Good time spent with friends

I was cleaning up some of my hard disk space by moving photo to network drive. There were photos that I took since I bought my first digital camera. It was fun reviewing back those old photos, it brought back a lot of good memories to me.

One of the photo album I love was our trip to PD back in 2004. Can't believe that it was 10 years back. It was the first time we had a trip together after we graduated from secondary school. We never have overnight trip when we were in secondary school as we were all girls and having a trip with all girls will be dangerous according to our parents. So PD trip was really our first trip and almost all of my friends were able to join.

I think Yen Ping was the one suggested this trip. She and ah Man put a lot of effort in making this trip happened. They helped booking the apartment, arranging transportation and even preparing foods.

We reached there about evening time. We had steamboat for dinner and had some red wine as well while playing cards. After that, we were drank and I forgot how we managed to squeeze in the 2 rooms apartment and slept.

The next day, after having breakfast, we headed to the beach for banana boat and taking pictures. We had a lot of fun playing the banana boat as the boat brought us to the middle of the sea and had a sharp turn that made everyone fallen into water. We have a lot of laugh as we were accidentally touching each other butts while trying to get back to the boat. :) We left after having a quick lunch at the apartment. It was a short trip but we had lots of fun.

I really missed those fun time and wish we can have more trips like this. But as we grow up, got married and entering parenting stage, making time for a trip like this becoming more difficult. Anyway, I am grateful that we at least experience it once and I really treasure the moment we shared. I miss you gals very much!

Steamboat dinner

Beach at night.

Apartment room

Ready for the beach activities

More beach photo. We love taking photo!

Banana boat

Trying to get back to boat

Blueberry Streusel Scones

My mother in law recently visited us and she will stay with us till December this year. I wanted to cook or bake something for her while she is here. From her last visit to US, I found that she loves blueberry pastry. So I decided to bake this blueberry scone for her. This recipe is super easy and fast.

I got the recipe from joy of baking but making a little changes to reduce the sugar. The top of the scone is crunchy and sweet, while the scone itself is soft.

Scone ingredient:
2 cups of all purpose flour
1/4 cup of sugar
2 teaspoons of baking powder
1/4 teaspoons of salt
6 tablespoons of cold unsalted butter (cut into small pieces)
1 cup of fresh blueberry or frozen blueberry (do not thaw if use frozen blueberry)
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1/2 cup of milk

Streusel topping ingredient:
1/4 cup all purpose flour
1/8 cup of brown sugar
2 tablespoon of cold butter (cut into small pieces)

Scone:
1. Whisk all purpose flour, baking powder, salt and sugar together.
2. Cut butter into small pieces and blended into mixture above. The mixture will look like coarse crumb.
3. Fold in blueberry.
4. In a separate bowl, lightly beaten the egg. Add vanilla extract and milk. Pour this into flour mixture and stir until the dough comes together. Do not over mix the dough or the scone will turn out tough.
5. Transfer the dough to a lightly flour surface and pat the dough to a 7 inch round. Use knife to cut it into 12 portion.

Streusel topping:
1. Mix flour and brown sugar together. Cut butter into small pieces and add to the mixture.
2. Top scone with streusel topping.

Preheat oven at 400F and bake for 18-22 minutes or until nicely brown.

Fresh from oven