15 minutes

Was at 15 minutes on Monday (yeah, a regular job makes me a lazy blogkeeper). We really liked the place. I'm a big fan of long wide tables + long benches, big high tables + comfortable high stools, and long narrow counters + comfortable high chairs. Well, they had all of that, which made it really hard for me to decide where to sit.

Only took a couple of pictures cos it was just drinks for us. Plus we were too busy chattering away even before we sat down. But Melly has a great post on the place.

Will definitely be back. Am already planning future meetings there.

Cafe & Meal MUJI

From 8tokyo.com.

Sigh. I miss Tokyo.

My love for petai is wild and borders on crazy. The mother cooks it stomach-churning, runs-inducing spicy, just the way I like it. I could eat it every day, except I shouldn't. It does make your pee smell funny for a couple of days and it probably isn't a good idea to agitate my stomach with that much chilli on a daily basis. But I really love it. The picture was hastily taken and a little blur cos I was too eager to dig in.

Monday Ramble

Magazines are strewn all over my floor as I am reading up for a meeting tomorrow.

I am bored from bending over pages and pages of glossies. I hereby permit myself to take a break.

So here's a couple of gorgeous items from Jamie Oliver's online Jme Collection Shop.

Mustard and ketchup are two of my favourite condiments. Well, actually, I love condiments, so that's not saying very much, since the list of favourites I have is very long. But no matter.

***
Visited Cat Socrates again and had the piping hot milk tea again. I love that milk tea. I love to drink it fresh and hot because it's actually sweeter than what I like but the sweetness works when it's really hot. I also love the cup it comes in, and the giant saucer, and the two pieces of berry chocolate cereal bars it came with. It was biscotti the last time. I'm not fond of biscotti.



My photo is on display at the mini cat exhibition they're having this month. So it feels a little like I'm visiting my cat. There are many cats to look at.

***
The mother wanted to go jogging. I convinced her to walk briskly instead. She doesn't know how to jog. I let her jog a few metres near the end and she was tired after that. It's not quite possible to jog for what may possibly be the first time when you are 54.

***
I have been obsessing over Flickr, collecting favourites and contacts. Discovered something amazing I want to share but maybe later.

Alright. I need to go back to my magazines now.

i LOVE this set

I was super taken by Y.S.K.31's Bento set on Flickr.

They're so lovingly prepared and lovingly photographed.

From one of comments, it appears that the wife made these for him.

I love bentos. Homemade bentos are extra special. Plus these look super delicious.

Food, sort of

From NYT here:

SODIUM — that’s what worries Greye Dunn. He thinks about calories, too, and whether he’s getting enough vitamins. But it’s the sodium that really scares him.

“Sodium makes your heart beat faster, so it can create something really serious,” said Greye, who is 8 years old and lives in Mays Landing, N.J.

and here:

The food development team spent a year creating two breakfast sandwiches for the pairings. Although the eggs and cheese are mixed in huge vats, poured into tins, baked, frozen and shipped to distribution centers to be assembled, they wanted them to look freshly made to appeal to people who do not like fast-food outlets.

At first, the manufacturer that supplies Starbucks with egg patties came up with perfectly round eggs from a mold. Starbucks rejected them, asking for a more free-form mold to look more like the shape of a freshly cracked egg, said Lani Lindsey Sordello, Starbucks’s director for food and bakery. Starbucks’s food scientists mixed parmesan cheese with the egg to prevent the smell from seeping into the stores and overwhelming the smell of coffee.

tomayto tomahto

I'm a tomato fiend. I like it stir fried with egg, with chilli, steamed with fish, in sandwiches, burgers, in soup, as soup, as sides, in salads, as pasta sauce, as garnish... I like ketchup too although I take way more chilli sauce and mustard. (But I don't like tomato juice much.)

Anyway whenever I go to the supermarket I get happy when I see fat, red tomatoes that look more of the beefsteak variety piled up rather than the orangey red plum tomatoes. The latter is good cooked but not so wonderful raw.

I love the typical mozarella/tomato/basil/olive oil/sea salt combination. But I got tired of buying basil because it's always too big a box and I feel this anxiety to finish them before they wilt in the fridge but really, there's only so much basil you can eat in two days on a mostly Asian diet. It's a race against time I can't win.

The other night I was craving tomato and so just did a cottage cheese/olive oil/sea salt/pepper toss. Yums.

While googling for tomato types (way too many, way too complicated) I found this tomato hate site. It's actually pretty nice-looking and dedicated - they even have recipes for tomato-less pasta and pizza sauces.

And it made me think of something. Do you remember this?



I used to watch it as a kid. Looked out for it, even. I guess something about tumbling tomatoes grinning evilly caught my fancy. I don't remember anything about it except the intro song and the sight of tomato armies rolling onto streets and people screaming. It's really funny.

Casual dining of yesteryears

At Far East Plaza on Saturday. Because we walked past Hans and out of, I don't know, nostalgia perhaps, we decided to have dinner there.

Everything tastes exactly the same. The overly thickened cream of mushroom, the cold garlic bread, the sickeningly sweet iced tea, the boiled cabbage and mixed vegetables side salad, the dubious sauce ladled over the chicken fillet. The only exception was the fruit - it was quite fresh and sweet. (My fear of honeydew is from camp and Hans.)

Lawyer was rather disgusted with the meal and was skeptical when I said it tastes exactly like what we used to have. I also recall eating at Hans a lot more times than she remembers.

But if I'm not wrong, we started going to Hans because our seniors brought us there. I only remember two outlets vividly - the Far East one and the one outside camp.

It was an easy place to sit and talk the day away. And I suppose when you are 13 or 14, it's fun to have a place where you can actually have a drink, a soup and a fruit or dessert to go with your "main", all at a pretty affordable price.

Gradually we grew out of it. It has been years and years since I last ate there. On Saturday, we readily reached a mutual agreement not to eat there again.

After all, the purpose had been served. We revisited a place we frequented more than 10 years ago, which triggered the game of 'I remember'**. Nothing makes you feel as old as when playing 'I remember'.

** What do you remember?
I remember the mathematician not caring that her nails were dirty when she ate, and economist sprinkling copious amounts of salt on her fries, and the layout of Far East Macs is still imprinted in my head.
Lawyer remembers the old uncles working at Macs coming to tell us stories because we were there so often. I concluded they must have been talking to her while I chatted with someone else, cos I seriously don' remember that.

things i do

scrambled egg with crispy luncheon meat cubes.

i know it's wrong to like luncheon meat because it's probably the junkest of all junk, processed meat but i can't help it. i really like luncheon meat. not all the time, just every now and then.

i used to know a guy who wouldn't let his girlfriend eat it. that's appalling.

anyway. i love scrambling eggs into fluffy little yellow clouds. as the last of it was setting, i pressed the pan-fried-to-crisp luncheon meat into it. add pepper. junk food bliss.

i like hello panda

but only strawberry flavoured.

Little Excursion Part Mock Sunset

i went to Dakota Crescent to look for the playground




and found that it's in the midst of a quaint estate, one of the last of its kind, where buildings are marked by interestingly patterned walls, alternate balconies and maze-looking facades like this.

not sure i like these plastic gym equipment places that are all over the island. i suppose they are good for old folks and all that healthy living stuff. but if you're a kid who grew up playing on one of these, what sort of person would you become, i wonder. a natural gym bunny? ah well. in 20 years' time, this would be someone else's nostalgia and maybe gyms would be defunct by then.



the estate is flanked by lots of new developments and upgrading works. but in the meanwhile, when you're in it, it kind of feels like time stood still somewhere really quiet and nice.












across the road is the old airport road food centre. i went there a lot as a teenager but i've not been maybe in years. i've never noticed the estate across it, but i guess i wasn't so into such things then.

ah. they have really good kway chup, otah and of course, there's the kickass hokkien prawn mee.

(oh do go. and bring lots of friends so you can order lots of things to share so you get to try everything.)



i don't quite dare to take photos of strangers, esp older folks. which is why i'm standing so far away from uncle here. he looks a little fierce but actually when he saw me aiming at him with my camera, he immediately stilled to pose for it. i scuttled off right after and regretted on hindsight. i should have smiled and gone over to buy a newspaper.




such a grandiose signage for a block number. whatever happened to just painting or sticking it on the side of the block of flats?



the old airport food centre side of the road. there are only these two old blocks left, sandwiched by generic high-rise flats.




it looks like i caught everything in a unnatural sunset because i used lomo redscale film. i like it best when the picture is taken in blindingly bright sunlight and there are lots of shadows. otherwise it looks a bit flat/monotonous to me.

Happy V Day

A little late, I know, but what's that cliche again? Everyday is Valentine's Day, that's right.

Anyhow. The brother wanted to have a picnic breakfast with the girlfriend. Took the opportunity to try out the tofu/avocado dressing from Harumi's Japanese Cooking.

That's the pale green lump in the corner. I think two tablespoons of mayo is too much, especially since Jap mayo has a really distinctive taste compared to tofu and avocado which are mild in comparison.

I love scrambled eggs.

Went to Meidi-ya to get Jap pudding for dessert. The strawberry is a special for Valentine's. It tastes exactly like strawberry milk.

I was so arrested by the fact that they have different expressions on the peel-off lid, I spent quite a while checking all the containers in the open fridge. I suppose I looked like some really anal person. You know, the kind who digs all the way into the back of the shelf to get the supposed freshest or nicest-looking item.

The brother bought flowers for the girlfriend. Either he or the florist really knows what he/she's doing, as they were quite pretty. Not that insipid bouquets aren't as sweet but honestly, if you're the kind that dislikes insipid bouquets, the fact that you received an insipid bouquet does diminish the pleasure a little.

WTF?

You may be grossed out, but insects and mold in our food are not new. The F.D.A. actually condones a certain percentage of “natural contaminants” in our food supply — meaning, among other things, bugs, mold, rodent hairs and maggots.

In its (falsely) reassuringly subtitled booklet “The Food Defect Action Levels: Levels of Natural or Unavoidable Defects in Foods That Present No Health Hazards for Humans,” the F.D.A.’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition establishes acceptable levels of such “defects” for a range of foods products, from allspice to peanut butter.

Among the booklet’s list of allowable defects are “insect filth,” “rodent filth” (both hair and excreta pellets), “mold,” “insects,” “mammalian excreta,” “rot,” “insects and larvae” (which is to say, maggots), “insects and mites,” “insects and insect eggs,” “drosophila fly,” “sand and grit,” “parasites,” “mildew” and “foreign matter” (which includes “objectionable” items like “sticks, stones, burlap bagging, cigarette butts, etc.”).

You should definitely read the whole article on NYT here. Considering that the FDA is so dedicated that they took pains to determine to such minute detail the number of fly eggs and/or maggots tomato variations are allowed to have, it would be awful of us not to read it just as painstakingly.

I'm now eyeing with suspicion the almost-finished can of pineapple juice beside me.

strawberries + red bean potong ice cream for breakfast

there's been these korean strawberries making their rounds in the local supermarkets. the mother bought a tonne.

ntuc fairprice house brand red bean potong is the best. it had a lot more red beans before the downturn though.

Will induce hunger and wild desire to own lengths and lengths of gorgeous robes

Was about to watch Hyakumanen to Nigamushi Onna (1,000,000 Yen Girl), which stars Aoi Yu, when I thought about Osen again. Osen is one of the best Japanese dramas I've watched and it's not just because of the story. There is so much gorgeous, delectable food in there. Actually I hesitate to call them food. They look so amazing it feels like no one should bear to eat them but really, don't you just want to ravish all these fine, fine dishes?

(All following images from here.)

Not just that. As the young proprietress, Aoi Yu has an amazing wardrobe. Lots of quirky details in her wearing of the traditional kimono.

What I like most are the stuff she wears to rough it out.

Makes me feel like watching the show again. But life is too short and I can't seem to afford much time to rewatch or reread things anymore.