Night out

This is a pretty famous store here in Chengdu where huge numbers of people will flock here for dinner at about 7pm. It's called 玉林串串香。

 

Skewers of meat or vegetables are thrown into a hot pot of either spicy base (麻辣) or non-spicy base. Most people there chose the full spicy pot but we do not want to kill ourselves with their powerful spices so we opted for a mixed (鸳鸯)base.

Our pickings from the kitchen (The skewers were divided into 1RMB per big stick and 0.12RMB for a small one.)

Waiting for the base to boil, look how hungry Gary is.. Poor thing.

Usually for hotpot, they will give us each a dish of either bean paste mix or sesame oil mix for the hotpot items. Once your food is cooked, you take them out of the hotpot and dip the food into this special mix of oil/bean. For this particular hotpot, we were given sesame oil with mashed garlic inside. Talk about artery-clogging...

Anyway the total bill came up to about 70+RMB for 3 of us and we were stuffed. But apparently, according to our driver, each person (for the locals) can eat up to 100RMB at this place! We were totally amazed.

After such an artery-clogging meal, we decided to cleanse our stomachs with something less exciting, but yummy nonetheless. We walked a few stores down the road to a Hong-Kong cafe. (And these stores are just across Gary's office, how lucky is he!)

William ordered a Honeydew shake and it looked really good...

And I had my mango intake for the day with my mango sago without the coconut cream, but replaced with mango juice!!

But poor Gary has to wait donkey years for his. By the time his order arrived, we had already finished our desserts. And we tried to eat as slowly as we could, but....

Apparently they finished their yogurt and they had to make a fresh batch for Gary's strawberry milk shake or something. But it was worth waiting for it. The place was real cozy with nice sofas and ambience lighting. We will definitely visit again.

Swensens

Being in a foreign place,  I tend to be drawn towards familiar brand names like ESPRIT, Isetan, Parksons, IKEA, etc... But I am not sure why I wasn't interested in visiting Swensens here even though I had heard of it. Anyway, several of our Singaporean friends who had been here longer had sang high praises of it so we decided to give it a try.

Swensens is located in a very hidden but quaint street on Chunxi Road (which is like the Orchard road of Singapore). 

Interior of Swensens, right at the entrance.

Familiar settings.

The food was not too bad, we enjoyed it. Prices are considered a little above average for the population here, but overall, it's good. We will definitely return for the ice-cream next time. 

Ramblings...

It's been some 4 months since we arrived here and my hubby liked the spicy food/dishes here that he kept bugging me to learn and try cooking some of the dishes. And I finally did.. 

This is a dish that we tried at one of the luncheons at the house church that we attend. And I manage to obtain the recipe from the chef...

粉丝cooked with豆拌酱

Apparently this dish can be prepared hot or cold, but I've only tried preparing it hot and I kind of prefer it that way.

Next dish is just a normal stirfry vegetables with mushroom but I used their spicy chilli sauce to cook it, and it's so yummy!!! Spicy and temperature hot!

And what more to finish such a spice-laden meal than a nice bowl of cold mixed fresh fruits with yogurt..

And I finally tried the blueberry cheesecake recipe that I got from Auntie Jess. (Missed those times when Auntie Jess brought her DELICIOUS blueberry cheesecake to church and we got to enjoy the yummy dessert.)

Well, this is my first time trying to make a baked cheesecake, and it turned out pretty well, I think. 

Looks and tastes good too!!!

And here are some of the common sights on the roads now that the weather had turned cold. Carts selling all sorts of food from roasted sweet potatoes, baked bread (sorta like pita), grilled skewers like mini potatoes, toufu, meat, etc....

Look at the carts! I like the traditional huge urns as 'oven' to bake sweet potatoes. 

And further behind is a guy selling pineapples on a stick. Reminds me of Krabi where we enjoyed fresh pineapples (cut and cored) on the sunny beach.

The mouth-watering aroma drifting from this cart with a big variety of grilled food..

And this is a common sight any time of the year...Street peddlers selling their wares ranging from necklaces to handphone covers...