half empty at the moment. It's being slowly cleared so new stocks can go in. The new stocks of chocolate are in the main fridge in the kitchen. 

But if you wanna know what they are:

On the door: 
There's this Alprose chocolate that mum bought from Dubai Duty Free. A box of Merci from someone, I can't remember who. The purple pack is some smarties chocolates brought back from Australia. On top there's some chocolates from Qantas plane and also some leftover of Chocolat Factory.

Behind the Merci I think are some cactus, orange and strawberry chocolate that Dad brought back for us from Jeju Island.  There's also some koala poo chocolates from Melbourne too! LOL

In the main fridge:
The Red, Green, Lavendar boxes are some chocolates from UK that sis brought back when she was visiting us. The red box is chilli! I think it's from Thorntons. Below it are some chocolate from Hungary! Below that is Lindt dinner mints that someone gave. Beside it, chocolate balls that another sis brought back, can't remember from where. Behind it some sweets from Australia.

On the lower rack, the orange box is chocolate from Alison Nelson's Chocolate Bar from New York City. Sis was giving a paper presentation in NYC and brought it back to London. I had to collect it from London when I visited her! The black box with purple rim on top is  Gu Chocolate Puds from UK. The choc pods are delicious!! Wonder what's in the plastic bag below the orange box. It has not even been taken out of the carrier bag! Above it more Nestle choc bars.



In the main fridge, are Disney Chocolates from Disneyland Anaheim. Plus the latest addition is some Schoc chocolate from New Zealand that sis brought back in November.

Do you have a chocolate fridge at home too? Don't tell me it's as big as the Heineken beer fridge! This little LG will get real real jealous! 

If you want to send me chocolates, this little LG of mine will gladly store it!
I am not greedy really! These chocolates are enjoyed by visitors to our home.

Tasting the Miracle Fruit @ Our office

Not sure if anyone here has tasted the Miracle Fruit. I first read about it around one year ago, and I told a few colleagues. Then today, a colleague brought some to work for me.

He brought it back all the way from Kuching. He found out one of his aunt planted it. So he visited his aunt and asked for some for me! What a nice colleague he is! These fruits are a few days old (that's why it is a bit shriveled) because I was on leave and did not come in to office! I was told they don't keep well, and it's best eaten fresh to get the best effect.

To know more about it, read this wiki of the Miracle Fruit. In short, after eating the miracle fruit, anything  sour will taste sweet! So we decided test if it's true.

My colleague had brought back two bags of lime for me. (He always bring back these lime from his own garden. Thanks!) So it's perfect for the experiment.

Another colleague and I cut a lime and tasted it first. Yes, it was SOUR!
We then bite the miracle fruit and made sure we coat our whole tongue and mouth with the fruit. The fruit is so so small, it's the size of a raisin. 



We tasted the lime again. Hey, it does make a difference!

If you read the wiki and experiences of other people, you get the impression it is very sweet. For both of us who tried it, we think it's more like an orange that's not sweet enough rather than a very sweet sunkist orange. :-)

The taste of the miracle fruit? It's not very tasty. haha.. More like eating the inside of a rambutan. haha..
But after eating the lime, and drinking water, we can feel the sweet after taste. The sweetness is more like artificial sweeteners like 'Equal'. ;-)




It was a nice experience though. If possible, we would want to try the fruit fresh from the tree. I wonder if it's any different. ;-)

Oh, I read that in hotels or restaurants that serves molecular gastronomy, it might cost up to $40 per fruit!  If you want to find them in Singapore, try Lim Chu Kang Drive. The govt has planted a few trees there! hehe.. That is if you can get the fruits others have 'stolen' it.

Bak Kut Teh... somewhere out there...

Most of us in the office are rushing work like mad people. While everyone takes around 2 years to implement an ERP project, we are rushing it out in 8 months! Think it is possible? It's the 'die die' must get it out. If you in the same line as I am, I am rushing out PS Queries and Reports, my fingers are cramp clicking my mouse non stop!

My fingers have no energy to blog. Brains too tired, so pardon me if I reply comments like 1 or 2 weeks late. So here's a quick post of a random lunch.

Other than chicken rice and those 'chinese mixed rice', this is something different for the week. It was rather quick, so the taste is below average. haha..

Soup's lacking flavour, the garlic bulbs are not soft enough for me to put in my mouth and just pull out the garlic skin. One consolation though, it's hot.



Rice is also 'like that' only.



Saucer also half filled. Cili padi no 'punch' at all.



But that's reality right? Most of the quick lunches we eat are always like that. Where to eat it? Bak Kut Teh from 75% of the stalls out there.

Why do I sound so bitter? I think I am stressed....

Birthday Mee Suah

In our family, we have Mee Suah for the birthday boy or girl. This is Mee Suah for the birthday boy that we had yesterday.

The small bowl for the ladies....


Chicken Soup boiled with carrots and bitter melon. The soup taste very good!
Top it up with an egg and mee suah and ah......

The bigger bowls for the men....


It was delicious and heart warming.
Thanks mummy for importing the mee suah, and aunt for cooking it.

Bob Blumer Cooking Workshop @ Discovery Travel & Living Channel

Around two weeks ago, I got an email (those that you subscribe to a mailing list) from Discovery Travel & Living Channel. It was about a contest for Bob Blumer's fans to attend a cooking workshop. If you are like me, you will usually press the delete button for these 'win' something emails ya? But wait, I saw the name Bob Blumer and took a seond look. Hey, it's Bob Blumer, the toaster mobile guy on TV!

Then I remembered a few months ago, Lyrical Lemongrass had a night out with Bob too in KL. I happen to be emailing both HairyBerry and Lyrical Lemongrass about something else and I just drop this URL ( www.travelandlivingasia.com/bobblumer ) to HairyBerry. If you read HairyBerry's writing, you would know he writes really well. The competition needed contestants to describe in less than 60 words the best meal you had. (Hairy's the person to write, I somehow knew he will win it!)

I was too busy at work and I forgot about it! On 15 July morning, HairyBerry emailed and said he submitted it just on time before 12 midnight on the 14th July. It was then I realise I forgot! Arrghhh....

The next day, Nic was being nice and said don't worry, he most probably did not win because there was no call informing that he won. Then during lunch, I got an text message from him: "Dude, u wont believe dis! i won da bob blumer contest!" Wow! Was so happy for him. Then he said, he can't go because he's going on a makan road trip to Penang with some friends, and he will see if he can arrange for the tickets to be passed to me. How kind of him! Thanks Hairy! So, Momo and I got to go. Yey!

The day before, while I was on Facebook, AromaCookery chatted with me about it because I left a message about a cooking workshop I was going. She told me that she's being invited to go as well. She's being invited as a food blogger. (Julia is this famous food blogger that has fans everywhere, one of her fans was sitting beside us and she screamed when she met her idol - Aromacookery. hehe.) Later that night, I met TheBakerWhoCooks and Divine Essentials too! Both were also invited food bloggers.

So here we are, last Saturday night. We had no idea what's going to happen, so it was really a surprise!



The event was held at-sunrice. I have always wanted to take a course here, but never did. Why? Their courses are held only during the day. I have to work during the day!

Anyway, when we went into the kitchen, we were delighted with the whiff of lemongrass scent. See the lemongrass boiling on the pot? (I love those mirrors where you can see what's inside the pot!)

If you are wondering how to make the lemongrass tea, here's the ingredients: Lemongrass, tea bags and sugar, with lots of crushed ice. Very nice!



Everyone was so excited and cameras, DLSR, compact, phone cameras of all shapes and sizes were just snapping away. While waiting for Bob to appear, we were glancing at the recipes for the night.



Bob's a real entertainer. We were laughing the whole night away!

The way it goes is that he will demo, then the whole class (divided into groups of 4) will cook the same thing. Oh boy, the whole kitchen was mayhem. It was so so noisy, so so smokey, so so chaotic that Bob nearly went mad. LOL...

The first dish was Chicken Popsicles. He said it's really simple, it's his version of a glorified chicken mcnuggets. It tasted really good and yet it's so simple to prepare!

Here's the end product. How to make it look good? Just skewer the chicken pieces and stick it on a pineapple! Tada!



Hmm what's Bob doing? With some variation of kung-fu action, you can turn it into Kung-fu Chicken Popsicles! He's such a funny guy.



The chicken pieces were wonderful, it was tender and the herbs and Parmesan used made it a hundred times better than the stuff we get from the 'golden arches' store.


Bob continued to entertain us while he prepared the second dish. He was telling us about his latest series of Glutton for Punishment that's premiering on Thursday 23 July 2009, 10:30 pm.

He was telling us his secrets of winning the competitions on each episode of Glutton for Punishment. We really salute him! The things that he does to prepare and win the competition!

Before I went, I was catching preview of the episodes on Youtube of the season not shown in Asia yet. hehe... With the previews, whatever he said, make me want to catch the new season coming soon!


Here's Bob preparing the second dish: Coconut Shrimp Lollipops.
Hmm before he opens a coconut, is he doing some sort of ritual?



Did you think he karate chopped the coconut?



The coconut part's settled, so he's preparing the shrimps to look like a lollypop.
What a brilliant idea eh? Rolling the shrimps and skewering it to look like a lollypop.



The end product! Looks good ya?

The whole class then cooked the same thing after he demonstrated for us. It was lovely with the apricot ginger dip that he prepared for us. Yes, he made it look fanciful by sticking them into a watermelon!



How does it taste? The shrimps taste nice with the batter dipped with stringy coconut shavings. It tastes nicer with the Apricot Ginger Dip that has chilli padi in it!

Time passes so quickly when you are being entertained. You could see the person in charge (from Discovery) was trying her best to hurry everyone! Bob was nice, in order to let us try the last dish, he said he will demonstrate it, and the chefs from at-sunrice will prepare it for us instead! (Excellent idea!)

The third dish, the dessert dish is called Chocolate Kiss Wontons.

How to make it? You get a piece of wonton skin, spread peanut butter at the bottom, then a slice of banana. Top it up with a Hershey's Caramel kisses.



Wrap it up, shape it nicely and make sure there's no openings on the skin and deep fry it.

While he wraps, he told us we can all ask questions, anything! So many people asked lots of questions. Here's some answers that I am sure you would also like to know:
- The Toaster mobile's still around!
- He's decided that as he gets more mature, Marge Simpson's hairstyle does not suit him anymore. That's why it's shorter now. LOL..



These on the tray are done by the chefs. You know they are called chefs? So consistent and they follow exactly what Master Chef Bob tells them to do!



OK imagine this, you put the crispy wonton into your mouth. You bite it, and then the caramel, chocolate, peanut butter and banana oozes out. You get to savour the sweetness of all the ingredients, a hint of saltiness from the peanut butter, and oh... the melting chocolates. Divine isn't it?




Thanks to Nic, for transferring the tickets to me!

Thanks to Discovery Travel and Living too for bringing Bob Blumer aka Surreal Gourmet in and organizing this workshop. Continue to organise more workshops for your faithful viewers.

Ahem.. we would like to meet Jamie Oliver, Nigella or even the foul mouth Gordon Ramsey. What about Take Home Chef, Michael Smith and Kylie Kwong too. :-)