Wine & Cheese & Friends

I spoke to surfer girl, who wanted to go wine tasting in town. Let’s go to drama’s back lawn instead - She provides the gazebo, and we bring the wine. Drama gave the go-ahead!
Chardonnay & sauvignon blanc, Carlsberg. Kilkenny on standby, all in chilly weather, and in the almost dark.
Now we can guffaw, burp, talk outrageously without the next three tables listening in.

Drama also sponsored four kinds of cheese, dried cranberries, crackers, and baguette bits. I finished almost all the baguette bits myself, so yummy with the herb cheese.
Well, you know what they say about the earlier bird, too bad for the latecomers. heehhhh.
Drama's dad made a timely special appearance just as food was running out past midnight… and delivered keropok and two roast pig heads. Went great with the wine and grapes brought by surfer girl.
Before-pix. Animal farm moment here.


the after picture Mr. Oink Heads all chopped up.



dupree consulting surfer girl the doc on her feet. Notice how I've managed to preserve the anonymity of my friends in this well-taken photo.

And how all that is destroyed in the photo that follows.

All the girly and funny topics came up... how to reject the guys tactfully with excuses they can't respond to... fetishes great and small... things we did when we were young and we forgot until drama came up with photo proof...when doctors cut you open, does stuff gush out, and is blood stinky. Knowledge and substenance combined.

My first Indian dinner at Siglap

This week, I tried out a restaurant and a spa at Siglap. These are not newly set up establishments, but little miss laggard took forever to check them out.

A bunch of my friends made plans to meet on Tuesday night downtown for dinner, unfortunately it was a no-go by early evening. Well, Dilly & I still need sustenance anyway, so we decided to go Indian at Siglap.

I specifically would like to try out Chutney Mary at East Coast road. I had heard pretty good reviews of the restaurant from my Irish ex-colleague who married a local Indian lady and stays in the east. I’m 70% sure it’s north Indian cuisine.

Our favorite dish of the night was a “Papri Chaat”- a traditional appetizer of crisp flour cakes drowned in yoghurt, tamarind chutney, mint sauce, spices, sprinkled with cheese wriggles and tomato dices. Dilly described it as something that burst with a mixture of rich flavors in the mouth, and it’s the truth! I read up on the Internet that it’s a dish sold at roadside stalls in India. Roadside food’s the best!

We also ordered a mild curry of mushrooms and peas to share. For our mains, Dilly had fish and I had Nasi Briyani. The rice was expertly prepared - light and fluffy, it came in a pot and there was enough for two.

Urm, sorry, forgot to take pictures of food.

Hokkaido Food Fair

Dear friends, there is a Hokkaido Food Fair at Isetan Scotts from 22 June to 2 July 07. Please visit, I highly recommend it. I plan to buy tons of Shiroi Koibito biscuits. People who miss this fair, please do not attempt to whine the biscuits away from me, it will not work. Please buy your own.



What’s going to be at the Fair: Scallops! Scallops! Scallops!!
We can look forward to seasoned, dried, soft, grilled or cheese scallops.

Potatoes: Hokkaido potatoes are special, smooth and milky tasting. Yum!

Melons, famous Hokkaido melons, cakes flavored with green tea and chestnuts, corn chocolate (Karen, pls note this), fresh gelato/ice cream.

Usual sashimi suspects, Crabs! and Abe Shoten Mori No Ikameshi (Squid with rice stuffing) and other strange but tasty seasoned seafoods.

They are also showcasing natural products such as HOKKAIDO HORSE OIL. My brochure says: “Since ancient times, horse oil has been used to treat burns and injuries. It is also excellent as a moisturizer for rough and hard skin.”

Feels weird to spread animal oil on body. When people say you smell like a horse, it’s usually not a compliment.

Seafood Brunch at Hakodate

Went to Japan with my long-time convent friends Lorrine and Karen, and Tong in March this year.

Damn SHIOK! Our first brunch in the land of the rising sun. We were dreaming of sashimi and seafood for days before the Great Japan Trip and Hakodate didn't disappoint, and therefore, deserve a mention here.

First, a view of Hakodate from Mt. Hakodate.


[All photos here taken by Lorrine and Tong]

Seafood Stall/Mini restaurant located in this neighbourhood, near the Japan Rail (JR) Station.



When you go to supermarkets, the aunties always feed you food samplers to entice you to buy. Well this is the equivalent Crab Sampler. We did contemplate going to every seafood stall to try their crab offerings and make that a free and delicious brunch session. But we didn't.



Here are my friends posing with the bigger crabs, but we didn't have them as they were quite pricey.



Viola! Our fresh and sweetly steamed Crab! Smaller than the above crabs, but quite enough for us, still quite enormous! Check out friend's hand (the smaller and farther hand) next to crab leg for scale.



Besides the crab, I really liked the Scallop Sashimi. Very Sweet too. We tried to order as much food as we could finish. We also had chirashi sets of sea urchin, squid, fish roe, which were local specialities. There were also grilled mackeral and delicious crab-flavoured miso soup. I'm getting hungry now just from recording all these down.



We were splitting equally the bill of the seafood brunch. I had whined on and on about Scallops. My dear friend initially converted incorrectly the price of one scallop, and thought it translated to about SGD60 For One Scallop, but since I love scallops so much, decided to let me order it anyway. Going by prices, one teeny weeny scallop = one giant crab. The actual price was about one-tenth. But thank you anyway, my dear dear friend Karen, for indulging me.





Happy troopers, we all were. Of course, we did many other things in Japan too, but I'll leave that for another day. That was great food & company!