Cavalock and The Revisitation Wish List

This here is probably the hottest joint in town right now and I'm talking bout Sacha & Sons New York Deli at the Mandarin Gallery, where Wild Honey used to be. Alright take it easy, the popular brunch restaurant is still around, they just moved a unit away. So anyway, having heard of a New York deli opening here and me missing my chance to drop by one during my last visit to the Big Apple, I knew where I was gonna be having my lunch that afternoon.

Ordered the corned beef reuben with swiss cheese. Loved every bite of it including the pickles. Can't wait to try the rest of the menu cos everything sure looks good especially the latkes, chopped liver and matzo balls. I guess I'll be saying good-bye to Nassim Hill Bakery for now. Hah! Was fun while it lasted!

Hey, since it's almost the end of the year, I thought I'll do a Top 5 pick of my favourite or most memorable joints of the year. Places with great food that I enjoyed this year and where I would certainly hope to visit again next year. There's the just mentioned Sacha & Sons. Next up is the always-crowded Sunday Folks for their soft-serve desserts and I'm not saying this cos it's my friend's place who happened to also really love the Christmas fruitcakes from our tiny apartment kitchen! Then there's the recently discovered Japanese bakery Boulangerie Asanoya, can't wait to have coffee there again. Cicheti has a new menu that has me drooling over their gnocchi. Last pick is kinda difficult cos it's a toss between a Japanese restaurant or a steak house. Flipped the coin, rolled the dice and Bedrock Bar and Grill is where I hope to have dinner once more.

Cool news for the week! I finally found the ballpoint refills for my late uncle's pens. The pens are pretty old and most stationery shops like Kinokuniya no longer stock these thin refills anymore. I really like them, light-weight and they got a good balance. Thank the stars for Tokyu Hands and their fantastic pen supply selection. I also purchased a S$170 Flash Heroclix brick set (but not from Tokyu Hands!) and as a lifelong fan of the original Scarlet Speedster, I just can't get enough of the figures below that I pulled out of the 10 booster boxes. Heh, I bet what I just wrote made absolutely no sense to most of you reading this. Oh well, that's me. Once a geek, always a geek.

Cavalock and The Perfect Steak Formula and Other Bootleg Bounties

A Saturday evening home alone and I figured its been awhile since I posted bout something I put together in the kitchen. Straight from celebrity chef's Heston Blumenthal's at Home cookbook, this is probably the easiest thing in there. It's all about frying the perfect steak. Like I said, it's real simple and anyone can do it.

Heat your pan for like 5 minutes till it's crazy hot and smoking. Salt the best steak you can buy but make sure the steak is at room temperature first. Drizzle some olive or grapefruit oil on the sizzling pan.

Time to drop the steak in the pan and watch it sizzle. The trick is to flip the meat every 15 seconds for like two minutes if you want a medium rare steer. Well, you can follow all that or just watch Heston's video here, yah well maybe the latter. The Canadian ribeye I got earlier in the afternoon turned out nicely. The steamed brussels sprouts was another easy peasy dish. Just steam them and add a dollop of butter once they are tender to the bite, which takes about five minutes.

Yes, that's an autographed copy thanks to blogger epicurative.

Good enough for me.

Saturday evening with my essential 'friends' .

As always, the worst part of every meal is mopping up a grease-soaked kitchen. I reckon that took me three times longer than it took for me to prepare the food. Still, you can't really put a price tag to a great home-cooked meal.

Another cache of fake ...opps ... I mean, customised Lego minifigures has just reached our shores and I can't be more excited. Except for the Green Arrow figure which was an San Diego Comic Con exclusive last year, all the other three minifigures have yet to be officially made or released by Lego. So like I said in a previous post, it ain't technically a fake if there was never an original around in the first place right? Now if anyone's wondering where to find all these fake Lego ...damn it!... customised figures, you can find them at the Sunday flea market at China Square Central. I saw almost half the stalls there selling them including the fake Winter Soldier Lego.

Daddy's home! 

My TV series vs your movie?

Geddit?

But this is my favourite collectible to come out of this latest shipment. A reproduction of the black and white Batman statue by artist Sean Galloway. Decent packaging, same size and colour, and looking at the box, I'm assuming the original is made outta porcelain but the one I got is made outta hard plastic hence the rather economical price tag of only S$24 while the real deal is going for US80 before shipping.

Now I'm sure if you take a real close look at it, you'll notice some minor flaws. But I'm cool with it. There were also reproductions of the New 52 figures of DC Heroes' Flash and Superman by Jim Lee. I wasn't interested in those as the 'completest' part of me would be anxiously waiting for the rest of the (bootleg) Justice League to show up.

Cavalock Assembles The Avengers Cookies

There was a whole lot of themed cookies that left our tiny apartment kitchen over the last year including Batman, Iron Man, Halloween and the Minions, now it's time to assemble the Avengers! Received an order last week to bake some cookies for a little boy's birthday party and he's a huge Avengers fan so here are what we came up with. Left to right top row, that's Wolverine, Captain America and Iron Man, followed by Hulk and Spider-Man below. And in case all you noon-geeks are wondering, yes, Wolverine and Spidey are both card-carrying members of the Avengers.

The gift tags we used are all old Marvel VS trading cards. Not bad, eh? I thought they look great and the other side's blank so the kid can write his 'thank you' or something. So who's your favourite cookie Avenger? 

Every bad guy in the Marvel Universe wants to piece of the Avengers!

Hulk smash Hulk cookie!

Cavalock and The Batman Cookie Caper

Remember the Iron Man cookies we made a couple years ago? Well, its been awhile since we had another order for super-hero themed cookies that is until last week when we got one for a kid's birthday party. Sure we made lotsa other kinds of cookies and cakes like the recent Minions but as a comic book geek I always look forward to the comic book ones.

Over 40 handmade Batman butter cookies left our little kitchen but not before I managed to snap a few shots. And yes, I do own a lot of Batman action figures, a whole lot more than what you see here.  Leave a tick in one them boxes below if you like. :)

Cavalock and The Great Customized Minifigure Roundup

Looks like almost all our cakes are baked and delivered just in time for Christmas! Another huge thank-you to everyone and we really love all your wonderful compliments! Check this out, you got your sour cherry pie, pear cake, rum-soaked fruitcake and orange sugee cake.

I must admit that the holiday season can be a rather depressing time for us caregivers but I promised a long time ago not on dwell on unpleasant stuff in this here blog so allow me to totally geek out on a awesome day out with the guys. Started with an afternoon of boardgames with the couple of the guys at my place where we played Elder Sign and Core Worlds. Then we headed to the east to meet the rest of the gang for dinner and more importantly, to grab these fak... er... I mean customised Lego superhero minifigures!

Yes, these are technically not fake or counterfeit Lego products cos if you look at the packaging, no where does it say Lego. Making or customising your own lookalike Lego minifigures is actually a popular and legit thing among collectors. Apparently a bunch of enterprising guys in China decided to customised a whole bunch of Lego minifigures and sell them at very reasonable prices. So there you go, these are just ... er... customised minifgures. :P

In my previous post, I showed some of the ones I bought. Well, after our boardgame session at my place, we went and bought a ton of them at this little shop that had hundreds on sale including customised crowd favourites of Star Wars characters. It's the freakin' motherlode!!!! We spent over S$400 cos the auntie shopkeeper charged us only S$1.80 each! At that loooow price, we practically cleaned out half the shop. Some bought them as holiday gifts for kids or colleagues, others to make little armies or chessboard pieces. I grabbed just 10 boxes including a complete set of Le ... I mean customised Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles minifigures. I love these Turtles and they come with their own skateboards and pizzas!

If you guys like these customised Lego minifigures from good ol' China, check out my other posts, here, here and here!

Lookit them pesky turtles skateboarding through the neighbourhood!  

Rooftop chase scene!

A Weapon X reunion tour!

Thor and Loki! Brothers on a balcony!
  

Super-villain team-up! Cyborg Superman and Bizarro go up against Green Lantern! Apparently Green Lantern and Bizarro are Comic Con exclusives and there is no official Cyborg Superman Lego minifigure yet. 

Then what greeted me back home was one of the games that I backed on Kickstarter couple months ago. The Agents finally came although the box was pretty banged up and contents a bit wet. Seems like the package made a slight detour to Israel. Interesting and unique game mechanism where different effects are triggered depending on how and where your cards are placed.

There you go, a rare yet totally geeky day and nite out with the guys. Wish there were more days like this. Like I said, the holiday season can be a downer especially if I go on social media and see someone's vacation pictures or even of office parties. Been more than a couple years since I went to a Christmas party too. I guess you kinda get cut off from meeting your peers and colleagues if you are a full-time caregiver. I tell myself there's a bright side to all this like spending time with my elderly family members but sometimes I do feel like I need a break.

Cavalock and The Lure of The Mandarin

I was actually kinda hoping to be proven wrong and enjoy a mind-blowing dining experience at our local Jamie's Italian that Thursday afternoon alas, the online reviews were right. It was a decent enough meal at an almost exorbitant price. I have no real complaints about the taste or quality of the food except maybe the posh fries or rather truffle fries were a little too soggy.  That there is the wild mushroom ravioli that I had and below that is the calamari. All that you see below for about S$80.

As I also expected, it was nothing like my experience at his Canary Wharf restaurant. That was more rowdy and filled with working adults instead of our family joint version. A different kinda vibe that I rather missed. A similar vibe would be at one of those places along Shenton Way that's always filled with loud expats drinking after office hours. On second thought, maybe I don't miss it after all.

Well, another annual Singapore Toy Games & Comics Convention (STGCC) has just ended and as always, it was exhausting and fun. Like the last 3 pre-STGCC days over the years, we brought Marvel Comics' C.B. on another local food odyssey. You can check out his food blog here.

Yes, this year's STGCC was pretty much a Stark Industries affair as we see hundreds and hundreds of  Iron Man armor in all shapes (yes, shapes) and sizes. Look out for more STGCC pix at Here Be Geeks. Anyway, my best buy of STGCC weekend has got to be this comic pack starring Silver Centurion Iron Man and the Mandarin, the comic book version and not the movie one. Scored it on the first day and first hour of the convention, Great deal for only S$20 as they usually go for almost double that elsewhere and I only wanted the Mandarin figure. Fellow Marvel collectors will understand how difficult it is to find him in one of his classic costumes and at such a low price too.

Cavalock and The Asparagus Aspiration

It's asparagus season! Well, at least that's what the magazines and blogs are telling me this month or was it last month since May just started? So I went and bought some US asparagus from NTUC, hoping to try a couple of the online recipes.

Anyway, after getting them I'm suddenly reminded of the aftermath of cleaning up the kitchen if I were to saute them. Meaning the whole place is gonna get greasy and I gotta mop the floor after that. Decided to steam them instead. Here, everything's steamed including the pork. It's really fast, easy and I guess healthier too plus you can drizzle them with some olive oil, herbs and feta cheese after that.

It taste so good, I had it two ways. First with a bowl of rice and then mixing them up with pasta the next day. Fast to prepare and best of all, no messy cleanups at the end. If you haven't tried steaming them, you should give it a shot.

So yesterday was May 4 and it's Free Comic Book Day and Star Wars Day all-in-one and all over the world. And that means it's time to reaffirm my geek-cred by criss-crossing Orchard and Bugis for several geeky events. Started at 10am at Kinokuniya Orchard, then it's off to GnB at Bugis then back to Orchard for the free Boba Fett figure from Hasbro. Check this out, the one on the left is the new remake of the original vintage action figure (on the right) that yours truly got when he was a kid. Yikes, showing my age again!

Earlier in the morning, the cool folks at Kinokuniya were nice enough to include this year's free Wizkids Heroclix figure with their bag of comics. Following their theme of making figures based on that's year's big super-hero movie, Wizkids's latest free figure is Iron Man in his new armor!

If I'm correct it started four years ago with the free War Machine Heroclix figure (with unique dials and tourny legal) during the release of Iron Man 2 movie. Then it was the DC's Green Lantern one in time for the Green Lantern movie a year later and last year it was back to Marvel's Thor.