Last weekend before CB ends and BTS (BACK TO SCHOOL!)

CB is coming to an end in a few day's time though things are far from normalcy in the coming one month, except for the fact that we're going back to school. I guess life will take some time before it return to normalcy. Even though we're going back to school, it will be quite different from the times pre-CB period. The greatest challenge for us and students is to get used to having the masks on at all times once we step out of the house.

After a 40++ days hiatus, I was back in school yesterday. It was definitely the first time I was away from school for so long. I was at home the past two weeks and did not even go downstairs so now I'm slowly adapting to life out of the house again. 

Anyway, I'm back blogging about some of my culinary adventures the past week. Diet. Exercise. Happy life during COVID-19. 

On Friday (21st May), I cooked another round of the cauliflower and cheese. It's still yummy but I was not craving for it, only cooked it as I only use half the head of cauliflower the previous time and I need to use up the remaining half before it turned bad. 

This was my fast breaker on Saturday, my version of the big breakfast. That was the last half of the tiramisu left (made 3 portions in total) and that was also my third try cooking the cloud bread, could see that I've not given up. Although it looked odd shaped and not too presentable, I was making some progress there as it can be finally considered some kind of food and bread. For a few days, I did not have dinner after workout and only drank dalgona chocolate with almond milk. I managed to lose more weight doing that. 

However, on Saturday late night, I started craving for food and weirdly, it was korean food with the kimchi taste. Watching Youtube videos to learn how to make those late night did not help as I was trying so hard not to succumb to the comfort food of instant noodles, luckily I do not have those at home anymore.

The next day, I got busy making army stew using the recipe I saved the previous night. Most of it are veggies and quite keto friendly although carrots and tomatoes can be a little carby. The stew was so satisfying that I finished the other half in the evening even though I intended to keep them for the next day.

 I have been doing the group buy for some exotic stuff on SHC facebook group and those scallops are part of those. We had decided to do a BBQ using the instant grill over the long weekend and P enjoyed grilling those scallops and yakitori even though it left our place with some BBQ smoke. I had to keep on diffusing my essential oil in the living room to get rid of the smell. The instant grill worked amazingly well though.

I gained back some weight after the day of feasting so I continued with my workouts and very light dinner for a week to get rid of the weight gain. For Monday and Tuesday meals, I had tuna and unagi as my main meal and for dinner it was just the almond milk. 

I'm proud to say we kept up with our zoom workouts daily for a month and it's sad that we have to stop after next Tuesday. I'm determined to continue with this as its easier to get things going unlike going for a jog when I had to wait till the sun goes down and sometimes I became too nuah after work. So far for the zoom workouts, I only missed two days of not working out at all as I had tuition sessions last week and got too lazy after that. Now, I've decided to wear my workout tee for tuition and start immediately after that before I get too lazy. I'm amazed by my own discipline though, sometimes I add on more workout videos to my routine after the girls had signed out from zoom.

On Wednesday and Thursday, I cooked the remainly Iberico Secreto and split it into two portions. Unfortunately, I forgot to salt and pepper those before cooking so it tasted a bit bland. I'm really proud of myself as those cloud bread finally turned out much better at the 4th try. Nowadays my appetite is really small and I dont really feel hungry even after the workouts. 

I made the lemon mug cake again this morning and grilled a piece steak. I added on the unagi as I had forgotten about finishing those the past few days. I'm hoping to keep up with the fasting and good diet plus daily workouts after I'm back in school next week. There's no time stamp on this picture as I've already gotten used to the hours of IF and dont really need the app to help me already. 

What I had been eating this week

Nothing special except a few days ago it was announced that school is reopening in 2nd June with P1-P5 doing HBL alternate weeks. As of now, I guess I'm left with 10 days of school holidays to rest and relax and we'll see how life will be in Phase 1 of post-CB.

Breaking fast with blueberry cheesecake and Arroz Caldo

This was what I ate after IF on Monday noon, I used the peanut butter cookies as the crust for the blueberry cheesecake. Honestly I loved the cheesecake but not the crust. Maybe for the remaining pieces of the peanut cookies I'll just mix it with yogurt like granola, and I'll wont bake those again.

Steak and escargots (Tuesday)

I ordered some stuff from SHC group buy and this included a pack of escargots. I cant remember if I've tried the delicacy before but I imagined it'll taste something like mussels or oysters. The texture was softer and it had a earthy taste to it so guess I wont buy it to try again.

Our dalgona chocolate drinks 

After 20 days of daily Chloe Ting workouts, I'm less hungry post workouts and for a couple of days I only made the dalgona chocolate with almond milk for dinner. My weight finally went down to 56.7kg as of this morning. P loves this drink as well and requested me to make it for him some of the days.

My very atas meal (Wednesday)

The SHC group buy also included this cut of pork call iberico secreto, it's this cut of pork so fatty that it taste like wagyu and is quite easy to cook. The only thing was I got satiated and felt 'jerlek' after eating half of that piece of pork. It was really good and fatty for my keto diet though. This is the most atas meal I had prepared at home, iberico secreto pork, escargots and bordier yogurt and butter (to cover the earthly escargot taste). I love the group buys!

Tiramisu is new kid on the block (Thursday)

I really caught on the baking and exercising flu during COVID period like most people. The cream cheese had ran out in stores over here and I learnt how to make mascarpone cheese to replace that for my baking. With my homemade mascarpone cheese, I've tried out Headbanger's recipe for tiramisu, I loved how the creamy part turned out but the texture of the almond mug cake for lady's finger didnt quite taste like tiramisu so I might try another recipe next time.

A very short COVID CB Sunday

I took part in a group buy of atas Bordier butter with one of the keto groups, and P helped me picked these up while I was having tuition this evening. Honestly I did not hear about Bordier but apparently, it's the Hermes and Rolls Royce of the butter world. The price is actually acceptable as it's imported from France. The butter were very flavourful and I could really taste the herbs, salt and stuff inside as labeled. I guess I will get more of these after I finished these. The yogurt are not keto compliant and tasted sweet to me as I've not taken the usual sugary stuff for quite some time. Guess I'll just take half a bottle daily, I'm keeping these cute little bottles as they look really nice.

Atas butter haul today

Garlic butter prawns with Lemon Garlic Cream Fettuccine

P and I only slept at 6am this morning, I was actually shocked when I looked at the clock and it was already early morning. I broke fast very late as I woke up at almost 2pm, I quickly whip up lunch, clean up and it's already time for tuition. It's my second try with the Lokarb noodles and fettuccine is actually my favourite, this is a simple dish to whip up together with Headbanger's Kitchen butter garlic prawns.

After 18 days of doing Chloe Ting's workouts non stop, I'm finally taking a break today as I missed the Zoom session due to shark week and got too lazy after that.

Mid May updates, CB and school closure+holidays 39 days

Just a quick update on what I've been up to, other than updating my Italy trip on this blog. P had been on MC for past 4 days and we've been staying up really late as we are actually nocturnal when we do not need to wake up early for work. I almost forgot that today is already Saturday (or Sunday?) and I'm not sure when I'm going back to school yet, but currently I've gotten quite used to this mode of working and spending my time lazing around in the day. I guess it would be hard for me when we need to go back to school or the normal hours again, I've not taken a break from work and school days as long as this one before. I'm actually quite enjoying it, other than the fact that we cant travel out of the country.

Keto cauliflower and cheese for dinner

On Friday, I had to quickly break fast before my ZOOM oral session with my kids and then take a short rest before working out. After weeks of doing IF, I do not feel hungry when it's time to break fast anymore. In fact, I had no idea what I wanted to eat. I only made a keto hot chocolate in the end, did my ZOOM and then tried making a cinnamon mug cake for snack. I've tried the recipe both by baking in the airfryer and by using the microwave, but it did not turn up nice. I'm trying to use up all the cinnamon powder that we bought when P was into this cinnamon and chilli powder concoction to make his big tummy disappear. He only used those powders for a few days and now we are left with tons of that product but his tummy is just growing bigger lolx.

Anyway, I saw another Headbanger's keto recipe that seemed really easy and whipped up this keto cauliflower and cheese for dinner since I did not know what to eat and had no specific cravings. It turned out really nice and easy to cook so I'll probably try it again soon.

Surprise banana cake

A lovely note

Not bad for breaking fast

Today my insurance agent and family friend surprised me by sending over a freshly baked banana cake, it looked very and seemed to taste really nice too but unfortunately it's not keto. I'm not going to waste the cake so I'll just have some small bites daily. I woke up when it was almost noon but it was past 2pm and I still did not know what to eat and I was not too hungry either. I'm not sure if I'm really adapted to IF and can go for longer hours or it's my shark week effect. Last night and this morning, I was trying to whip up keto cloud bread but both times it failed.

I have very limited space on the kitchen counter so I'm quite reluctant to get extra gadgets if they're going to be white elephant. I've been using the airfryer for some baking but it does not work for some baking recipes, I guess cloud bread is one of them. I saw the keto cloud bread recipe for the longest time and it was quite popular years ago but I did not have the chance to try it since I lack the gadgets. I also do not have a electric whisk and I thought I can never whisk the egg whites to stiff peak but I'm surprised I've managed to do it manually. In fact, I only realised it when whipping up the dalgona chocolate for P a few days ago. I finally decided to get a electric whisk as lately I'm quite keen in keto bakes again but I'm still undecided about that small oven as it does take up space. Right now, I already have some gadgets lying around in kitchen cabinets that I do not utilise regularly, one huge steamer and one blender that we bought before moving in, another blender given by a friend and the waffle machine I bought last year when waffles was the keto trend.

Keto peanut butter cookies

I'm really into baking these few days and a few hours ago, I've baked my first batch of cookies using airfryer. Thankfully it turned out fine after I left the cookies to cool for quite some time. I guess it's the texture of the keto cookies, these are quite crumbly when they were still hot. It's my IF period so I only tried a very small bite to taste, honestly I think I do not really fancy them as it's quite dry, I do not eat peanut for the longest time as I felt that it's heaty and it made my throat dry. I only started liking peanut butter in M&Ms these few years and lately bought peanut butter to mix into keto ice cream. I guess I would use these cookies to make the base of cheesecake if I'm in the mood the next few days.

New toy... Sodastream...

This morning, for fast breaking, I made a lemon keto mug cake from headbanger's kitchen recipe, and it was really smooth and moist, almost like a cream cake. I think it's the best mug cake recipe I had tried out so far and I divided it into two portions, only finished it a few hours later when I felt hungry again. The glaze hardened a little and tasted even better when chilled.

Keto lemon mug cake and matcha milk tea 

My new toy

It's looking very good on my kitchen counter

A few days ago, I ordered Sodastream from their SG website, I had been thinking about getting one for a long time as I'll drink plain soda to reduce my cravings during IF. Many years ago, during my first trip to US, my sis was an avid user and I had been thinking about getting one since then. Prior to keto, I had been drinking diet soda daily and and recently I had been trying to soda water from Redmart but sometimes it's OOS. The recent splurge on online shopping finally made me bite the bullet and I finally got myself the new toy.

More keto food

Chinese egg spam fried rice

I tried a different schedule today, and had a early dinner before my tuition at 5pm. Honestly, I do feel hungry after a hard workout after tuition and cheated quite a bit. Anyway, I ordered a set of Lokarb rice and noodles from their local website and those arrived few days ago. I did not have a good impression of konjac rice during my Ketomei subscription but those came with the package, and it turned out to be the first thing I tried to cook as there is a very simple recipe for fried rice provided. It turned out really good and I'm really happy with the result. The texture and taste is really close to cooking with rice and I think the taste is better than cauliflower rice for this dish. I kept half the portion for breaking fast tomorrow morning.

Another random day, random thoughts

My kind of big breakfast

I'm quite happy with my fast breaker today, I made myself a very sumptuous brunch. It had been quite sometime since I did the mug cake recipe, but I did the 90sec almond mug cake today and fried it in the pan with eggs and spam, and it turned out tasting better.

Aunty Sylvia posted this nice photo

I've been wanting to post this. It was posted a few days ago by P's aunt on Mother's Day. It's a group photo taken by P when P's aunt and family came to Singapore with lola and we brought them around. Lola is in the pic too and I really love P's very lovely family, I'm so blessed to be a small part of their family.

Doing my own manicure

Cheap and nice nail stickers

One of the services I really missed during this COVID period is my monthly manicure. P had solved the issue of my haircut and now it's my nails. Two weeks ago, I finally removed my last gelish nail polish done in March, it had lasted seven long weeks but my fingernails were getting too long. I had been going to home based salons the past few years but now such services had stopped due to COVID but my nails will keep growing. I had to order a kit from Qoo10 to remove the gelish polish on my own and I cant believe how easy it actually was.

I also chanced upon this website selling nail stickers and I bought 10 sets at one go as it's just $2 per set, meaning each of my gelish manicure session can get me 30 sets of these stickers. It finally arrived today and I tried pasting them on tonight, it's not perfect like doing manicure as my nail beds are bigger than normal standard sizes and the stickers do not cover some parts of my fingernails edges. I was also too lazy to trim the sticker shape to fit my cuticles to the exact shape but it is still a cheap investment and I can change many designs over the next few weeks once they start to peel off. I'm supposed to put on a layer of nail top coat so that they will last longer but I was not able to find it at NTUC/Guardian/Watson's and I just ordered it online today.

New tricks learnt! 

Another weekend, another fruitful day... Happy Mother's Day 2020

Today is quite a fruitful day, most of the days I'm just zooming with my students and then do my zoom workouts with the kakis. But today, I specially woke up early as we are having a family chat on ZOOM to celebrate Mother's Day. Of course this is the first time we cannot get together for the family dinner or luncheon and we meet up virtually and remotely. At least my sis and ex BIL can join us from US.

Oh yah special mention from the ZOOM screenshot below, P helped me cut my bangs a few days ago. For most couples, it's the other way round during this period but he wouldn't let me touch his hair lolx.

Our family zoom

My keto muah chee

Break fast with these

After the family zoom chat, I was inspired to do keto muah chee and I set off to work on those. It was hard work for me as I only have black sesame seeds and not the powder. So I had to religiously chomp them down into the powder form and that took me a long time, and it was a back breaking chore. I wanted to break fast earlier as I need to do my workout at 330pm since it is tuition day. But after all the work, I could only break fast after 2pm. This is the second time I'm making those keto muah chee and it tasted better when I made a smaller batch and ate them immediately instead of plating them nicely.

I was sleepy but I only had a 15 min shuteye and got up to prepare for my workout. After workout there was just enough time to shower and got ready for my 2h tuition session. And after tuition, I spent almost an hour preparing cauliflower rice arroz caldo for my dinner, and it tasted really good. I washed up, cleaned the house and prepared for next week's lessons for my two classes. I'm glad I'm done everything on my to-do list for today and now it's time to relax and update my blog. Yippie!

The stuff we do during the odd May hols

My home exercise equipment is complete

My fast breaker (ate a few mouth of the rice opps)

The chocolate version of the dalgona coffee

My 20mm thick new yoga mat ordered through Qoo10 came today, and P also managed to get a 2nd hand dumbbells rack from Carousell. The only thing missing is our workouts lolx, this is my 10th consecutive day doing home workouts but I have not started with those weights. P also started a little of his training as there are no more excuses.

We had dinner quite late last night and I thought it would be hard to meet the 16h of IF, but when I woke up it was past noon. Last night, I started to reading my travel blogs and ended up updating my trip that happened half a year ago! Anyway, P whipped up a very good brunch and we were lazing around until my workout time.

After my workout, I really wanted to have dinner quickly and start my fasting earlier but I had no idea what to eat. I decided to try out the chocolate version of the dalgona coffee and had a very light dinner. This time round, I paired the 'foamy' part with iced almond milk instead. It's really hard to whip up the matcha and chocolate version without a proper electric whisk. Anyway, it did not affect the taste and P loved it so much he drank half of mine and asked me to make him another glass. I thought I will not get the runs from the almond milk unlike the whipping cream but I was wrong. I love the detox though.

Keto group buy and my IF meals

I've decided to do another post about IF and my diet the past week so the previous post will not be too long. Anyway, I took part in a few tuna group buys the past few weeks so that I can try those medium rare tuna, I had it in Italy and missed the taste so much. I dont really eat out so often and I've not seen it in restaurants here so I guess it must be quite rare. 

This is the version I had at Venice, really loved it!

Looking delish! (Breaking fast on Tuesday)

Honestly, its really easy to prepare those as we do not want to overcook these guys, so the best is to coat it with some oil and then black and white sesame seeds, and fry it for not more than two minutes on each side. Overcooked tuna taste really bad like those canned tuna so it'll be a waste. I think I bought 2.6kg of these over three group buys ($33/kg) and now I'm left with 1kg of those in the freezer. 

4 KG of Tey's ribeye

Breaking fast on Monday

I was hesitant to get beef as I tried it a year ago and I took a long time to finish those, even though Mum took some pieces home and P were keen in eating steak then. This time round, I have about 17 pieces of those and I'm the only one eating. The previous round was O'Conner ribeye and honestly I cant remember how it tasted already. This piece of Tey's ribeye that I've gotten doesnt have that much fats streaks unfortunately but I do love the game taste if it's not overcooked. I've already forgotten how I've prepared the medium rare steaks last year so it took some experimenting this week to get it right. The best texture for me is just 4min in the AF for each side. It's also easy enough to prepare, as I only coat the surface with salt and pepper its easily cooked in the airfryer so the cleaning up is simple.

P went around to a few places and finally found these! 

Decaf dalgona coffee to break fast on Wednesday

Keto laksa and keto bak chor mee

 I found someone who whip up delicous BCM in the keto version as the lady boss is doing keto as well. Actually the stall is somewhere in TPY North and I actually bought pork lard croutons from her last year. Anyway, i'm craving for some of these local delights and it's actually laksa and BCM without the noodles with more ingredients. The delivery fees is $10 which is about the same as Grab with my tipping so I tried it for lunch one of the days. It came a bit later than my fast breaking time and I was really hungry so I made dalgona coffee using decaf coffee powder I bought from NTUC last week.

Break fast with steak again (Thursday)

And steak again on Friday!

My new yoga mat and the dumbbells arrived

Quite a few of my online orders arrived today, the LoKarb noodles set, my Korean chilli flakes for more kimchi making and the dumbbells! Our home exercise equipment is expanding but we'll need to find space and ways to organise those properly. I've ordered another yoga mat and its also on the way but just now we went out to get dinner at J8 and we saw Watson's selling yoga mats (surprisingly) and I decided to get another one so P and I will have new mats to do our workouts on. The old mat on the left were donated by PL when she left the school years ago and I think she kept it in school for ages prior to me taking over so it could be 10 years old?  It's was still really new and rarely used and I brought it home last year when P wanted to do some floor exercises. However, with the extensive usage these days, it's disintegrating real fast and flaking all over so I need to do a lot of sweeping after my workouts daily. I've decided to just bring it back to school in case we have camps or have yoga/pilates again. 

A week of school hols (May hols for the first time in my life)

There's actually many things I've wanted to blog about the past week but I got too busy and kind of lazy. I continued my zoom workouts with friends and today is the 9th consecutive day I'm doing it. Even when one of the days I missed the workout with the group, I made it up on my own at night. It's kind of addictive and I feel stronger and fitter after putting in one hour a day! I've stopped running or walking the past week, initially I thought I could do both but eventually my body feels tired and I was sleepy/hungry after the workout at home.

Last Sunday when we had the biggest turnout

I'm following the Chloe Ting's workout and I'm kind of addicted to her workouts and Youtube channel at the moment. We tried to switch thing out by mixing in some other workouts like dance etc but that did not work out too well. Her workouts are easy to follow, she has a great personality and I love her lean body and nice attire! I realised that this girl is so real and candid and not the perfect barbie doll kind of Youtuber once I started watching more of her videos. Wendy introduced this lady to us although I've not heard of her prior to this, but apparently millions of people just started subscribing to her channel during this COVID period. I'm glad we have a good and healthy routine to follow now, its easier to get going compared to jogging outside right now.

My TM2020 running package

This came by DHL delivery on 1st May 2020, I was one of the lucky ones who received it pretty early even though I saw many people posting it on the offical FB page already. I'm impressed the delivery reached me on a PH and a few days earlier than what they stated in the email. I'm happy to receved these items which the organisers had sent to us at no additional cost. I love the good quality and fluffy towel and the well designed T-shirt by Asics. Everything was in the box except the medal and race experience. By the end of this month, we will be given a choice and to register our option to defer to 2021/2022. I had not made up my mind honestly, a part of me want to quickly get this over with next year but there are many talks about how COVID-19 might affect us all the way till end 2021. I really dont know...

Keto style breakfast

IF and breaking fast with cauliflower porridge

Other than exercising, I'm also trying to be cleaner in my diet and resumed keto/ dirty keto & IF the past one week. I still cheat sometimes by eating my peanut butter M&M's and some mouthful of rice here and then, but for the most part I'm trying to keep to it so as not to waste my efforts doing those workouts. Everyone is gorging and eating lots during this COVID period but I'm determined to stay healthy and fit. This special holidays given to us without traveling is the best time for me to do this. I think my weight during the March holidays and the start of HBL was just 56kg and now I'm slightly more than that, but I'm not worrying too much as I'm building up my muscles again.