The Foooood Episode! Part 1

Welp.  I've been here for just about 6 weeks now, and in that time, I've eaten a good number of meals, and since everyone in my life is obsessed with food, I suppose it's time to write about this.  I think it makes the most sense to split this up into fruits/juices, snacks, noodles, and other.  I'll go in that order, but I have a feeling that I'll have a lot to say about each, so I'll start with fruits/juices and snacks.

Fruits & Juices

The heat and humidity here might be killing me (it's been floating between 85-95 degrees since we arrived), but tropical climates are pretty prime sources of excellent and exotic fruit.  I'm not quite sure I have a favorite, but if I had to rank, I think I'd definitely put jack fruit and mangosteen in the top two.  Ironically enough, the jack fruit looks a lot like the infamous durian, both inside and out, but definitely does not have the same... pungency.  In actuality, a jackfruit is most like an extremely sweet and perfectly ripe mango.  I haven't had it straight up, but they serve it as part of an icee dessert with evaporated milk and jelly things at the food center across the street from us... mmmm!

A mangosteen, on the other hand, is not like a mango.  But it is delicious.  It's just like this little ball of explosive flavor; I don't know what to compare it to.  Like a number of other fruits here--lychees, longan, and rambutan, which all look the same to me once they're peeled--mangosteen has kind of a "cool" taste to it.  I know that cool isn't a taste, but if you've tried any of these, you know what I mean.

Speaking of lychees, someone I met playing frisbee (see! I promised to make non-animal friends) introduced me to a great bottled drink that they sell here: lychee juice, slightly sweetened with sugar cane juice.  Ahh, now that is a great post-workout referesher.

But really, why would I bother to buy bottled fruit juice, when every fruit in the world is available here, freshly juiced?  Seriously.  For those of you that don't know, I worked at an organic juice bar back in high school, and even back in the fertile state of California, fresh fruit juice was somewhat of a luxury.  But here, you can get seemingly anything juiced; watermelon, lime, and sugar cane are some pretty popular ones.  Also, the machine they use to juice a sugar cane is pretty cool; it's just like a giant squishing machine that presses the juice out.  Two juices on my "to try" list are avocado/honey and jackfruit, but so far, the fresh strawberry-kiwi juice that I can get at the food court downstairs at NUS has been holding me over pretty well.

Snacks

By snacks here, I pretty much mostly mean buns and bun variants, although there are a few others.  And of course, fruits are snacks as well. :)  But buns are very popular here, for breakfast as well snacks.  By the way, by "buns," I am referring to the kinds of things you'd get a dim sum, sweet doughs filled with some filling, which is very often meat, but can also be a paste made of beans, nuts, or fruit flavor.  Most bakeries here have tantalizing arrays of buns, all made temptingly shiny with the glossy brush of egg whites and adorned with the appropriate seed or decoration as to indicate their contents.  Some of my favorites are those filled with red bean or lotus bean (no surprise if you know me), and there's also a really good pumpkin one that I've found.  I've also developed a slight obsession with a chain called Bread Talk.  I know it's a chain, and I'm sure there are better stores, but in the same way that some people obsess over Starbucks when there's a perfectly good mom and pop store across the street, Bread Talk has captured my mind.  I try to limit myself to a once a week indulgence, but it's really hard when they're coming out with new and creative pastries all the time, like this chocolate tiger for Chinese New Year:

(Below it is one of the pumpkin pastries I mentioned.) 

Another delicious snack worth mentioning is the curry puff.  A good curry puff is something that will make your soul happy.  It's just what it sounds like.  Curry (Indian style) inside a puff pastry.  Maybe I'm raving about it because it was the first thing I ate this afternoon after four hours of frisbee.  But no, other ones that I've had at less desperate times have been equally delightful.  The curry puff is just... a well-thought-out idea.  I mean, if you're eating curry, don't you normally want bread or rice with it?  Well, this puts the curry and the bread together in one convenient package.  It's great for munching on at your desk, while you're walking, sitting in a park on the afternoon, it's just plain good.

Ooh another super snack (errr, dessert, really) is almond jello with longan and syrup.  One thing I really like about all the desserts here is that they're usually only mildly sweet, and in a very natural way, not completely comprised of sugar.  And speaking of desserts, mango sago is a nice, pudding-like treat that is both satisfying and refreshing.  I also like the glutinous rice based creations, but those I liked before I left.  

Well.  I could go on, I'm sure.  Haha I actually have sort of a running list of all the new foods that I've tried here, but I think I'll spare the internet of my drivel and take a break for now.  Oh, in related news, I recently rented Julie and Julia... that was a really cute movie, but the point is that it had a great line, when Julia Child is trying to decide what hobby she wants to pick up while her husband is on assignment in Paris:

Paul: What is is that you really like to do?
Julia: Eat!
Paul: And you're very good at it.

Hmmm.  Fooooood.