*dimsumdolly* - the different morsels of the life of a foodie

Phone On Right

Have you ever noticed how, when some people answer their mobile phones with their left hand (because their right hand is occupied), they have to put their left arm across their face to hold the phone at their right ear?

I can never quite understand why people do this involuntarily because don't you think it is a very awkward action? I do it at times and after I put the phone down, I always wonder why I didn't put it at my left ear where it would be more comfortable and less awkward a pose. And it's not as if I can hear better on my right ear!

I can't understand why it happens. Do you?

Love Numbers

Over dinner and drinks with two friends one night, we were having the typical talk of singles in their 30s. OK, technically two of us haven't reached 30 yet, but we will in a few months' time – we are already mulling over what to do to celebrate. Ha. Suggestions welcomed.

Anyway, so it was the usual – jobs, people we know, the meaning of life, love and relationships. The last two were the main talking points of the evening. I mean seriously, we're single, what else is there to talk about? Superficial beings that we are. Haha.

Of the many facets of love and relationships we talked about, I remember something one of my friends said. He said he thinks it's better to have many failed, but not so deep romances rather than one major failed romance where it just wasn't meant to be with the love of one's life. His reason for saying so was that it's much easier on one's heart and it's easier to forget when feelings aren't so deep and entrenched. Conversely, there'll be major hang-ups and heavy emotional baggage arising from the end of a deep and love-of-one's-life kind of relationship. It's like the sum of pain from the many failed romances will never add up to the pain experienced from one major failed romance.

I don't know. I don't have the answers. You do the maths.

Eclairs

I love eclairs. There's just something very lovely about biting into well-made choux pastry filled with chocolate pastry cream and topped with dark chocolate. And it has to be a chocolate mousse filling. Custard or fresh cream variations just don't seem right and can't quite cut it as far as satisfaction levels are concerned.

One of the best eclairs I've had was in Paris when I was on holiday there with the Skinny Epicurean. Having heard of the wonderful eclairs at La Maison du Chocolat, we bought one caramel and one coffee eclair. Both were divine and we sighed in satisfaction and delight as we sank our teeth into them.

I had the chocolate eclair pictured above at Corduroy Cafe in Vivocity and thought it was good. If you know of any other places in Singapore that have good eclairs, please drop me a note. I'm on my eclair quest!

Tajimaya Yakiniku

Tajimaya Yakiniku is another one of those restaurants where you have to cook your own food which has sprouted out in recent months. Its sister restaurant just next door (they're actually linked and staff serve both sides) is the shabu shabu arm of Tajimaya.

Its interiors were nice and comfortable with soothing, cream colours and muted clean lines characteristic of Japanese decor.

Here's the charcoal grill with the fiery red charcoal in all its heated glory. There's something to be said about grilling with charcoal and the telltale smoky flavour it imparts into food.

We ordered a plate of sesame salad to have some greens in our meal. It was very ordinary and those few sprigs certainly weren't worth its $9++ price tag.

Next came the pork collar which was had a nice marinated that tasted good after the meat was grilled.

Of course, the star of the night was the plate of Wagyu beef with all that fine marbling. All that fat renders the beef so tender!

Then came along the even fattier pork belly which was pretty good too. By that point, all the exercise I had done earlier in the day had come to naught. When grilling the pork collar, we were told not to put more than three slices at a go because anything more would cause too much fat to drip onto the charcoal which would then see it spewing fire. We believed it 'cos it happened with the three we put on the grill!

Overall, it was an enjoyable enough meal but it wasn't exceptionally good for the price paid. You would have to budget for at least $35 per person. Service was good but I'm not in a hurry to go back again as I didn't think there was anything special there. Two weeks later, I went to try the shabu shabu side – the food was even more forgettable than Yakiniku's.

1 HarbourFront Walk
#01-102 VivoCity

Settling

It always fascinated me how people go from loving you madly to nothing at all, nothing. It hurts so much. When I feel someone is going to leave me, I have a tendency to break up first before I get to hear the whole thing. Here it is. One more, one less. Another wasted love story. I really love this one. When I think that it's over, that I'll never see him again like this... well yes, I'll bump into him, we'll meet our new boyfriend and girlfriend, act as if we had never been together, then we'll slowly think of each other less and less until we forget each other completely. Almost. Always the same for me. Break up, break down. Drunk up, fool around. Meet one guy, then another, fuck around. Forget the one and only. Then after a few months of total emptiness start again to look for true love, desperately look everywhere and after two years of loneliness meet a new love and swear it is the one, until that one is gone as well. There's a moment in life where you can't recover any more from another break-up. And even if this person bugs you sixty percent of the time, well you still can’t live without him. And even if he wakes you up every day by sneezing right in your face, well you love his sneezes more than anyone else's kisses.

~ From the film 2 Days in Paris

I was chatting with a friend online the other day and she told me she and her boyfriend were making plans to get married. Usually I would be thrilled if I knew that my friend was going to marry the love of his/her life. But for this friend, I didn't offer my congratulations straight away. My questions to her were: Are you really happy? Are you sure you're not just settling?

The reason for my questioning was that, as of late last year, she had admitted to me that she didn't love him enough. True, they got along well enough, having been pretty good friends for a long time before they got together, but she had never experienced feelings of passionate love with him. I guess different relationships work differently so maybe some people don't need that kind of love. But I sensed that she would like to have that, having experienced those feelings before with a few boyfriends who had come before him.

But she said to me that she didn't want to look anymore. He loves and cares for her, and he's a really nice and stable guy. She said she liked that about him, having had boyfriends who were flighty and non-committal. She then sent me the quote above from the film 2 days in Paris, and said sometimes one just gets used to having the other person around.

Perhaps it's too presumptuous of me to conclude that she's 'settling', but I would say that's the feeling I get from her. Perhaps her feelings have changed in the past six months. But what am I to conclude when she sends me that quote?

While it's tempting to settle so you can revel in the comfort that there'll be someone there, feelings of being trapped and stifled may surface in time to come. And if you can't give yourself to someone heart, body, mind and soul, the other party will sense it eventually and could possibly leave you some day too.

Another friend of mine has advised me never to settle as it only brings emotional suffering in the long run. She says this based on personal experience. She married someone who loved her but whom she didn't love back to the same degree because it was, as she said, 'the safe option'. He was the kind of guy you would take back to your parents – stable, stable, stable. She also never thought she would be able to find someone she would be crazy about. But eventually she began to feel trapped because she didn't love him enough, and now she has decided to get out. I believe it's for the better.

I may be cynical about many things, but when it comes to love I'm still quite the hopeless romantic. I can't give myself to someone I don't love or care enough about. It wouldn't be fair to myself nor the other party. I don't ever want, and won't, settle.

I can't.

Pick Your Packet

When I was in Hong Kong in February, I had lunch with my friend Felix in Tseun Wan. When we were in one of the small shopping complexes, we walked past this cart which was full of plastic packets. Curious, I went nearer to have a closer look.

What I saw was pretty bizarre. There were small portions of food in each packet and the idea was that you could pick and choose what you wanted to combine everything into a bigger meal. But all that food there looked foul! All processed food and everything looked so cold and unappetising, not to mention innutritious. Examples of food inside those packets: cold yellow noodles, spinach noodles, tofu, chicken feet, soggy cabbage, processed fish cake and fish balls, fake crab meat etc.

Granted it's really cheap, but please, it's not something any food lover should touch!

Dog-earred

Are you a dog earer? Er, what's that you say? OK, let me come again - are you someone who dog ears your books? You know, you fold the corner of the page down to indicate that's the point at which you've stopped.

If you are, DON'T do that to my books if I should lend you any, 'cos I hate my books being dog earred. I just can't stand unnecessary creases on pages and whenever I see a page being dog earred, I have this compulsion, need, to undo the fold. It's like some obsessive compulsive disorder. I just can't stand it. I think the folds spoil the look of the book.

Being a book lover, I have a certain respect and reverence for books. I believe they, like humans, should be treated well. It annoys me when I see library books, which are public property, being abused and mishandled. People who treat books like that are inconsiderate as they are destroying information and knowledge that can be passed on to someone else.

Anyway, this rant came about because the book I borrowed from the library, Anthony Bourdain's The Nasty Bits, had many pages that were dog-earred and it just irked me!!! The book, by the way, is great! I love Bourdain's brashness in his collection of essays. Am half-way through and can't wait to get till the end of it.

Bread In a Cup

I love going to Japanese lifestyle shop, Muji. To be more specific, I like their food section. All the Japanese snacks, teas and biscuits make me just wanna grab everything!

The biggest Muji outlet I've been to is the one in Tokyo which is near the station Yurakucho. That one was like a big warehouse and it also had an eatery. I had lunch there before I caught my flight back to Singapore and it was a pretty good one. Oh, how I miss Japan!

In Singapore we have mini Muji. I went to the outlet at Marina Square and came away with this bread-in-a-cup mix. That's my name for it anyway. You've just got to hand it to the Japanese for their ingenuity.

The tomato and cheese bread flour mixture looks like this on the outside.

Instructions are on the back – don't worry, there's an English translation. Each packet is sold for S$2.30.

Add water to the flour mixture and stir with a spoon or fork. After stirring, it will look like what you see above.

I decided to improvise a little and added slices of cheddar cheese into the mixture.

Put the mixture into the microwave for about 2.5 minutes at 500W and you'll get bread in a cup!

It actually tasted pretty good! Slightly sweet and savoury at the same time, and it was pretty soft. Just make sure you don't put it into the microwave for too long.

This is great for a quick snack and something useful to have in the house for the times when you want something to nibble on desperately!

Sweet Potato Buns

I love these steamed sweet potato buns I found at 一口味 the other day. I really like eating sweet potato so I usually like anything that has sweet potato in it. I liked the slightly sweet taste of the buns and I love that cheery orange colour! They were going for $2 for 2.

Go here to read more about this humble tuber.