times above: How I spent my Christmas

My family doesn't celebrate Christmas, so I spent the day with L. We had a picnic at the Botanic Garden and we brought two dishes each for lunch.

I made sauteed mushrooms and garlic fried rice. The inspiration: I went to Symmetry recently, ordered their Truffle Egg Mushroom ($21) and was very impressed with their sauteed mushrooms! Anyway, I find Symmetry nice but it's pretty pricey. Their Truffle Egg Mushroom had a portion of sauteed mushrooms & scrambled eggs both drizzled with truffle oil, hash brown and salad. That all for $21!

So after tasting the best sauteed mushrooms ever, which were succulent, juicy and tasty, I became obsessed with cooking mushrooms to that standard as well. I went to research on how to cook mushrooms and found the secret to cooking juicy mushrooms!

Two rules:

1. Do not wash your mushrooms, just wipe it clean with paper towels. Ensure that the mushrooms are very dry when you put them into the pan.

2. Make sure the pan is hot when you put the mushrooms into the pan. You should see smoke emerging from the oil in the pan. That's when you know it's time to put in the mushrooms!

Tadah!! My version. I think it was not bad, at least it was juicy! For the first time, water did not come out of the mushrooms even after I added salt. Seasoning were: Salt, cayenne pepper & black pepper.

The food we had in our picnic. Top two were the mushrooms and garlic fried rice. I still have much to improve on the fried rice, it wasn't garlicky enough even though I used like one whole clove of garlic! L brought cherry tomatoes and boiled prawns. When he took his food out, I was like "HUH, you only boiled the prawns?! Why would you do that!!" If I were him, I would definitely saute it with some sauce? Like make garlic butter prawns or chili prawns. Thank goodness he took out three bowls of dips, which were tartar, pesto and laksa to dip the prawns with.

After eating, we just lied down on the mat and relaxed. Or rather I lied down only cause there wasn't enough space for two people to lie.

After the picnic, we went to walk around in Orchard and we dropped by Isetan because I wanted to buy some furikake to make onigiri for work the next day. I found mentaiko flavoured furikake and I happily bought it. I went to look at fresh mentaiko also cause I want to try making mentaiko pasta some day! One packet, which contained three sacs of mentaiko cost $15. Might buy it to cook when I feel rich next time.

For dinner, L made reservations at Yakinikutei Ao-Chan, which was at Concorde Hotel so we slowly made our way there. I saw so many Paris themed decorations or merchandise when we made our way there. Paris is sooooo overrated. I've been there, and there was nothing great, but I just see so many Paris themed stuff everywhere, even in Taiwan/HK. So many people buy into the idea that Paris is romantic, pretty, magical and whatnot, but I just don't feel the same.

Yakinikutei Ao-Chan is a Japanese BBQ restaurant. Realized I've never eaten Japanese BBQ before and the experience was pretty good. We ordered:

1. Wagyu beef harumi