Gourmet Plus at Frankel Avenue is a delightful little europeen bistro with an unpretentious and unambitious menu, by which I mean that they don't give you fifty kinds of pasta and entrees and pizzas and main courses --- just about fifteen, no pizzas, and maybe six or seven appetizer ideas to get you going. One crispy duck confit and one well-pesto'd seafood fettucine later, we were too full for dessert --- "our creme brulee is excellent", coaxed the young waiter, all dressed in black --- and we forgot to ask why they serve only light Erdinger beer, instead of Terz's preferred dark variety. To think we'd meant to have a light soup and sandwich at the neighbouring Cedele Bakery Depot --- except that they were closed.
As for the aforementioned chocolate cake, it turned out to be not too bad --- nowhere near the seratonin-inspired stratospheric rapture of the legendary Lana cake, but none too shabby for a cake boxed in by professions of "Cherub's Love". There's still half left.
Fortunately, there was still room in the fridge for it after we unloaded all the groceries. We deliberately bought a not-too-big-or-fancy fridge when we moved into this apartment, and it's never really been filled to the brim, except around festive seasons when parents and in-laws ply us with food --- but I'm starting to think we need to both spring clean (how long's that mint sauce been there, hm?) and reorganise so that we can pack more food into the same small space.
We're eating in all week, in order to save money, ensure that groceries do not go bad and avoid excessive consumption of alcohol. Cabin fever symptoms should start to show up around week's end...
5 Comments:
ooohhh, mon dieu: J'ai l'impression que tu est en France!!! La cuisine, toutes les jours, et le frigo bien rempli: bravo!
(tr. oh my god/ I have the feeling you're in France. Kitchen, everyday, and a fridge well stocked. Bravo!!)
Lana cake fan, eh? That is yummy indeedy.
i loooove duck confit!!! i looooove pesto!!! i totally, totally loooove groceries!!! you are luckyyy!!!!
eh, sorry, emoting. :-)
me too i went grocery shopping recently (i was busy and hadn't had time to go in a bit, so my frigo was in a sad state of affairs, like, a container of shredded mozzerella left over by the summer subletters, a wrinkled lemon, a half-consumed thing of total greek yoghurt), and now i have all these things and some of those things are concord grapes, which are AMAZING. my dad got some when i was in singapore, and he seemed to be referring to them as japanese grapes. but concord sounds very american to me; isn't concord in new hampshire? no, massachusetts? something. jesus, i should go look it up. and i'm sure these grapes are called different things all over the world anyway.
so but okay, these grapes are amazing, can you immediately go and buy? they are small and round and a dark purple, almost black, but the insides are a very light, almost translucent greenish. and they are sweeeeet. and you put one in your mouth and you can slip the inside out of the skin, it's funny.
um, is this old news to you? i am new to concord grapes so the whole operation is still magic to me. check in with me in a couple of years. oh, never mind, i think you know and i know i'll probably still be enamoured of squeezing concord grapes between my tongue and the roof of my mouth. mmmm.
Is it my imagination or is everyone cutting down or quitting drinking. Various non-NIE mates of mine are doing the same. Is this the beginning of that 30 something crisis vis a vis weight and finance? Have we alls tarted to realise that from here-on in weight will pile on? That retirement is only 35 years away, and if we want to retire comfortably we need to save at least 15k per year?
Maybe we could all do a dinner one night - I volunteer to cook! If ppl are wary of a night of dogginess then I am happy to cook at other ppls houses :-) I reckon for $25 per head I could go pretty far with an appetiser, meat course and dessert....
Fridge update: Almost empty, save for some asparagus, sio pek chye and dou miao. Depending on whether we purchase eggs tomorrow, we may have this promising Italian asparagus omelette for breakfast (fresh from a recipe we came across in --- shoot me now --- Elle).
Lana cake --- the closest thing to chocolate heaven on this planet, I swear.
Concord grapes are tasty, I'm sure, but all grapes were expensive at the supermarket earlier this week. I don't quite know why they're so pricey here --- must be something to do with having to ship them from New Hampshire or wherever, but I guess the Sunkist and Granny Smith operations have got their shit together because their fruit doesn't sell for half as much as any grapes.
Neil: I'm cutting back on the bottle because I'm too broke after last month's (work-instigated) indulgences. And this financial planner told me that to be able to maintain my current lifestyle at retirement age, I need to have something like $3m tucked away by then. At which point I fell off the chair, hit my head and don't remember anything else after that.
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