Written by lainie at 02:37 AM on July 5, 2009 in melbourne, Daily Life, Stupid, but fun..

The 4th of July is, as a day that occurs only once a year, a very special date indeed. So special.

I started the day groggy and grumpy, but a trip to popular DeGraves Street, and one latte later from Cafe Andiamo, I was one of god's loving creatures again.

Next item to tick off the list: groceries shopping with Gazel and Tommy.

 
(and everyone else was chirpy too)

I was quite upbeat about the idea of going to Victoria Market again. I love the deli section; and maybe it's my budding inner homemaker, but I generally love being in a good, or obnoxiously large, market.

Inka Marka was busking outside Queen Vic market. Some of you may have heard their "music from the Andes" at the 2007 Rainforest Music Festival. If you want to hear them, I took a lil video the first time around.

The kid thought I was staring at her. I was actually having a mental litany of complaints against children wearing shoes bad for their spines.

 I like the idea of choosing your own chicken eggs (Gazel taught me I have to check the prepackaged ones in the supermarket — true enough, many of them contained cracked eggs). Wheeee! Eggs!

We were looking for fresh mackerel for tonight's dinner, but we didn't manage to find any (puh-lenty of tuna and salmon though).

We got there later than we'd planned to, so a lot of discounts were being thrown around. This guy was trying to sell lots of rib eye steaks, and finally jumped onto his own counter to bellow out his prices.

Very entertaining and showy, but I'd rather get my steaks from the butcher who doesn't stand on his counter, thanks.

I love mushrooms. So, so much. I usually buy some of these, but this time around I got some flat mushrooms.

This particular stall owner is veeeeeery tetchy if you try to bag your own mushrooms. You'd think when the next five shops sell the same product, at the same price, that he'd try to sound less like a jerk, but no. He snapped at quite a few customers.

I bagged my own mushrooms at another stall.

Punnets of strawberries going for $1 each. Gazel lifted up one to check, and saw that moisture had gathered at the bottom = not good/fresh/yummy. I'm slowly learning more about buying groceries.

Plonk is also readily available at Queen Vic. Rewine — taking responsible drinking up a notch by allowing you to reuse wine bottles (and, you pay less for your wine).

 This was at giant bear stencilled outside some children's shop near Queen Vic. Stare into its beautiful, hauntingly paedophiliac eyes. This is going to give me creepy nightmares, what the hell were they thinking? -_-".

It's almost as bad as those "Azn girl poses" or whatever the hell they're called, where Asian girls try to stare cutely into cameras. Stop doing that. You look like weird Korean remakes of Children of the Corn. You look like that fuckery the stall thinks is a bear up there.

Speaking of Children of the Corn...we left Queen Vic to hit a bunch of shops/supermarkets in Footscray area. Seagulls. I haitz. Look at all the poo on the floor. They pooed on our car too.

There were drivers who inched their way out of the carpark because these seagulls were everywhere. Just drive la, they're seagulls. Your little car is not getting rid of them .

We made a very late pit stop for lunch: Vietnamese pork rolls! Behold, hostile glare from person who hates cameras.

Vietnamese pork rolls are addictive lil buggers. A baguette. Rich layer of pate, lots of butter*, different kinds of pork slices, all topped with crunchy and sweet pickled vegetables, coriander, and some Maggi seasoning (or some other sauce, depending on where you go).

*Some sites describe the Viet pork roll as "healthy". As I know it, the "butter spread" is an euphemism for either lard and eggs, or egg butter. Not to mention the pate, and that if you leave the ingredients out for too long you risk getting salmonella.

I don't have pics from the bakery I went to today, but that soft, yellow, mayo-like goo in the picture above is the butter spread, next to the pate, from Nhu Lan Bakery.

Yummy goodness. Maybe they mean "healthy for the soul", because damn, these things make me happy.

This came from a corner bakery near Little Saigon Supermarket, just two doors down from Nhu Lan Bakery on Hopkins St, in Footscray. All pork rolls are awesome, but if you must choose between the two, I recommend Nhu Lan.

After our late lunch, it was on to more serious things. The craziness of Little Saigon supermarket — where the produce is fresh, cheap, and hawked off by very loud stall runners sometimes intentionally shouting gibberish (face it, you can't hear their discounts anyway). Everything reduces into a constant stream of noise here.

I'd been having bpoo kem (Thai salted small crabs) cravings lately, so I suggested to Tommy we buy some small crabs to cook for tonight.

Behold, big orange crabs at the back, and small crabs (smaller than my palm) in front. All live and staring at me with their beady, resentful eyes — I don't appreciate my food forming opinions about me, this should only go one way, you judgey crustacean.

I realised I don't know what ingredients go with Thai small crabs, hence change of plans. But I will be back, little ones. In the meantime, I visited the deli section of Little Saigon for another solution.

Vietnamese deli produce (but, as the sign says, made in Aust)! We ended up getting these pha chê tai đây, made with ba khía (three-striped crabs, in season now!).

You'll find some right friendly chaps in charge of the stall. It's the second time I've pestered them with questions, and they're always very patient, helpful and cheery. So if there's anything you want to try, don't hesitate to ask.

In this case, they suggested using the crabs for a salad, with a bit of the sauce for dressing. Throw in some green mango/papaya, a bit of lemon juice to take away the extreme saltiness of the sauce. Maybe some mint leaves, whatever we'd like.

So we settled for baby spinach and lemon, and this is the end result for dinner:

I tried to think of a tactful way to say "I tossed a salad with crabs" (....), but the options were limited. So, behold, our salad, which I rather liked the taste of. The crabs were too salty for Gazel, but I was fine with it. I think basil or coriander will be a good addition to this.

I also did another set of starters for our dinner, ingredients purchased from Little Saigon:

First, we picked up some balut, which are basically duck eggs (most of you should know where this is going). I wanted Gazel and Tommy to give this dish a go.

Behold again, I successfully boiled five duck eggs (slightly under 15 minutes, water with some salt in it).

[ If you're gonna try this...Don't fret too much about boiling time, you can also soft boil the eggs. 5-15 minutes are both alright. They just take longer to boil than chicken eggs. I mean, chill out. ]

A brief how-to guide on eating balut. First, crack open the top (which is the darker end of the egg — the whiter side's the tough, thicker end of calcified shell), drop a tiiiiny pinch of salt in. Some vinegar, if you'd like.

If you see a thin membrane holding back the juices, remove it (pinches off easily). Drink up, like a musky, slurpy shot.

Peel away the rest of the shell. It's basically like eating a hardboiled chicken egg, except it's a duck egg and there's a foetus inside.

I think some people call this "warm, aborted duck foetus / fetus", but it's really just....a boiled egg. See the yolk, see the egg white, see the duck that would have been.

For your viewing purposes (and to gross out the weak-stomached), I parted the bird. The bones are very soft, the feathers so wet, slick and mushed into the flesh, it's just eating soft flesh, really. From some angles, it is curled up very much like a duck foetus.

[ If you purchase eggs older than what I got, the foetues will be more developed: the more developed, the crunchier the bones. ]

I made a dip for the egg: garlic, salt, olive oil. Before this, I made it with some chillies and vinegar too.

But I figure, it's up to you what you want to add into the dip — essentially, what do you like with your hardboiled eggs? I figured I didn't want vinegar since we already had the pha chê tai đây salad earlier.

Gazel: All your hippie friends okay with you eating balut meh?
Lainie: They know I eat eggs, and they know I eat ducks. This is just in between.

Which, I suppose, is the reason I don't see the taboo behind eating duck eggs.

Pic above is Tommy, about to eat a duck foetus. He had two, which means the first balut session couldn't be too bad . I also bought some regular duck eggs to cook over the week (god knows what kind of certification these eggs come with, I'm not thinking about it).

Again, Gazel wasn't too fond of my starter.

So, that was balut. I'd go for it again, I prefer a softer boil. I'm pretty sure my cholesterol will skyrocket if I keep this up though.

[ May all my vegetarian/vegan/raw food/non-meat eating/weak-stomached/etc friends one day look me in the eye again. ]

As for dinner:

Gazel made assam laksa. We ended up cooking it with salmon, since we couldn't get mackerel. It worked anyhow.

I never knew assam laksa had so much blended onion in it. We tried searching the Asian supermarkets and grocery stores for the kind of sweet, dark prawn/shrimp paste that goes with Assam laksa, but we kept finding other varieties. So we made do without.

That was my first moment of true disorientation in Melbourne, by the way.

True, I wail for Han Chon delivery when Liy tells me she's getting some; I miss my food outings with Kat; threatened to burst out the waterworks when Nish teased me about KL food (she backed off like, immediately, hehe); and it's been a while since I clubbed in Loft then ended up at my favourite loh shu fun (bless Joyce, Meesh and Sarah for taking me there towards my last few days in KL)....but I could always look for substitutes.

But.....being in a supermarket that caters to Asians...and not being able to find that one item I wanted...

Gazel's assam laksa. I haven't had assam laksa in yonks (mihun, because she prefers it to fat laksa noodles).

I used to eat it a lot back in Ipoh, because there was a really good lil stall near my mother's hairdresser. All the salty/spicy food really got to me, so it was good to end the night with some soft Turkish Delight that Tommy got. I think I really needed it for my palate by then.

So that was it, one of my first meals at home over a weekend (unless my memory fails me, which is very possible).

I end this update with a recent sad discovery. I have a lot of white hair T_T.

I've never really tried to yank them out before, but this came about when I noticed ONE strand while I was watching anime. I sorted through some of my hair, kept finding more strands of white, and now I refuse to continue because.....because.....

*cry* T_T

That's all for the 4th of July. Independence wha-? Who? Until my anime subtitles be rid of the dreadful spellings, I am not talking to you, Land-of-the-youknowwhos.

[ Fuck, what a ridiculously long entry. I refuse to check for anything. And if you're reading this on anywhere other than Tabulas (ie: Facebook), words will sometimes glue together likethisokay. I don't know why. ]

Written by lainie at 06:34 PM on June 29, 2009 in melbourne.

Daph's car busted during a recent roadtrip, and I ended up stranded in Ararat with her and Tim.

We got there slightly past dinner time, and there was barely any activity going on. It looked like the kind of place that didn't get too hectic in the daytime either, maybe because it was the long weekend. It wasn't always so --Ararat is the only town in Australia founded by Chinese people, during a gold rush. They have a Gum San heritage Centre there. I actually sit next to a picture of it nearly everyday, from Gazel and Tommy's visit.

The guy who drove the tow truck told us not much happened there. People passed by for the day, not a lot stayed for long. He tows a few stranded people to Ararat every day, he's had this conversation before.

He brought us to the Shire, told us we could stay there for the night, and rattled off the names of a few pubs we could go to if we got bored. There was also the old gaol museum, where the criminally insane were held, but it would be closed for the duration of our short stay.

(we were very hungry by the time I took this photo and found a cafe that served what Tim was craving -- parma)

Had our dinner in Red Poppy Bar and Bistro, then spent some time in the slot machines lounge attached to it. Upon reflection, that was the most happening and crowded place we saw in Ararat, but not the place for us. 

We tried to entertain ourselves, but as even the locals sheepishly told us, Ararat is a bit of a hole if you're just dropping by town for a night. Worse, even the few revellers who usually frequent the pubs seemed to have left town for the long weekend.

We decided not to waste the night anyway: the streets were quiet, and we strolled around, peering into the dark windows of the shops near The Shire. We saw police cars patrolling more than we did the locals. The banner for the store display above was a nice surprise: Tim designed it.

We ended up in hanging out at the pub in Leopold Hotel. We took one of two pool tables, us girls playing against Tim. The jukebox blasted cheesy music, we played pool, they drank beer (I gave it a pass).

When the jukebox played

1) Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You",

2) Sinead O'Connor's "Nothing Compares 2U" and

3) Lily Allen's "It's Not Me, It's You"

the men at the bar started teasing us for selecting those songs. It wasn't us, but I do agree with Daph and me hanging out together, we were the most likely looking candidates. There's some tough-looking bloke in Ararat who likes his power ballads.

A small group of people our age came in. We asked one trendy looking girl where the place to hang in Ararat was. She gestured at the other ten people sitting around. "Yeah, you're here. This is pretty much it".

We're stuck in Ararat, but...you're here by choice....?

"Oh, I'm from Sydney, visiting family. I paid to fly here, it's heinous". Then she stuck some coins into the jukebox (against the protests of the men who wanted the free jukebox music), and formed a small circle with her three gal pals in the comparatively generous amount of floorspace.

They danced a bit, but no one else was convinced. It was a quiet night, and they didn't stay very long.

Most of the people we talked to were visiting family over the long weekend. One of them had been to Malaysia, a long time ago (pre-KLCC era).

Eventually, we left because we couldn't take the jukebox's auto-selection of strange Euro-house music. I like my raves, but even I was overwhelmed. It was a cold walk home, and we passed by a monument commemorating the soldiers stationed during the war in, amongst other places, Malaya. There were some teenagers with unnatural neon hair colours skating near it.

We went back to The Shire, and I rather like how old it was. Fiddly iron doorknobs, a big key for the door (boo to cardkeys!), old light switches, creaky floorboards; both Daph and I used the loo and had panic attacks we'd locked ourselves in.

Apparently, some other poeple are really fond of the building too. The Shire has some long term residents willing to "put up" with noisy backpackers trampling over the wooden floorboards at 3am. You could spot their doors by the keep out/shut up/"this room belongs to" kind of notices.

We (or rather, Tim) tried to clip a cloth to the top of the doorframe so we could block the exit sign's light from our room. The attempt involved repeatedly opening and closing the door, and we woke up a helpful — and probably disgruntled — long term resident.

She seemed to know exactly what we were up to, which means we're probably not the first fools to wake her up that way. Told us to use the hotel's towel, which would fit just right. It took us a while to get to sleep. Most of my ex-roomies know this, but when the lights go off, it makes me talkative.

Not because I'm suddenly in confessional mode, but because I am mildly scared of the dark and talking through it eases me into the idea that if something is in the corner, at least it's not chiming into the conversation. And at least I can bore it to bits.

The next day, Tim made us avocado on toast (yes, our own food). Bless. The heater there was very welcome too.

For both signs, I actually returned to my room to look for a pen to correct the grammar, and maybe make the signs  prettier. My efforts were shot down by my own half-heartedness and the fact that I stuff my backpack without thinking of how everything comes out later. Passive Aggressive Notes, anyone?

Walked downstairs and talked briefly to another resident, taking in some morning air. I don't usually wake up in the morning, but when I'm with Tim and Daph, I sleep early.

In the day time, Ararat has a nice, laid-back weekend feel to it. Just down the road from where we spent the night was a cafe called "Browse & Brew on Barkley".

 Books all around, good coffee, and the relief that a friend had come to our rescue. Cafes should always come with cosy corners and books.

Browse & Brew's tables had old documents from Ararat lacquered onto them -- some their own, others donated. Very nice idea for a cafe in a town that sells its history to travellers. I went to all the unoccupied lil' tables to take a look.

Ararat is a great stopover town...in the daytime. You'd have to stick around a bit longer than we did to figure out what goes on at night.

(Ararat has the lowest road signage I've ever seen, it's looks lower than those "Keep left" blue arrow signs!)

Since I'm visiting the country, I don't mind that I saw more of Australia that day. All incidental side trips are a boon. Who knows, I may be back soon, on my terms, for the wineries and the J. Ward gaol museum.

Written by lainie at 11:57 PM on June 21, 2009.

Nothing gets to me like meeting someone who has eaten in Singapore, and presumes it represents the food in Malaysia. Except because Singapore is more developed, the food is better. It kills me. At the wrong time of the month, it could kill the person who says it.

Also, it hurts my conscience to keep that polite smile plastered across my face. But I do, because I don't want to look like that crazy Malaysian girl who hates the tourists in Singapore.

If you are a foodie, and your explorations of Asian cuisine begins and ends in Singapore, you look like an ass. Sorry, there's no avoiding it. There is fantastic food in the region, and Malaysia is foodie heaven.

Every Malaysian who watched Discovery Travel & Living during Anthony Bourdain's review of Singapore's Ampang Yong Tau Foo (a Hakka Malaysian food famous in Ampang, Malaysia) died a little death that day. Despite Singapore being a dot on the map next to Malaysia, it felt like we were the little guys.

On that day, Bourdain became to me an aggravating schmuck who was willing to eat/drink anything, which where I come from, is not a distinguishing characteristic to boast of.

To be fair to him, I don't remember Bourdain claiming to be anything else in his book. And there are other people on tv far less amusing. But they're not in Singapore praising Malaysian food, are they? Bourdain didn't even look like he knew we existed, which was probably the best slight any person in Singapore could have dealt Malaysia

Enough about Bourdain, what am I supposed to do with the people I meet here? Thwack them with the KL guidebook I wrote?

I now live in a country where I have frequently seen on menus, this "Malaysian" item: Rice with skinless, boneless chicken cubes, generously topped with creamy satay sauce.

I know our satay comes with ketupats/lontong and peanut sauces, BUT FOR FUCK'S SAKE???

Meat cooked with satay sauce is, I think, an Australian invention. Alongside the parma, I might even call it their national dish, just by the number of times I have seen it on the menu.

If I saw this menu item all the time, I might not feel inclined to go to Malaysia either. After all, "Singapore Fried Noodles" seem safer and more appealing.

Never mind that you can spot some Malaysians (or Indonesians) new in town, because they will at some point take pictures of the "satay sauce on rice" dish listed in the menu stuck on the window. As I have, out of sheer incredulity.

Still, if you have not been to Malaysia (and by some weird chance got to my blog, or worse; because you are one of those persons who kickstarted this post), read these food blogs from KL/Selangor:

1) Masak-Masak,

2) A Whiff of Lemongrass and

3) KY Speaks

Three food blogs with different styles and approaches to their content.

Right. I'm done. I had some balut earlier and I need to sleep it off. Phew. Heavy.

[ WOAH! I've not been to Masak Masak blog in a while, did she get a fancier camera or what? Pics look way better! ]