April 2014 – Bekpackr – A Filipino in Singapore

A day to myself at Sentosa

I’m on a week-long staycation in Singapore so I came up with a list of things I wanted to accomplish. I don’t always get a ten-day break to do these things so I’m making the most of it.

Do spring cleaning. –I threw out a whole plastic bag of receipts!
Breaking Bad marathon. –I manage about six episodes per day.
Game of Thrones marathon. –Gave up in Season 2.
Read a few chapters from a book. –Dusted off “Twilight in Djakarta”.
Create a 6-month budget plan. –A new excel file.
Go jogging at Ang Mo Kio – Bishan Park. –Enjoyed the view again.
Learn how to cook two dishes. –I made (1) lumpia; and (2) pasta with broccoli in pesto.
Visit the beach. Because no vacation is complete without some sun, sand and booze.

N has work on weekdays and I have always wanted to just spend time by myself. I felt like having a picnic by myself at Siloso Beach in Sentosa.

3:17 PM – Pack bag with a notebook, a book, an extra t-shirt, my D3200 and some tissues.

The weather was pretty hot and sunny. Perfect for a late afternoon at the beach! I took this photo from the kitchen window. This is the kind of HDB that we live at in central Singapore.

Learning how to cook Lumpiang Shanghai

I’m beaming! I just finished making lumpiang shanghai which is one of my favourite Filipino snacks. I don’t cook much okay! So this first attempt was documented lol. I know, I know, it’s only lumpiang Shanghai… like making a sandwich for some people.

First of all, being somewhat of an OFW means having to learn new skills like cooking. I bet a lot of OFWs watch Panlasang Pinoy and Cook N Share. These two guides show informative videos how to cook popular Filipino dishes. For lumpiang Shanghai I watched both Panlasang Pinoy and Cook N Share.

So I did groceries at both FairPrice and Giant. They don’t sell the larger sized wanton wrappers. They sell the small ones for siew mai I think. I have no idea what parsley looks like at the grocery store so I gave up on that.

EXPECTATION

REALITY

http://instagram.com/p/mP5rQjKGaE/

Just watch the how-to by Panlasang Pinoy on how to make Lumpiang Shanghai. Hindi ako magmamagaling. In fact, N helped me do the frying. We burnt some of the pieces hahaha.

Oh and another thing… we don’t have banana ketchup which goes perfect with Lumpiang Shanghai. So we substituted with the Singapore standard of sweet chili sauce. It worked great.

I’m challenging myself to learn a new recipe each week. Not that I’m experimenting or anything. I’m just following instructions and seeing how I can put it together with the ingredients I find at Singapore supermarkets.

Kain. 🙂