Munchin' Mamas

2008-03-30T21:29:00.000-07:00

The blog is NOT dead!

For avid MM readers, PR Manager post has been taken up by olly! And basically her job scope just involves flirting with all the restaurant managers for the benefit of MM. Cool no? : D

Looking forward to the next MM outing,
Jasmine!

2008-03-22T12:56:00.000-07:00

Ah the much anticipated clarity cafe post (BY JASMINE)! I shall clarify that my job only includes posting about OFFICIAL mm meetings, thus I'm not for hire if some of the mamas go on a secret rendezvous (think Popcafe group) or if I'm absent from the meeting (due to valid reasons of course). : ) Pardon me for the lack of details in this post cos it all happened a week ago : /

The bunch of us met up at bugis mrt late in the morning last friday and in fashion too, with the maroon 408 class tee being the most conspicuous in the crowd and us exclaiming at each other since we haven't seen one another since the previous birthday celeb.

I forgot how long we took to walk to clarity cafe, which is situated somewhere along purvis street, but it's pretty near the mrt. We were greeted by this cheery cafe which had cartoon figures plastered all over the walls and everything was furnished in a girly manner, presumably too girly for most girls. I found it cute but the rest thought it was quite odd, especially when the cafe was situated in the business district area. Valid point.

Bulk of us took the garlic crusted dory, some tried the roasted chicken leg and if I'm not wrong peiting took the slipper lobster capellini which looked really classy and tasty but I don't have a picture of it. : ( yumin took the beef burger obsession and yikai got this nicely breaded and fried chicken cutlet. I don't know the name of the dish jolene took but it smelt excellent anyway.

it looks tiny on the big plate but the serving size was decent, potato wedges were underneath the dory fish.

you can't see from this photo angle but the patty was really thick and juicy. might get sick of it after a few more mouths though.

damn good! : D

For desserts, I got a mud ooze with qiuping which was served with ice cream on top of a layer of moist fudgey chocolate cake that breaks to reveal hot fudge underneath it. : D Yummy. The price was a little steep though, $4.50 for a tiny cup! Jo got a warm bread and butter pudding which was an interesting combi too while sipei and zhiying both got a blueberry pie each.

Ah and not to forget our promise to celebrate the birthdays of members (but we forgot the part about giving a treat 0.o), we sprang a "surprise" on jo! Once again, happy belated birthday! : )

CAMWHORE TIME.

I apologise for the over-appearance of pingfang but I got the photos from her so there's not much choice. : D

One of the many type of photos i had to censor.

A supposed scandal, very poorly posed for.

3 dumb blondes.

clee in a shirt colour close to maroon! : D

mentally disturbed qiuping. hope that your face is back to its chio state! : )

soccer kids sorn and addy at the back!

tiddy (so cute!) at the back! on a side note, sipei, you are glowing in this picture!

For the set lunch (drink + dessert) and maybe an additional dessert, you probably wouldn't have to spend more than 15 bucks. It helps that there's no GST and service charge! : D

But for the service we got on that day, we shouldn't pay either because when they saw the birthday cake, they didn't take the initiative to ask if we need extra plates. We're not being nitty-picky!

Where happy people meet, it's worth another visit! : )

RATING: 3.5/5 mama stars

2008-03-10T05:40:00.000-07:00

UPDATES!

Hello all! CAD speaking! After reading The President's harsh review for Nihon Mura, I must say the takopachi and the salmon are still really good! No need to be picky about the size of the octopus and the slices of the salmon sashimi huh. : D

Anyway, after another informal MM Mugging/Pigging out session (but pigging out would have been an understatement, trust me. The scene I'm about to illustrate is about as accurate as it can get: Claire, Zhiying, Pingfang and I eat at Swensen's. Then, we proceed down to Coffee Bean for 2 cakes since I had 10 bucks voucher to spare. Half an hour later, Claire says, "Eh, I'm getting hungry again." So we went to Kopi Roti for Kopi and Roti. The 4 of us are the role models of all mamas!)

But the point about this post is not about Munchin' Mamas changing its name to Munchin' Piggos, I'm just here to tell you guys about the fabulous idea our events co-ordinator came up with!

Our secretary is going to scrapbook every single reciept (wow, Claire, finally we have a job for you eh) that we have and record down the mamas present at each pig out meeting.

At the end of the year, she will tabulate the results and we will have a TOP SPENDER OF THE YEAR!

The Top Spender of the Year will recieve a free treat from all the other mamas during our Gala ~~Pig out~~ Dinner Event!

Hmm. but what KIND of treat? Hawker fare? Or Foie Gras? This shall be decided by a lucky draw! The Top Spender will draw lots and pick out the destination for the treat!

Other than rewarding the Top Spender, we will also be kicking out the mama who spends the LEAST and does not turn up for any meetings. Well, if you are an exceptional case, we might put you on probation..

Toodles! Look out for our next update: MISS CLARITY CAFE!

2008-03-09T07:24:00.000-07:00

Since the majority of the Munchin’ Mamas EXCO and a few other members were craving to eat sushi & sashimi, we decided to stuff ourselves (fat) by going for a SUSHI BUFFET last Friday! Our enthusiastic GPS consultant Peiting recommended this place called Nihon Mura, located at the basement of The Cathay, which serves high tea buffet from 2.30-5.30 pm.

Presenting Nihon Mura, MM's choice of restaurant this time round! :)

We were supposed to meet at DG MRT station at 2 pm sharp, but as usual nobody was on time except for the president (of course!) and the treasurer. Hence, I now proclaim a new opening for anybody who wants to join MM. Calling anybody who has lots of SMSes and outgoing call time, you can be our people finder! xD Basically, your job scope would be to call/sms everybody to find out where they are right before an MM outing and to inform them where to meet everybody else. Hahah sounds quite fun right! :D

Anyway, so after everybody finally turned up at about 2.20pm, we trekked all the way from DG MRT to The Cathay as our form of exercise before a food outing. xP The atmosphere of the restaurant was pretty nice and cosy, just that *quotes chng* it was a little too dark and romantic, especially for a group of noisy people like us (looks at chng, kpf and GPS consultant) who will probably just spoil the ambience. We proceeded to order A LOT of food and we also took many plates of sushi from the conveyor belt, so we ended up with a spread like this.

Hahah..sure looks like a lot of food right!

At first, we were all busy eating and we couldn’t even be bothered to really talk, let alone take pictures. Hence, observe the lack of pictures at first only.

So, here’s what we think of the food served!

Salmon sashimi - it was rather fresh and tasted pretty nice, just that we felt it could have been sliced more thinly. It definitely beats the ones they serve at Sakae, but it is definitely not to-die-for either.

Baby Octopus – this was not bad too, just that the sight of eating the whole octopus really grosses me and some other MM people too. So, I suggest you bring a blindfold so you can eat it without feeling any sense of guilt. xD

Tako pochi – it’s hot & crispy, giving you that ‘crunch’ sound when you bite into it. However, I felt there was waaay too little filling (the octopus thing) inside for you to actually taste it.

Fried Tofu – it’s not bad, but nothing special either. It tastes like the one they serve in the rjc canteen, so I don’t see why you need to come all the way down to The Cathay to eat this. xP.

Chowamushi – In the first place, I’m not really a big fan of chowamushi. Plus, the chowamushi here is served with those kinds of fake crab meat, so don’t try it unless you want to be disappointed! xP

Handrolls – I must say the Californian handrolls were really quite good! Whether it was the unagi/tempura/soft-shell crab handroll, they all tasted really delicious. The seaweed is kind of crispy and nicely salted, complementing whatever’s inside the handroll. I definitely recommend everyone to try this! :D

Other sushi – they were all generally the kind of standard fare you can get in any Japanese restaurant around Singapore, so nothing special.

I think another thing this Japanese restaurant really needs to improve on is its wasabi. Even though I tried piling like one small heap of wasabi onto my salmon sashimi, I still failed to get that tingling sensation from my mouth through my nose. I’m sure the sushi and sashimi would have tasted a lot better with that and we would definitely have had a lot more fun watching each other go red in the eyes and squealing! xP.

Claire and Pingfang giving it the thumbs-up! xD

Though, overall, we feel that the sushi & sashimi high tea buffet served here is really decent, considering its price of only $14.50 (excluding GST) per person for students. Therefore, we herby award it three and a half Mama stars and recommend you to come if you're craving some japanese food!

We quietly ate for about half an hour, before our stomachs started filling up and we (or rather kpf, yunting and peiting) occupied ourselves with camwhoring! xD We were all feeling reaaaally full, and then our dear peiting called the waiter to order MORE FOOD? And, it wasn’t just more food. It was A LOT MORE FOOD, she was like 2 salmon sashimi, 2 tako pochi, 2 fried tofu ...... and we just STARED AT HER! And, we decided she’ll be responsible for finishing the food, not us! xP But, of course, we wouldn’t be so mean to our nice GPS consultant. Afterall, she does have our interests at heart! To help us make our money’s worth and ensure that we’re well-fed! We’ll always love you peiting! After a while we became too full to eat, so we did random things like trying on yunting’s sunglasses and just camwhoring! xD

The three of them doing what they do best!

A bug's life?

Ooooh..what's the scandal?

All of us, with our esteemed guest, ARATHI THE QUEEN!

That sums up MM’s sushi buffet outing and look out for our trip to MISS CLARITY’S! :D

zhiying :D (the one with the position that everybody wants xD)

RI'S POPCAFE!

2008-03-02T03:05:00.000-08:00

Yuxuan, Peiting and I decided to go for an unofficial Munchin' Mamas meeting at RI's Popcafe since we had about an hour or two to spare before BLYC camp started. 29 February 2008 was Peiting's first Munchin' Mamas meeting! : D

Brownie and ice cream!

We ordered the brownie and ice cream for 2 bucks! The price seemed pretty reasonable, since most brownie's sold outside cost much more. (But if we compare it to Sheena's 2 bucks brownie to this brownie, give me Sheena's one any day)

The brownie was lousy! It was dry and hard to swallow, even though I guess it's cheap! If not for the ice cream, I think the brownie would have been stuck in my throat.

The aunty was very nice though. She didn't mind having us losers in the cafe camwhoring like nobody's business when we were obviously more interested in taking pictures rather than the brownie ( Yes, you can tell from the ratio of the pictures of the brownies to us. I mean, how different can a brownie look! So one picture shall suffice : D )

We wanted to order more, but most of the food were gone, and she was closing up anyway. We'll be popping over to Popcafe another time to do another review with more of the Munchin' Mamas members!

Mama stars: 1.5 Mama stars.

MORE PICTURES TAKEN FROM OUR UNOFFICIAL OUTING!
The reason for the many pictures taken was because of Peiting, who insisted on retaking them since she claimed she looked fat and ugly (read: fagly). PEITING, YOU LOOK ADORABLE OKAY.

Welcome to Muchin' Mamas!

(oops, last picture wasn't taken in RI's Popcafe, but RJ's toilets. : D Just FYI! )

2008-02-25T21:50:00.000-08:00

HEY MAMAS! i am back again with yet another MM outing: THE LEAP YEAR GATHERING!our esteemed PRESIDENT came up with this idea! -applauds- so do come if you can make it and spread it to any eightians that you happen to meet! (=

Date: Friday, 29th February 2008
Time: 545pm
Place: Windy benches (house boards side)

we should be either staying in J8 or going to town cos don't we all miss orchard so much?! and we will most probably be watching THE LEAP YEARS together so do bring enough money!

and if anyone ends school early on friday and want someone to hang out with before the meeting, you can call yours truly cos i end school at 1230! haha yup so cya all!

this LEAP YEAR is gonna be AWEEEESOOOOOME! (x

LOVE, FANG

2008-02-24T01:47:00.000-08:00

HEY MAMAS!

this is your events coordinator here, proposing our next outing!

MISS CLARITY CAFE

Credits: www.hungrygowhere.com

DETAILS
Date: Saturday, 14 March 2008
Time: 11 am
Meeting place: Bugis MRT

SMS me whether you can make it! If too many people can't make it then we needa do some rescheduling so do tell me FAST! and ms clarity cafe isn't opened on sunday so that can't be an alternative sadly.

For more information of the restaurant, CLICK HERE!
(peiting you should be doing some work on finding out how to get there from bugis mrt! xD)

so check this blog regularly for updates of the outing and i trust everyone to visit this blog regularly for any new outings. if you don't and miss out on any upcoming activities, DON'T BLAME ME! (=

btw ms president, chng and i the two bitches have something to say:

___crystaaal* says:
u know
___crystaaal* says:
i think the president damn SLACK pls
___crystaaal* says:
she has no proper post
f a n g ! says:
YES
f a n g ! says:
NO USE!
___crystaaal* says:
YEAH
___crystaaal* says:
when u blog
___crystaaal* says:
please add that little snippet of our msn convo in

so there! don't be offended! (= so see ya all on saturday!

LOVE, FANG

MUNCHIN’ MAMAS SECOND FOOD HUNT: TIONG BAHRU MARKET

2008-02-17T02:04:00.000-08:00

I shall now edit this post such that it becomes more credible. Comments in red by Secretary Jasmine. (-stares at imposter Chng who is a threat to my position-)

Before I start blogging on our second food rendezvous at Tiong Bahru Market, President Chen has certain issues she would like to address, regarding the establishment of rules for our club.

Rule #1: Members who pon 3 or more meetings (without valid reasons, i.e. having a hot date thus abandoning fellow mamas) would be given a warning! 3 strikes and you’re out! Our motto “where there ain’t no papas” is there for a reason, mamas. Hmm, why do I have a feeling she's talking about me?

Of course, if you’ve been a highly regarded member all along, we might consider your appeal to rejoin our esteemed club : D You may contact our Secretary for administrative purposes regarding your appeal. So if I get kicked out, I contact myself? : D

Now, on to my real blogpost for the day!

MUNCHIN’ MAMAS SECOND FOOD HUNT: TIONG BAHRU MARKET.
(We decided to downgrade. High class dining shall only be held once a month, otherwise we would be seriously broke. We need sponsors! )

It’s only our second meeting and half our EXCO were already not present! (namely Yuxuan and Claire) Thus, this displeased the President and yours truly very much. Plus, our dear secretary, Jasmine, was having second thoughts about coming to our meeting. !@#$%^&*() Hopefully, Munchin’ Mamas is not going to disintegrate soon. It's not! Peiting and I want to organise one on 14th March during the school hols! Are you people free?

By the way, Peiting has joined our team! I shall forgive her for not having been to this blog EVEN ONCE. But as a GPS (global positioning system) consultant, she is in charge of showing us the way to any new food hideout! Cool position yea?

Yunting (our new recruited member, the Photographer -remembers our attempt to give her a cooler sounding name LOL), Jas, Zhiying and I headed up to Tiong Bahru Market. Considering that it was a Sunday afternoon, you would think that the place would be packed full of people, but we managed to secure a seat easily.

There were long queues at the chicken rice stall and cheekueh stall, both of which had supposedly good reviews, hence the Munchin’ Mamas decided to see for ourselves. See what?

In the end, we ordered chicken rice, cheekueh, carrot cake, prawn noodles, tang yuan (for Zhiying and I since we are both huge fans of tangyuans), some ice kachang desert YT and Jas got which tasted a bit like cough syrup to me and sugarcane juice. Sadly, there’s been a lack of pictures ~~of us~~ since all of us were starving like crazy.

TSK. Camwhoring while YT and I were painstakingly queueing for the hokkien mee.

I prefer white carrot cake though.

The Chicken rice stall had such a long queue, we took ages there. Yunting was all grumpy from the waiting and said “WHY DID YOU ALL TAKE SO LONG! GO HEAVEN AND BUY IS IT!”

Zhiying and I, the Tangyuan fans, felt that the dessert stall at Tiong Bahru market did not meet standards, although the soup and the skin of the tangyuan were pretty good. When you bit into the tangyuan, sesame did not ooze out into your mouth for you to savour. Instead, the fillings remained stuck inside the tangyuan and it felt kind of hard to bite. RATING: 2.5/5 mama stars Maybe it's the cheater bug kind of stall that uses canned tang yuan! : /

As I eat all kinds of food and find that all food tastes the same to me, I shall not be doing the actual food reviews as I would be doing great injustice to the stalls. Hence I shall leave our dear secretary to do the reviewing once she comes back from her movie date! But of course. I see my opinion is highly regarded.

As I'm typing this a week after I've eaten the food, I must apologise for any inaccuracies in my review.

The hokkien mee was fragrant and wasn't too dry or wet as what substandard stalls would present you with. And the chef definitely looked pro while working his magic on noodles and prawns BUT how can hokkien me be called hokkien mee without the bits of fried pork skin! SIGH. That's like laksa without the cockles, rojak without the sesame seeds and chicken rice without the achar! RATING: 3/5 mama stars

Speaking of chicken rice, the stall we tried didn't have achar as a side dish but there was an interesting addition of pickled vegetables as seen in the picture above that was pretty appetising too. I didn't really like it though cos I like my chicken to be fat and juicy but the one we ate was more on the dry side. Well at least there was skin on the chicken. I never ever eat my chicken skinless! RATING: 3/5 mama stars

The carrot cake was not bad! It has an interesting translucent quality to it when you hold it up to the light, which kind of amazes me. We added so much chilli to the hokkien mee and carrot cake that it sort of numbed my taste buds though. RATING: 3.5/5 mama stars

As for the desert YT and I got, it wasn't anything special and for people like Chng who thinks it tastes like cough syrup, it can't be that good. But there was a generous amount of sago balls and jelly, which I like because I've been subjected to miserable amounts of toppings in food court desert stalls for quite some time. RATING: 3/5 mama stars

Updates: Yunting has now been given the position of a Photographer since she loves to camwhore so much! We tried thinking of a cheem name for the post, but we realized a photographer will always be a photographer, no matter how cheem you want to make it sound. Too bad, Yunting.

Meanwhile, The Lord of the Tissues post is still open. Anyone interested? We could change the name… Would Tissue Queen be more appealing?

New members! Think of your posts! The sooner you think of them, the sooner membership cards would be printed and delivered : D

Stay tuned for more updates!

(This post is lovingly brought to you by your Creative Arts Director because the Secretary is busy with her date.)

I shall leave all of you with a beautiful picture of 1/4 of the Munchin' Mamas. Yes, as you can see from her expression, Jasmine was the one taking the picture. She had a hard time co-ordinating her facial expression and pressing the button. SORRY LAH. And I look so spastic I should just be cropped out of the picture! : (

2008-02-12T21:29:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone! I'm back to give an OFFICIAL update.

THIS GROUP IS REAL. The membership card and our gmail account munchinmamas@gmail.com really exists!

-hears cries of support-

Anyway, our next meeting is going to be held at roti prata house at thomson road as yuxuan our research guru has said! (or maybe casuarina curry 0.o) BUT whatever it is we will be eating roti prata on sunday during brunch period (time hasn't been confirmed) so feel free to join us! : D

Members we have recruited so far include yikai, olly, pingfang and yunting! But the only posts we have thought of so far is the lord of the tissue - the coolest tissue provider ever or erm the events coordinator (whatever that is lol) So join us now before you get even more ridiculous posts : D

2008-01-26T10:31:00.000-08:00

Crystal: Zhiying, kick Jasmine out of the team. She hasn't been doing any work!

There. Barely 1.5 weeks since the start of Munchin' Mamas and my fellow mama is threatening to disown me as the secretary they cannot do without. I have the crucial job of documenting all our rendezvous and the antics of our mamas. With this first official post I have to inform you that you are witnessing the birth of an amazing student interest group, so leave your name on our tagboard now and we shall inform you of our next food hideout! : D

What can be any better than a steamboat meal for buddies who haven't met up for a long time? After scouring the streets of Bugis, we settled at Shanghai Steamboat Xian De Lai on Liang Seah Street. There was this super popular steamboat place down the road but there was a QUEUE for seats and the few of us just couldn't be bothered to wait for a place so we just took their namecard and we are going to RESERVE seats the next time we have a craving for steamboat.

Xian De Lai was a pretty neat place with air-conditioning just at the right temperature because it prevented us from sweating while sitting around the pot of bubbling hot soup. (okay crys said she was sweating like crazy) Instead of the traditional hole-in-the-table steamboat, they made use of this electric heater and placed the steamboat on it which is pretty dangerous I must say because if you were any more clumsy than these three mamas

who dropped their chopsticks at least twice each, you would have knocked the whole pot over and disfigured yourself. Thank goodness Claire and I were sitting on the steamboat side where we were careful not to risk the lives of our members.

We had a choice of two base soups and we chose a spicy base and some pork ribs soup for the other. For about $20 (inclusive of GST and service charge 0.o), we were expecting a steamboat buffet but half of our orders didn't come and even if they did, they came in miserable portions on mini plates. Our favourites were the special meat balls, vegetable dumplings and yam strips but other than that, there wasn't much they offered that we couldn't find in the supermarkets.

So for the sake of that $20, I suggest you spend it on anything else but not the mediocre steamboat place we went to. RATING: 2/5 mama stars

And since it was our first meeting, we had to challenge our stomachs to their limits by stopping over at this traditional chinese desserts eatery Ji De Chi 记得吃 where we had their tangyuan in ginger soup and plain glutinous rice balls that came with crushed nuts. We started whipping out our cameras and taking pictures of what we were eating and one concerned lady came over to ask us if anything was wrong.

-imagines the day munchin' mamas becomes THE feared group of food reviewers with all the eateries laying out their red carpets and offering us their best delicacies for free- : D

The tangyuan didn't disappoint

but we don't recommend the plain glutinous rice balls because they are plain. LOL.

We didn't know that at first and since they looked oh-so-divine in the golden syrup covering them, we had to try some for ourselves. Since this place has had promising food reviews, we wouldn't mind coming back to try other items on their menu (like their steamed egg white, I would have tried it if not for my empty wallet that day) when we have more stomach space. RATING: 3.5/5 mama stars