I’ve always had a problem with having too much bread in the house. For some reason, the bread they sell here mostly come in huge loaves, and I can never finish them before the expiry date. V*al suggested that I make french toast with this. And since I’m on a strike from school work this weekend, I decided to spend a good deal of Saturday morning trying out Alton Brown’s recipe for french toasts.

The ingredients required were simple enough. Bread, milk, egg, salt and honey. It was the cooking itself that was tough man. According to Brown, good french toast should be crispy on the outside, and moist on the inside. Hence, there was a very elaborate process of soaking, then sitting the bread, then pan frying, then baking.

I must say it was quite worth the effort. I’ve not had good french toast in a while. Whenever I make them I usually just coat them with egg – a la roti john. Actually it’s not even as elaborate. **Note to self: Maybe I should try making roti john! It wasn’t as crispy as I thought it would be, but it tasted good, even without maple syrup or any additional honey. Two pieces was more than sufficient to fill my tummy. I had about eight of them.

OH, and it tasted even better when I downed it with good ol’ Old Town Coffee from Malaysia.

After hearing some friends, who had gone to the opening of the new Hyvee at Rockbridge, rave about the new mart, I planned to do grocery shopping this morning. Unfortunately, the soul was willing but the body wasn’t. I couldn’t get out of bed in time. With about 40 minutes to go before class started, I decided there was enough time to grab coffee from Caribou Coffee that was located in the new Hyvee and probably make a round there.

The hungry me decided to head over to the cooked food section – Hyvee has not too bad Chinese food and at low prices – to look for some dough to fill my stomach. This breakfast pizza under the Italian food section caught my eye and the pizza junkie in me decided to give it a try.

It’s really quite good though. It’s layered with some hashbrown, sausage and topped with a rather generous layer of cheese. And at US$2, it filled my stomach. And satisfied my cheese craving for the day. I did wish that the crust was a little thicker – I’m not quite into thin crust pizza. Then again, for US$2 I can get two whole bowls of porridge with a ton of chicken in Singapore. Then again, this is the US, where food isn’t as cheap despite its abundance.

This evening was beef rendang (a drier type of curry). I’m not sure if this turned out to be what I had expected it. I thought it would emerge much drier. Perhaps I got some part of the instructions wrong. There was this one part that was really confusing – it said to add water, but didn’t say how much. So the curry ended wetter. And I wished it was spicier.

Dessert was the other item that’s something Mum and Grandma always makes. White fungus drink with ginko nut and lotus. Actually I don’t know if they usually add in lotus seeds – which according to Er*ic, a friend Ca*llie invited along today, looks like turtle’s eye balls. That was just humorous given that Halloween is just a couple of days away. It was amusing too to see how everyone reacted when they first tasted it. Er*ic wasn’t too fond of the texture of the fungus though and understandably. I didn’t quite like it when I first had it either.

I used too much white fungus though. I forgot they expand after soaking them, and found that using one whole packet was way too much. So I ended up with a huge pot of fungus drink. I suspect that the leftovers will fill up at least two more cups. Well, at least it’s cooling and can help neutralize the heatiness from the curry.

Ll*oyd asked me over for dinner last week, and even though he had told me ahead that we were having pizza, I was in for a shock when I saw the final product out of the oven. It was a stuffed pizza that had so much meat stuffed in it, that I felt stuffed just by looking at it. There are five different kinds of meat in there – bacon, ham, pepperoni, sausage and it was topped with minced beef. The meat-lover in me went bonkers that night.

What’s also interesting is that the pizza is a “Take-and-bake” pizza from Papa Murphy’s. So how this works, according to Ll*oyd is that you make an order in advance by phoning in, they’ll make the pizza fresh and according to your specifications, and then you go pick up the uncooked pizza. At home, you pop it in your oven for 10 mins when you’re reading to eat. I kinda like this concept – that I’m getting fresh pizza. And I think while it can as expensive as the stuff from Shakespeare’s Pizza, this is way better value for money. It’s much larger and just choked full of ingredients. And we got it hot off from the oven in the comforts of home. Oh, and the best part – for some reason, it’s not as greasy as some other pizzas.

I probably need to try it again soon.

Prior to Thursday, I was already researching how to cook the lobsters and found this simple recipe that looked mouth watering here. The dish would be a lobster baked in a cream sauce with bacon and topped with cheese. It called for butter to be melted and then light cream to be mixed in. I had forgotten that butter had to melted in low heat and turned left the heat on high instead. With the butter ending up black, adding the cream made it look like an even yuckier gray. Despite its color, it smelt wonderful after the bacon was thrown in. Convinced that the sauce was still edible, I dribbled it on the lobsters that had barely defrosted, layered the meat with cheese and popped it in the oven for 20 minutes. This was how it turned out:

I never quite had lobster like this before and was pleasantly surprised at how well it tasted. Perhaps I had overbaked it a little and the meat felt a little dry, but on the whole, it was like nothing I’ve ever had before.

The crab cakes were easy-peasy – or so I thought. Until I read the instructions again and realised that I had to flip them after being in the oven for 15 minutes. Silly me did not wear my oven mittens, nor did I think to remove the tray from the oven, and in the midst of trying to flip them, seared my hand against the top of the oven. It was a painful lesson.

Keeping to the tradition of cooking at least one Singaporean dish in the Meal-of-the-week, I did up a pot of “claypot” rice. It’s usually cooked in a real claypot but since I did not have one, I used a casserole pot. The recipe called for it to be cooked fully in a rice cooker which I’ll explain why I didn’t do so later. The rice was cooked with a soy sauce seasoning in the rice cooker first. I then browned the chinese sausage – the red color looking bits. Separately, I seasoned the chicken with oyster sauce and soy sauce and then fried it with ginger and scallions in the pot first. After it was cooked, I dumped in the rice into the pot and cooked it till the bottom bits of rice became crispy and slightly charred – that’s the hallmark of claypot rice which is harder to achieve in a rice cooker.

The lava cake was truly simple. A minute in the microwave oven and it was overflowing with chocolate sauce and done. A perfect way to round off the dinner.

It was a meal that I never thought I would be able to pull off. But I’m glad I did. And it was made even more meaningful that I had company to share the great food with. To Chr*istine and E*ugene, my deepest thanks for the food and your friendships. To R*intaro, thanks for helping out in the kitchen, your appetite and friendship.

It was rather simple. Boil garlic and ginger in a pot of water with some chicken. Add a bit more chicken stock for flavor, and then I added the macaroni and cooked it together. The recipe I found online said to cook it separately but I thought WTH. The other one thing that I deviated from the recipe was that I used roasted chicken meat – which I got from Gerbes – instead of the chicken that was boiled in the stock. Felt it made the dish smell so much better! Nothing beats having a bowl of hot soup and pasta on such a cold day.

I decided to also make try making Green Bean soup. Again, I found the recipe online. The only thing I lacked was pandan leaves – a sort of leave that gives off a very nice fragrance when boiled. Otherwise, it would have been perfect. I also did it the more Nonya way by adding some coconut milk to make it more lemak – or thick. It was so good that it really reminded me of the ones that dad would cook on Sunday afternoons.

I decided to indulge in some good ‘ol American Mac and Cheese on Monday – one of those long days that I get so tired that I refuse to do any cooking. They came from the noodles place opposite J-school. Despite it being so costly – the meal came up to almost $8 because I requested for Parmesan crusted chicken – it was worth it. The pasta was well cooked and the cheese wasn’t overwhelming unlike some that I’ve eaten back in Singapore. The chicken tasted a little too tender though – so tender that I wondered if it was really chicken in the first place.

This is not the first time I’ve tried food from this place. I had fried Udon with beef some weeks back and I didn’t like it. I guess the thing with Asian food in America is to never get it when it’s not done by Asians. It just tastes bad. I didn’t think I could go wrong with Mac and Cheese this round and I was right. Yums!

Let me cut to the chase: Despite the Starbucks whore I am, I don’t think I’ll ever like their brewed coffee. Instant or not. Period.

I popped into the Starbucks opposite the J-school for my usual hazelnut latte since I was still early for my interview this morning and was greeted by the chain’s latest product: Instant coffee. “Wah, what took soooo long for SB to come up with instant coffee man?” I thought. “Ok, since they took so long, it better be good.”

So I bought a pack to try.

“You’re buying this?” the lady barista asked, half shocked that I was buying something so new, and without even asking for a sample.

“Yar,” I replied.

“Oh oh!! They taste sooooo good!” she exclaimed, as if she had forgotten her rehearsed lines.

I left the store amused. Later that night, I decided that some coffee would help drive my sleepiness away. There was just too much readings to be done.

It was simple enough to make. Just add water, or cold water, or milk, as the barista had told me. Since most of the reviews said it tasted good on its own, I added water first. I must say the coffee tasted bold and really not bad. Then I added the milk and sugar. That’s when I decided I never will like American brewed coffee.

I’ve always been an espresso person and the heartlander in me yearns for kopi (sock-filtered coffee). Those who frequent coffee places with me – like KL, Nat and Jarron  – probably know I don’t order the brewed stuff. Brewed coffee never seem to have the body that espresso or kopi has, nor is it as rich.

So despite the nice packaging and the very well-thought out website and marketing, I won’t be buying another pack – not because it’s lousy brewed coffee 0 in fact thumbs up for tasting like freshly brewed coffee – but because after giving brewed coffee so many chances, I still don’t like brewed coffee.

What I really need though, is another huge pack of this Old Town coffee that tastes soooo very much like kopi. And I haven’t seen it around here in Columbia here. I got that from Chicago.

Rara jie jie, if you are reading this, can you buy me one big pack from the Chinese store we went to get crabs and mail them over to me please?

The photo is deceiving. The mee sua tasted terrible. The soup just wasn’t tasty. Maybe I should have boiled a soup using the chicken stock cubes first. I was hesitant because it contains MSG. I should have just dumped them in. The only thing that tasted good were the meatballs, which I made with tang chai – a preserved vege that came in an urn-like container from Hong Kong Market. Any suggestions how to make the soup more tasty before the mee sua goes in?