Happy Belly

12 Oct 2014 – Fun With Family, Friends & Food

Thu: at the post office to discover that packages of laksa, curry and chicken rice paste are not permitted to be mailed. Such a bummer as these are excellent gifts for people from this part of the world who has immigrated overseas. Found a new brand named Happy Belly – cute name. Made totally in SIN and even has a pix postcard of somewhere in SIN. Oh well, there goes one of the gift ideas for mailing!

Fri: at the market early for breakfast and then grocery shopping for the weekend. Early Fri and Sat early are the days where shopping in the wet market is fun when the produce and fish are fresh. Have to be an early bird as I am picky and only buy small amount! My regular vendors are accommodating to me when there are no crowds! Where can you buy just a few wigs of mint leafs or just one stalk of celery but here at this wet market.

After a week, I need to make my own food and it is good to be with my regular vendors who are kind and helpful as I do not know many of the local names and just show them pix of what I want. Organic fresh produce for S$8 bought and washed before sunrise! These are organic for sure – had to wash and remove the worm-eaten leafs…

Thanks for dropping by for lunch Gel. Glad to see you feeling and looking better. Stay strong and positive and know that you are in my thoughts to be 100% the Gel I knew. Hope that she will get to see the Aurora either next year or in the near future. Tkx to sis Jo for dinner.

Sat: Cape gooseberry, the Physalis fruit can be lovely for food presentation. Bought a punnet yesterday to discover that they were rotten. Brought it back to Parkway Cold Storage this morning and you will not believe what was said…

Me: I need to return these rotten berries.
Service person: you want new ones?
Me: I checked and they are all rotten.
Service person: so you no want this?
Me: thinking, duh! but said: would you want to pay for rotten berries?
Service person looking dumbfounded and said: OK return you money

No apologies, nothing. So wasted 2 trips to ‘Cold Storage – the Fresh Food People’ as they are known and NO comparison to the MT Market! The lesson learnt, if I ever buy Physalis again, I will open every berry to check or just stick to local produce in the wet market…

Either Cold Storage has no idea about the job of a customer service position or that our government has wasted our taxed money spent on courtesy campaign and probably both!

A day of food preparation for Larry/USA, Richard/NZ, Louis/S Africa. Thanks to Chesper for his chicken curry+popiah and to Clement for sashimi+salad. The organic ‘NasiUlum Bug Attack’ was my contribution. Chesper caught me ‘bugging’ 🙂 A lovely evening was enjoyed by all.

Sun: this haze is giving me such a headache that all I feel like doing is staying in my AC place and not go anywhere – have still to finish unpacking since my return! Difficult to even try scraping off paint in the bathroom!! Pix taken 1800hrs from the bus into town with a PSI reading of 100.

Dropped by Campers Corner/Waterloo St and Chris drove us to their the new location for Marmot at Novena. On the way in the van, was wondering why these Indians were walking barefoot from Little India and turns out that it is the Fire Walking Festival.