barely recovered from The Worst Stomach Flu i’d ever encountered and being comatose and totally devoid of food for almost two days, i was prepared for a shock to my system… well, what’s a celebration without food, after all. it’s something the husband is especially, especially fond of. i think, even fonder of than me ha ha.
and that ice-cream, which i’d taken the liberty of requesting from the wonderful staff of TGIFridays @ JB, was almost regretful on the part of my stomach (no dairy, doc said!)… but i survived, phew.
to the guy who boils me homemade barley for my fever, makes hot tea for my stomach, scours shops for that particular isotonic drink to recover my salts…
to many more years of looking after me!
HEH HEH.
(that, and many more dishes of delish food to enjoy, and drive-home music to sing along to.)
a creation that was inspired by none other than man vs food main man, adam richman.
i was bored with the usual ramly burger setup so i decided to add salsa sauce and cheese to go along with the patty. looked rather plain so i added a slice of turkey ham. the burger wouldn’t be complete without fries. so i cut a few russet potatoes to make it a complete meal :)
it was the first time for the quasi-playgroup-teacher-wannabe mommies conducting the baking session last weekend, and all we had were basic baking ingredients and an online recipe we’d never tried before. we were each sorta assigned to take on one activity and thankfully, Is took the lead for this one.
we went for a ‘thematic approach’.
we spelled, counted, measured, talked about what the ingredients did, passed around the vanilla essence for everyone to smell….
we scooped, stirred, broke eggs, took turns, resolved conflicts…
we rolled dough, created shapes, sprinkled rainbow sprinkles and chocolate chips…
and with the smell of cookies baking in the oven, we did some storytelling… bilingually, too. :D
and of course, we tasted the fresh, warm, home-baked cookies, nevermind the dubious hygiene level of the cookie-makers, lol. they tasted pretty good, actually, despite the fact that we didn’t follow the ingredients too closely (seeing how things kept spilling).
we balanced tea time with fruits and nuts and then it was free play…
and we got hungry again at dinnertime, so we made some pizza. the little chefs were actually more interested in piling stuff on the dough than eating the final product, though they did collectively run to the oven every few seconds to peep through the oven door. so the ones who eventually ate were the adults, who also got creative and designed their own satay pizza (izad’s family are in the satay business, so it’s a staple at every function – the satay and peanut sauce are awesome.)
inspired by the success of this playgroup session, we’ve assigned the daddies to take over the next one. something less domestic and more outdoorsy… though it’d be interesting if they could conduct, oh i don’t know… origami or scrapbooking, maybe?? :p
went for dinner at na/bins at bali lane the other day. was disappointed for a number of reasons:
1) was misled into believing from their FB site that there’d be bellydancing. ok, nevermind, maaaybe we read or processed the information wrongly. fine.
2) the music was blasting from the moment we sat down, and continued to blast despite our repeated requests to turn it down. fine.
3) the air-con was also blasting, and continued to blast despite our repeated requests to turn it up. by now, we’re like, helloooo, mr foreign-waiter-with-no-expression-and-didn’t-seem-to-understand-us!
4) the food looked good when served (plus we were starrrving by the time it reached us), but discovered that it lacked… oomph after a few spoonfuls. only this appetiser platter wasn’t too bad. we would’ve been sufficiently filled up by sharing this between us and forgetting about the main dishes.
even the birthday girl who treated us left with a “takde dua kali lah tempat ni”. BUT! it was a cosy enough place since we were practically sprawled out in a corner, it wasn’t crowded despite a friday night, and the neighbouring tables pretty much weren’t bothered by our mak-budak-tak-sedar-diri antics and the two children spotted scampering around the place making themselves at home. and yes, we even appointed these two children to be our unofficial photographers. (bagus jugak ada anak.)
(taken by aniq. i’m not kiddingggg.)
(evidence of child labour.)
aaand happy birthday to the eldest mak budaks among us. THIRTY FREAKIN’ THREE OMG.
received a tweet from putriberendam last sunday saying that domino’s pizza had finally arrived in singapore and is halal certified. being a big fan of food (duh!), i simply had to check out their pizzas. i vaguely remember eating at domino’s years back in JB, but the only thing that struck me then was their red and blue logo…
turns out that the nearest branch is in katong and they don’t do delivery to tampines as yet. but since i was keen on trying it out, i drove all the way there with the wife. ahh, the things we do for our stomach :)
yes, finally got ‘em!
beforehand, i did an online order for the pizza, a rather straightforward point and click procedure. we ordered the value meal set that consists of a large pizza, jumbo wings, garlic cheese onion rings and breadstix. since there was an online promotion going on, we got a free order of twisty bread. upon confirmation of the order, the staff called me back to verify it.
so how was the pizza? well, since we took a while to reach the place, the pizza was a bit on the cold side when we reached home. but one of the plus points was that they were rather generous with their ingredients: sausages, pepperoni, chicken meat and turkey ham. the bread was fresh and very soft, the mozzarella cheese melted nicely on the pizza, but we felt that there could be more sauce. taste-wise, it’s definitely better than canadian pizza but we agreed that sarpino’s pizza sauce is still our favourite, or maybe because it really suits our so-called “malay tastebuds”.
meat galore is our pizza of choice!
perhaps the great discovery food item on the menu had to be the tasty fluffy breadstix, sinfully sprinkled with garlic seasoning and piping hot, this is one side order that you cannot afford to miss out. soft and fluffy on the inside, with salsa sauce on the side, just writing about it makes me wanna grab some more!
hmm, soft and fluffy breadsticks, nice….
overall, great food at a reasonable price. browse the website and see if they deliver to your area. last i checked, tampines area’s not covered! anyway click on my flickr to sample more of the food ;)
ps: i received a call from domino’s staff a day after purchasing the pizza, asking for my feedback. told them about the lack of sauce on the pizza and was informed that we could request for more sauce topping at NO EXTRA COST if we wanted to. they thanked me for my feedback and offered me a complimentary LARGE pizza on my next order. i must say, they really take their customer feedback seriously. so give them a try, not happy with the pizza, tell them! who knows you might also get a free pizza.. :)
on a lazy sunday evening last week, i managed to get the gang to join me prawning. its my first time prawning and i guessed for them too. we tried the one at punggol, there are a few all over the island, from bishan to pasir ris but the punggol location seems central to the rest of them. its $15 an hour but its get cheaper if you book for 3 hours which is $30. and you could barbeque the prawns there too!
rendra waiting for the bite that never comes!
the prawns were nothing to shout about, they were of decent size but the pond’s water looked rather clear so we could really see the prawns swimming along, haha!! anyway, we just prawned for an hour each. we got to choose our rods and were also given powdered bait which i suspected were dried worms. we tried the baits for a few minutes but it seems that the prawns were not biting. finally we got the live worms that they sell at the counter. and these worked like a charm! among us we caught around 11 prawns in an hour, not bad for beginners like us!
happy with our catch of the day!
anyway, we decided not to barbeque the prawns there as lenny offered to make sambal prawns :)
we ended the day with dinner at jalan kayu instead. for more pictures check out my flickr!
ok, we finally held the highly anticipated burger party last week and what a party it turned out to be!
the ingredients for the burger had a minor tweak to it but basically it followed the recipe from here. in the beginning, i wasn’t really sure if 4kg of mince beef was enough for the hungry people coming later but i guessed 36 thick fat beef patties were more than they could chew, literally!
the first few guests came just after 730pm and in no time, the grilling was in full force. since it was a grill-ya-own burger party, the guests were pretty much left to their own devices on the type of burgers they prefer. rendra started the grilling by making his own burger with egg combo. as it was a potluck thing, there were also a variety of other food and desserts. special thanks went to heriati and hubby for bring us a burger cake, even though they didn’t really stay for the party! i think we should host a special private burger party just for you guys! :)
they came, they cooked and they ate! what more could a host ask for? the food were great and some of these food included potato salad, apple crumble, caramel popcorn plus the oh so sinful chocolate brownie by lydia! the kids entertained themselves with aniq’s and auni’s toys, the guys with fifa10 while the girls as usually had their pekpot session. we even managed to include a surprised birthday cake for our birthday girl, farah! (how old, eh?) anyway, i guessed they all had so much fun that they want the burger party to be a regular event! (let me think about it)
i was inspired by discovery travel channel’s man vs food, dagwood sandwich that i really had to recreate the sandwich.
for those uninitiated, a dagwood sandwich is named after dagwood bumstead of the comic strip, blondie who loves to make huge sandwiches.
so on a rainy afternoon, i traveled all the way to tampines mart to get stuff for my sandwich. i got 5 different types of meat cut for my sandwich, foccacia bread (my favourite!) and the usual greens. took a while to get my foccacia bread, had to travel to another part of tampines for the bread, apparently its sold out at certain places! ok, on with the program.
first we cut the bread and spread the greans plus sauces
put all your meats in between, yummy!
all set!
just lovely!
wanted to go all out and stack the meats as high as possible but i couldn’t possibly finish the whole sandwich! anyway, 5 meats plus cheese is a good start. btw, the meats that i used were roast beef, pastrami, chicken ham, turkey ham, and meatloaf.
for clearer and juicier pictures of my attempt, check out my flickr.
and i thought i was never gonna taste the slurpy eggs anymore in my lifetime, when a trip to batam reunited me with one of my childhood comfort food.
like a lost lover found, the taste was all too familiar, memories of my childhood kept flooding back as I took large slurps of the runny egg. some may enjoy it while others just detest the slimy texture and taste but i belong to the former.
we used to buy them every time my family goes for our weekly marketing at geylang serai which is now just a distant memory. i guess, i was like aniq’s age when my dad gave me a taste of the telur penyu. maybe we were trying to save the turtles from extinction when the government totally ban the selling and buying of this delicacy. But for whatever reasons, if you feel like tasting the good ‘ol telur penyu and reliving your childhood, it’s just a ferry ride away.
we traveled up johor bahru to check out the night scene on a sunday evening with my dad and brothers. since we half expected the woodland causeway to be jam pack, we decided to go by tuas instead. luckily, traffic was a breeze there. wanted to go jusco but tesco attracted us with kenny rogers. the place was so-so, perhaps more suitable to the local clientele. got my ayamas and ramly fix in tesco before heading to the main destination.
pandan city is located just south of jusco, the place is a hive of activity, kindda like the geylang bazaar but at least 4 times bigger. tried out the famed “gearbox tulang soup” which aniq loved and got a nice ramly burger special with cheese for myself. the rest bought sate, ikan pari bbq and roti john. didn’t really explore much as monday is a working day. it was rather chop chop but aniq and auni seems to enjoy the journey especially little auni who finally bonded well with her grandpa :)
click on pictures for an expanded view. more pictures at our flickr site!
i’d meant to bring the family somewhere for an overnight stay where it’s near and cheap and that wouldn’t require a tedious drive across the causeway, but bogged down by sheer inertia and procrastination, it didn’t happen. so on the last day of our week-long holiday last week, we decided last minute to just hop onto the ferry to batam for a day trip, just for the heck of it.
we left aniq to spend time with his grandpa and uncles, and brought mum along, who was equally curious of the place.
it reminded me of old shopping centres in malaysia. (not the KLCC types, of course.) nothing much to shop for, so we concentrated on, erm, eating. which izad was more than happy to do.
i liked the Breadtalk spree the best. and so did auni, as you can see. she devoured a whole cheesy bread thingy by herself.
the thing about not driving up was, we couldn’t bring back a load of stuff, so we had to give a miss to a lot of cheap groceries and toiletries at the hypermart. and concentrated on bringing back these instead, which went like half the price of that in SG.
for $40 a ferry ticket, i think the next time we head there, it’d better be for a spa resort holiday.
we were at is’s place a couple of weeks back for a family gathering when she served us homemade burgers. and boy, do they taste really good! so good that i asked for the recipe and tried it out last weekend. basically its from jamie oliver’s burger recipe but he uses steak meat which is definitely fresher than your minced beef meat that you get from the supermarket. and where in singapore can you get free range chicken eggs?
anyway, if you must follow his recipe religiously, you can check out the recipe here
so i did try to follow the recipe as instructed.
i fried some chopped onions
pounded the cumin and coriander seeds together. add the black pepper and salt for taste.
added the ingredients together which included the breadcrumbs, grated parmesan cheese, egg and english mustard.
mix well, if its too sticky, add more breadcrumbs.
shaped ‘em into err, burgers and sprinkle more breadcrumbs. leave in fridge for around an hour.
just a few notes about round two of the Jalan-jalan Cari Makan roadtrip to KL we went on two weeks ago.
remember, it was all about the food, the whole food and nothing but the food.
so ok, let’s go. first stop, breakfast on a saturday morning across the border. some had roti canai, some had nasi lemak. some had kaya toast. and a side of sausage. (which is what i call that juicy meat with the bald head. ie. “hey Sausage. Sauu-sageee.” coz she really feels like one. cheese-filled.)
we reached our destination in good time, but our hotel rooms weren’t ready. in fact, they weren’t ready for a few hours more. this resulted in a Singaporean female lioness unleashing her wrath of fury to the hapless hotel staff. wah seh. you don’t play play with Singapura lionesses, ok. they are not all docile, purring Kucintas, hor?
we bunked in with lyd & mr boy, the latter whom Sausage is smitten with, for some reason. she calls out to him every time she sees him from afar, and has absolutely no objection to him carrying her. why ah, Sausage, why? why do you like mr boy so much? is it his magic mole that holds the charm? coz mummy also has a mole and you like her very much too.
[insert obligatory family picture. see hot Sausage in stroller.]
anyway, the hotel we stayed in was the heart of damansara, perfectly located with malls and shops all around, and too many restaurants we didn’t know where to begin with.
ok ok, i know where we tried to begin with. it was the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co.
i said tried, coz we somehow didn’t end up eating there although i think most of us wanted to. see, we happened to be there on a valentines weekend, and well, malaysians are not immune to the pull of the valentines dollar, or rather, ringgit. a few places had projected that valentine couples would readily open up their petaling street wallets on this special weekend, and priced their set meals and buffets at exploitative costs. unfortunately for us non-valentine tourists, bubba gump was one of them. so we gave it a miss, and headed to marche instead.
what did we eat? i don’t know! i think aniq had spaghetti, i had rosti, auni had mushroom soup (and bits of bread, baby bites and anything else she could grab within her reach), izad had turkey ham something (that looked like Spam to me), and grilled chicken. should have ordered the crepe, which thankfully rin & naz did. the calamaris farah & naz had were not as good as the calamari you find in SG. and i wanted my bundaberg root beer but got ginger ale instead, grr.
we settled in our rooms for a bit, naps for the drivers and some of the kids, and then we got ready for our reservation at Rebung restaurant. which we were an hour late for coz we got decidedly lost. lol.
(well, at least i almost wished we had, so we could go to T.G.I. Fridays instead. shhh.)
but found it we did. we had to lah, the last time we came to KL, we cancelled our reservation coz we decided to do tony roma’s or something. :p
this famous restaurant is owned by chef ismail and dr sheikh muszaphar. yes, THAT one. the pride and joy of the nation. the handsome-tak-boleh-carry astronaut. the manager of the restaurant told us that we should have informed him of our, ahem, ‘interest’ to have him present that evening coz apparently, he makes guest appearances lah, ok! but nevermind, he said, next time sure boleh. because, malaysia boleh.
so what did we eat at rebung? err…
i don’t know either! lol.
the dishes are mainly traditional. think hajah maimunah to the power of three. with all the ulams and asam pedas and sambals and siput seduts galore, i’m very sure our parents would lurrrve this place. the rest of the gang did too, actually, since they all wanted to try out this place. izad, don’t say lah, he’s one of those appreciative of malay foods. (unfortunately, the fella had a seriously bad case of ulcers this time round, so his palate was a little wonky. nonetheless, he valiantly attempted all the dishes that came his way despite their threats to assault his wounds.)
i think i had my rice with whatever i was familiar with, ie. asam pedas, kicap ikan… ok, i’m sorry, all i can remember was feeding auni with rice and sup daging. lol. and pisang goreng. i know, i’m like the absolutely worst person to bring to a buffet, i swear. hopeless like anything.
anyway, the manager took us around the place, took some pictures, and we left, with our butt marks imprinted on the red sofa as a memo for mr astronaut that the Kucintas had come, preened and poised, ready to pounce on him. meoowr. next time lah.
the next morning was hotel breakfast, the usual fare. i was delighted to find porridge amidst this, and proceeded to stuff auni with as much of it as i could. can you tell i’m obsessed with stuffing her, like a turkey?
with all the restaurants around our hotel, it was a bit of a puzzle how we somehow ended up going all the way to KL central for lunch. some had chicken rice, some had bubur ayam (which again, i managed to stuff the little Sausage with). the fella, despite his frazzled ulcered tongue, could still taste how bad his mee bakso was. which was why i held out on local fare – i wanted my westerns and i wanted my meats, dammit!
BUT! to keropok lekor, i concede.
coz, malaysia has the best lekors lor! they have soft ones, thick ones, crispy ones, thin ones.
i like the piping hot chewy ones. mmm mm.
next up was PS Boutique. that’s Petaling Street Boutique, to you.
the lure of this place is, of course, the search for the Almost Genuine-looking Fake Goods. attempt only if you are already familiar with the real stuff, know your goochis and el-vees and praduhs well. also your tissohs and omegahs. :p now, we will not disclose what have been collectively acquired at PS Boutique by the gang, as we are sworn to secrecy of the highest order. (now, pls girls, tuck in those blue boxes away…)
but i will tell you this – izad’s favourite stall in all of PS. this is real stuff, cannot bluff. with the heat beating down on us, we had at least three cups between us.
my perseverance finally paid off when we reached pavillion – carl’s jr.! :D and this time, no wussy chicken burgers (coz the last time we came, the beef broiler machine thingy was out of action). good ol’ double hunka meats for me. and this time my turn to stuff my face, with the yummilicious chilli cheese fries. and free flow of drinks!
they (the burgers) were so huge, i shared one with izad on the spot, and took away another one, of which i devoured half of at the hotel later that night, and the other half… back home in singapore, shhh. lol.
speaking of that night, we decided not to follow the rest to farah’s friend’s house coz it was late and we wanted to get the kids bathed and in bed after a long day out. he was kind enough to pack some of the satay kajang he’d served, though.
and so much for getting into bed – us and aniq ended up sprawled on the hotel room sofa watching a ‘friendly’ Wall-E dvd we’d gotten from PS Boutique earlier.
on our last day, our Bubba Gump plan was once again thwarted (why ah??), coz we decided to push on to KL central again. eh, we didn’t even get to eat those swedish meatballs at ikea again. and TGIFridays was out of the window as well, lol. so much for damansara.
we got to KLCC and headed for Chilli’s instead. nachos, fajitas, all good. even auni had her free kid’s meal of mac & cheese. now i know what to buy for her next time. gooey, disgusting mac & cheese. lol.
and that, i THINK, concluded our Jalan-jalan Cari Makan trip. well, give or take a few snacks in between.
travelling with a bunch of friends is always good. give and take is a must, and miscommunication inevitably happens, but surviving it only makes the bonds stronger, no? well, i hope so. :)
travelling with kids – what can i say? the joy and the fatigue come with the package.
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