The End of Summer Camp 2010

You're not required to say grace before a meal. But do you think about the food on your table every time you eat it? For my last meal before heading back to SF, my sister made a big pot of soup and kakak made dinner. It would be my last home cook food until I go home next summer. It was probably the best meal I've ever tasted in my whole entire summer trip because the main ingredient is L.O.V.E. and I thank thee for the wonderful and yummyliciously prepared dinner.

25 yards

How much would you pay to play golf?

In Manila, 3 buckets of golf balls + a caddy girl costs less than Php. 200 and with an instructor for an hour it's Php. 700. Now, what say you? Golf anyone? :)

Go Green!

Philippines is a meat nation. It is pretty hard to get vegetarian food. Often, if you tell them that you're a vegetarian or you don't eat meat, they'll say, "Oh we got fish." However, Corner Tree Cafe is probably one of the rarest vegetarian restaurant in Manila and also the winner of the Best Vegetarian Restaurant in the Philippines. Not only they serve western style vegetarian food but also local style and catered to vegan or non vegan.

We ordered the feta/spinach croquettes, deep fried lumpia and fried polenta with mushroom sauce. I really love lumpia and they make very good ones, they're crispy and not oily at all. I don't know about carnivores but for me, if I can have such great tasting vegetarian food like these constantly, I really don't need meat :)

Corner Tree Cafe (Vegetarian Food)

150 Jupiter Street Bel-Air, Makati, Metro Manila

Summer Fat Camp 2010 - Destination IV: KL

YS: Eh, where do you wanna go?

Me: Anywhere lah, just take me to your favourite joint.

YS: Erm, there's this place at Damansara Heights, good bread and coffee.

Me: Sure, let's check it out.

IY: Eh, you just came back from the States right? Takan you still wanna eat bread ar?

Me: It's oklah, what matters is not where but who I'm with mah....

So off we headed to The Bread Shop @ Damansara Heights.

I didn't think I would have time to go KL to spend some time with my Coffee kakis. So when I did, I was very excited, I missed my old friends dearly.

YS said the place has a really good bread pudding thingy but it doesn't come out until 12.30pm. Perfect. Since I was really full from breakfast, they ate, drank coffee and waited until this bread pudding thingy came out. Hahaaa....so IY thinks that since I've been away, I should be either tired of bread or tasted much better bread abroad, but I was really surprised with how tasty this little thingy tasted and I finished it all by myself. It was like pastry puff on top and bread custard at the bottom. :p It was sure yummy!

Being deprived of the time to hang out with each other the past year, we continued our coffee session to YS's next favourite joint - Fat Spoon Cafe @ Uptown.

The interior of this cafe is pretty cool. They decorated the place with all the old and ratan furniture from the early 50s-70s. It feels like going back to our grandparent's place for coffee or tea. YS wanted to try the Pohpiah and they serve it in such a way that you can roll it yourself.

So here's YS busy making the popiah and IY cutting it. :) Such an honor to be able to eat the popiah made by YS & IY. Haha...

I love my friends, they're the loveliest bunch!

Summer Fat Camp 2010 - Destination IV: Penang

Before I came home, I was craving for all kinds of seafood cooked home style. One of our favourites is the octopus. The secret to cooking good Mr. Octopus is to blanch it in hot water and once it's cooked, take it out immediately. Season it with some garlic oil and walah, you have yourself a plate of sumptuous fresh Mr. Octopus as the appetizer.

Our 2nd favourite is bamboo clams. Oh-my-god. They taste best in ginger and onion. Not only they're really clean (free from any sort of sand), I cannot even express how naturally sweet and tasty they are! This is dish is quite rare so not every body knows how to appreciate it. But if you are a seafood lover, I'm pretty sure you'll fall in love with this baby.

*Drumroll*

Our 3rd favourite is Prawns in mint curry.

There must be mint in this dish, without it, it looses its zing. As usual, when you eat seafood at this restaurant, they only serve the best of the season and freshest of the day. Hence, there's no doubt to the freshness of the seafood. Having such fresh raw ingredient, the seasoning, style of cooking are only secondary. But for me, I love the soup more than the prawns. Hehe... I love to flood my rice with the mint curry. I could literally just the curry sauce and rice!

Total damage for lunch was only RM54. Now, isn't that worth making a trip to Penang?

Before I left Penang, my aunt treated me to Thai food and she took me to this place which my cousins love. Since there were only 4 of us, we couldn't really order a lot, we ordered the deep fried kangkung (water spinach), mango salad with minced fish, omelette with Thai vegetable and cat fish kang som (tastes more of tamarind than hot and spicy like the tomyam). Surprisingly our food came out more green than red as it would typically be for Thai food and they were really nice. I like it very much because it was really appetizing and we asked the dishes to be made less spicy and sour than it would typically be. So instead of having to burn my tongue I could actually taste the food! :)

Yummy yummy yummy, yummy in my tummy! :)

Happy Birthday to Me

How do you usually celebrate your birthday? I was lucky enough to be able to celebrate my birthday with my friends and family at home this year. I had a week long celebration, every time I met up with a group of people, they would celebrate it with me. I was very touched and felt extremely lucky to have these people in my life. Without them, none of these would probably be meaningful.

Thank you.

Summer Fat Camp 2010 - Destination III

It didn't take long for me to decide where I should go next - Lion City. Reason being? My beloved friends of course! What's better than to meet up with old friends that feels like family. After a long trip away from home, I truly felt blessed to have my gregarious and generous hosts picking me up from the airport and spoils me with the best food in town. All in the name of pre-celebrating my birthday! See, these are the kind of friends we all should have. I felt truly blessed.

1st stop: Rider's Cafe

This cafe is tucked deeply in the luscious green Bukit Timah Saddle Club. As we drove into the parking lot, I thought the place was too posh for breakfast (based on the luxury cars parked in the lot), I felt a little guilty when my hostess insisted on treating me the whole trip I was there. But surprisingly, the food was really affordable and our bill came up to not more than S$40.

After getting used to the American portions, I thought my omelette was a tad too small, but I could barely finish my food and it was just nice. As I thought I was too full for lunch, my hostess took me to another favourite Japanese restaurant of hers Ootoya at Orchard Central.

One thing I like about Singapore is you don't have to pay through your nose for a good meal. A meal like this would probably costs more than double at home. The scallop rice was yummy, the salad is wonderful and even the pork tastes really good. But my favourite is the dessert! Green tea ice-cream served with caramel custard, red bean and banana. Yummylicious!

After lunch, I could barely eat dinner, so we skipped. The next day, she took me to this Dim Sum place which I forgot the name, but it's so old school that it reminded me of old Hong Kong. Look at the red chairs and red lantern hung all over the restaurant. There's not much we can order for 2 person, so we ordered some of our favourites: chee cheong fun, pork ribs, 'phoenix claw', har kao, char siew pow and egg tart. It was really good, it was really the authentic dimsum that I've been craving for and it really hit the spot! So I was a real happy camper that day. :)

After breakfast, I headed towards my 4th destination- Home.