One Week in Sillypore 8

Late to bed and early to rise, that pretty much sums up how last week went for me. Been busy with a couple projects that had me hammering at the keyboard way into the nite and early morning. Well, alright I kinda prefer working at nite so I did 'internationally delayed' some stuff till almost midnite.

When your life is just too booorrrring to blog about, or when you are just too busy to try putting together anything new or trying out a new joint, it's time for that mixed-up, anything-goes, filler post I like to call A Week in Sillypore! :P

As busy as I was, I still managed to pick up an heirloom of sorts. A customized iron kueh bulu mold that's like over 50 years old. Notice how the molds are smaller than the ones you find in the shops these days and there are different shapes too. Plus you need a flaming charcoal fire burning, below and on top, to get this thing working, no on-switch here. Neat huh?

A bunch of stuff I'll be mailing to an American ex-boss in Hoboken, New Jersey. Wonder if she knows Cake Boss?

Something new at the supermarket again. This looks nice. Holiday Chocs from the US. First time seeing it at NTUC FairPrice. Anyone picked it up?

Call it obinmushi or dobin mushi, it's that familiar and hearty Japanese teapot soup. Besides the seasonal ingredients, you got your basic stuff like mushrooms, shrimp or chicken, and you squeeze a little slice of lime in it.

Another thing I like bout is that each teapot is an individual serving. It just seems so neat and tidy that the little cup and pot are all that. Here's a recipe, looks alright although I haven't tried making it myself. Saw a selection of them at Takashimaya, made me hungry just by looking at them.

What am I reading on the iPad this week? December's copy of Food Network magazine, too bad they didn't include the special Xmas Drinks booklet that came with the actual magazine. Yah, I know, don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

So what did I do once I'm done with four straight days of writing? Celebrate Friday with an entire day of gaming with the guys. Up there's my character for an Advanced Dungeons and Dragons campaign, below you got Dice Town, Power Grid (Central Europe map) and Chaos in The Old World, all fun games.

Oh, and here's another great way to end a week. My little tub of custard vanilla ice-cream from Hokkaido. It is pretty eggy but that's the way I like it. <^;^>

Cavalock and The Meidi-Ya Hokkaido Fair Temptation

Guess what, I was at the Hokkaido Fair but it's not the one you would expect. Instead of the usual fair at Isetan (like every four months?), the other Japanese supermarket on the island is having its own Hokkaido Fair too. Yup, Meidi-Ya is having its own two-week long Oishii Hokkaido Fair till the end of the month.

I don't think it's their first time having it but anyway there I was this afternoon after an Iron Man related event earlier that day. They got the usual Hokkaido ramen, milky confectionary and crabs, crabs and more crabs!

Lots of cool stuff like these eye-catching roll cakes, great packaging! They got white chocolate (my fav!!!) as well as the usual vanilla and I think strawberry.

I didn't buy any this trip maybe next time. So what did I get from the fair? Six little tubs of Naganuma Ice Cream. At S$5.30 per tub, it's like the most expensive ice cream I have had for awhile.

So here they are sitting nicely in my freezer. :) Flavors picked were Pumpkin, Hokkaido Pumpkin, Red Bean, Hokkaido Milk, Potato & Butter and Custard Vanilla. Don't fret now, I'll be back at the Fair for more stuff later this week. So look for more updates later!

Now here's something I thought might be interesting to do. I'll post cool gift idea stuff that folks out there might like to get as Christmas gifts starting with this. Spotted these upstairs at Kinokuniya Liang Court. Pac-Man moleskines! Aren't they cute? <^;^> But I have no idea how the inside looks like.

Let me know what you think, leave a comment or give me a tick in one of the little boxes! Thanks!

Cavalock and The Mediterranean Dessert Deception

Need an exotic yet easy and fast dessert to impress someone? Here's one I picked up from an episode of Chef At Home, with my own modifications of cos. Hah!

Alright, it's not really a Mediterranean dessert, I'm saying it is cos it sounds kinda exotic and the ingredients do give the dish a certain flavor from that part of the world. And come on, it also works if you wanna impress someone, tell them you can whip up a Mediterranean fruit dessert in seconds!

Real simple to make, all you need is bout half a watermelon, olive oil, basil, sea salt and pepper. Cut the watermelon into cubes or just small pieces would do. Mix the water melon with a 1/4 cup of olive oil, sea salt and pepper, all in a bowl. I say don't be afraid to go crazy with the salt and pepper. Now here's my switch, grape seed oil instead of olive oil cos that's what I usually use. And also, I don't have any basil with me so no basil. :(

Mix and stir everything up real good. Put it in the fridge and serve it cold. Tastes better than I expected, well to be honest, I didn't know what to expect. I mean, it looked real easy on TV so I figured why not? I must admit, it takes a while to get used to grape seed oil if you haven't had it before but by the third piece of watermelon, its gonna be a burst of cool flavors, you got juicy sweetness, savory and a bit spice all in there. It's good, it's easy, what's not to luv bout it?

Now here's something that I saw at Canele in their outlet at Paragon basement. It's their strawberry shortcake and how they displayed the strawberries.

Look at them, why have the pale, characterless inside of the strawberry facing out when you can have the red, luscious exterior instead? I don't get it. <^;^>

Cavalock and His Hot Italian Date

Oh, who am I kidding...I was home alone when I whipped up my version of an Italian pasta salad for lunch. It's been awhile but I figured instead of talking bout somebody else's joint, I'll do a post on something I did, that I'm happy with.

What you got here is a little pasta salad that I came up with. Having downlo...er...I mean, gotten a whole bunch of food magazines on my iPad, I decided to take bits and pieces from different pasta salad recipes, put them together, improvise here and there and see what comes outta it.

It's really, really easy and I did it in like 45 minutes, most of it were spent just waiting for the the pasta, prawns and broccoli to cook.

You decide how much macaroni, broccoli, cherry tomatoes and prawns you like. Next, prepare the other ingredients and here's where I start doing a little 'free-styling', like when the recipe calls for extra virgin oil, I use grape seed oil. Just two tablespoons of grape seed oil and a teaspoon of sugar when mixing everything up later, the only time I added salt was when boiling the macaroni.

The other major thing I subbed out was the parmesan cheese that most recipes asked for. I decided at the very last minute to use some raisins instead. Turned out to be a great move, I thought the taste of the raisins complemented the other vegetables nicely.

It was quite a huge bowl and I thought there was no way I was gonna finish it. Guess what, I wolfed it down while standing in the kitchen. If I do say so myself, I thought it was that good that I literally couldn't put the bowl down. <^;^>

And what better way to complete an Italian date than with my popular Affogato. You just can't go wrong with that. ;)

Cavalock and The Docomo Delay

Got to admit I haven't been eating out at any new joints lately. Thought I would free after that last gig but ended up spending most of last week at home writing more stuff. Anyway I did managed to find some time to finally make a return visit to Liang Court or to be more specific, Meidi-Ya supermarket.

But before that, you can't visit Liang Court without dropping by the basement Tampopo Deli for their ever popular cream puffs. That's them on the bottom row and that's the Pont Neuf top left and banana caramel tart top right.

Walking to the supermarket, look what I found. Looks like Japanese mobile phone operator Docomo has finally decided to open a store right here in Singapore.

Talk about too little, too late. From like five or six years ago till last year, I was praying that we could lay our hands on those cool, crazy ass Japanese handphones here. That is until I got my iPhone 3GS, after that nothing even comes close.

Didn't take any pix in the shop but yah, they do have those stylo Japanese flip handphones here at last. A recent survey showed that iPhone in Japan is like 40% of the smartphone market. So I guess since they are losing market share back home, they finally decided to go global? Too late bub.

So in Meidi-Ya, I saw this new Kit Kat pop choc. Looks yummy but almost S$9 for it? Nah, I'll pass especially since there's a tag that says it's only £1.99!

The other new thing I spotted, beer! Japanese LUXURY beer to be exact. Yah, it does sound pretty cool.

Umenishiki beer comes in a bunch of different flavors, six I think. And a few have won some local and international beer awards. They aren't cheap but then again, it does say 'luxury' beer so I guess you are expected to buy more, from S$10.50 to like S$11.50.

So did I get one? Hell yah, have yet to try it. Just one bottle first, if it's good and I like it, I'll go try the rest. See, it promises a 'luxurious time', can't wait for that. <^;^>

And here's another shot of it so you can see exactly how big it is. Check out the bag of brains behind the can of Sapporo beer!

Cavalock and The Greenwood Visitation

It's the long weekend and I finally finished a 3-week gig in town so it's to dinner at Greenwood. A nice, quaint little place that's pretty much inaccessible unless you drive or teleport. It's my second time there, first time was with the guys a.k.a. The Fellowship.

This time it was with the nice folks from the U.K. trip. First stop was the famous Lana Cakes shop. Moist and rich chochy goodness. What else can I say? Too bad you can only get it there and not anywhere else on the island.

Then it's dinner at the Fish Market. First time there for all of us so we took the two hot and cold seafood platters. Not a bad choice, for the cold platter which arrived first, we had half a lobster, mussels, tuna salad, oysters among others. I only thought the lobster was kinda bland, tasteless like.

Same with the other half of the lobster in the hot platter below, just wasn't that tasty. The rest of the hot platter was good. The baked oysters, calamari, scallops and the rest, all pleasantly satisfying.

I wouldn't mind going there again. The row of restaurants that Fish Market and Lana Cakes are housed was quite empty during dinner but there was another row at the other end of the road that was way more 'happening'. Anyone knows what's good there? I think there's an Italian joint that was real crowded.

Ok, a little something I found that I thought was funny and weird, so wanna share it here. Heh. I posted some of these Japanese surveys before and here's another interesting one on Office Romances. Hehe. Only if you like to eat where you shit, dip your pen in the company ink, well, you know what I mean. Feel free to leave a comment or personal story! <^;^>

Q: What office romance situations do you long to find yourself in? (Sample size=341, male)

Rank		Score
1	Working overtime into the night together	100
2=	A grope in the lift	95.6
2=	Leaving the office at different times but meeting up outside	95.6
4	A grope in the office kitchen	77.8
5	Writing where to meet on a Post-It Note	73.3
6	Both going on a business trip on the same day to the same place	68.9
7	Secret meetings on the office roof	57.8
8=	Always eating lunch together	53.3
8=	Playing footsie under the desk	53.3
10	Eyes meeting as we pass each other on escalators	51.1
11	To keep our relationship secret, splitting up at the station and going into the office separately	48.9
12	Secretly exchanging email on office computers	46.7
13	Looking diagonally at her seat	40.0
14=	Meeting in empty meeting rooms	35.6
14=	Talking in code	35.6
14=	Suddenly calling her under the guise of work	35.6
17	Secret meetings on the fire escape	31.1
18=	Secretly chatting on office computers	24.4
18=	Matching lunch boxes	24.4
20	Calling her when the copier gets jammed	20.0

Q: What office romance situations do you long to find yourself in? (Sample size=731, female)

Rank		Score
1	Leaving the office at different times but meeting up outside	100
2	Working overtime into the night together	73.1
3=	Writing where to meet on a Post-It Note	63.5
3=	Both going on a business trip on the same day to the same place	63.5
5	A grope in the lift	60.2
6	Eyes meeting as we pass each other on escalators	58.6
7	To keep our relationship secret, splitting up at the station and going into the office separately	47.4
8	Secretly exchanging email on office computers	45.8
9	A grope in the office kitchen	43.0
10	Looking diagonally at his seat	41.8
11	Secret meetings on the office roof	41.0
12	Always eating lunch together	34.9
13	Suddenly calling him under the guise of work	32.9
14	Talking in code	27.7
15	Secret meetings on the fire escape	27.3
16	Playing footsie under the desk	24.9
17	Secretly chatting on office computers	21.3
18	Meeting in empty meeting rooms	18.5
19	Calling him when the copier gets jammed	18.1
20	Being proposed to at the end of a presentation	13.7