Singapore turns 55 years old! 

We've come a long way, through ups and downs, and we're still going strong. Happy Birthday!!

This year is indeed a very different year of national day celebration. Not only do we have almost ALL Singaporeans present in the country on this day, we also experienced a different type of celebration. Normally during the national day period, I'm usually not in the country. Not that I don't love Singapore, but working adults have to try to fully maximize the use of their annual leaves, combined with public holidays. Hence, national day public holidays are always used in conjunction with my AL to go travelling. hahaha. This time last year, I was at New Zealand. The year before, I was diving at Malapascua... Oops. But this year, everyone is grounded because of Covid-19! 

Welcome home (and stay home), Singaporeans. 

Since we can't travel, let's make full use of this holiday. Started the morning of 9th August with my usual sunday morning run. I usually take my run to the waterway park connector, running past my future house and checking out the construction progress, and rounding back to the mall. Total distance 5 KM. Easy run, just to keep my stamina going and heart pumping. Its a weekly affair and I do it with my parents, to encourage them to exercise together. 

This year's national day parade will be taken to the streets, where the military will showcase their battleships/tanks/vehicles. It is usually done at the parade grounds itself (during the NDP show) but since this year there won't be any NDP show for the public to attend due to crowding restrictions, they brought the vehicles to the heartlands! We learnt that the mobile columns would be passing by our area at Punggol (right infront of waterway point), so after our morning run, we stayed at waterway point to have breakfast and waited until 1130 AM to catch the mobile column passing by us. 

Did our seemingly patriotic part by cheering at the roadside, and headed home to wash up. Hooray! Since it was national day weekend, my bro & I decided to cook the dinner feast. I prepared Molten Lava Cake (for dessert), made fresh pasta from scratch and baked lasagna! Since the molten lava cake was supposed to be dessert, I made the batter ahead and refrigerated it. To have oozing molten lava, you need to bake it hot & quick and eat it while it's still hot so the lava will ooze out. Making the batter was easy, so I started early at 1 PM, got it done and out of the way. Next was to make the lasagna pasta sheet. I wanted to buy store bought sheets, bcos it's not costly and less time consuming. But for some weird reason, all the supermarkets in Punggol seemed to be sold out/OOS of the noodle sheets! I was so mad, i walked to 7 different supermarkets all over and I still couldn't find. Some friends suggested that I make my own lasagna noodle sheets, and so I did. It's actually super simple, you just need plain flour and eggs. But, the actual work comes with you need to knead the dough and flatten it out. I don't have a pasta maker machine, so i had to go old school and use a rolling pin. This is tough work. 

  

After making the dough, you gotta let it rest for 30min, then portion out to flatten. After flattening, cut the sheets to desired size and then let it dry for at least 1hr. Once the sheets are dried, it's ready to be cooked and the leftover sheets can be frozen for future use.

  

It took me really long to make the pasta dough and I was sweating all over. The weather was really unfavorable yesterday. But after seeing the end product, my pasta sheets drying nicely outside, it's quite satisfying! Once my sheets are cooked, I started to assemble my lasagna! Cooked my ground beef with onion & garlic, poured in tomato puree and paste, added my seasoning (salt, pepper, oregano, thyme) and simmered for 15min. Mixed my ricotta cheese with mozzarella, parsley and it's go time! Beef sauce > pasta > beef sauce > cheese mix > mozzarella > pasta > beef sauce > cheese mix > mozzarella (finish all), cover up with foil and bake for 45 min at 180 degrees. Remove foil the last 3-5 min and bake till golden brown crust. Rest for 20 - 30 min before serving. DONE!