Manpuku @ Tampines 1

I am sure most of you are familiar with "Manpuku" which is located at level 3 of Tampines 1. This Japanese Food Mall was once flooded with crowds when it first started early last year. According to some read up, this place can hold roughly about 500 seats which is consider a big mall with 10 different food stalls selling all kinds of Japanese food, dessert and drinks.

Today I was meeting up an old friend for lunch whereby she suggested that we can have lunch over at Manpuku. At first, I was quiet shock as because I ask her that isn’t it will be too crowded to fight with the lunch crowd at this food mall? But she told me that I would be surprised to see how empty the place is compare to what it is before. Now they also do away with the “card” system and customer can just walk in and order from whichever stall and just make payment.

Although their business might not be as good as before, but I was kind of attract to their window display outside the shops and interior decoration in the food mall.

After going round the food mall, Tracy settles for the Kimchi Chicken Ramen while I went over to “Hokkyokusei Omu Rice” stall and get a set of their promotion Mixed Sauce Omu Rice with Mushroom Soup for S$7.50. The mushroom soup was kind of diluted I guess that is what to expect for the price of S$1.00.

“Mixed Sauce Omu Rice” is just Japanese fried rice wrapped with omelette then drizzle with half each of tomato and creamy sauce. Overall I find the sauces still goes well with the rice and since both rice and eggs are my favourite item I am quiet satisfy with the dish too. But Tracy on the other hand mentioned that it was rather not worth to have just rice and egg with sauce for S$6.50.

SuperNature Organic Products

SuperNature store is located inside Park House Condominium that is near the road junction of Orchard Boulevard and Tomlinson Road. This organic store was established in 2001 and offers a complete range of organic and natural products in the meat, poultry, dairy, grocery and household care categories in a combined floor space of 4,500 square feet.

At the entrance of the store, you will notice a lot of carton boxes and cooler bags display on the left side of the shelf. These boxes are known as “Farm Box” whereby they offer 5 different range of farm box varieties for customer to select from such as “Asian Farm Box” (popular leafy greens, herbs, tubers and fruit in Asian cuisine), “Juice Farm Box”(different types of fresh organic fruit to blend into fruit juice to quench thirst) and etc.

This place is like a mini supermarket where you can find all kinds of fresh vegetables, seasonal fruits, frozen meat/poultry, dairy products and etc. Although the price might be around 10 – 30% higher than those usual products we get from the local supermarket but I am sure these organic products are worth it penny because of its' health benefit values.

Look at the fresh vegetables section, most of the vegetables such as egg plant, pumpkin, corn, green pea, mushroom and etc are all imported from overseas countries such as Taiwan, Australia, France, Japan, USA and many others. These products are all pesticide and antibiotics free and as well retain its very own vitamins and minerals.

Breakfast items are always one of the most important groceries that I would rather spent more to select some health choice for my family members. So while scanning around SuperNature store today, I am so delighted to find a wide range of Organic breakfast cereal, oats and dairy products. At their dairy section I also saw this “Straus Family Creamery” fresh milk that is imported from Marshall, California.

Next let’s take a look at their Pasta section where they have all kind of pasta such as Penne, Spaghetti, Shell, Elbow and some of them are even made of brown rice and they are “Wheat and Gluten-free”. Apart from the wide range of pasta sauce that can used to cook these organic pasta, you can also find some soy sauce, ketchup or more others seasoning sauce to lift up your dish from mundane to marvelous taste.

There are still many interesting sections in this store that I would like to share with you but due photographing restriction, I can only share some of the items which I find it great for working mum like me because some of these products really makes a great different to what we normally consume. Especially if you have young kids or old folks around, healthy life-style and food are always a great investment for them. Apart from the above, I also read from their website that they are having some "Dumplings"(made from organic pork belly & mushroom, click Here for more promotion detail) specially made for this coming "Dumpling Festival".

Other than the grocery store, SuperNature also has another new "Wellness" store that is location at the other end before the Supermarket near the entrance of the Condominium. Even before you enter the store, the light and refreshing scent of aroma is filling around the air and surrounding area that makes you attracted to the store. As I was rushing off, I only just roughly glance through the store to see what they are offering and I was surprised to find many organic baby food products such as drink, biscuits, cereals and etc.

Another discovery I found in this store is, they actually have "Organic Laundry Detergent/Powder" that does not contain any chlorine, phosphates or other chemicals which dangerous to our health. Perhaps I would drop-by another day together with mum and aunty to find more on their organic household items and beauty products which they might be interested in. If you are keen to know more about this store and the items they offer, you can click on their website stated below or drop-by their store and take a look at their products too.

SuperNature
21 Orchard Boulevard
#01-21/23 & 27 Park House
Singapore 248645
Tel:(65)6304 1338
Fax:(65)6735 0366
Email: sales@supernature.com.sg
Website: www.supernature.com.sg

Rice Dumpling Aka ZongZi

The yearly Dumpling Festival is just a couple of days away which falls on Wednesday, 16 June 2010. I am sure these few days you can smell the aroma of the mouth drooling dumpling circulating around your neighbourhood area as some families are busy with the wrapping and cooking of this festive food. And as usual a few weeks to a month before the festival, most of Chinese restaurants will create all kinds of festive dumplings using some special ingredients in order to attract more customers.

Although the traditional Nonya and Cantonese rice dumplings are good, but most often we are still looking forward to delicious new creations to satisfy our taste buds. Recently I read from a food magazine that this year Cherry Garden offer a special “Lychee Braised Pork Belly Dumpling” which consists of ingredients likes dried lychees and braised pork belly flavoured with lychee liqueur. I wonder how it will taste as normally we only used cooking wine instead of fruit wine as seasoning. But I am sure this will taste great with lychee flavour.

No matter where is your choice to get the best rice dumplings or you are intending to make some before the festival. I am sure there is always something suitable for you everyone. The “Savory Pork Dumpling - 咸肉粽” shown in the photos above are made by my Mother-in-law. Sometime I just wonder in this modern society, is it only those older generations folks are willing to spend time and effort in the kitchen making all these traditional foods. Because most youngest like us tend to buy read-made products instead of spending the whole day preparing and making these time consuming food.

But if you are interested to try, there is a Rice Dumpling making post(with video) in my recipe blog that you might like to read more about it. (click Here)

Crystal Jade Kitchen

Crystal Jade Kitchen has a number of branches scatter at different parts of Singapore. Their menu consists of authentic Hong Kong Style Dim Sum, Roast Duck/Meat, Congee, Noodle and Cantonese dishes.

Last week, we happened to shop around Bishan area so we decided to drop-by one of the Crystal Jade Kitchen located at basement 1 of Junction 8. While queuing up for our seats, we are attracted to their Rice Dumpling promotion(click here).

From the list, we decided to try something sweet and savory so we ordered this "Rice Dumpling with Pork - 五香咸肉粽" that consists of pork belly, whole salted egg yolk and green bean. The glutinous rice is very soft and lightly fragrant by the spices and seasoning and it goes well with the tender pork belly that make you crave for more. Personally I love the adding of green bean to this savory rice dumpling as it really blends well with the ingredients, especially with the salted egg yolk.

Since it is around lunch time, we decided to try their 2-in-1 combo lunch menu. This set comes with the "Poach Chinese Spinach with 2 kinds of eggs" and "Deep-fried Prawn Coated with Wasabi Mayonnaise".

This vegetable dish taste great with the combination of 3 different eggs such as Egg, Century Egg and Salted Egg. The soup broth of this dish is very tasty and you can even drink it like a soup because it is cook using superior stock.

Next dish is this "Deep-fried Prawn Coated with Wasabi Mayonnaise" which we find it a bit disappointed. The large prawns are coated with batter and almond flakes then deep-fried till golden. Although the prawns are very fresh and crunchy but it was kind of overpower by the over coating of Wasabi Mayonnaise sauce. The wasabi sauce actually makes the dish too spicy and greasy to consume. If the sauce is slighter lesser like what is shown in the their menu, I guess this dish will taste better than what is it now.