Singapore is a city filled with delicious food. Most of them are high in calories. Due to our vast culture, we get to eat food from the different race and religion. Chinese likes stir-frying and deep frying methods of cooking. Although we do steaming from time to time, most of the food that's calling your names are those packed with loads of fats! For stir-frying dishes, we have Char Kway Tiao and Fried Hokkien Prawn Noodles. Both are fried with deep fried lards to have the extra fragrance and omph in it. Although I don't quite fancy it, a lot of Singaporeans do!
There are simply too few places with steam goodness. There's one that I really liked but it's more to the saltier side (equals to high sodium). How come we do not have any places with simple steam dishes? Think they are not nice or tasty enough to survive on our local foody population. Where people actually don't mind eating something nicer for the same price. People tend to choose tasty over health. So much about being healthier. LOL!
Our Malay friends sell wicked Satay, Mee Rebus, Nasi Briyani and etc. They do not use lard due to their religion. Muslims do not eat Pork. But they have a lot of Mutton dishes. Their Mutton Briyani is to die for. Now that Briyani is available anywhere, anytime, it's really hard to avoid the savoury goodness of the spices and colourful rice. Also, the melt-in-your-mouth mutton, cooked till super tender. It's also sucked in all the flavours of the spices thereby covering the gamy smell of the mutton.
I just ate Roti Prata and Mee Goreng yesterday. There's this super sinful shop in Thomson area. The roti prata they serve is the crispy-est I've tried in Singapore. And they have this special paper prata, where the super thin dough is fried and have sugar added in one side and condensed milk on the other side. Imagine the about of sugar, fats and calories packed in that one plate of dough. It's not even filling! But it's damn good. I cannot resist this sweet sin! God please give me strength!
Although the Eurasian occupies the least in our population, the food is definitely everywhere! From fast food chains to fine dining options, There's all sorts of options to suit your budget and taste buds. Recently, there's been a rise in certain types of restaurants. Example the Salad Bars, Soup restaurants, All day breakfast joints, Sandwiches eateries. All these gives a feeling that it's the healthier choice, but we've all seen articles that some of the food are misleading. For example, a sandwich looks fine, but the amount of carbs that you are getting from the bread is too high, the sodium from the ham and meats is unthinkable. So, you think you can't really go wrong with salad bar. But the salad bars in Singapore is too damn expensive. Would you choose to buy a $6.90 salad that is not filling, or a packet of $2.50 that is yummy and makes you full? Do your maths. Now, that's the reason for our obese teens. Further, these salad bars are not as easily available as our chicken rice stalls.
Apart from real restaurants or food stalls, we have LOTS of places for desserts. And trust me, these places are really making profit from the look of it. We have a lot of ice cream shops that operate 24 hours or at least till like 3am. These places are not cheap. Usually $3+ for a scoop. If you want waffles or brownies to go along, please add another $5-$10, depending on the restaurant you are at. Places that do not only sell ice-cream, sells cakes. We all know what goes into the composition of a cake right. Do I still need to break them down?
Apart from all the above DAILY sins we commit, we still have special occasions. We eat like gluttons during Chinese New Year. We have the sinful Bah Kwa, all those goodies that's usually filled with lard also. I recently found our that my favourite brand of Bah Kwa contains 977kcals in one single slice. How sick is that?! Can you imagine the healthiest choice is Mandarin Oranges? That's ok if you eat like one or two. But usually each family will get a box of oranges during CNY, where do you think all these oranges goes to after the 15 days celebration?
We also have Hari Raya where our Malay friends will handmade those homemade goodies like pineapple tarts (also available during CNY), cookies (X100 types), rolls, cakes, chocolates and their kuey kueys. Usually, all these delicacies are packed with butter!
We also have Christmas, mooncake festival that's coming up, rice dumpling festival that we ate lots of glutinous rice dumplings with fatty pork wrapped in leaves. Also, we got the ghost month, where we have lots of offerings to the deceased. With the incense and joss sticks, we pray with food! Usually, we have a whole roasted suckling pig, roasted chicken and ducks, steam fish, noodles, rice, candies, tidbits, drinks, or anything that comes into mind. We all know that our ancestors don't really "eat" the food. After they finish "eating", it's said that they blessed the food. So we eat it, to be blessed. And down it goes through our esophagus.
Those above are typical. We still have anniversaries, birthdays that we come together and eat. Rule of thumb, just EAT!
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