Original Herbal Shop @ Balestier Road

After eating at two different places, we still had some space for desserts in our stomach. ;-)
To cool down after eating so much, we went to the Original Herbal Shop. It's my first time to this shop!





6 of us, we ordered the following:
Nic had the Black Sesame Seed Paste. I remember it smelling good!





Nic said he needed to cool down. So he had this black bitter concoction! The 24 Herb Special Herbal Tea. Haha. I took a photo of him drinking this. It sure looked bitter and disgusting from his reaction!

I think this bowl came from the big huge container in the first photo!





Hungry Cow and I had the Ginseng Honey Suckle Chrysanthemum Tea. (Cold ones from the fridge)
I was so thirsty and this was a thirst quencher!




AromaCookery had the Longan Stewed Papaya with Rock Sugar.
Looks so delicious isn't it?





Momo and Camemberu ordered the same dessert.
They each had a Longan & White Fungus dessert. Looks good too!



Looks like an interesting place to have good old fashion desserts.


Original Herbal Shop
414 Balestier Road
Singapore 329806

Tel: 6250 5567

Ah Hak Bak Kut Teh @ Balestier Road

After the dinner at 2nd Kitchen, we went for a 2nd dinner!
We were walking around looking for food and we saw this shop that has many people eating Bak Kut Teh. 

I remember it was not bad before. It must have been a few years ago that I ate here with my colleauges. We were hoping it was as nice as it was. But sadly, standard seems to have dropped. (or it is because the food at 2nd Kitchen was better compared to this? hehe)




Anyway, we ordered the usual stuff and ate. The You Tiao.





The Bak Kut Teh meat was ok, but the soup was not as peppery or tasteful as I remembered.
The others agreed with me too. It's $5.50 per portion of 3 pieces of meat.




But we found the braised trotters nicer than the BKT. $5 each.
It's a little fatty, but some like it, but some not. :-)




The second bowl of it. Maybe we like the trotters because of the sauce which is tastier?




Momo and I like the Bak Kut Teh at a little shop in Clementi better. :-)
But if you are hungry and need food, this is ok lah...


Ah Hak Bak Kut Teh
395/397 Balestier Road
Singapore 329800

2nd Kitchen @ Balestier Road

We had a food outing with a few other food bloggers again. This time to a place called 2nd Kitchen on  Balestier Road. If you get lost, look for Value Hotel, it's on the ground floor of this hotel.

It's kind of small, with only a small section of it inside the building (ie air-conditioned). If you like to sit outdoors, then don't worry about seating. There's more seats outside.





The rest of the foodies did their homework. They know what's nice here. (I was lazy and only want to eat haha..)

One of the must try is their Fried Bee Hoon with Lala. 

The portion is a bit small for the 6 of us, but it was delicious though. A little salty which probably made it so tasty. You can see it's quite generous with the Lala (and also chinese cooking wine too!).





You like hor fun, then you will most probably like this Sliced Giant Garoupa Hor Fun. (Cooked wat tan hor style) It comes covered with egg sauce on top, so we got to dig the ingredients out to show you the contents. :-p

As salty as the dish above, but we like it!





This is Sambal Winged Beans. It was recommended by the service staff. He said they have their own farm (I think was in Kranji or something like that) and these are fresh from their farm.

The veggies sure are fresh and very spicy and delicious! If you are a rice person, order a bowl and I am sure you can finish this up in an instant!





This is the garoupa's "Photophores". Huh? What's that? Go 'bing' or 'google' to find out!

We looked at the menu and wondered what is nice, and the service staff recommended this. He said due to popular demand, they prepare more nowadays. Previously it was only available if you called to reserve it.

The soup looks very milky. You know why? It's because it is fish bones and scales that has been boiled till it disintegrated! I wonder how long they took to prepare this! There's ginseng in it as well! Try it if you like soup. 





We also had another dish that's not available on the menu. They did not want to sell it to us. LOL. Only for their regular customers he said. They finally decide to serve it to us,  but I think I shall not post the photo here. :-)

But we wondered if it's because of the big cameras around the table. They decided to give us a dessert treat. We were served mochi with toasted desiccated coconut.



Each of us paid around $14.
We felt like eating more and went for more food elsewhere! (we are gluttons!)


2nd Kitchen
592 Balestier Rd
#01-03
Singapore 718813

Tel: 62543676

Marche @ 313@Somerset

313@Somerset, one of the many new shopping malls that have opened recently. On Wednesday, I went to 'take a look'. Aunt tagged along and she enjoyed herself at Uniqlo. This Japanese chain has lots of clothing that looks cheap. Aunt said it's like Primark in UK! haha...

Anyway, before we walked the shops, we had a quick break at Marche. They have reopened another branch here at 313@Somerset.




Aunt had her usual coffee fix. Cousin and I had ice cream.
Why did we pick the ice cream? Because we spotted a 1-for-1 for the Movenpick Ice Cream!

This is Creme Brulee. Oh so yummy.....



The Swiss Chocolate flavour. Ohh.... just lovely.



So with the 1-for-1 by using UOB Credit cards, I paid $4.90 for 2 scoops (cups) of ice cream.
Nice place to take a break if you are tired shopping. ;-)


Marche
313@Somerset
313 Orchard Road
Singapore 238895

Tel: 6834 4041

Christmas Dinner @ Home

This was our Christmas Day dinner at home. It's mostly prepared by our Aunt. The rest of us just eat!
The table all set up! With a flower arrangement given just a few days by her friend.



We started by having soup. This is tomato and crabmeat bisque.
It was nice. Aunt said this time she is not giving out her recipe, she will trade it for her sister's brownie recipe.  :-)



We had the soup with toasted sour bread slices topped with smoked salmon and aunt's yellow capsicum relish. Aunt has been researching and experimenting!



After the soup, the bowls were cleared and next came the Wordorf Salad. (made by yours truly, but it was too salty, I accidently added too much salt! haha) I modified the original salad recipe that you can find online. The red apple, I replaced it with Red Jambu Air. (Red Apple)



We had the salad with the chilled prawn cocktails. The little ones ask for this every year. Why? It's so easy to eat! It's like you can't stop. You just want to eat another and another.... It's nice to have it with salad!
(oh the amount of work to peel all the prawns!)



Oh yes, the Roast Turkey with chestnut stuffing baked in aunt's kitchen.
If you say, oh not turkey again for Christmas, then you most probably eat the ones made by the supermarkets or catering services. Those are usually dry and cold. It's usually cooked a few days in advance. Yes, we bought them previously and tried many 'suppliers'.

Home roasted turkey taste totally different. When we took the turkey from the oven that has been resting for the last 2 to 3 hours, the juice literally flow out when we held the turkey up.



Mix vegetables. A simple stir fry with garlic. So simple yet so nice.
But everyone seems to like all the veg except cauliflowers. :-p



We usually have processed meats, i.e. leg of ham (oh I remember the time we had a whole leg of ham, it took us so long to finish it and so salty too!)
This year, it's healthy eating instead. None of the preserved stuff, but a chunk of good old roast beef.
(I think I should take photos in the kitchen next time, the lighting is better and food looks more tasty! haha)



We had the above with roast potatoes. After dinner we rested and watched TV.

2 hours later, it was time for dessert. This is the Glenfiddich Mincement Tarts. Aunt says it's uncle's favourite. Yes, it's the Glenfiddich Malt Whiskey brand's Glenfiddich.



Aunt's sister made these delicious brownies. It's the chewy kind!
Oh yes, we had it with B&Js.
But we found that the brownie is so nice, it nicer to eat it without the ice cream!




Wishing all of you a very Blessed Christmas.

These are just food that feeds the physical body. Have you tasted the food that feeds your soul?
May you find the meaning of Christmas.

Tang Yuan @ home

While everyone has Tang Yuan the day before, where were we? I can't really remember. I think it was last minute Christmas gift shopping. haha.

We had our Tang Yuan the next day. We were all busy in church for Christmas Rehearsals, so we could not have it for dinner at Aunt's. She said, no worries, just come over for supper. Tang Yuan Supper.

These are frozen ones from the supermarket. hehe...
Only the soup is home made. If you are wondering how to make it, it's very simple. 2 ingredients only: brown sugar and lots of ginger.

When asked how many do we want?
I said 3 is enough for me. (Ya right. In the end I ate like 6 or 7 of it!)



Some started with more. Nope, the person sure did not stop at 4 too!



The youngest at home said, I just need 2. Just as you have guessed. She ate more than 2!



Hmm. We eat it not because of any significant meaning. We eat it just because we like to eat it. Sis and bro especially loves Tang Yuan. But bro is in UK now, wonder if he ate any this time?

We enjoy sitting on the table talking and eating. It was even more fun when we were trying to guess what type of fillings we got. I like peanut ones.

Oh, sis and bro over the years have tried almost every single brand of Tang Yuan in the supermarket. Their verdict is that NTUC Fairprice's own house brand taste the best! The only thing is that it does not come with the soup. But as sis loves to eat this, what she does is to have a cup of hot ginger tea in replacement of the soup!

JPot @ VivoCity

My colleagues and I had a 'Christmas Feast' on Tuesday. Not sure if you have a scheme at work where you suggest work improvements and you might get compensated with some $$. It is known as "WITS" in many places.

Anyway, a few colleagues suggested quite a few improvements over the year, and we kinda pool them together and have a 'makan' fund.  This lunch was paid for using the 'makan' fund. ;-)

We thought we would go for JPot because a few colleague saw my post on it previously.

So, off we went to VivoCity. It was a big group, so arrived at different time. The group that reached earlier placed the order. So we just ordered...... while the rest began by eating the dips! LOL.. Yes, the dips are delicious. See, I had chives, parsley, raw garlic, fried garlic, sha cha, sesame seeds, ginger stripes and soy sauce and different oils below.




There's just too many photos, so I took out some and the rest are smaller size here.

We booked a table of 12 initially. But 4 colleagues could not make it at the last minute, so only 8 of us turned up. We still got to sit at this huge table they reserved for us. Think we needed the space with all the things we ordered! ;-p

The big table had 2 induction cooker, so we could have 2 pots cooking at the same time. Since we had 2 pots, that means we could try 4 out of their many soup bases. The first pot, we had the Bak Kut Teh and Laksa Soup.



The second pot, we had the  Superior Broth and Tom Yam Soup.



We just ordered what we felt like eating. But we were trying not to over order or bust our budget. For most of the things we had like 1 each for each person. Except for things in the 'yong tau fu' menu where we had a few since not everyone eats them. One colleague wanted to eat 'sausage' so much, so this is hers. :-)



We had like 2 of the 'giant' meat ball. I think this meat ball is nice!



We had like other balls as well. Can't remember how many kinds of it we had. But you can see these balls are not those frozen balls you have at other places. Fresh ones!



The fish paste in a piping bag, so that you can squeeze long strips of fish meat into the soup. It looks like mini worms. Worms that are delicious!



Think this is the chicken meat with the quail egg. Think we also had the pork. The moment it's done, it just disappears from the pot. We just put it straight into our mouths. haha



More balls. After cooking, they are a little bouncy and yet very soft.



Some stuff are expensive while others are cheap. I think this might be one of the pricier items. Fish maw. Makes the soup very tasty though!



The beef... So thinly sliced it cooks very fast. So all you need is to put it in the soup, count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and take it up!



The service staff told us the prawns were on sale that day and we should order it. We had lots of prawns. 7 each plate and we had 2. So prawns lovers could eat more.



The YTF stuff.. The colours looks so vibrant eh?



We only ordered 1 portion of corn. After tasting the corn, we thought we should have ordered more. :-p



Enoki...
We dip them in the non spicy side of the pots. We thought it won't go with spicy soup. But maybe it will on hindsight.



More mushrooms...



We had lots of veggies. This is the Tang Oh. We also had 2 other different kinds. Watercress and something else.



Boiling away. You can see we also had yam slices. What else did we have?



If you are wondering which soup base is the best, all of us said the Superior Broth. If we were to come again, we would just have Superior Broth. and maybe Bak Kut Teh.



We were stuffed, so so stuffed.

But we still wanted desserts. The mango shaved ice dessert. We shared 3 of it.
We were initially greedy and wanted 4 bowls, but the service stuff said: I think you guys should just order 3. She was so right. Another reason why we like this place. They don't push and make you order more than what you need.



The bill came up to $216.10.



We asked if any cards had discounts. (as usual. don't you all ask too?) We were told Citibank gives us 10% off here. We get discounts with the Jumbo Card (which we did not have). So we gave the service staff the Citi card. Then we took it back. We realise StanChart gives 15% via rebate instead.

The service staff was so confused when we said we get 15% with this card. She says, no this card has no discount here. But we said it's ok, just swipe it. She walked away so so confused wondering why we took back the Citibank card. haha..  (no, this meal was paid by us and not StanChart. Thought StanChart cards still gives the best deal around).



JPOT
VivoCity (Lobby F)
1 HarbourFront Walk
#01-53
Singapore 098585

Tel: 6273 3536