new year's eve's eve

With 2006 coming to an end, the five of us meet up for a little get-together for the new year!! I woke up early on new year's eve's eve, picked Bern up from Novena (she went there Abs/Butt/Thighs at California Fitness :D and some grocery shopping for our cook-off), and together we scuttled back to her place to get ready for action!

We started cooking without waiting for the latecomers. So yes, we kicked off the day with the Creamy ham and broccoli pasta!

Steps:

1. Cook pasta (We had vermicelli. The package said 4 servings but after cooking, we realised there was enough pasta to feed about double of that)
2. Prepare and cook broccoli. (I still haven't researched on how broccoli grows...okay mental note)
3. Prepare cream sauce.
4. Stir in pasta, broccoli and ham into sauce. Toss in some moz cheese.

It seemed simple enough. But disaster struck when we discovered that there was too little sauce for the vast amount of pasta, and we ended up with a ugly looking, dry concoction of vermicelli with a depressingly miniscule amount of ingredients. After much moaning and grumbling, we whipped up a new pot of cream sauce and added it to the dried pasta...and it tasted ok! Not THAT bad. We'll improve.

Then eggy distributed her christmas presents!! There was a cool adult-ish Mocha butter cookie thingy (right eggy? or was it called something else...oh well!) And also cute christmas tree shaped butter cookies with coloured icing. We didn't get a picture of that though. I'm holding the mocha cookie in the picture below. We tried countless times to take a artistic shot, but this was the best we could do. You can see Harry and Sally's red lights in the background!! (aka Bern grandma's altar. We nicknamed the Taoist figurines Harry and Sally. ) We also got to try out the merengue cookies eggy baked some time ago. Little drops of heaven!(with a slightly fishy smell)

This is maddy's strawberry creme...there's jelly, strawberries, strawberry cream, cranberries and a granola crust. I realised, after making it, that it was kinda like the strawberry shortcake from BreadTalk, except that i had too much jelly, too little cream, and a soggy crust. (not my fault!! blame...er...the cream) Eggy loved the jelly+strawberries, Maddy loved the cream+crust = Gone in a blink of an eye!


A cross-sectional view of the strawberry creme.



After lunch, we started work on our new year's giveaway. We wanted to make cookies to giveaway to random people on the street, aka old ahmas selling tissues and ahgongs singing christmas songs on erhu. Bern wanted something "hard" and "with pistachios" (she needed to use up her huge collection of pistachios from Greece). So tada!! Pistachio Biscotti!!


We slice the biscotti log after the first bake...


Even though we followed the instructions and made a 3"x10" log, the biscotti slices were still soft in the centre when we sliced them up.


After the 2nd bake, we created cool little crunchy biscotti slices! With pistachios too!


Chocolate for spreading...


The biscotti adventure: Future, Present, Past. (future-biscotti with chocolate, present-chocolate being spread on the biscotti, past-plain biscotti) There's a whole artistic vision guys!


The beautiful finished product...Bern's family loved it. So it must have been really good, or they're just nice, polite people.


Bern and I start working on the packaging for the biscotti. Eggy suddenly pointed out that we probably shouldn't put the plastic on the floor coz it would contaminate the biscotti. We lovingly brushed off her warning. :D And in the 2nd picture, the finished product! Adorable little new year packages for strangers!

Then it was time for the time capsule.

Yup. and I'm the Keeper of the Capsule...in charge of taking care of it for 5 years. I can't wait to see what's gonna happen to all of us...if the prophecies come true. Our paths kinda diverge from now on, and it's so exciting to predict where we'll all end up in the future. Where we'll go, what we'll be doing, who we'll be with...Hehe. Well HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone! Hope that your 2007 will kick 2006's ass, and remember to make vague new year resolutions so that you'll definitely keep to them. Wishing you good health and much love...

Maddy