Fruit Salad

I had a great week but I didn't take a single photo so ..... what do you do when you wake up on Friday morning and you have a blog called KK's Photo Friday and you have nothing to post? If you are as lucky as I am to have such a smart husband then its easy, you just take his advice. I went out and took some photos of all of the interesting fruit we have in Singapore. Some things I still don't know what they are and some things I had to google to find out what it is and how to eat it. I google quite a bit when I go shopping, always something new and interesting out there!

I went to the Tanjong Pagar Plaza Market to take some photos. They have the best fresh fruits and its close to home. I walk over her all the time to go to the grocery store. Sometimes I come here and get special goodies for the weekend.

I see these and I'm thinking brown bananas that aren't old, just a dark color. After googling them I discover they might be red bananas. Similar to a regular banana but with a slight raspberry flavor. I'll have to try these sometime. 

Dragon Fruit. They have white flesh with little black edible seeds the size of sesame seeds.

Here we have dragon fruit, mango and a cherimoya or custard apple. 

Jack fruit, giant fruit sort of tastes like a pineapple - mango mix, but more tart and creamier somehow.

Papaya

Star fruit. These are not super sweet and are really pretty in a fruit salad or as garnish on a cosmo :)

Canned fruits at the grocery store. I have Palm fruit, Sea Coconut, Aloe Vera, Loquats and Lychees. 

Australian Rock Melons, or Cantalope as I know it. Familiarity is nice sometimes :)

The package says Sweet Prune Powder. You are supposed to dip your cut fruit into the powder. I guess I'll try it.

Looks good, smells good, I like sweet things...

GROSS! NOT SWEET! SALTY! I'll eat the rest of my fruit without the Prune Powder.

And here is my beautiful fruit salad. I have to admit though that I didn't make this salad myself ;) I actually bought it from a fruit stand and brought it home. Much easier to carry this than all of the fruit I'd have to buy to make this!! $4, includes fresh figs, watermelon, rock melon, honeydew, pineapple, jackfruit, kiwi, apple, guava, dragonfruit, grapes, papaya and apple. This was a great idea, thanks Geoff!

Happy Friday!!!

Flowers at Gardens by the Bay East

Here are some flowers from my walk at Gardens by the Bay East. Enjoy!

Wide open lotus flower. I don't know if I've ever seen this yellow part of the flower core. Really pretty!

Sometimes when I am out taking photos I am so concentrated on exposure and holding the camera steady, etc that I don't even see what I am shooting. I didn't notice the great reflection of the flower at the bottom left of the frame. 

Cattails!

I love a butterfly. It was just breezy enough to make it challenging. When I saw it I started shooting and just kept going till it left, about 10 seconds is all I had. Wish it would have stuck around a bit longer so I could change my camera settings. 

I liked the bright colors in this photo. Super small flowers covering a large plant.

Same here, liked the colors, so much pretty green with a bit of white and orange. Its a little dark because the white of the flower was way too bright and I had to correct it a bit. 

Happy Friday!!!

A Walk Around Pasir Ris

This week I met up with a group of expat ladies to walk around the Pasir Ris area. It is the last stop on the east end of the East West MRT line and I have only been once before to see the Pasir Ris Beach Park, this was more to see the neighborhood. A few of the ladies live in this area and thought it would be fun to organize a walking tour. Other members of the group are going to organize tours of their neighborhoods as well so we can all experience different parts of Singapore. I would offer to do my neighborhood but it is right smack in the middle of the most popular area at Marina Bay and everyone has already been here a million times (thankfully).

Here is the entrance/exit to the Pasir Ris MRT. Not all of the train stops in Singapore are subways. Moving out of the city most are above ground. Another neat thing about the stations is that there is almost always shopping and dining options, some not so great, some are. I like to go to Mr. Bean and get a cold soy milk :)

Train tracks overhead. The buildings on the right are HDBs and on the left are more apartments under construction.

Quite a few people ride their bikes to the train station. More HDB housing in the background.

Notice board at the train. We don't have these in the city, at least I haven't seen any notice boards. That would be a sad unnoticed notice board :( 

Lots of guys at the military supply shop, their training facilities are close by. National service is compulsory for all Singaporean men and are required to enlist full time for a total of 22-24 months. After completion they are considered "Operationally Ready" and then become the equivalent of a Reservist until they reach age 40. There is some leeway in deciding when to start training, some choose to continue their education and begin military training at 19 or 20. It is possible to opt for early enlistment and with parents consent begin training at 16  1/2 years old.

OK, we left the MRT and are walking about now. Here is a park, great colors in this photo. 

And next to the playgroud area is the Pasir Ris Town Park Fishing Pond. It is huge with plenty of shade trees and umbrellas along the shores so you can have a little help avoiding the direct sun. You are allowed clean and eat the fish you catch here. HDBs in the background. 

I was here on a Tuesday morning around 10:30. There were about 30 people here. Its a big fishing pond, plenty of room for a ton more people. There was a free fishing night last month and 2000 people showed up. WOWSER! Pond has since been restocked :)

They are working on catching prawns.

This guy works here and is telling us to bring our kids down so they can catch some prawns or fish. Guaranteed catch and good time he says. Also he says never mind the usual fishing guys here, on the weekends there are more families than these guys. ;) lol!

Pasir Ris Pro Pond. You do have to pay a fee to fish at the pond, it isn't free. They have a shop to rent rods, buy bait, clean and scale your fish for you, you can even take the fish next door to have it cooked for a fee. If I ever have a fishing enthusiast visitor I know where to take them!

A couple of egrets were there fishing too.

We kept walking and passed a beautiful Nepalese Buddhist temple. 

Reminded me of our trip to Bhutan.

I wasn't dressed properly to go inside, need to cover shoulders to your knees. Its too hot and humid outside to walk 5 miles in pants so I gladly waited outside in the shade. With a breeze it isn't tooooo bad in the shade.

Pasir Ris has tons of HDBs. Many families live in this area because you can get a much bigger place here. The closer to the city you are the smaller your condo is. This HDB had such pretty trim colors, love the pop of yellow and all the greenery.

HDBs have these banners up to let residents know whats happening at the Community Center. 

Here is the Neighborhood Center. I took a photo of this thinking it was the Community Center but now I'm not so sure. I did see some shopping there, maybe?

This HDB has pretty green iron work on the sides of the windows. With the red brick it is very pretty.

Loved the courtyard too, shaded and breezy with a nice quiet place to sit. 

Last we passed a mosque, this is the Al-Istighfar Mosque. Gorgeous blue and white with beautiful windows designed after the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey.

OK, that concludes the highlights of my 5 mile walk (no photographs of the giant burger I devoured for lunch after the walk!). Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Happy Friday!!!

Mooncakes

Singapore is celebrating Mid Autumn Festival again. Falling on the 15th day of the 8th month of the Chinese lunar calendar when the moon is to appear at its roundest. The full roundness of the moon represents an abundant harvest and family unity. Last year I posted photos of the lanterns at Gardens by the Bay. They are putting those out again this year but I wanted to do something different. Lanterns symbolize the full moon during the festival, the glow of the lanterns copying the glow of the moon, and are bought and sold in abundance now. Another must have Mid Autumn item would be the mooncake. These cakes are small, about the size of a cupcake, maybe slightly wider but not as tall, and very dense. They come in many different flavors, some of the most popular are red bean paste and lotus seed paste. Some have one to four yolks in the center and some come without yolks. They are meant to be shared with family and friends, too much to eat one by yourself...its very dense!

A few extra stalls have popped up in Chinatown to sell goods for the Mid Autumn Festival making it just a bit more crowded than usual. This stall is selling mooncakes. They vary in price, anywhere from $5.00 to $12.00 each depending on how many yolks are in the cake and what kind of filling it has. There are also very fancy mooncakes for sale going for as much as $20.00 each. Most of the nice hotels and restaurants in the area will have mooncakes for sale.

Here is another shop selling mooncakes.  Hard to see with the fruit vendor setting up in front of the cake shop. I recently took a walking tour of Chinatown and my guide said that this shop was one of the most popular for mooncakes. She was right, the line wraps around the street. 

On Temple Street in Chinatown there are a few kitchen supply shops that I like to visit when I need something in particular for my kitchen. Currently they have mooncake molds. The lady at the store asked me if I knew how to make a mooncake, I told I was going to try. She gave me a smile and a little laugh. Maybe I will just use it for decoration! 

Here is one of my mooncakes I bought today. This is a single yolk lotus seed paste mooncake. Traditionally served with Chinese tea which goes well with a sweet cake. Usually the characters for harmony and longevity and sometimes the bakery name are used in the molds for the cakes.

A single yolk lotus seed paste mooncake has on average 800 calories and 45 grams of fat. Wowser! I am done with these for the year! That would be a lot of 12km loops to run and I don't do it for the fun of it. 

Cutting it open you can see the yolk. The brown surrounding it is the lotus seed paste and the outer layer is the thin pastry shell. It is thought that mooncakes were used in the 14th century as a way of communicating a decision to overthrow the Mongols during the Yuan dynasty. Notes were placed inside the mooncakes or even in the writing on top of the mooncake as a simple riddle or puzzle. No notes in my mooncake today.

I brought home four mooncakes and they came in this nice box. My eyes were bigger than my stomach yet again. I think my friends may be getting a cake from me this year :) Especially after seeing the nutrional value, or lack thereof! 

Happy Friday!!!