lemak sia...

Ok, today's work progress has been moderately successful, managed to get two annoying-to-write forum postings up... Actually quite looking forward to the week ahead, since it features a couple of (hopefully) slack revision lectures, and only one cunningly-scheduled tutorial. Apart from that, there's also mala huoguo nite to look forward to =) Oh, and loads of revision too =X

Just had an extended family dinner of sorts at Charlie's, a Peranakan restaurant just a short walk from my house, opposite Holy Family Church. Now, normally i am not particularly crazy about any of the plethora of eateries within the immediate vicinity of my house, always have been better acquainted with the Siglap area eateries [Debs: just fyi, cos i know you dunno since you are stuck in your Clementi ways, Siglap and my house area (Katong) are two different constituent parts of the wider east]. Anyway, didn't quite remember much of Charlie's from the only other time i ate there so i didn't expect much...

My parents took the liberty of ordering the dishes, and practically half of the stuff that they chose was outside the boundaries of my eating range: Nangka Lemak (Nangka - yuck), Chap Chye (just don't like any of its constituent "chyes"), Babi Cincalok (Cincalok = shrimp = puke), Penang Gulai Fish (the gulai in this case was all brinjal *bleah*), Bakwan Kepiting (crabmeat - no way will i eat that).

There was one dish that more than made up for this though. Nope, it wasn't the fabled ayam buah keluak (which still was rather good btw, especially with the sambal, which regrettably was not hot enough though). Rather it was the beef rendang, which was just droolworthy. Not because of the tender and moist beef chunks, nor for the delicately spiced rempah that was not overpowered by lengkuas or ginger or any of that stuff, thanks to the daun limau purut that was added. Nope, it was thanks to the extremely liberal amounts of coconut that they put into the dish. Not only could i taste very rich coconut milk in the sauce, but also could detect generous sprinklings of dessicated coconut inside as well. Wow, it was almost like eating beef cubes in coconut milk *slurp*.

Yup, i know that this is so freaking unhealthy, but trust me, if you ate it you'd be willing to run for hours on end to burn off whatever effects it may have on you body (erm... on second thoughts make that minutes on end - not willing to commit to that much running)

And the staff were quite nice too, one of the aunties even apologised repeatedly for her perceived poor service due to the crowded nature of the restaurant, although it wasn't bad at all in my opinion... Humility is always a plus point for me...

Yup, so when the opportunity arises, i shall go there to clog my arteries with their beef rendang again, then proceed to attempt to unclog them by running for, erm, minutes on end...