Angry Birds Cable Car ride to Sentosa

Posted on November 12, 2012 by Angeline

Two weeks back after Alicia’s art class, she requested to go for a cable car ride. I’m not sure why she was so adamant about going that afternoon, but we ended up going anyway. With the added feature of the kids’ favourite angry birds, the angry bird cable car ride from Mt Faber to Sentosa and back was quite a highlight for my children, especially Alicia! It was Alex’s first cable car ride so he had a lot to deal with so I think angry birds weren’t really that important to him. 🙂 After we bought our cable car ride tickets at Mt Faber’s Jewel Box, we headed upstairs and got a complimentary Angry Birds fruit punch each:

one obviously happy boy while the other is very apprehenisve

After our drink, we proceeded to the floor for boarding the cable cars. But wait, there are cute features here which we just had to check out before take the cable car ride. Posing with the angry birds cable car: It’s the world’s first Angry bird cable car ride! How could we not take a photo here?:

And while the girls were busy taking photos, here’s what the boys were doing:

The boys playing the Angry Birds game near the boarding area

And we finally prepare to board the Angry Birds cable car:

Not only is the exterior of the Angry Birds cable car decorated with the cute angry birds, the interior does not disappoint with angry birds themed seats:

and even a BIG plush angry bird to keep you company through your journey!:

And not to mention a small mounted tv which plays the angry bird theme song for you to hum to:

And to complete the entire Angry Birds Cable Car ride experience, we received angry bird masks for each ticket we bought:

Alicia trying to engage her brother in conversation:

but little boy is still more concerned that he’s in an unknown place, staring down at very tiny things… and he thought he was small!:

But he finally warms up to the idea:

Here are some of the lovely views of Singapore from the cable car ride:

literally a bird’s eye view of the latest theme park development in Singapore:

Here are some shots of the exterior of other Angry Birds cable cars:

After we reached Sentosa, we went to take a look at the exhibits at the Cable Car museum:

trying to get a proper picture in the old cable car exhibit with dim lighting using an iphone is quite a feat!

Fans of lego? Here’s a cable car made out of lego!:

Erm, I have no recollection of this cable car. It’s the earliest range of cable cars in Singapore in the 1970s. And guess what? I wasn’t born yet! 😛

Check out the fares back then!:

Just a fraction of what we pay now! But look at how beautifully adorned our cable cars are now – we have really made lots of improvement over these few decades, but I wish we could make cable car rides more affordable for Singaporeans!

We board another Angry Birds cable car and head back and it’s a green angry bird we have for company this time!:

Little boy strikes a pose while he wonders when’s his turn to play with the green plush bird? 😛

Little boy decides that he shall strike a conversation with the pigs instead while waiting!:

 

enjoying a quiet moment with my little precious

And it’s time to say goodbye! Hugging the angry bird for the last time:

The themed Angry Birds Cable car ride was really refreshing with all the elements well thought of, from the complimentary drink served in an Angry birds cup to plush toys and the catchy tune played during the ride.

The Angry Birds Cable car ride tickets are priced at $29 (Adult) and $18 (Kids) for the Round trip and it’s available till Dec 2012.

I did not receive any form of compensation for this post and all opinions expressed are my own.

Posted in Where to go | 3 Comments

Basic soup base recipe

Posted on November 10, 2012 by Angeline

Very often in recipes we come across the need to use a basic stock to make the dish tastier. Of course, we can replace the stock with water but we know that the taste of the dish will be compromised somewhat. So how do you cook this stock that is called for in cooking, I am often asked. Well, this is the basic soup base recipe I use whenever I need to have any stocks added for a Chinese dish. Other possible ingredients to add are dried shrimps, dried cuttlefish and ikan bilis. I use these in some of my soups but since this is a basic soup base recipe for cooking purposes, we’ll go with the main ingredients. If it’s a Western dish that I’m cooking (such as cream of mushroom soup), I’d add 3 bay leaves and depending on the type of dish, maybe 3 sticks of celery too.

Note: If you are using this basic soup base recipe to cook porridge for your baby, you would need to remove the use of the dried scallop in case of allergies.

 Basic soup base recipe

Ingredients:

2-3 small chicken carcasses and 200-250g of pork ribs, cleaned

a handful of small dried scallops, rinsed

2-3 garlic cloves, washed, keep peel on

Directions:

Add the chicken carcasses and pork ribs into a pot of water with enough water covering them and bring to a boil. Once it starts to boil, you can turn off the heat and you will see this:

That’s the scum from the meat and bones. We don’t want our soup to turn out looking like this and hence we clean the meat and bones of impurities first before cooking the soup base proper. This also helps to remove the ‘smell’ of meat – some people may add garlic and/or ginger slices in at this step but I feel that it’s usually enough to rid the smell by bringing the meat and bones to a boil.

Get ready the soup bag. It’s made of cloth and it’s especially useful when you are cooking soup with fine bones such as a fish soup. Even for normal soups and this basic soup base, I use the soup bag for convenience. You’ll find out why later. Oh, there’s always the chance of small little pieces of bones that fall off from the pork ribs sometimes and if we’re making this soup base for kids, I’d say it’s wisest to use a soup bag so that the soup is kept clear of the possibility of bones. I used to use disposable soup bags but those don’t seal as well and some of the smaller pieces still manage to make their way out into the soup.

Place the ingredients in the soup bag:

basic soup base

If you intend to consume the dried scallop, don’t put them in the soup bag. Add them directly to the soup pot.

Tie up the soup bag and place it in the soup pot of about 3.5L of water. Bring to a boil and simmer for 3-4 hours.

When the soup is done, simply remove the soup bag and you have your basic soup base! 🙂 Now you know why I said I love my soup bag? You’d have to use a fine sieve to sieve out what you don’t want in your soup if you don’t have a soup bag or don’t want to use one.

I can’t believe I took so many years to finally write this basic soup base recipe here! I’ve been repeating myself about how to prep the ingredients in my soup recipes and now I can finally just hyperlink it to the instructions here!

Now you may want to hop over to my latest recipe which calls for using stock: crab meat sheng mian (crispy noodles).

Or try out some of my favourite soups – glass noodle soup (冬粉汤), wintermelon soup, old cucumber soup (老黄瓜排骨汤), black bean soup and my modified si shen soup (四神汤) for toddlers to improve appetites!

Click the link to view the full list of soup recipes (with thumbnails).

 

Posted in Stocks | 7 Comments