rice cake confessional

I have enjoyed the extensively modified potato chip that is the Pringle for many years. My favorite flavor is a toss up between sour cream and onion and salt and vinegar. Imagine my amusement when my cousin and I were cruising Carrefour and saw these babies on sale for SGD4.80 for 2 cans.

At first the grilled shrimp and seaweed flavors didn’t phase me too much since I’ve had seaweed flavored things before and I love a nice salty bag of shrimp chips. Then my cousin explained that the real kicker is that all of these flavors would be on top of that distinctive crispy crumbly Pringles chip.

Then I got a little worried.

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In the same vein as my Mosburger post (ie unique local chains) is Kono Pizza.

If you’re guessing based on the name you would be right. Pizza. In a cone.

I can appreciate the mobility of such a food but there are still some tweaks to be made if you ask me.

The result of putting pizza in a cone: a deep layer of oily cheese that will burn your lips off, a bready buttery cone of crust, mediocre sauciness with bits of pepperoni, and a pool of oil in the tip of the cone. This last bit is most disconcerting since in an ice cream cone that last bit is the best part. Not so with the pizza cone.

Judge for yourself.

Kono Pizza: the one above from B1 of Liang Court at Clarke Quay but other shops on the island

Let me give you a glimpse into my highly structured and regimented life. Every night I come home and spend a good hour or so perusing my Google Reader feeds. It’s my equivalent to reading the morning paper. My Google Reader is organized into topics like: kstuff (for my kdrama and kpop addiction), pstuff (Mabuhay!), funnies (Milk Toof and FML go here), and food (duh) – among others.

One night I came home to a post from Cupcakes Take the Cake about cupcakes in Singapore. See now this is important because I am oven-less and cannot bake my own cupcakes. On top of that I’ve bought cupcakes in Singapore before and they were not tasty. Nuh uh. They were dry with exorbitant amounts of frosting. They were worse than Safeway cupcakes.

But the cupcake on Cupcakes Take the Cake did not look dry. They looked moist and delicious. Further to that, lo and behold, the place in question is located one block from the office. The hell? Let’s fix this cupcake-less life shall we?

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JenLui brought me 3 different types of KitKat from Hong Kong – orange chocolate, melon, and peach.

I think most of these flavors originate in Japan. Like I mentioned before, Japan is serious about their KitKat and I can respect that. In true fashion I brought the KitKat to work to have everyone taste test the different flavors. I kinda had my money on the peach purely for aesthetic reasons – pink box with a cherry blossom in the corner.

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I first got introduced to this brand when JenLui brought over a pint of the mango flavor during the last dumpling night. A few weeks later during a regular trek to Ranch 99 I picked up the plum variety.

It’s a lovely shade of bright pink in a pretty purple pint. As you’ve probably guessed, it doesn’t take like fresh plums. It has more of that salted, dried plum flavor except sweeter. I can only guess that it tastes a bit like umeboshi. I’d recommend it in place of your typical sorbet (it has more of a sorbet texture even though it’s labeled as an ice cream) to finish off any meal and cleanse the palette.

You’ll probably need to go to a specialty Asian market to track down Meada-En’s plum ice cream. It’ll set you back about $4 for a lil’ pint. It also comes in mango (yummy) and azuki (aka red bean, I haven’t tried it yet) flavors.

Speaking of plums… I love prunes.

I’ve seen these at Trader Joe’s for awhile but finally got the guts to try them. I’ve tried the meatless corn dogs which I thought were spiced kinda strangely. These were much better. Very close in texture and taste to regular ol’ chicken nuggets. Too bad the outside wasn’t crispier. The weird thing is that the picture on the box looks nothing like the actual product. If you’re curious, they’re made mostly out of soy protein.

I didn’t always like curry. In fact, I think I pretty much hated it. My theory is that in my old age my taste buds are dulling (or maturing) so that things I hated before are not as overpowering as they used to be. Included in this list: cilantro and curry.

My favorite is yellow curry but I found green curry sauce at Trader Joe’s and figured I’d give it a shot.

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I’m trying a few new things from Trader Joe’s this week. The first of three experiments I’m posting is frozen gnocchi. I was pretty skeptical about this. The best gnocchi I’ve ever had was at Emil’s restaurant in San Jose. We made them fresh for a cooking class and got to eat them afterwards. But who has time (or skillz) to make real gnocchi? Not me.

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I eat Korean soft tofu stew almost once a week so I was pretty excited to come across this instant seasoning pack at the market. (Soft tofu not included.)

Now the picture doesn’t look like your usual soondubu but there was tofu, an egg, jalapenos, and (from the ingredient list) mussel juice. Score.

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I found 4 containers of free leaf tea at work and was intrigued. I grabbed a Teance brand jasmine white tea packet and popped it into some steamy water. Very pretty, would be nice to have when you have guests over for afternoon tea or an after dinner drink. I’m not too well versed in flowers but it looks like a dried chrysanthemum infused with tea and dyed on one side. The tea itself is quite mild (white tea generally is) and the jasmine is not overly fragrant. For some reason whenever I’d take a sip, I’d catch a faint whiff of corn. Random, I know. It was a nice and visually appealing treat although I didn’t really like the little bits of flower that started floating around.