Happy Food Friday!
This week I was on a bit of a tight budget which meant not a lot of room for going out to eat. So I decided the best way to fulfill my food Friday blog post for my avid readers was to give you all a glimpse of what work lunch looks like! Lately I have just been bringing leftovers for lunch as, to put it nicely, my body doesn’t respond to the canteen food as beautifully as I would like. But this past week I decided that it would be cheaper for me to get lunch at the canteen (café) for about $2.00 – 2.50 a day.
So my lunch idea for food Friday actually hit me on Wednesday and so my recount starts there. Let me first explain that Wednesday was a rough day for me…ok really this whole week was rough. Without getting too much into it, I’ve been a bit frustrated at work, people were coming to work on my apartment which meant I had to sleep in the hot un-airconed 2nd bedroom, and knowing that my trip back to the US is only a couple weeks away now made me just yearn to get back. The truth is, as great as Singapore is, there are times that I just wish I could walk out my door and wish I was home. Most days I’m not down about missing home but I just get little bits of oh if only I could grab a dunks on my way to work or CAN I JUST GET A PIZZA! So this past Wednesday my morning started out tough and I went to the canteen with my fingers crossed that there would be just ONE thing I could look at and know what it was. Oh boy was I in for a treat!!! Chicken nuggets without bones!!!! I wish I were joking about how exciting this was for me. No joke-la!! Being able to have chicken without bones is such a rare find here and to have it be chicken nuggets, well let’s just say I was about as happy as when Mom would let us get the Kids Cuisine dinners when the babysitter came.
Egg, chicken nuggets, and random green veggie
You see the trick is when you’re feeling 10,000 miles away from home (and then realize you actually are that far away from home) it’s about finding something small that can give you just enough of a boost to make it through. Luckily I didn’t have to rely on chicken nuggets to be the only happy part of Wednesday because I got a surprise video chat from Dad! He has been quite the social butterfly lately and we’ve missed getting to video chat for a couple weeks now. Of course I love getting my time with my Momma but it’s nice to have Dad time too. So thanks for calling Dad!
Alright back to the food scene! Usually our lunch options start with 1 of 2 choices: halal (Muslim) or Chinese (Non-Muslim). Then each stall has about 8-10 different types of veggies and meat. You get a scoop of rice and then can choose as much or as little as you like. However, most days they’ll have a special meal. On Thursday my whole team opted for the halal special which was mee goreng. This is a noodle dish and had some type of spicy sauce and was served with a piece of fried chicken. My group told me it wasn’t spicy but in typical fashion my lips were tingling from the heat of the dish, although it was not unbearable.
And finally today for lunch we went out to eat per usual on Fridays. We went to a hawker center at a mall called Downtown East. I opted for the economic rice and mixed veggies stall (yes that’s actually the name of it). You get a scoop of rice and then can choose from an assortment of meats and veggies (very similar to our canteen but with lots more options). I like this because you can try a little bit of different things. I went with sweet and sour pork, green beans (that I later found included bits of sardine-like fish, got to love that Asian cuisine), and egg.
After lunch we grabbed coffee, kaya toast, and kaya puffs. Kaya is coconut jam and if you’re lucky I might bring some home to the US!
And that concludes this edition of Food Friday! I hope you all tried something new this week or got creative if you were on a tight budget like me.
Have a great weekend and I have a feeling there will be some good posts coming to you next week….
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