Mooncake festival

Ok, I know. It's supposed to be called mid-autumn festival. But since I no longer play with lanterns or candles, no drinking of chinese tea and admiring the full moon while solving chinese riddles, I guess it's just mooncakes then...

Many companies are invited to come over to my office area to do corporate sales. Famous hotels, brands, etc.. Quite interesting to go and look, taste and buy... Of course I bought some for my family too....

So here's a sumary of mooncakes that have crossed my hand (and perhaps my mouth):


Traditional Mooncakes

Traditional lotus paste with yolk mooncake from Intercontinental. Not bought by me, but given by dad's colleague. Always my favourite. Actually, I like Regent's best. Not too sweet, but yummy. But since we got a box, I didn't get from regent this year.


Traditional piglet. Haven't tried it yet, but given by my neighbour. Neighbour also made 2 baked moonckes for us. Will try too..


Mixed nuts mooncake. Bought one for parents since they wanted one. Personally, I can't appreciate mixed nuts mooncake, but for her and my bf's mom, I went around taka to try different brands. Finally decided on this brand 'cui xiang ting' since it tasted the most fragrant of all.


Snowskin Mooncakes

First one I bought was black gold mooncake from Home's Favourite. Supposedly charcoal in the skin and durian filling. The durian filling is fantastic! Can't really taste charcoal in skin, but I guess that's a good thing. Just find it interesting with the contrast in colours.


Shared this box of ebony & ivory mooncakes from Marriott with 2 other colleagues. I only bought 2 out of the 8 mini mooncakes. Well, if u're wondering what ebony & ivory is, it's some form of chocolate filling.


Marriott's blueberry cheese mooncake. Bought 2 over from colleague's box. Was supposed to share tiramisu moonckes from Rendezvous since we never tried it before. But they didn't bring their snowskin mooncakes to my office's fair, so we changed to this flavour. Had some blueberry bits, but I'm more amazed by the fact that it does have a tinge of cheesecake flavour... Wonder how to do that..


Raffles's famous champagne truffle mooncake. Didn't buy it for myself lah. Shared with frens as a gift for another fren's housewarming. Not too bad. Quite light, not too sweet. Fren's mom and grandma likes it.


Teochew Mooncakes

If you ever go to taka mooncake fair, you will walk past this stall distributing pieces of piping hot yam mooncakes with crispy crust skin. Yep, from Eater Palace. I always like to walk past and take samples. Really yummy when it's eaten hot. For pple who like 'oa ni', you should like this. Finally, we decided to get 2 this year. One is the yam, and one is pumpkin (new flavour). This is the yam and pumpkin mooncake...


Special Mooncakes

Saw this on accident. Just went to the mooncake fair at my office building to browse and walked past meritus mandarin's stall. Went to poke at one piece to try and thought it was not bad. Tried another piece and decided to buy it. It's called gold ingots, 8 pcs in a box. Pastry skin with lotus paste and yolk. Thought the pastry skin is quite unique and nice..


So there... Looks like a lot, but actually I'm used to buying only one or two pieces of each flavour to try. And I'm not the only one eating. I'm not a mooncake freak!! =)

I eat pomelos too!


I'm damn full....

Happy...

I'm just in a happy mood for 2 days... =)

Anyway, my extended maternal family gathered on sunday to celebrate my grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary.

Wow. 60 years together with the same person. One has to be married, not get divorced, both live till 80+, 90+ year old before you can reach the 60th mark. Imagine getting married at 30, you have to live till 90 with your partner beside u!

I really can't imagine that happening to me yet.. Really too farrrrr...

shake shake

Did u feel it???

My house shook while I was having dinner. Today it shook longer than the famous tsunami incident. And it didn't feel as bad either. Still remember the previous time, I thought I was going to faint cause I felt giddy..

This time I'm not alone! More people know how I felt!

Disappointment

disappointment, irritation... Whatever you call it.

I just wrote a feedback email to Tung Lok on their mooncake sale at my office compound. Think it'll give you a good enough idea of what I went through today. Boycotting this brand of mooncakes liao..

Hi,

I would like to feedback on the sale of mooncakes at DSTA-DTTA today.

Last week, I emailed my pre-order and it was acknowledged, as seen below. During the collection process, I was extremely disappointed in the sale system.

Firstly, there was no proper system in differentiating customers who were collecting their orders versus those who decided to buy on the spot. There was only one extremely long queue, consisting of both groups of customers.

Secondly, service was slow. There were only 2 staff at the booth. I had to queue for more than 40 mins (from 1pm to 1.40pm) before it was my turn. In my opinion, the waiting time was too long for people who only wanted to collect their order.

Thirdly, there was no system in differentiating mooncakes for collection versus on-site sale. Mooncakes were purely sold on a first-come-first-serve basis. To my dismay, at the end of my 40 mins wait, I was informed that the mooncakes (Noble Mooncake) I ordered has been sold out. At the booth, I double checked that my order has been confirmed and the staff had a copy of the form. Thus, this was definitely not a matter of 'not passing down' the orders. Furthermore, I was not the only person who was affected. Several others were also unable to collect their orders.

Lastly, I was told that a second delivery later in the afternoon would be arranged and I could still collect my order. However, at 4pm, I went to the booth and was informed that the flavour has been sold out at all outlets. Thus, they were unable to deliver today. There was also no information on whether there would be a special delivery made on another day. Without any choice given to me, I cancelled my order.

In the entire process, sale was conducted in a first-come-first-serve basis. If that was the intended system, then collection of pre-orders by 5 Sep would have been totally unnecessary. However, if the intended system was to ensure that people would be able to collect their mooncakes if they pre-ordered, then this system was definitely not carried out.

In future sales, whether of mooncakes of other products, please ensure that such problems would not occur again.

Crab again!

I went to AMK crab again! This time I brought my family there to eat. It's been many years since we've gone for a crab feast. So long till my sister and I can't remember when the last time was.

This is my favourite crab bee hoon soup!


Look! The crab shell is as big as my face! =)

sangria

I found bottles of sangria being sold at vivocity!!! Bought a small botle of 187ml at $6. Tried a sip and thought it was not bad... Will consider the bigger bottle if it's nice. Quite affordable price leh... Less than $20 only.

Quite like sangria. Like the fruity taste inside. Better if there are fruits, but of course there aren't any in these packaged bottles.

Anyway, for people who like to get drunk, I saw Absinth being sold, with highest at 85% alc.

HP ink?

Anyone uses hp ink no. 45? Black ink. Bought a new one for my old old printer, but my printer didn't work. So, new but opened ik cartridge. Anyone?

Crab-by

Finally tried the famous AMK crabs at Blk 232 on fri evening with some friends. Wah, really long queue sia. Although we made a reservation, you got to queue at the 'reservation queue'. Got to order before they give you a seat.

Ordered 3 medium crabs among 6 people: Crab with bee hoon soup, Butter cream crab and Chilli crab.

1st crab came in about 30-40 mins. Much faster than I expected. Maybe it was still early at 7+ only. The chilli crab is nice. Gravy goes very well with fried buns. *slurp* Butter cream crab not my type. Taste not strong enough for me so I ended up pouring chilli gravy over it. Crab with bee hoon very nice. The soup is flavour-ful...

Amazingly, eating half a crab each with some fried buns and 1-2 small bowls of bee hoon is quite filling. The crabs are quite big and meaty...

Thumbs up!