SAUSAGE AND SALAD

Tonight I had dinner at home. I had sausage and salad. I didn't cook the dinner. Why sausage you may ask. Well, when I started out for novena this morning I had intended to have a home-grilled steak. Then I went to Borders to look for the last two books in a fantasy series. As I am prone to, I lost track of time when I am in a book shop. By the time I surfaced, it was past 5 pm. So I took the train back to Novena Square to get my car. There is a Cold Storage supermarket in Novena Square. So I went in to look for the steak, then I spotted the sausages in the delicatessen. They were so tempting and I succumbed, especially since I thought that maybe it was a bit late to prepare the steak.

I always have a fondness for sausages - English, German, Italian, Middle Eastern, Chinese, Taiwanese. In fact, I think most countries have some sort of sausage. But maybe not India; never heard of an Indian sausage. I will Google to confirm sometime. My love affair with the sausage began back in the long gone days I was in the Singapore Armed Forces. I was sent to England for training and stayed for almost a year in a Royal Air Force officers' mess. Once a week, sausage and black mushrooms was a menu choice for breakfast in the dinning hall. After the first time, I had it whenever it was a choice. Those were the days, man.

So I bought two grilled sausage, a package of prepared salad and a carton of pure promegranate mangosteen juice from the Cold Storage. When dinner time came I heated the sausages in the microwave and ate them with the salad, chasing them down with the juice.

One of the sausages was a bratwurst, a spicy German pork sausage with sun-dried tomato; the other was a Mediterranean jumbo sausage, also pork, I think. Both the sausages were firm to the bite, grilled just right - cooked, not over done. The hint of sun- dried tomato in the bratwurst gave it that bit of oomph. The jumbo was just pepperish. And the salad was just a salad with crotons. Overall a satisfying meal. Yum. It had everything I need - protein, fat, carbohydrates, veggies and vitamins. Except something is missing - company. Sigh.

FOO CHOW FISH BALL

For the last couple of days I have been looking for a route to and from work driving through which I don't have to fork out $4.50 to $6.50 daily, depending on how early I leave home. I am quite peeved that I have to part with my hard earned money to enjoy the convenience of driving to work when I don't see the convenience at all, what with the very heavy traffic and sometimes jams. Today, I found one going through Nichol Highway where it will cost me just $0.50 to $2.50. This seems to be within my irritation threshold.

This route also gives me the choice to go by Old Airport Road. So this evening, I decided to go to the Old Airport Road foodcentre for dinner. Browsing around, I came to Stall 103 selling Foo Chow fishball. Unlike the normal fishball which is quite ubiquitous in all the foodcourts and foodcentres in Singapore, the Foo Chow fishball is somewhat of a rarity. Thinking it wise to have a light dinner since I had a heavy nasi lemak lunch, I ordered a bowl of the Foo Chow fishball. $3 gives you 4 fishballs and 3 meat dumplings.

The thing about the FooChow fishball is that its centre is filled with minced meat. When you bite into it, you cut to two textures - the spongy fish outer layer and the soft meat centre, like biting through a savoury centre-filled chocolate. For me, a good fishball has a bite. At your first first bite, there is resistance; a little more pressure then cuts through the little rascal. This particular Foo Chow has some bite but I think some flour has been added so that it is softer. The meat dumplings were good and the soup tasty with the added kelp. Overall, worth a go. There are also other balls, I mean normal fish balls and pork balls, at this stall to go with noodles.
Yum, yum.