Hungry for Hungarian Goulash

It's hard to find a nice, thick Hungarian Goulash these days. I'm talking those with chunky bits of beef, potatoes, carrots and beans. Instead, the order of the day seems to be those sissy, diluted ones with no beef in sight (probably just strands of it) and what I absolutely detest is that they stew it so long till the teeny cubes of potatoes just melt away in your mouth before you can even land your molars on them.

We chanced upon Soup-erlicious, a soup café (which are another dime in a dozen these days), in Suntec one weekend. After walking around in Carrfefour, Vel complained that she was hungry and wanted some bread. Thinking that how boring it was just to eat bread alone, I suggested why not have some soup to go along after sighting the café as the nearest eatery to go to as we stepped through the check out counters. In actual fact, it was a ploy to find something substantial to fill my stomach as I was feeling slightly peckish as well.

To my amazement, the goulash was wonderful! It came with pieces of foccacias cut up into rectangular blocks (making it ultra easy for dipping) and the soup was the thick, gooey and chunky kind that I loved and missed so dearly. The soup was fragrant and flavourful, yet the beef was tender and the chunks of potatoes and carrots still had a nice crunch to them.

It was supposed to be a snack but the bowl was so huge that after draining it dry and wiping up the sides with the foccacia, I was stuffed (not Velouria though)!

Yummy indeed! I’ll definitely be back for more. My next target – Wild Mushroom Soup!

Pigging out - a 'hum'-ful night

Penny was down with a really bad bout of flu for the past two weeks. When she finally did recover (not fully), we thought that it was only fitting that we celebrated it with a rather restrained pig out session at East Coast hawker centre (which is kind of an oxymoron when you think about it) since we didn't want her falling sick again soon after she had gotten well. Having being deprived of all the evil fried and oily food for the duration of her illness, she was craving for all the wrong things.

We started our feast with a plate of chicken wings, some satay and a couple of drinks. When we realised that all that stuff could barely fill us, Penny went in search of more grub to gobble up. Gone for a good ten minutes, she returned with a plate of the famous (but only okay by my standards - I still prefer the one at Balestier) satay bee hoon and, horror of horrors, a plate of see hum!

Armed with a toothpick and a saucer of sambal belachan, we went at it and soon all that was left was splattered blood and a pile of shells on the table. The cockles were barely cooked but that was what gave them that signature crunchiness. I never felt so disgusted but yet equally satisfied at the same time.

As always, we left rubbing our tummies, deeply satisfied with our meal.

The Lunar-cy of the Lunar New Year

It has begun. As much as I hate festivities and all the hoopla that comes with it, there is no escaping the insanity of the Lunar New Year since we are, after all, Chinese. It started a couple of weeks back with the purchase of a CNY-ish plant which I don't even know the name of, putting up obiang looking 福 paper cut-out decorative thingies (must be inverted, no less), getting crushed in the markets and, the part I hate most, spring cleaning.

Our refrigerator is filled to the brim with stuff since the Chinese are a superstitious lot (i.e. my mum-in-law) and believe that the house should be chock full of food as we pass into the New Year. And that is not even taking into the account the junk food we have sitting outside the refrigerator.

Is it just me getting old? Or is it just my overall nonchalance with life that I just can't seem to be bothered with such things anymore? Given the choice, I would just pass the holidays quietly without any visitations or parties whatsoever. But I suppose my family wouldn't have any of that.

As I am typing this, Penny and Vel are off with the MIL to the markets in search of the perfect fishballs for our steamboat tomorrow. I'm like, whatever.

恭喜发财，身体健康.

Impromptu barbie

It was just another lazy Saturday. We had half the mind to chill out at East Coast but were too lazy to pack everything into the car and the thought of having to unpack later made us change our minds. Eventually we fell asleep (me with my glasses, waist pouch and phone still on me) while deciding what to do. By the time we awoke, it was already 6 in the evening. Damn, the whole day had almost whizzed by while we were ding-donging.

Penny was craving for barbie food, so since we had some charcoal left, we pulled out what we could from the fridge- two pre-barbied sotongs from the streets of Taiwan, a few pork chops and some sotong balls from Nancy's barbie earlier in the week, a packet of NTUC cheese sausages and a few sweet potatos. A quick dash to NTUC for a packet of pre-seasoned chicken wings, Dodo Crab Stix, two ears of corn and some fizzy drinks and we were good to go!

As always, I fired up the pit while Vel and Penny prepared the food. Surprisingly, we had quite a spread despite using mostly leftovers! Vel, as usual, was eating mostly sausages and corn, leaving Mummy and Daddy to finish off the rest of the food. We had a nice slow fire and it was a cool breezy evening, so we took our time to cook our food. Fortunately for us, our neighbours weren't home so we didn't have to worry about bothering them with the smoke.

We called it quits at about 10pm when Penny and I were stuffed with so much carbon (carbonised food and carbonated drinks). Not surprisingly, we didn't manage to finish all the food (we couldn't pry apart, let alone cook, the pork chops as they weren't thawed enough).

God sent some rain as we were ending our little party to cool everything off. We fell asleep feeling gratified that God had once again blessed us with a wonderful day.

Ushering in the year of the Pig. Oink!

Time flies when you're having fun. The CNY holidays have come and gone. And we haven't even watched Ghost Rider yet. Now it's back to reality... Work.

Came back to a huge chunk of emails (mostly spam), a pile of CNY greeting cards in my 'In' tray, a jar of cookies from some company I don't know (and spelt my name as REENNIE) as well as a lovely trail of ants marching around (probably attempting to pick up all the junk food lying around).

So what have we done? Steamboat on the first day with a SHITLOAD of food (cold dish, veggies, abalone, cereal prawns) that we could barely finish. Grandma's house at night Blackjack-ing with my cousins and more food (lobsters! woo hoo!).

And the rest of the days we were just chilling. Mainly because we cancelled our HCMC trip (stupid birds!)

So there! One whole week of holidays gone! Now we can move on with our lives and look forward to, er, Christmas and our year end bonus (if any).

Wishing one and all a prosperous and healthy year of the pig.

P.S. : Pearl Harbour on TV... again! Free to air TV sucks! Fortunately I have cable. At least I get to watch re-runs of Spiderman 2 and Season 7 of CSI. Woo hoo!