MySuit&Apron is One Year Old!

Exactly one year ago today, I launched MySuit&Apron, after years of being prodded by family and friends. The blog was a way to share my recipes of home cooked food, pictures of which I had often posted on my personal Facebook account.

Now a year has passed and MySuit&Apron is One Year Old! How time flies! The goal was to post one recipe per week: 52 recipes for 52 weeks, since I work full time and can only really cook leisurely on weekends. Today, MySuit&Apron celebrates the year with a total of 65 recipes, exceeding the initial goal.

What started out as just a humble hobby garnered some unexpected recognition when MySuit&Apron was one of the finalists for Best New Blog and Best Cooking Blog in the 2014 Singapore Blog Awards.

As I end a full year of food blogging, I'd like to thank the following people:

*My Mother, who at 74, still works full time, goes to the gym and still cooks everyday;

*My daughter M, for patiently teaching me how to use Blogger, for designing the blog and the logo;

*My family, the best and worst critics of my creations in the kitchen, the "victims" of many a failed recipe;

*My best friend M, who launched her own blog, Mama Munch's Kitchen, a few days ahead of mine, and gave me that final push. She's also the one who came up with the brilliant idea of the apron I'm wearing in this photo, which was conveniently commissioned during a very recent trip to Bangkok.

*My dear friend and ex-colleague K, of Twice as Delicious, who encouraged me to blog about food. I still remember that it was during one of our monthly foodie dinners, over steak and wine, during her birthday dinner at Wooloomooloo Steakhouse.

Thanks so much to all of you for all your support! Happy New Year! Keep cooking for your family and friends, because whatever you cook will surely be sprinkled with love, something that you can't get from a restaurant or takeout. :)

Baked Squid with Rice, Raisins & Pine Nuts

This is a flavourful, baked squid dish, on top of rice with tomato sauce, raisins and toasted pine nuts. An alternative is to stuff the squid with the rice but if you have no time (like me, during this particular weekend of making this dish), you can just put the squid on top of the rice, bake it, and it will just be as impressive. The dish is best eaten with tzatziki, a Greek yogurt based dip. The recipe for my tzatziki is here.

It's a very pretty dish...

 

Serve it this way!

Tzatziki

We love making our own tzatziki, a Greek yogurt dip which is a perfect accompaniment for baked or fried dishes. Here's my recipe for it.

Baked Squid with Rice with Raisins & Pine Nuts. Recipe in this blog too.

One table, Seven Christmas looks

This post isn't about recipes per se, but I just wanted to share how one dining table can have sevendifferent Christmas looks. It all depends on your creativity--using different placemats, tablecloths, dishes and centrepieces, some of which even include my children's toys!

Merry Christmas!

This one features poinsettia Christmas plates on red Vietnamese lacquerware placemats. The centrepiece is a green runner, with silver candelabras, a poinsettia bowl and my son's Battle B Daman marbles.

Baked French Toast with Caramelized Bananas

This is a delicious breakfast, and making it will fill your kitchen with the scent of cinnamon and caramelised bananas. It reminds me of Christmas mornings.

Bittergourd (Ampalaya) & Tomato Salad

Ampalaya (Bittergourd) Salad, a refreshing Filipino salad perfect with fried fish or meat.

The salad is very simple to make and is a perfect accompaniment for dry, fried food, such as fish or pork chops. Because of the vinegar, it eventually turns into pickles, so you can store it in your ref for a prolonged period of time and just grab it when you have your next fried dish.

Spaghetti with Shrimp & Roe

This is one of my favourite "go to" recipes when I want to make a quick seafood pasta. It's easy to make, flavourful and lemony. It uses two types of roe and some nori (seaweed).