provincial food

before i go on to describe how life is good to me, let me first......

clarify that i am not plugging LOCK & LOCK products no matter how partial i am to all things korean.

cannot resist adding the above to this post cos it's one of my pet peeves that people do not remove stickers on the products they are using.

(i know for a fact that this water bottle is at least  6 months old).

just like i cannot stand price and size stickers left on back of shoes...

or price tags on potted plants, even books.

call me a sticker-hater, sticker-destroyer, stickler for no-sticker, if you must  but nothing gets my goat more than a worn out sticker on something still in use.

i know what you are thinking - go get a life!

actually, i do have one and a pretty good one too, haha... ^0^

like last sunday, i felt like teriyaki chicken don. didn't feel like going out to eat so cooked my own.  

had this recipe cut out from a japanese newsletter yonks ago but didn't have the time to try it out.

it called for chicken fillet to be marinaded in sake, ginger juice and soy sauce for at least two hours.

chicken is then grilled in a shallow pan with a little oil, and then sake. finally, teriyaki sauce comprising mirin, sugar and soy sauce is poured slowly over the cooked fillet.

to be honest, i burnt the first piece of chicken. realised fire was a little too big so sugar in sauce caramelised too quickly. lucky there were two other pieces so those turned out all right.

later that evening, we had a really nice meal at pu tien restaurant(tampines mall branch).

pu tien specialises in heng hwa cuisine. the ongs are heng hwas, their forefathers having coming from putien county in fujian province in china.

we are not very familiar with many of the putien dishes so don't know if the restaurant serves authentic heng hwa food.

but if we are to believe the papers' food critics, it's the real McCoy.

anyway, we have always enjoyed the food even if it meant having to brave traffic to kitchener road where the main restaurant is.

luckily, it opened a branch at tampines mall some months back. 

yeah, so convenient.

and you know what? the consistency is there! food here is just as good. apart from our favourites, we also tried new dishes.

like this drunken cockles.

it was the best thing we have ever tasted for a while. the cockles were juicy and boiled just right. no bloody mess if you know what i mean. the simple sauce of chopped garlic and sliced chillies in vinegar and soy sauce was just the right stuff.

i wasn't too perturbed about contracting hepatitis B than i was about the smell of garlic on my tongue that lingered until the day after.

but it was worth it.

our fave. 

sliced ice cold bitter gourd served on a bed of ice and eaten with honey. 

crunchy, refreshing and bitter-sweet, thanks to the runny honey.

another of their signature dish - sweet and sour pork with lychee.

taste a lot more superior than the zi char type. what stands out is the sweetness from the lychee. i cannot figure out if its just the juice or pureed lychee in the pork but whatever it is, this dish is nice.

doesn't look like much but this heng hwa lor mee is one of their must-eats. the broth, though thick, is not gooey like the singapore type. 

while oz prefers the lor mee, this heng hwa beehoon is my fave.

heng hwa beehoon is the very fine kind which needs no soaking. m-i-law used to cook it quite often until a few years ago. now, i am glad i am able to find it here. there are other ingredients like clams, veg, tau pok,  roasted peanuts and fried seaweed, all adding crunch and texture to the melt-in-the-mouth beehoon.

told you life is good.  :-)

pond-icherry

had lunch at tampopo yesterday.

we were seated next to a conveyor belt but it, strangely, had no plates of sushi on it.

it was a delivery system for sushi and sashimi dishes and was touted as the newest and first of its kind in singapore.

so we had fun.

you first order through a touch screen monitor suspended above the conveyor belt. 

select and hit send and then wait.

forgot to take a picture but to the right are three little buttons. the first lights up when your food is on its way. the second tells you that food is nano seconds away cos you can see it. and the last one asks you to remove food from belt and well, start eating.

in less than 5 mins, our order of mekajiki sashimi glides down the belt on the left, stops right before the window and makes a precise right-angled turn onto the final stretch. 

impressive.

and what's going on here?

oh, we are going fishing in new zealand?

so cool.

in lake taupo?

do we go in a yacht or boat??

( tsk, tsk, *mother shakes head*)

can we row the boat?

(that's better)

is it very big, this taupo place?

is it a pond or river or what??

hello, it's lake taupo, my dear. 

counting down to the new zealand trip.  

so looking forward to it.

day of plenty

the girls bundled into the car in high spirits yesterday, looking forward to a day of purposeful shopping. just before i swung out on to the main road, i inserted my cash card into the IU.

no click.

no reading.

nadah. zilch.

the car is hardly 9 months old. how can the IU give up on me? 

i yanked, i grabbed, i pushed. i tried again and again but that gray ugly thing was evilly silent.

no choice but to call LTA, visions of a lovely day with the girls slowly evaporating before my eyes....

lady told me to go to the nearest VICOM at changi north, near the prison.

so here we are.

can you blame the girls for looking disappointed???  :-)

guy in charge quickly ascertained that IU had indeed died and would change a new one for me pronto.

hey, not bad.

the moment he heard the click of my camera phone, his head whipped around with a watchudoin' ? kind of look.

i could tell him i was taking it for my blog and no, it's not for evidence or anything in case you screw up but i didn't know how to tell him.

not in chinese anyway. it would come up like a suspicious it's-for-my-computer kind of answer and that's even more sinister-sounding.

so i backed off and went in search of the girls who were exploring VICOM. wei was, like, "this reminds me of malaysia".

well, am not so sure if this whole thing would be so easily solved if we were in malaysia.

but we are in singapore. fifteen minutes and he's done. and we were happily on the expressway with the cash card working in the new IU, replaced gratis cos it's "under warranty".  

and so began our fun of mall-trawling.

first to far east plaza for xru's dress alteration and some quick buys at the basement.

then to takashimaya for lunch and a long-overdue swimsuit and a pair of goggles for wei.

mooched around other shops for a bit.

then hopped over to cuppage plaza to check out the organic shop for lip balm and hair dye. totally unfruitful. the shop must be dying a slow death.... stocks are getting more and more sparse.

finally to plaza singapura.

first stop was tea at eclectic attic, my fave shop whenever i am at PS.

it's no ordinary cafe. in fact, you can't tell it sells food cos it looks like a vintage furniture store. the seats and tables where food is served are also for sale.

while waiting for our tea, we poked around, admiring the interesting merchandise.

i distinctly remember portions being bigger. all this cost cutting is not good for the pocket. at $6.95 each for the scones and the cake platter (second picture), i think it's pretty steep.

then, it's to spotlight to buy craft supplies and to la senza for undies before heading home. doubt i could go on much further cos my feet were killing me by then.

indeed, a day of plenty....

of female-bonding and love.

funk-y

sometimes, to get out of a funk yourself, you need to help others out of their deeper funk.

so we have decided to cancel bali and have the wedding anniversary celeb in singapore instead.

it sounds easy making that decision but it wasn't. there was denial, then pessimism sprinkled with the occasional optimism but in the end, common sense prevailed. like we know it would.

so he got into a funk and i got out of it, trying to get him out of it.

plus had a heart to heart talk with helper to get her out of her funk. that needs some more time but i have faith that things will be back to normal again.

like me :-)

bright skies are here, woohoo!

things are looking up. the bali kayumanis villas got back to us on the penalty sum and it was less than we had imagined.

now, still waiting for plane tickets cancellation charges....

tackling one thing at a time gives me a sense of mission. 

there's  ticket reservations, accommodation and new celebration venue to take care of,  in that order.

keeping fingers' crossed that there will be no major hitches. don't have much time cos leaving for NZ in two weeks....

dark skies

doesn't look like there are going to be blue skies for me yet. 

have been MIA cos have been feeling irritated and snarky for the past 2 weeks.

things have not gone right for a while..... missing objects and misplaced values, under-performing helper...

told myself not to sweat the small stuff. but it's easier said than done. when i look at the big picture, it's what lies beyond that riles me. ok, i know i am talking in circles.

anyway, just when i tell myself to let up a bit, another bigger dark cloud descended suddenly last night.

have been told it's not safe to go to bali next month. the 3 bali bombers are due for execution any day now and their supporters have vowed revenge.

reliable sources say retaliation may take place in the coming weeks.

question is: do we want to take the risk and put both families in the path of danger? if nothing happens, we all can breathe a sigh of relief, laugh at our paranoia and fly out of bali safely.

BUT WHAT IF SOMETHING HAPPENS???

i don't even want to think about it. there are 16 of us on this trip which we have planned for more than six months. everything is booked and paid for. 

my gut tells me to go ahead with the trip. we will be in ubud after all. in the past, terrorists have targeted kuta, the whites' playground. australia has already issued a travel advisory to all its citizens. understandably so because a large percentage of those killed in the last two attacks were australians.

but my head is cautioning me. besides, i have to be fair to my guests. i have to ask them if they are willing to take the trip. we cannot just drag them along just because it's our 20th anniversary.