Makan parade

Being Singaporean is synonymous with being a food-lover. We eat at any time of the day. Tourists who visit Singapore are surprised that there are eating establishments that are open 24 hours a day. For many of these tourists, they cannot image eating any more meals after, say, 8 pm at night.

I would say that the same applies to being a Malaysian. This is why my Malaysian relatives and my family and I often eat, eat and eat some more whenever we meet up.

My family and I tend to be creatures of habit. When we find a food establishment whose food we like, we tend to have our meals there very often.

Da had to work today. After several months of absence, I finally managed to make a trip to my favourite beauty salon at The Adelphi for a facial this morning. I brought some home-made green tea cookies for the girls at the beauty salon. Word has reached their ears that I have a blog and two of them asked me for my blog address. The lady boss also told me that her daughter browses the recipes in my blog. She found this out when she mentioned my blog to her daughter and her daughter replied, "I know... It is "Jesus loves Pebbles", isn't it?".

One of the girls at the beauty salon requested me for a recipe for egg tart. Hi girl, I do not have one off-hand but I shall try to locate an easy recipe for you. I have taken note that you prefer the type of egg tarts "with more egg instead of milk".

After a relaxing facial (during which I fell asleep), I went home and made preparations for the bread dough for a loaf of coffee bread. Just as I placed the bucket in the breadmaker machine and set the machine to the "dough" cycle, Da came home. He suggested that we go to our favourite coffee shop at Jalan Tua Kong for lunch. As the "dough" cycle would take 1 hour and 40 minutes to be completed, we left the breadmaker to work its magic while we made our way to the coffee shop.

When we arrived, the drink stallholder was jubilant when he saw Da. He calls Da his "soccer brother" and he often exchanges views with Da about upcoming soccer matches. He speaks to Da in the Hokkien dialect and it is quite interesting to hear the Hokkien translation of the names of football clubs and international soccer players.

Da ordered a beef fried rice (which, incidentally, is not on the menu).

I requested for the thin type of kway teow (noodles) fried with chicken and anchovies. I left it to the chef to decide how he wanted to fry the dish. As I do not eat chilli (er... except for Muar otah!), the chef fried the noodles with a bit of egg gravy and he sprinkled a generous amount of peanuts on top. I guess this would be a variation of the Thai kway teow.

When we reached home, the "dough" cycle of our breadmaker machine had just been completed. I turned the dough onto a floured board and using floured hands, I kneaded the dough for another 5 minutes. Thereafter, I placed the dough in a loaf pan and covered the loaf pan with a piece of cloth. After an hour, the dough doubled in size (in fact, it more than doubled) and I baked the coffee bread in the oven. The smell of the bread baking in the oven was heavenly.

In the evening, I was browsing some recipe books and I came across a recipe for baked chocolate cheese cake. The photograph of the cake in the recipe book looked so tempting that I immediately started preparations to make the cake. However, as I did not have enough self-raising flour and I wanted to save my plain flour to bake cookies, I adapted the recipe and used cake flour, bicarbonate of soda and baking powder. The end result? When I removed the bundt pan from the oven, I was very excited when I pressed my finger gently on the top of the cake and it sprang back easily. That meant that the cake was very soft and moist. Yippee!

What was I saving the plain flour for? Well, a few weeks ago, I bought a tub of sour cream which I have to date not used. I decided to use the sour cream to bake some sultana cookies.

When my mobile phone rang, I checked the caller ID and realised that it was my mother. We arranged to meet at Hong Kong Street Family Restaurant at Eastwood Centre for dinner today.

Before Da and I left our home for dinner, I packed some home-made goodies in a container and gave them to the family of the three handsome boys who live opposite Da and I on our floor.

Goodness me... the traffic on the road was rather heavy tonight! When Da and I arrived at the restaurant, the rest of my family (that is, my mother, my two brothers and their respective other halves) were already seated and the first dish (sweet potato leaves fried with sambal) had just arrived.

My family had ordered:-

(a) sweet potato leaves fried with sambal

(b) yam ring fried with prawns and assorted vegetables

(c) kung pao chicken

(d) claypot tou fu

(e) bai kwok wong (that is, pork ribs)

As there were seven of us at the dinner table, all the dishes were medium size except for the yam ring (which was large). The cost of the dinner? S$80+. Had we ordered an entire steamed fish, the dinner would have cost more, I would think.

If you are wondering whether we had our usual "part two" after dinner, you are absolutely correct. After dinner, we adjourned to the Cold Storage Supermarket located a few doors away from the restaurant to do some grocery shopping. I heard my mother say "uh oh" when she saw me place a packet of self-raising flour and a packet of bread flour in my shopping basket. *grin*

My brother (LG) and his girlfriend (ZT) were contemplating buying a box of Sara Lee frozen cheesecake which was being sold at a discounted price of S$7.90. However, we kept hearing the announcement in the background about the store closing for the day and in the end, they did not buy the cheesecake.

Before we parted ways, I handed to my brother (LB) and his wife (MF) a container of baked chocolate cheese cake. I assured them that there were only 3 slices of cake in the container (I could not give them more as I was constrained by the size of the container that I had available at home) and hence, they need not worry about consuming too many calories this round. LB looked at me skeptically and asked me how many calories there were in one slice of the cake. Oops....

Hi GP, I hope that you enjoyed your dinner today with your friends at the Qi Ji outlet located in the building where LSD works. Which nasi lemak did you order? I like their Set 1 nasi lemak.

Da and I have arranged to meet WC and SC at 7.30 am at the Redhill hawker centre tomorrow morning for breakfast. Thereafter, we will be going to the Henderson Waves for a morning walk. I understand that the Henderson Waves connects Mount Faber and Telok Blangah Hills, so this should be an interesting walk. Do look out for lovely photographs in my post tomorrow!