Hungry? Must Eat!

"Cousin-in-law" has a new camera and food blog. Check out his site:

http://hungrymusteat.blogspot.com

Farm Food

Recently, I've bookmarked these 3 eateries which were once purely agricultural places. They were all near our home so we decided to check them out.

Firstly, Vanilla Pod. This is the most classy of the 3 places. Nice classy restaurant with great view and ambience in the afternoon. See my previous blog entry here.


Petals and Leaves Bistro (click for slideshow)

Secondly, last week we went to the Petals and Leaves Bistro. Slightly further away in the Kranji area. The food choices were not as extensive as a normal restaurant but were quite adequate. Choices were mainly "western" dishes with some local selections.

They had a big pond for fishing (not sure what kind of fish though) and an activity corner for children. There is also an outdoor playground (although it is a bit run down). This place also has facilities for wedding/dinner receptions and farmstays. Overall, a nice place to have lunch or even stay for a quiet weekend.


Poison Ivy Bistro (click for slideshow)

Finally, this weekend we went to Poison Ivy. SIL saw our photos from Petals and Leaves so we decided to have a family outing to the Kranji area for lunch.

Compared to P&L, it was more "farm like". For $2 you can walk into their farm and see where they grow their organic veggies, which were also available for sale and for lunch. The food on their menu were all local dishes. We ordered quite a bit and the food tastes home cooked and quite nice. Price wasn't too expensive. We had healthy brown rice and quite a number of dishes and it cost us only about $10 per head.

We'll definitely be back to Kranji. Who knows, maybe farm hopping next time?

If you are interested, here's a LINK to google maps to get started. More info can also be found here: http://www.kranjicountryside.com/

Lunch @ Vanilla Pod

Decided to try out Vanilla Pod for a nice quiet Saturday lunch as it was near our place. When we reached there just after 12pm, it was quiet. Wandered around and found the restaurant after asking the staff. The main restaurant is hidden behind the garden. There is also a cafe/bar at the front with nice cosy sofas (maybe next time can try chilling out here).

Anyway, we weren't big eaters so we ordered soup and shared a plate of pork knuckles which we almost couldn't finish. Overall the ambience was really nice and peaceful. Good place for a stress free lunch or chit-chat.

Will probably come back here to try other stuff on their menu like pasta, pizzas and dessert.

Father's Day 2009

This is the first Father's Day that I am officially "celebrating". Last year, the boy was only 1 month old. So the attention was on the 1 month celebrations.

Anyway, lunch was on wifey (of course, and just as well since I lost my wallet the day before!), and I picked the location. Chose Friends @ Jelita because they currently have a 1-for-1 promotion going on for their set lunch and dinner.

Their set lunch and dinner is a tad expensive, so it was good that they had a 1-for-1. Anyway, the food is not bad. Enjoyed a peaceful lunch, mostly because the boy was asleep, but had to rush through dessert and tea as he was awake by then.

Click photo for slideshow.

"Standalone" Sushi Outlet

Being pretty busy with work over the past few week-ends, it was a luxury this week to be able to have dinner on a Saturday night with family. We wanted to go to IMM to do some shopping, but didn't want to fight with the crowd. And I remembered seeing a small Sakae Sushi "building" nearby IMM, so there we went to check it out.

Food is typical Sakae sushi, but the outlet was a "standalone" building by itself. Parking was free, and it reminded me of the restaurants in the US. Arriving there at 6pm, it wasn't that crowded we found the ambience to be pretty good. Even the boy was impressed (I think, cos he never really started whining and fidgeting).

Anyway, we had our fill before the crowd started arriving.

MIL's Birthday Dinner

We celebrated MIL's birthday with a small dinner at a restaurant called "Zi Ran", which is "Natural" if literally translated to English. It's a small Chinese restaurant located near Redhill MRT. Food is not bad and it seemed pretty popular. The sexy chopstick holders were a tad out of place though. See if you can spot them in the slideshow ... :-P

Sun and Moon

A collage of photos from several visits to the Sun and Moon japanese restaurant at Wheelock Place.

Packed Weekend

It's been a long time since I had so much activities on the weekend ...

Sat (AM):

Was supposed to have lunch with Wifey's friends at Vivocity Marche. So we happily went there and when we reached, we realised that we were 24 hours too early, thanks to some mis-communication (not on my part ... :-P ) In any case, we attempted and succeeded in having lunch with the boy at Shin Kushiya. Most part of it was taking turns looking after Cayden as he woke up before our set lunches arrived. Not very glamorous but we managed to finish our Mixed Kushiyaki Set and Cha Soba Set before he made any fuss. In fact, we were so busy with him that we forgot to take photos ... shucks!

After that it was shopping at Giant before heading down to in-laws place for part 2 for the day.

Sat (PM):

It was Wifey's aunt's birthday. So she treated us to dinner at Joe's Kitchen Thai Restaurant. Its a small restaurant at Alexandra Village with cheap but reasonably good Thai food. HERE are some pictures of what we ordered.

Sun (AM)

Went back to Vivocity AGAIN and this time we finally had our lunch at Marche. Spent about 2 hours catching up and taking some photos before we left

Sun (PM)

This is finally when we got time to relax for the weekend, although about an hour was spent trying to get the boy to sleep, and another hour trying to get him to stop crying and go back to sleep after he woke up (probably from a bad dream or loud noise).


I think the picture below aptly sums up our weekend ... :-D

Hawaiian Rocket

Take a standard Cold Storage "First Choice" pineapple and ham pizza as a base. "Zeng" (modify) it with loads and loads of extra Mozarella Cheese and Wild Rocket, and you get your very own "Hawaiian Rocket" Pizza!

Cous cous salad (Updated)

I have made a second attempt and added in more ingredients this time. Close up photo below:



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I was inspired by the "instant take-away" cous cous salad which I had at the Louvre last year in Paris. See here:

KooshLog: Paris - Day 2

Anyway, I finally had a chance to create my own ...



If you want to make some, here are the ingredients:
- Cooked and cooled cous cous (with salt and butter)
- Mixed vegetables
- Onions (diced)
- Raisins
- Italian Dressing (or other salad dressing ... up to you)

Other things which you can also put in:
- Tomatoes (diced)
- Lettuce (chopped/diced)
- Ham (diced)
- Bacon (bits)
- Black olives (pitted and diced)
- Green peppers (diced)
... basically anything you like!

After that, let it cool in the fridge. Once done, its a very refreshing snack, and can be kept for a couple of days.

Carrot Cake

Haven't cooked this dish at home for some time now. Have made an attempt recently, see the results ...



Cooking this is pretty simple, and so are the ingredients:
- Carrot Cake
- Egg
- Chai Po
- Chinese Parsley
- Vegetable Oil

Tastes close enough to what you can buy at the food courts, perhaps it would have tasted a bit better if I had a worn a straw hat while cooking it ... :-)

Rice Cooker Tip

Have you ever struggled with cleaning the rice cooker after every meal where you had to scrub and scrape all the burnt/stuck rice from the bottom of the container?

This happened to me, especially when the rice cooker gets older and the non-stick surface of the rice container degrades.

One tip which I like to share to solve this cleaning problem is to use ALUMINIUM FOIL.

What you can do is to put the uncooked rice and water onto an aluminium foil and place it into the container. Make sure the water in the aluminium foil does not leak out. In the space between the aluminium foil and container, add a little bit of extra water. This is to make sure the foil gets good contact with the container through the water and to allow the rice cooker to detect when cooking is done. (This works cos most rice cookers use a thermostat to determine when the rice is cooked i.e. when the water dries up, temperature goes > 100 degrees C)

Result: 100% Fluffy rice without s single grain getting burnt! Better yet, just rinse the rice container, no scraping or scrubbing!



BTW, for those who want to know how a rice cooker works, here's some interesting links:

How Stuff Works (Rice Cooker)
How a Rice Cooker Works (Some girl on YouTube)

Birthday 2008

A new year, a new number for my age. That's what it's like to have your birthday in January.

This year, other than the birthday cake and lunches at the office, I had dinner with family at Waraku @ The Central on Friday. It was my first time at The Central which is located just next door to the Merchant Court Hotel. Waraku was on the 3rd floor. The Central also had a whole bunch of other Japanese restaurants throughout the mall. If you are into Jap food, this is the place to go.

Anyway, Waraku (as well as some of the other Jap establishments) was super crowded. We had to wait a while for a table for 8. The food itself was not really fantastic. The jap curry was not near any of the better ones I had tasted. Overall its ok, but I still prefer Sun with Moon!

(Flickr Photo Set HERE)

Coconut Candy Blocks

Yummy! I have not seen traditional coconut candy blocks for a few years already, so imagine my surprise when I found them being sold at Glory Snack Shop at Lido Cineplex! They are one of my favourite childhood snacks.

Coconut candy blocks typically come in packs of 5 rectangular blocks in different colours; Green, Orange, Red, White and Dark Brown. Solid chunks of coconut and sugar, a super treat for the sweet tooth. They used to be pretty cheap but now its S$2.00 per pack.

Hairy Crab!

Wifey has been wanting to eat this for some time now. After discovering a place which sells reasonably priced Hairy Crab, we went for it. The place was along Upper Cross Street, same stretch as the famous 油鸡 noodle places.

The restaurant was called Tam Kah's Sharkfin Pte Ltd and wasn't very crowded at the time we arrived. Big hairy crabs were going at S$28 a piece, XL ones were $38. We had the large. Other than the hairy crabs, we had noodles/vermicelli, roast chicken and vegetables. There was also complimentary ginger soup glutinous rice balls for dessert with the hairy crabs.

Personally, I think the crab meat tasted sweeter and better than normal large Sri Lankan crabs. However, the hairy crabs are much smaller, meaning more work to get out whatever little meat you can find, not really worth the effort for that little bit of meat. It was a great dinner nonetheless!

Oh yes, I was also surprised at the great service (at least from one of the staff). The lady staff showed us how to de-shell the hairy crab and where we could dig out bits of crab meat. After that, she continued to de-shell the entire hairy crab for my MIL as my MIL could not de-shell the crab cos she is not very dextrous anymore. She carefully removed bits of crab meat and put onto the spoon for my MIL. Spoon after spoon as MIL ate. I reckon she stood there digging out crab meat for at least 20 minutes!

More Teochew Porridge

Yet another trip to Chun Tin for Teochew porridge. Somehow it feels great to have it on Saturday or Sunday afternoon for lunch.

The Hae Bi Hiam is fantastic, I could just eat plain porridge with it and nothing else!

Ben and Jerry's

About a month ago, we bought a tub of Ben and Jerry's, after not having any in a looong while.

The flavour we bought was "Dave Matthew's Band MAGIC BROWNIES". Yum, I especially love the taste of the brownies blended into the Black Raspberry ice cream!

Anyway, that started off our craving for B&J's. Recently, there were quite a number of offers at various supermarkets selling B&J's at "2 for $XX.XX" ... so check out our latest collection!

Deepavali Holiday

Happy Deepavali to all Hindus!

Today is a public holiday and is also a great "Food and Entertainment" day. The past few weeks have been real busy working on a submission for a customer next week. As such, this weekend should also be pretty busy so I am taking this opportunity to have a quick break before the coming rush for submission.

Wifey and I decided to go for a nice lunch and a movie today. Here's what we did:

1200hrs: Lunch - Sun and Moon Restaurant at Wheelock Place



1330hrs: Movie - Stardust. A good, two-hour movie that is worth watching. (Based on the book by Neil Gaiman)



1615hrs: On the way driving home, Wifey decided that we should detour to Clementi to pack a nice dinner. In the end, we bought stuff from the popular Satay stall at Central and also the famous original "Bros" Rojak.

While buying dinner, we also happened to chance upon chef Sam Leong and QuanYi Feng filming for their new food show Good Food Fun Cook. They were cooking some sort of steamed crab claws. I was asked if I wanted to try Sam's cooking. Unfortunately, as it meant being "interviewed" in front of the camera by YiFeng (and in Chinese somemore), I politely declined ... :-P



1900hrs: Had great Satay and Rojak!



2000hrs: Working at home ...

2230hrs: Starship Troopers 2 on TV ...

Ok, its back to work tomorrow.
Looking forward to end of next week!

Caramel Apples

This stuff is rare and is usually only available in supermarkets like Cold Storage or Marketplace during Halloween. Haven't had this in a long while so I grabbed one when I saw it during grocery shopping last week. Yummy!

Longbeans and Toufu

Have tried to recreate a dish which both wifey and myself have had since we were young. So far, we have not had this for any of the home-cooked meals over at my cousin's nor my in-law's place.

Anyway, turned out not bad but I think it can be improved by making it more spicy using sambal or a twist with some roast pork or bacon.

Ingredients:
- Long beans
- Toufu
- Chye Poh
- Roasted Peanuts
- Chilli