Still selling

It is July and 3 months without an update so we are pretty sure most viewers won't come back. This entry has to be posted though, so perhaps we can read it again in the future to recall the reflections today.

By October-November, there will be a change in our lives and it is very much depending on 1-2 decisions which shall not be elaborated here. But we can share the possible scenarios:

- Retire
- Carry on doing what we like, and changing/improving the menu as promised.
- Change entirely what we are selling. Beef noodle? Handmade noodles? Japanese food? We really don't know.

Well, obviously the uncertainty has been unsettling enough to unmotivated. Thus the lack of postings, creation as we have decided to let things remain status quo, until we are clear what lies ahead for us.

Labour Day holiday

Heard tomorrow is Sports Day. Thurs is Labour Day public holiday. A break for the all hardworking students and the busy teachers. Exams are probably round the corner soon. Have a good break and to all students, study hard!

Sour Cream

First of all, it has been a long time since the last entry.
Life's been busy - and terribly warm.
May is lurking and it'll always be rather busy until the holidays.

We hope to try out the few newer things in the holidays and implement them.

We apologise for the unavaliability of Sour Cream. We'll try to bring it back next week.

Peach Salsa (Part 2)

Tweaked a few bits, confident it is a better one than the last week.
Fresher, crunchier and prettier. Sweeter plus a dash of lemon

Peach Salsa

We encountered this during nice meal outside at an Australian Outlet.
It isn't a conservative taste so we are not sure how youngsters will like it.

We are bringing this to you anyway. We are sure you'll grow to love it.
So try it. Salsa the Australian Way.

Back to school

Holidays are ending.
Hope you enjoy it. It's never enough of course.
It's back to work for us too...

March Holidays

Taking a much needed break to 're-org'
Too many changes recently.

Patty

Meat patty is cooked on a flat hot plate. So it fulfills the requirement.

Some information about the item:

Ingredients:
Mince Pork
Onions (we love it so we added that)
Egg (to hold the meat)
Flour (to make the meat smoother)
Pepper
Salt

There are real cheese in the sauce, we melt the cheese and stirred curiously and surprisingly it turns out really nice and cheesy so that's that.

Moving on..

-New Pastas
-Will remove unpopular items (by poll results)
-Exploring Japanese Rice Balls, heard it from someone who rave about it.

Death of our inventions

Cheese Pork
Chocobo Egg

and our copycat items

Batter Fish
Breaded Fish
Chicken Cutlet
Pork Cutlet

basically, anything which goes into boiling oil in case I left out any.

Goodbye and it was fun while it lasts.

The rusty brain is creaking for legit items to replace these... suggestions welcome

More good (bad) news.

After a meeting with the school folks...

No, we are not supposed to fry anything on anyday anymore.

Period.

It's good (bad) news, depending how you look at it.

For us, it's still business as usual.

Obviously we have to revamp the menu, so we seek your kind understanding during the transition period, it is really difficult to get things changed within a short period of time because we are mass producing and not cooking for a small family.

So hope you guys and gals will be able to accept the healthier options as we roll them out slowly alright?

Might as well...

The school wants nothing 'fried' on the menu on everyMon, Wed, Fri. The boss (drinks stall) feels the pressure and relay the message. Of course we too feel the pressure now and for everyone's sake:

School: Happy the stalls comply with standards

Boss: Happy that school doesn't give him pressure

Students: Health will improve, supposedly

Us: Ok, if we please everyone, we ought to feel happy too right?

Looks like the winner is...

Jap Rice..

The poll has not end but it is clear Jap Rice is going to win it.
So how to make Jap Rice?!

:O

Change of menu, soon

School complained we are 'frying too much'
So some items of this nature will be taken out on certain days, the similar way it was to dyfunctional items like french fries and popcorn chicks.

In the meantime, help us by giving suggestions what 'non fried' items we can add to the menu?

55 pcs of Cheese Pork for pork lovers this week.

The usual quantity is around 30.
Hope it will be sold out, don't want to bring any home.

Thank you for the support

Wondering if we are able to continue next year.

Happy Chinese New Year!

It's 5th day of Chinese New Year.
Wish everyone a good year ahead.

Blog url

The blog url written on the glass front of the stall has been mischieviously wiped off.
Haha.

I wondered what happened. Any clues for us?
Too lazy to write it back though

Pop Corn Chicken - The Banned

It was crazy.

The demand was definitely more than what we can possibly supply.
Unless we buy a meat cutting machine.

Back then, the canteen lease was up for tender. We weren't sure if we would be around the following year. If a new operator won the bid then, we might or might not be able to continue our operation. With all the uncertainties back then, investing in a machine was probably the last thing on our minds.

So, it was down to hardcore manual meat slicing. We prepared the popcorn chicken by tubs (those blue Bestfood tubs). We prefered to use chicken drumstick meat rather than chicken breast.

Bad mistake.

Chicken drumstick meat was a lot more 'slippery' and difficult to cut, especially the skin. Well, it took a fast hand about 30 mins to fill 1 tub and an average helping hand 1 hour to do the same. To fill half a dozen of those requires about 3 -6 hours (depending who does it) of pure meat cutting after 'office hours'

All 6 tubs would typically be sold in 1 hour with angry customers yelling for more. Not that we were unhappy with good business, we were at a loss of what to do to meet the demands.

Unluckily for us, (and maybe the customers) this item was soon banned from the menu. Personally I am not sure what happened, but it probably doesn't matter.

If it is disallowed, it is disallowed. Case closed but it was fun while it lasts. Hope you guys and girls enjoyed it.

Soup matters

The 'Campbell Soup' bowls we use are a little bit misleading. We used to get the supplies from them during the Nanyang Girls School days (before we came here) so they gifted us these bowls.

Not anymore though. Can't remember why that happened. Either we lose contact with the supplier or we find the soup we made better than their supplies.

I'm sure everyone tried Campbell soup before. Just wondering is the soup we are offering better, or the original Campbell soup. If it is the latter, we might consider searching for their supplies again...

Scotch Egg

During a trip in Perth, we came across a homely cottage-like supermarket by a petrol kiosk one freezing afternoon. I kept staring curiously at a product on the counter. Of course it was a scotch egg.

Back in Singapore,

"What's this?" asked Canteen Auntie.

"Scotch Egg," came the reply.

"Huh?"

"Yeah."

So it became an item on the menu today. We are still trying to improve it week by week.
Problems include:

- Eggs shells are difficult to peel. Seriously. Try peeling 40 eggs! Delicate care has to be taken to make sure no shell fragments remain where they are not supposed to be as well.
- We can't find sage supplies(yet), the herb that really make scotch eggs delicious. So we have to use rosemary as a stand-in herb as for now.
- As the meat patties are thick, very careful cooking required, there was 1 case of meat not 100% cooked. We urge diners to voice it out by bringing it back and we promise to return it completedly cooked. However we are confident these cases will cease by now as we are very committed in giving no-nonsense, well prepared meals to customers.
- It is rather difficult to wrap the whole thing up without things falling apart.
- It looks small although we use more meat than a usual pork chop would have. Hopefully that wouldn't be a minus in the presentation area.
- It requires so much more time to prepare compared to a regular chicken chop, sometimes we wondered if we are asking for trouble.

Hope to get some feedbacks on this.

Feedback

Any feedbacks?

Cheese Pork

We toyed with the idea of embedding cheese into meat ages ago, only to find a way to do it properly in our 3rd of operation. Thought that it would be good to list down the problems we faced in the process of learning how to prepare this item.

Initial problems:
-The cheese melt and leak during cooking.
-Difficult to mass produce, it is probably easy to make 1 or 2 but really tough to make 40 of them.
-Inconsistent meat size/shape from suppliers.
-Which type of meat should be used.
-The embedding requires relatively thick meat but as a result inner sides of meat can turn out uncooked and cooking it longer will burn the crumb outside.

Just a thought here...

2008 is our 5th year of operation. It hasn't been easy through these years and we would like to thank everyone for their feedback and support. There were a lot of ups and downs (more downs than ups) and we probably would have given up if not for the support. So all these couldn't have happen without you.

Well, nothing last forever. Just like all students who will be here for 4-6 years, it may be inevitable that we may, though reluctantly, cease operation in this lovely place one day. Personally we think it is a pity to part ways like that.

We wondered before if we should start(continue) this little stall outside the school so that students and ex students can get to enjoy occasional good old days together.

Why we enjoy our work in HCI

-The place is reasonably near home
-The environment is lovely
-The customers are honest, good boys and girls
-The boss is rather nice
-We have a sentiment attachment to the school