Chicken Saganaki, Spaghetti Aglio Olio & Salad

I have been thinking of how other half and I can celebrate Valentine's this year, since both of us are working in different states. Finally, I decided to take a day off from work so that we both could spent time together. What other more meaningful way than to cook together?

Chicken Saganaki

The 1st time I had Saganaki was at Roka, where we celebrated our 2nd wedding anniversary. You can read it here. I've always thought that 'Saganaki' is a Japanese word (e.g. Nagasaki, Kawasaki, get the drill?). In actual fact, 'Saganaki' refers to various Greek dishes prepared in a small frying pan called 'saganaki'.
From my research online, most recipes published were for Shrimp Saganaki. I wanted to substitute shrimp for chicken. Thankfully there was a recipe online for Chicken Saganaki. I tweaked it a little and added some olives and British parsley.

Feta cheese from Emborg

May I present to you...Chicken Saganaki!
The ingredients are: Chicken breast, Onions, Garlic, Red Wine, Oregano,Crushed tomatoes, Feta and Parsley (Olives are optional).

Chicken Saganaki

Spaghetti Aglio Olio

This humble spaghetti needs no introduction. The key ingredients are relatively simple (garlic, chilli flakes and olive oil). There were many versions of Aglio Olio recipe online. We wanted to attempt the one by Rachael Ray but we did not know where to get canned anchovies.

Anyway we still went ahead with the basic recipe. This was made by hubby.

Spaghetti Aglio Olio

Home-made Salad

What? Meat and carbs but no veggies? Hubby made a simple salad which consists of red and green bell peppers, Romaine salad and tomatoes, with olive oil and balsamic vinegar as dressing. Lastly, he threw in some bread (I told him we should use bread crumbs, but he said to save time we have to make do with what we have).

Salad

Overall, we were very satisfied and happy with the outcome of our 1st attempt at the Chicken Saganaki and the Spaghetti Aglio Olio.

Belated Valentine Lunch

Tao Buffet @ Penang Times Square

A couple of days ago, my boss treated us to a pre-CNY buffet lunch at Tao, Penang Times Square.

I'll let the pictures do the talking.

To be very honest, I don't quite like eating buffet sitting down on the floor. 

The food was just so-so, probably since I'm not a fan of Japanese food.

Sorry for the blur pictures. Tried to snap as many pictures of the food before they were gone!

I don't know what are these dishes are called in Japanese (didn't bother to remember).

These were the only food pictures I have....

Jellyfish

Assorted seafood

Octopus

Abalone

Meat and prawns

Prawns

Cakes

Strawberry and chocolate chip ice cream

The two pictures below are courtesy from Thian Chang my colleague. 

Decoupage and the weekend project

I do not consider myself artistic, since I can't draw well and used to getting C's for art subject.
However, decoupage is a form of art which do not require me to draw or paint, what-so-ever.
It just require patience, creativity and some skill (which I still lacked). I got hooked on decoupage when I stumbled upon this art while looking at some blogs 2 years ago. Also, decoupage was what I did to pass time when I was looking for a job back then.

Most of my creations were done on wood. I've done some on bottles and glass too. I never seem to be able make the surface smooth, lack of skill I guess.

These two were done on wooden chopping boards from Daiso.

These two blocks of wood was given by a nice church member. I should have used sandpaper to smoothen the surface before pasting the tissues.

I used the cover from a biscuit tin and added the rest of the accessories. Got this inspiration from my church member.

These two small wooden boxes were painted and decoupaged. Now used as my mini jewellery box.

Decoupage can be done on egg shells. So I tried...What do you think?

My collection of decoupage tissues..

This weekend, my project was to transform this tin (used to be Kjeldsen's butter cookies) into a flower-themed storage tin. Got hubby to be involved in this project. He used sandpaper to remove the original colours of the tin and then sprayed the tin white.

I cut out the flowers from the tissues, arranged them and applied a layer of gesso followed by sealant and lastly a coat of clear varnish. The final product...

From what I gathered, most professional's use JoSonja and Americana decoupage kits (gesso, glaze, varnish, etc). Many ladies (from blogs) are really really talented and good at decoupage. They do offer basic decoupage classes to anyone interested and also sell customized decoupaged products. Really pretty!

Then next thing to learn is folkart. Unlike decoupage, I think I need to attend classes since folkart involves painting..