Our themed weekends are keeping us busy, both planning wise and enacting, so we are keeping them up. I hope you find them entertaining! We decided on a Singapore theme to enjoy in some local delights, just as Singapore announced stricter lock down measures. It made procuring treats more difficult, but we still had fun with it.
We started with fruit drinks on Saturday, which was one of the first things we did when we arrived in Singapore. I remember heading to the hawker center and ordering big cups of juice for each of us. We made them at home this time, with watermelon and strawberry.
Shortly after we started making the dumplings. My kids love dumplings, so making them is a fun treat. They started with the dough, then helped to roll it out and put the filling in the little pockets.
Singapore is more than 75% Chinese, and we ended up with quite a feast, with all kinds of dumplings, a scallion pancake, veggies, and salad for mommy. The kids ate a ton and were hardly hungry for the rest of the day.
After a good nap, and a failed delivery of Singaporean snacks, we started on our first craft of making Peranakan tiles. Peranakan is the mixing of the Chinese settlers with the local Malays in what is now Singapore, and they created beautiful tiles that can be seen throughout old shop houses. I wanted to create the tile designs out of paper, but really struggled to find anyone who had done this. We ended up cutting out shapes with the silhouette and letting the kids glue them to a piece of cardstock.
After this my husband make some local mochi, called muah chee which is a little softer than Japanese mochi. Meanwhile the kids and I worked on a centrepiece for the table with red tissue paper flowers.
For dinner we did a mix of order in and making at home for the local favorite, Nasi Goreng. It’s a Malay, Indonesian, and Singapore dish that is simply delicious. And we had the muah chee, sesame and peanut for dessert.
For breakfast we had a typical Singaporean breakfast of kaya toast and egg. Usually the egg is soft boiled, but we opted for hard boiled.
Then we opened up our tiny balcony for some water play. One of our favorite things about Singapore is the plethora of fun water areas for kids around the city. Most of them are free and they offer a great way for the kids to cool off in this hot city. So the kids played in our water table, while enjoying Singapore views.
After drying off, we shared some boba tea and peanut butter pancakes (min jiang kueh). One of the things that closed just that Friday was boba tea shops, so we did make our own boba. But in the end we were able to find a shop that was able to deliver, so we had some commercial and some homemade boba.
After water play, we did another craft. We made chili crabs and merlions, both national symbols of Singapore! Both print outs are from here. I added a few more flourishes to make it fun.
Just before lunch we watched a short video on Singapore wildlife, which may have been one of the best parts of the weekend. I liked learning about the otters and birds and lizards. For lunch we had delicious Indian food. Singapore is about 7% Indian and the food here is delicious. We are so spoiled.
And per our usual Sunday afternoon activity, we watch a movie. This week it was Jungle Book. It was a good weekend, filled with yummy food. I think we would have made any Singaporean proud!
