Riders Cafe

http://www.riderscafe.sg/

(i removed the marshmallows and maple syrup)

Homemade chicken essence

I just made my very first chicken essence. Grandma has been doing this for me once a month and out of curiosity, I went to google and check if there's a less tedious way of making chicken essence.

My grandma cooked it with charcoal, which supposedly makes it much more fragrant than cooking with gas. Anyway, you may like to check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2Msw6E-UZ0 or http://neckredrecipes.blogspot.sg/2007/07/homemade-pure-essence-of-chicken.html since I got my inspiration from these websites.

Let me share with you how I made it.

First, you find a big crockpot and place a stand inside. (I personally prefer ceramic over metal pots)

Then another smaller pot to be placed on the stand. Put a bowl inside like the picture below.

 Remove the fats of the chicken or choose kampong chicken cos they are less fatty. Crush the chicken bones slightly with the back of a chopper. Put bones inside. I use kampong chicken bones and black chicken here. (the more chicken bones, the more liquid you will get)

I put homemade chicken stock instead of water in the big pot for tastier essence.

Otherwise water works well too.

Lastly cover the pots.

Set the fire to medium until it gently boils for 10 minutes.

Then turn the fire down to low heat.

Boil for another 3 to 3.5 hours.

(please check every 40 mins to see if you need to top up more water)

Remove all the chicken first.

And tilt the bowl over slowly.

 This is what you'll see.

Then I transferred into glass bottles of my previous BRANDS chicken essence.

There you have it!!

Claiming from Small Claims Tribunal

I believe a number of you still remember my earlier claim from a salon in 2010. I am still receiving emails from people asking me for help/advise and this is the reason why I am not shutting down my blog.

I am not sure which forum you are from - Spore Motherhood, Mummysg, Flowerpod or a fellow cotter. I rarely post in forums anymore.

And if you have bought expensive packages (expensive I mean more than $1K) from salons and are thinking of getting a refund but you are unsure/afraid/don't know what to expect and would like some advice, please feel free to email me.

Congrats to some of you who managed to get a portion of your money back.

I do appreciate that you do not publicly post my email replies on any public domain. Everyone's situation is different and there is no one size fits all solution. The last thing I want is to get sued by a beauty salon that I didn't even heard of. Please treat my responses as private and confidential between us.

I am doing this out of goodwill and if you think I can be of help to others (in this way), I am more than happy.

Let's bust all the unethical sales techniques!

Merry Christmas 2012

We had wagyu beef at home for Christmas dinner. It was really great :) We had two pieces of 200g beef. Total cost is close to $55. It's cheap and really delicious.

Wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New 2013.

Eat healthily and be merry :)