Home cooking

I've started cooking at home recently, after months of keeping a non-oily stove.


Home dinner one night, with store-bought roast pork, which I've grilled in the oven (to a crispy skin).


Beijing cabbage with canned vegetarian 罗汉斋


Bean sprouts with ready-soaked black fungus from the market


Tofu with minced pork


Dinner of wanton soup and sweet peas stir-fried with pacific clams


These ready to eat wanton soup from CP brand is fabulous...one of the best frozen food around.

Pasta dinner tonight:



With grilled spicy pork sausage, fresh brown and white mushrooms, assorted veggies and leftover pacific clams.


While being grilled in the mini oven, the sausages somehow caused a little fire to be ignited in the oven! :-O

The oil dripping must have sparked off the small fire on the aluminium foil! >_<"



Anyway, it was an extra tasty pasta dinner. ;)



And I love my pasta keeper. It has holes that conveniently dispense exactly 100g or 200g of pasta.

Soups & Salad

Yummy and filling soups from The Soup Spoon are just the thing to eat for lunch when I'm feeling not particularly hungry, or feeling a bit out of sorts. There's a choice of thick soup, cream or tomato-based soups, or clear broth, with or without meat. It's not too heavy, easy-to-eat and yet not so light that it makes you go hungry too soon.

For a heavier lunch, one can always opt for the large portion, which comes in a bowl that's as big as the "碗公" (in Hokkien) that are typically used for soups in Chinese families in a communal eating setting. A small bun of your choice is served with each serving of soup.


The day's special - Chicken Ciacatore (sp?) with Sage, which was very yummy with a strong taste of ang moh herbs


Spicy Vegetable Gumbo, which was meatless


One can take-away either the hot soup or this package chilled soup and heat it up at home. I opted for this because it's easier to handle cold soup on public transport.


It contains some Japanese chicken soup/broth, enough for about 2 to 3 servings


Sweet and yummy!

On another occasion, I went back to Food For Thought one day to try its salads. This time, I chose to sit at its empty bar counter as I'd wanted to see the food preparation and what goes into their dishes of mainly salad and sandwiches.


The creamless brocolli soup was alright, though hardly exciting.

Now the Chinese Chicken (or was it turkey??) Caesar Salad was the one that bothered me. Instead of the usual Caesar dressing, it's dressed in a Chinese stewed pork sauce, which came from their special stewed 3-layered fatty pork (meant for sandwiches) and topped with fried ikan billis (anchovies). I knew this only because I'd asked them about the sauce.


Salad leaves with a layer of shiny oil

While I'm ok with the Chinese twist of adding fried ikan billis and a Chinese-styled dressing, what was not ok was that they had first added some oil onto the salad leaves, followed by the stewed pork sauce which also had a layer of oil.

Gosh! I wanted to eat a salad coz I wanted something light, so I definitely don't want my salad to be piled with so much oil! There was enough oil for it to drip below the salad leaves onto the plate, and I've had to try to drain out as much oil as I could from the leaves before putting them into my mouth.

Secondly, I really didn't expect anything porky to appear in a chicken/turkey salad, so why did they not mention anything about adding pork sauce, and a rather oily one at that? What if customers were on a white-meat diet? Furthermore, the sauce was not even fantastic.

And finally, I AM NOT A PORKY PERSON (I will only eat some pork done in certain ways), so I absolutely hated it that they'd spoiled my supposedly-healthy lunch totally with the very porky, pork oil-laden and probably cholesterol-laden sauce! Not wanting to waste food, I ate them up, but I was so put-off by their mis-concept that I did not bother to give my feedback.

Needless to say, that was my last visit to that cafe.

Saybons, French Food Factory

I hadn't known this take-out joint is so "famous", until I saw the newspaper cuttings pasted all over their counter. I'd recently read from a food blog about their nice soup and crepes.



That's a large sized cup of seafood bisque (price $4.90).



The SO thought it was curry...and actually, it did have a spicy taste.


The seafood bisque was good, with a good "body" and without the strong "fishy" taste, which I'd experienced at some supposedly good restaurant.

The mushroom and cheese savoury crepe (@ $4.50), one of their popular items.


They also have dessert crepes filled with bananas, chocolate, strawberries and peanuts, but not all in the same crepe.

The crepe wasn't as hot or soft, since I'd taken it home to eat, but it was very nice all the same. The SO likes it too.


I drank almost all the soup and ate about 40% of the crepe, but it was quite filling, and I didn't feel like I needed to eat more for dinner, except perhaps a fruit and drink. I think a soup plus focaccia bread (which they also sell) would make a nice lunch.

Soup lunch at Food for Thought

Having had a heavy breakfast, I wanted to eat something light for lunch. After gallivanting into PLC to check out the retractable leash, I remembered there was a small sandwich diner close by, so I found Food for Thought, which offered several choices of sandwiches (1 vegetarian s/w), pastas and 2 types of soup.

I chose the shitake mushroom soup (the other was Ham & Potato).


A Sunday Times food reviewer had ordered this soup and on her first taste, thought the chef had forgotten to add salt! Contrary to her experience, on my first taste, I found the soup to be savoury and slightly sweet, which needed just a sprinkle of pepper.

The soup came in a big bowl and had slivers of shitake mushroom. It was served with 4 pieces of lightly-toasted bread...enough to make a filling lunch.



Water is free, but please donate generously, so that the underprivileged may also have clean water to drink... so says the sign.



It was close to 2pm, so the place wasn't crowded, but while I was waiting for my takeaway latte, a bunch of school gals came in to have lunch.


The place is small and cozy enough, though I wish they didn't have those reflective tables which is kind of glitzy. If it remains quiet and not too crowded, I would like to go back to try their salads and fruit freezes.

(Note to self: the cafe latte at $3 was average, in a small cup...can't beat the Sleek Espresso Bar's version at $3.60 which had more oomph... )

Vegetarian food

Some of the vegetarian food that I've had recently, besides the brown rice chye png (vegetables & rice) combo every now and then.

Kueh Chap - Interestingly, the fishball was super crunchy/crispy, but too salty.



Herbal noodles - very nice with herbal soup and the ubiquitous mock mutton (made from mushroom stalks)



Laksa with mock cockles, which was wrongly served to me!


I'd ordered yong tau foo items with laksa gravy, including the vegetarian ngoh hiang, and this bowl arrived, also with the ngoh hiang on top, so I thought it was my order. Luckily, the other customer didn't mind having my food instead and paid more for it. I find that the regular customers at vegetarian stalls are quite amiable and willing to accept such minor mistakes without fuss.

The soup accompanying the main course of ...



Vegetarian Korean Bibimbap (organic version with brown rice)...super yum!


Instead of the usual sunny-side-up egg, it has what looked like scrambled egg, which was very cleverly made from toufu and almost tasted like the real thing. The soup has radish, carrots, soya beans and perhaps a piece of yam-cum-sweet-potato thing.

Spring onion pancakes and hot & sour soup

We had these at the Lavender Foodcourt, from a stall that sells Shanghainese food.

Szechuan hot & sour soup and spring onion pancakes (葱油饼)

The soup was average, but can't complain lah, since it only cost a dollar or so, and the pancakes were really good and yummy!

Although the pastry looks thick, it didn't taste heavy but was nice and crispy. The chilli dip was shiokado! too and would even go well with chicken.