Day 229/365: Aug 17, 2014

I’m thankful for:

• A perfect P-date at the park eating pita bread sandwiches and playing at the playground.
• Figuring out that my L+R contacts were in the wrong eyes -the reason why I was having trouble seeing clearly!
• A random gift from my friend, just because.

Playgrounds aren’t just for little kids.

J through O… Just an Odd collection of dates

Don’t worry. Even though I haven’t posted about it in a while we have gone on dates since last posting about our I date.

So that I have a record of what we did, and that we did go on dates, here’s J through O:

J is for Japanese food

We cheated for J. We love Japanese food. And we really enjoyed a Japanese restaurant that was in the vicinity of our former apartment. (Hint: We’ve taken so long to post about it, that we’ve already moved since it and other dates happened.)

I wonder if there is a synonym or Japanese word for “yummy” that starts with J ?

K is for Kites and Kiwi

Andrew wins points for originality with devising a plan for a K date while including Gideon. We went to a park with new kites. And when the kites failed (not windy enough and started to rain) we took a break to eat some kiwi. Gideon didn’t know that the date didn’t go as planned, and the wife still had a great time with the special outing, so it was still a success!

Reminds me of the song from Mary Poppins, “Let’s Go Fly a Kite!”

L is for a Leisurely date at the Library

Even though we had babysitting, we just wanted to do something simple for this date. So off we went to the library. I must say, most of my trips are spent trying to keep a toddler from squealing and grabbing any and ever book off the bookshelf, it was rather nice to sit quietly in the library cafe without all the normal toddler drama! Disclaimer: the date was so leisurely that we didn’t take and pictures! 😦

M is for Mozzerella Bar

(Well, really we went to the movies… but then we realized a random date we had done had a good M title and was in the rich time frame.)

Fantastic food, great company, and the most awesome babysitter (my mom).

N is for something New

We decided things are always changing around Singapore, why not find something “New” that we hadn’t done before for our N date? I had for months seen people walking around our local mall eating crepes, but I hadn’t figured out where they got them from. Finally one day I noticed the shop that I must’ve passed many many times! The crepes were great!

Gideon came too, can you blame him?

O is for Ordering Out

For our O date I realized that it has been a year since we started with our A is for Anniversary date. It’s taken us a year just to get to O… but thankfully, we’ve done more dates than those that strictly adhere to our alphabet scheme. And in all honesty, the alphabet idea has helped to keep us thinking of new things to do together rather than always doing the same thing. It’s given us a challenge for creativity even for those dates/special times when Gideon is in tow.

Back to our anniversary… We were unable to find a baby sitter for the weekend or the day of (which was a weekday anyways). So I searched around and found a website that would deliver food from nice[r] restaurants (“order out”). After Andrew got home we took care of getting Gideon ready for bed. Just as he was about to head to bed our food arrived. Perfect timing.

Up… I guess you can tell when we started our dinner! :p

We finished with the bedtime routine for the little guy, lit the candles, and had our dinner. It was a delicious fare of a blended middle eastern and lebanese cuisine. Afterwards we snuggled together on the couch (and treated ourselves to air conditioning in the main room for the evening) and watched Julie and Julia. (Would’ve been better for a J date… oh well 😉 ).

The next kiwi we had was even redder!

And finally we topped the evening off with some Japanese Cheesecake, raspberries (always a treat here), and red kiwi (never tried before, but were good enjoy that I would recommend them if it weren’t for the price$$$!). Andrew sweetly remembered to pull out our wedding book and keep our tradition of reviewing it and our vows/etc on the anniversary of our wedding day. Sweet ending to a special day, right?

Perhaps a simple way to spend the evening of our anniversary, but it felt special, and we both enjoyed ourselves.

Now we’re up to speed… What starts with P?

Day 4/365: Jan 4, 2014

I’m thankful for:

• A husband who plans unique dates.

The panda is a kite!

Today’s date was our “K” date – so we [tried] to fly kites, and we ate kiwis.

I is for Intriguing Sushi and LN2

There’s no obvious need for Gideon for an “I” date. Consequently, babysitting was arranged. Yippee! We were overdue for a child-free date. I made contact with Gideon’s Singapore grandparents and worked out a time for them to come watch their surrogate grandson. Additionally, I told them it would be a surprise for Andrew.

Monday night as Andrew called me to let me know when he’d be leaving work, I told him that Gideon and I would walk down to meet him at the bus stop. As this is pretty common, he had no reason to suspect any plans beyond a normal evening. When he got off the bus and met me, he noticed I was wearing a dress, and their were two individuals waiting to whisk Gideon away; then he had reason to suspect.

I convinced the husband to play along and just follow me to our destination. He didn’t know until we arrived at Itacho Sushi that I found a way to have sushi for an I date. Any reason for good sushi, right?

And boy was it good sushi! I followed the suggestion of an online review and ordered the gyoza (Japanese dumpling – we normally love these anyways) with green tea salt. 

Gyoza with green tea salt… what!?

Intriguing you say? Oh, it was – but delicious! It added a depth of salty flavor that enhanced the crispy dumplings!

The dishes seemed to be served as they were ready because Andrew’s salad and our edamame (deliciously salted!) were served last. Instead, after the gyoza we were served our sushi.

First up was pork sushi.

Andrew modeling with the pork sushi! (Don’t worry – the pork was cooked 😀 )

I know it sounds weird. Believe me, I had a hard time trusting that something that doesn’t swim in the sea could make good sushi… but it was moist, fall-apart-in-your-mouth, and flavorful – the things good sushi should be!

Next we did a standard tuna. Predictable, but still tasty.

To keep in theme with ordering intriguing menu items we tried the roasted duck sushi.

Inconceivable!

Absolutely bursting with flavor!

All in all, a delicious dinner, but not so filling that we didn’t save enough room for dessert. We walked to Little India for dessert. While walking I asked Andrew if he had any guesses what we were going to do for dessert. I looked at his face and then quickly decided I didn’t want to know if he knew or not, so I changed my mind and informed him to tell me later. Fickle me.

It’s not uncommon for it to be quite warm in Singapore, even in the evenings. It was probably in the 80s as we walked to dessert. So it is only fitting that we completed our walk at 320 below – somewhere where we could cool off!

320 Below = name of the establishment

The intriguing name comes from the fact that liquid nitrogen boils (turns to gas) at -320.4F!!! (That’s -195.8C for the non-Americans reading, and 77K for the nerds. Anyway you put it that’s cold!)

“Alright, now you’ve gotten out of hand,” you might say. “How does liquid nitrogen fit in with an “I” date?”

This awesome shop uses liquid nitrogen to make Ice cream! You pick your flavor. Then they put the ingredients into a standard Kitchen Aid mixer. What’s not so standard is what happens next: They turn the valve on a pipe right next to the mixer that pours liquid nitrogen (abbreviated LN2) into the bowl, essentially instantly freezing the ingredients. Because it is done at such a low temperature and because it happens nearly instantaneously, you don’t get the annoying ice crystals that is notorious for messing up the consistency of ice cream. Instead, the result is one of the creamiest ice creams known to mankind! (I’m done with my Chemistry rant for now.)

The cloud of “smoke” is really a cloud of liquid nitrogen.

Besides the fact that we are two science nerds, it was a lot of fun to see the process happen right before your eyes as they whip up your personal serving of ice cream.

Andrew picked out the owner’s recommendation, “Bailey’s Chocolate.” For the myself, the idea of having “Tiramisu” in creamy ice cream form, was irresistible.

Tiramisu & Chocolate love

While the chocolate was good, the tiramisu was a definite winner. Since we were the only ones in the shop, and the ice cream was that good, we just had to have a round two! This time we chose Raspberry frozen yogurt and lemon sorbet.

Just as happy about round two 🙂

The lemon sorbet wasn’t as tasty as we were hoping for. (Hey, we had really high expectations based on round one!) But the raspberry frozen yogurt was probably the best frozen yogurt I’ve ever had. And that’s high praise. 

You know how I changed  my mind about asking if he had a hunch about where we were headed? Well, good thing. Because somehow he had spied the ice cream place in his facebook news feed, and with an I date… well he’s a smart cookie. Good thing I didn’t know the surprise was spoiled till later.

 

Looking back, I realize now that the date ended up being quite an interesting one, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Oh yeah, I can’t end a post about an “I” date without saying, “I love you, Andrew!” 🙂