Obama, Healthcare, Food

Check out my latest on the Huffington Post.

Some good news: right after I posted it, Obama did speak up saying “It also means cutting down on all the junk food that is fueling an epidemic of obesity, putting far too many Americans, young and old, at greater risk of costly, chronic conditions. That's a lesson Michelle and I have tried to instill in our daughters with the White House vegetable garden that Michelle planted. And that's a lesson that we should work with local school districts to incorporate into their school lunch programs.”

Let's just watch and see if this is a whole lotta B.S. or what.
I'll be holding him to this quote.

Singaporean dessert

Before it's too late and I have forgotten everything, I must write about dessert.  Dessert in Singapore/Malaysia/Indonesia is not like anything I have ever had before.  Wheat flour makes few appearances, same with chocolate.  You would think then that there was nothing good left to eat for dessert, but this would not be true.

Picture this:

a bowl full of chopped gummy bears, sweet corn, and beans. Topped with Italian ices.

This is called ice kachang and it's the picture I led with when I began this series.  Here's another closeup so you can see the corn and stuff.  Maybe it was all the satay and beer I had before it (or the week-long food orgy leading up to this, my final night in Asia), but this wasn't my favorite thing I had.  My favorites were in Kuala Lumpur...

At a sweet little restaurant

 called Precious, in the Central market, we had chendal, sago melaka and bubor chacha.  The whole Malaysian gang I was with were very very excited to see these things on the menu and declared these renditions to be "very very very good."  I myself had nothing to compare them to.  They looked like nothing I had ever seen and I thought they were OUTSTANDING.  

The one at the top of the pic is, I believe, the sago melaka, a divine mound of glutinous rice balls submerged in a sweet coconut broth. Does this even do it justice? Chendal is stranger, also incredible--a mound of shaved ice, with that same coconut liquid, and some brown stuff--brown 

sugar? and then topped with these glutinous green stringy things.  how do I make this sound appetizing?  My food writing skills are failing me.  You'd have to eat it to understand.