Durian Snow Ice: Hong Kong Dessert- Chinatown (Mei Hong Yuen)

Durian Snow Ice!

I never thought that I would taste such soft snow ice dessert in Singapore! I always thought that I needed to travel far and wide to places like Taipei- mother of all snow ice desserts cafe to enjoy snow ice dessert. This snow ice dessert is as soft as ice cream and full of durian flavor that doesn't taste too much like durian essence. Imagine having such a huge mountain of durian ice cream eating in front of you! Yummy! Really made my weekend so memorable!

Yam paste aka orh nee

This yam paste comes in a "semi-solid" pudding form and is without coconut milk. It's such a pretty colorful dessert. It's a lil dry we ended up adding the melted durian snow ice to it. And guess what? It was a winning combination. Yam + Durian. I should patent this combination asap.

But then again Durian goes well with almost everything!

Segamat Durian Feast- King of Fruits Feast

June is a fantastic month to feast on seasonal tropical fruits. Especially this year! The hot spell means bumper harvest for Durians- the King of all fruits come once a year. It's delicious especially the bitter-sweet ones. Like the other fruits, durians come in various varieties. The most "fashionable" ones are the "Cat Mountain" variety.

Recently, we rode up to neighbouring Malaysia for a Kampong Durian Feast in the town Segamat. Yes that's how into durians we are! Travel 3 hours to feast on these king of fruits.

Fruit stall at one of the rest stop:

Check out the giant size jack-fruit!

After a 3 hours ride... we have finally arrived in Segamat to eat kampong durians that have freshly fallen from the tree over the night.

Baskets full of fresh durians of various varieties!

Opening the durian...

I have no experience in prying open durians. I do specialise in licking off those meaty yellow durian flesh though.

Ta-da..

A nice meaty yellow durian sitting alone in its compartment.

Most of the durians from the farm were so meaty! I could not even feel the seed when I pick up the durian from its compartment. And btw, I like my durian to taste bitter-sweet. I have no inclination towards sweet durians!.

Saying good bye to the durian farm after stuffing our faces with the fiberous fruit.

Malaysia's really full of kampongs or villages. So vastly different from urban Singapore.

Visiting Mount Ophir's waterfall:

Check out the number of weekenders enjoying a dip in the waterfall. I was pretty surprised by the kampong lifestyle that they led. Coming from an ultra-urban and city set-up, I could not imagine actually spending my sunday like those in the photo. Shopping or surfing the net is some of the more familiar sunday activities that I am used to. But definitely not soaking myself (fully clothed too) in the shallows waters of a brownish waterfall.

I need to mention that climbing to the top of Mount Ophir waterfall without taking any rest breaks is a fantastic workout. Great way to digest all the durians.

Another great day trip. Tasting fresh durians was something that is really worth the >3 hours ride.

Dim Sum at Raffles Town Club

For no rhyme or reason, I really like taking pictures of food. And judging by the number of posts I have on Dim Sum. I enjoy dim sum and definitely enjoy taking pictures of them. Dim sum are just so photogenic! It's colorful and make the pictures just look oh-so-vibrant!

Char Siew Soh that shaped like a curry puff! Usually Char Siew Soh comes in pillow shape.

Egg Tarts. My all time favorite dim sum dish! The egg tarts' pastry look different from the earlier egg tart pictures that I took.

An overall feel of the dim sum dishes.

Teochew Dumplings. It was okay. Not over the top fantastic though.

Char Siew Pau. I like this picture. Too the untrained eye, seems to me to have the right composition.

A non-dim sum dish. This is fried silver fish and jellyfish and bean sprout. This dish was too salty for me.

Dim Sum is one of my favourites. It's the pride of all Cantonese around the world!

Singapore's 1st Shabu Shabu Steamboat Buffet- Sakae West Coast Plaza

Over at West Coast Plaza's Sakae Outlet, there's Singapore's 1st Shabu Shabu Steamboat Buffet. The Shabu Shabu beef was tender and sweet and the ala carte buffet also includes a medium size selection of non-steamboat items like sushi and tempura.

Btw, I like the cute lil dumplings at the bottom left-hand. It's filled with some glutinous rice mochi like filling. Very interesting.

Seafood Platter for the steam boat. Comes with skinny crabs and embroyic-size clams.

Vege Platter for the steamboat.

Tempura! Piping hot tempura straight out of the pan! This dish on its own probably cost half the cost of each individual's buffet price.

Maki... Sushi comes straight from the kitchen. So I am thinking it's prepared fresh!

More sushi...

Fried Salmon Skin in sweet and sour sauce. Again, very interesting!

I particularly like this buffet. And it felt healthy! Yes oxymoron. A healthy buffet. Yes it exists!
Too bad there isn't any dessert items! Else it would be an almost perfect buffet.

(All photos taken with Sony Ericsson k850i. The pictures turned out unexpectedly good after editing with Photoscape.)

Polar Pufffs & Cakes- Fruit Tarts

I like fruit tarts. But I feel disappointed when I sink my teeth into one that has excessive cream in between its fruit and pastry shell. Then I discover Polar's fruit tarts! (Yes Polar! The "bakery" found in heartland malls!) They have a cakey base in between the fruits and the shell. Yummy! Makes the fruit tart so complete.

Shame to those excessive cream fruit tarts; Cakey base is the way to go.

Orange Muffins/ Orange Nutella Muffins

The 3rd work week of the month is usually the best time of the month. It's usually the time I actually have time to breathe and play catch up with recreational activities without worrying too much.

Made these orange muffins during the Mothers' Day weekend! Yes that's like quite some time back but I still can clearly recall the texture and flavor of these muffins. These muffins are soft and cupcake like and strangely taste better after being left overnight. Definitely one of the better muffins I made. Yum!

Orange Muffins can be achieved by simply swooping milk for orange juice and adding orange peel to the plain muffin mix.

Check out the orange peel and the light texture. All has risen! It's probably the easiest flavor variation to try out when you have grown sick of plain or chocolate muffins.

Orange Nutella Muffin. Nothing can go wrong with Nutella! Works well with the orangy flavor too! Add a single teaspoon of nutella into half filled muffins cups and top up with the rest of the batter.

Day 5: Christchurch to Queenstown

Continuing on my NZ trip early this year. Yes finally! After so many other distractions- like blogging about food and my day trip to Malaysia.

Day 5 was a pretty long travelling day as we made our way across the South Island- from Christchurch to Queestown. Enjoyed the pretty sights of the South Island but could not have enough time to soak in the peacefulness and feel totally immersed in the landscape.

First stop of the day was a stop at a Souvenir Store. And behind this souvenir store had interesting animal!

Unfortunately, I can't recall what the name of this animal is! But I must say that NZ has a range of interesting animals that is really unique to its country. Just like the Kiwi Bird. And this mysterious animal is one of the few that I have met during this trip.

Continuing to Lake Tekapo.

This is really one of the most peaceful places on planet Earth. The surroundings were so silent and serene and so ideal for a stressed out person from the city that needs a lil me-time.

We had lunch at a cafe that sits besides Lake Tekapo.

My heart- shaped decaf cappuccino. I heart decaf.

The view made it was one of the better lunches I had in NZ. I really wished that we had more time to sit and enjoy our meal and the view. But we had a long distances to cover that particular day.

This was taken during my me-time walk after lunch. Beautiful....


Also overseeing Lake Tekapo is the Church of the Good Shepherd.

It's a tiny church but with a picture-perfect view.

The next must-see tourist location in the South Island- Mt Cook.

We only managed to view Mt Cook from afar. What I really wished to do was to do a small hike through an easy route of Mt Cook National Park but no, the tour package that I was on did not include so. What a real pity!

As we continue our journey towards Queenstown, we made a stop at Mrs Jones in Cromwell

We got ourself some very sweet and juicy peaches, apriots and nectarines. Yummy. We don't get such good quality non-tropical fruits in Singapore. The avocados were great too!

Also, stealing a quick ice cream treat at the fruit stall.

This wasn't one of the best ice cream I ate during my stay in NZ, although it was freshly prepared with fresh fruits. I chose some berry flavors so the ice cream ended having lots of tiny seeds that get easily caught in my teeth!

New Zealand is definetly the adventure capital of the world. Here's some crazy-adventurous people jumping off a cliff.

And finally we have arrived in Queenstown!

Queenstown reminds me slightly of San Diego. It must be the broadwalk and the presence of the waterbody (but without the mountains). It's really a tourist hive. But I like it! It's one of the most bustling places in NZ. And it has a pretty view of Lake Wakatipu.

Yes, I think if I was given a choice of which town/state to settle in in NZ, I would choose to live in Queenstown! I feel in love with the town almost as soon as I got there. And I didn't mentioned that the houses there in Queenstown are pretty too!