Happy New Year 2015!

Happy New Year 2015 to all my friends
新年快乐
즐거운새해보내세요
Yoi otoshi o! よいお年を!

A very happy new year 2015 to all!

4 things that made me really happy & feel good in 2014 are-

my weekly 10km jog with a close friend & the 100plus, nespresso chat afterwards

my 2 close friends organising 2 birthday dinners – one for me at chef chan’s & one for my wife at tunglok central

visiting my relatives in china – 汕头澄海

learning korean & making 3 good friends in korea

i continued my jogging in 2014. timing had slowed significantly & i now usually do 10km at 1hr 13mins on the track where previously i did 1hr 9mins in 2013 and 1hr 6mins in 2012. on the treadmill in the gym i can still do 1hr 6mins. 🙂

also for 2nd half of 2014, i did mostly 2 times a week where previously i did 3 times a week consistently.

i had a lot of family time including with my son in london, and we also travelled to cambridge, lake maggiore & milan.

before that i had a wonderful vacation with wife & daughter to amsterdam, lake como, cinque terre & milan.

i spent lots of times with friends, including lots of home cooking. i am very grateful for their friendship. and on 22.12.2014, we had 128pax gathering at our alma mata raffles institution auditorium including 10 teachers. 🙂

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this evening, the children have their own programs. tomorrow, we have a 20pax homecooked family new year day lunch. so for this evening, my wife & i decided to have a simple dinner at home just 2 of us (二人世界). ^^

i bought a piece of USA Harris black angus ribeye from mmmm at west mall. it was expensive today, no discounts & price went north as well!

pumpkin tofu salad

pumpkin tofu salad

portobello

portobello

coffee from our jura machine

coffee from our jura machine

wife made the pumpkin tofu salad, portobello & onions. i did the ribeye. we had a very good sake to go with the meat.

nice, simple dinner. after that we slowly sipped a nice cuppa!

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

c.h.e.f andy

Really Good Coffee @ Chye Seng Huat Hardware Coffee Bar on 17Sep2014

flat white @ chye seng huat coffee bar

flat white @ chye seng huat coffee bar

after taking kok kee wanton mee @ lavendar food square on 17.9.2014, we decided to walk over to chye seng huat hardware at tyrwhitt road for our cuppa. 🙂

flat white @ chye seng huat coffee bar

flat white @ chye seng huat coffee bar

flat white @ chye seng huat coffee bar

flat white @ chye seng huat coffee bar

the cafe CSHH coffee bar was located on the ground floor of a building with the name chye seng huat hardware and a cool shophouse facade.

the interior was a nice chill-out ambience. at 430pm there were quite many customers but not full & we sat at a corner wall with a ledge & tall stools & a wall mirror so you could see the whole cafe when sat facing the mirror.

flat white @ chye seng huat coffee bar

flat white @ chye seng huat coffee bar

we had a flat white at S$5.50 each.

the coffee flavour was good & the frothed milk was velvety smooth & combined well with the coffee.

i had 2 really great cuppas during my recent stay in london – one was at monmouth cafe in covent gardens on 22.8.2014, and the other when we stopped for a cuppa at melrose & morgan during our walk along regent’s canal to primrose hill on 24.8.2014.

a nice coffee makes all the difference. i have a jura machine at home. i used to get the rather expensive lavazza coffee at culina but later found caffe aurora at qbfoods that cost 40% the price, and for me they were very good (or good enough). i had nice nespresso at my friend’s house after our weekly jog, and also at my son’s apartment in london. all of them were better than the coffee one gets at starbucks, so if i want to get a coffee outside that is NOT a S$1.20 kopi-c, it has to be a good cuppa to make any sense in spending that money! 🙂

for me, CSHH cafe bar’s flat white falls into that good cuppa category. 🙂

c.h.e.f andy