Leading the wild into the ways of the man…
The Coffee Bean.
The Original Ice Blended Black Forest w/ whipped cream @ RM 11.50.
Optional honey sticks for those of us who still have taste buds.
Here’s a closer look at my short hair. My friends say I look 13 instead of 23.
Black Forest Ice Blended
Our secret Coffee Extract and chocolate or vanilla powder blended
with ice, chocolate espresso beans, maraschino cherries and low-fat
milk.
This is a double espresso – the ice blended drink was just for starters.
This is the new product by KFC – Chick-a-Cheese! It costs RM 1.90
and didn’t look like much from the banner, but I went in to check it
out anyway.
There was a lot of cheesy goodness.
Much more than I expected.
I was overwhelmed by the cheddar assault.
Hell, even my tray liner is advertising the new Chick a Cheese.
Here’s some interesting facts (?) from the liner notes:
KFC Chick-a-Cheese
Crispy Cheese-stuffed Chicken Sausage on a Stick!
Introducing the new Chick ‘a’ Cheese from KFC! A juicy chicken
sausage, stuffed with yummy cheddar cheese, cooked nice & crispy in
corn batter. That’s what gives it the triplelicious taste of corn,
cheese & chicken!
Did you know?
Sausages have been around for a loooong time. The Babylonians and
the Chinese have been eating them since 1500 BC! They were even
mentioned in Homer’s “Odyssey”, written in the 8th century BC.
The term “hot dog” was coined by cartoonist Tad Dorgan in 1901. He
sketched a cartoon depicting vendors selling “dachshund sausages” but
wasn’t sure how to spell “dachshund” – so he just called them hot dogs!
Corndogs, made by dipping in corn batter, are a popular item in
American high school cafeterias. They were created in 1942 for the
Texas State Fair by Neil Fletcher.
According to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council, July is National Hot Dog Month!
Anyway, this is what the Chick ‘a’ Cheese looks like. It’s corn dog on a sticks wrapped in individual packages.
Here’s what it looks like after a bite has been taken out of it.
Here’s another angle.
What does it taste like? It tasted surprisingly good actually. The
warm cheese was divine, melting out of the crispy batter and creating a
wonderful fusion with the sausage. Recommended!
I haven’t been to McDonald’s for a while…dropped in this afternoon
for a quick lunch after ironing out some annoying bugs and noticed that
McDonald’s has a promotion going on where you get a free soft serve top
up with every Big Mac value meal. It’s basically an upgrade of your
coke to a McFloat for no extra charge.
I’m rather partial to Spicy Chicken McDeluxe myself, but I thought,
why not, and got the Big Mac meal instead. I haven’t had one in ages
and I’ll need to start pre-loading for my Weekend Warrior Thing (TM).
😉 Big Macs sure tastes good after you haven’t had one in a while. The
coke float (or spider, as some people call it for reasons that escapes
my comprehension) was a welcome addition as well.
I like ice cream with McDonald’s and this McFloat substitutes that
well. 🙂 Head down to McDonalds to take advantage of this promotion
where you get a McFloat for free with every Big Mac McValue Meal!
This post was sponsored by McDonald’s. 😉
Fish McDippers is the latest addition to the McDonald’s menu over
here. It’s like Chicken McNuggets, except it’s made with fish instead
of chicken. This gives it a soft and spongy texture which is quite
pleasing. McDonald’s Fish McDippers comes in two sizes – the photo
above shows the large “mini bucket” which contains 6 of the fish
nuggets and retails for RM 4.90.
Here’s a look inside the six piece container.
It’s also available in a smaller size, which usually comes with
Happy Meals, but can be purchased separately for RM 2.95. The small 4
piece box has…er, four pieces of the deep fried, batter coated, fish
nuggets.
It is wonderfully crunchy and crispy on the outside, but retains the
soft, slightly undercooked and delicious fish flesh on the inside.
This is what the 4 pack looks like, when opened.
The Fish McDippers comes with tartar sauce – which goes well with fish.
Unlike the sauce mini containers in Australia, the ones here are free instead of the A$ 0.30 they charge over there.
Instructions for use:
1. Grasp one Fish McDipper with your fingers and insert the nugget
into the open tartar sauce container. Dip the exterior surface with the
sauce.
2. Open mouth and take a bite out of the piece. Repeat.
Pizza Hut has this seafood promotion going on. We went there last
night for dinner and had the Atlantis Combo 2, which includes 4 seafood
soup as the appetizer, a large pan pizza (choice of Neptune Delight,
Thai Seafood, Hawaiian Tuna or Island Supreme) as the main course, 2
Alfredo Tuna Spaghetti or Seafood Lasagna as the side order, 4 Black
Forest Trifle as the dessert and a pitcher of Pepsi as the beverage.
This promotion comes with a game, just like the XXX Pizza did last
time. The above shows the game board – there’s a spinner on the upper
right hand corner and a board on covering the left, with a red triangle
as the piece that you move.
The Ocean Spinner shown here shows which navigational direction your piece will move. It’s made to look like a compass.
You’re allowed to spin twice and you move the piece accordingly.
Miriam spinned, since she was the guest of honor (last dinner before
she leaves) and the red Bermuda Triangle moved up twice, giving us this:
4 pieces of Breadstix.
It goes really well with the dessert, if you eat them together. Here are the rest of the food photos:
Seafood Soup
It had something resembling seafood inside and it had a seafood taste to it. I can’t comment further than that.
Seafood Lasagna
The lasagna is good, there’s not much seafood bits inside, but the creamy sauce makes up for that.
Alfredo Tuna Spaghetti
It was alright, but nothing to write home about. It had pieces of
Seafood Stuff (TM) in a thick sauce of unknown origin. It tastes
like…well, seafood.
Neptune Delight
This is the new pizza so we went for this one. It has tuna, squid,
pineapple, crabmeat stick, green capsicum, fresh tomato and lime
mayonnaise sauce.
We went for the cheese crust as well. It’s fit for Neptune himself.
It tasted good to me anyway. I think I ate half of the whole pizza
(munchies).
Black Forest Trifle
It has a blueberry jelly top and a bottom that has the consistency
of custard, with a layer of biscuit crumbs in the middle. Tastes rather
like cheesecake.
Pizza Hut, 3rd Mile Kuching.
31/03/2004
This is the scanned photo from Valentine’s Day when I went to eat Pizza Hut’s SweetHeart Pizza
[sixthseal.com]. I received a call just now on my cell from an unknown
082 (Kuching) number, answered it and the Pizza Hut guy asked where I
was. Told him I was in Padungan (where I worked) and a guy came in 5
minutes to give me the photo. Thus, this is me eating alone on
Valentine’s Day (afternoon, went out with friends at night) in Pizza
Hut, Kuching.
I went to Pizza Hut for their Sweet Heart pizza after work. The
funniest thing happened while I was there, more details below. I work
half days on Saturday till 12:30 pm. I went alone, coz obviously it
won’t be right to go with someone else since I’m in a relationship. 🙂
That did not dissuade me from going to try their SweetHeart pizza
though. It’s a limited edition pizza, and the word “limited edition”
always activates my consumerism mentality. 😉 It’s a heart shaped pizza
too, how many times do you get to see that? 🙂
Show your heart this Valentine’s Day with Pizza Hut’s latest
creation – SweetHeart Pizza! Specially designed heart shaped pan crust
topped with Valentine’s toppings to spice up your romantic occasion.
I was the only lone diner there…
Anyway, it should be noted that 4 tablets of 15 mg Dormicum was
consumed right after work and I was Not Exactly Sober (TM) when I drove
there and walked in. I was a bit of an asshole to the girl handling the
seats (the place was full, and my patience is limited edition too) – my
apologies. Anyway, I soon got seated and ordered a SweetHeart pizza and
a mocha float.
My One & Only
Cherry
Lovebird
Chicken Meatloaf
You’re So Hot
Red Capsicum
Nuts About You
Almond Flakes
Sweetie
Pineapple Tidbits
Glazed with
Truly Yours
100% Pure Honey
Ala Carte Price: RM 28.00 (check out the hearts to replace zero)
The guy taking my order made a double take when I ordered that pizza
– it seems that only couples are allowed to order it. 😉 He did recover
and asked me if I wanted the pizza cut or served whole. I wanted it
whole. Well, two guys selling flowers came in after that and er…I was
a bit of a smartass with them too…
Guy #1: Hello sir, would you like to buy a flower?
Me: (looks pointedly at the empty seat opposite me) Tell me…does it look like I want to buy a flower?
Guy #1: Er…
Guy #2: Maybe you can buy it for your girlfriend?
Me: Nope, go ask someone else.
Guy #1: Thank you sir.
Now, that would have made me guilty for being rude, them thanking me
after my loud brush off, but my order came, so I shook away my
conscience and concentrated on the food. 😉 This is Pizza Hut’s
Sweetheart Pizza:
Pizza Hut’s SweetHeart Pizza for Valentine’s Day in pristine condition
It came with this card too:
Anyway, back to the funniest thing that happened. At this time, one
of the Pizza Hut’s staff approached me and said “Sir, do you mind if we
take a photo of you with the pizza?”
I don’t mind having my picture taken, so I said “Sure, go ahead.”
The guy then posed me a bit and moved the heart shaped pizza and then
asked me to smile. Now this is a pretty strange thing to be going on,
and you all would never believe me (my gf didn’t until I said I have a
photo to prove it). I asked him to hold his pose and let me take one of
him and he was very obliging. Here you go:
Anyway, I didn’t bother to ask what the photo was for. I didn’t
really care actually, since I always take public photos anyway.
However, as I dug into the pizza, the same guy approached me again and
asked for my address and phone number. Now this…this I’ll have to ask
what it’s for. He said they’re selecting photos of people eating in
Pizza Hut for a promo and they’ll send a copy of it to me and call me
if I’m selected for the print ad.
Here’s a close up of the SweetHeart Pizza (the middle part)
Strange huh, the things that happen in Pizza Hut. Strange, but nice. 🙂
Back to the pizza, it tasted really good. Was it salty or was it
sweet was the question that’s on my mind and the answer is…it’s
neither! The flavors all blended together nicely to a not sweet not
salty flavor. Very strange. I liked the combination of pineapple and
almond flakes with chicken. They compliment each other and flakes gives
the pizza a nice crunchy texture.
I ate the whole pizza…leaving only the crust. 🙂
How was everyone’s Valentine’s Day and did anything strange happen?
This is the new sambal variant of the Pocket of Persia. I saw the
commercial advertising a new sambal flavoured Pocket of Persia on
Discovery’s Travel and Adventure channel, of all things. Anyway, I went
to the KFC at Wisma Sanyan after getting a haircut today and sure
enough – they have a sambal version of the Pocket of Persia.
The new tagline is The sambal’s in the Pita instead of The secret’s in the Pita
[sixthseal.com] in the normal version. It also states that the new
Pocket of Persia comes with sambal sauce and crispy cucumbers:
However it does taste quite different – the sambal goes surprisingly
well with the other ingredients, much better than chilli IMHO, so this
makes for a delicious change.
There is no difference to the new sambal Pocket of Persia besides
the replacement of the chilli sauce for sambal and some cucumbers, but
that seems to make a world of difference in taste. I liked it.
The Prosperity Fish Meal in Sugarbun sounded very attractive from
the banner they had in front of the store. SugarBun is a fast food
outlet like McDonalds, Burger King and the like, except that it has
recently diversified its menu to provide a wider range of items. The
banner shows a whole fish and I thought that sounded interesting, so me
and my gf went to check it out.
The ads strung across the cashiers also promote this particular meal
– Prosperity in every bite! The “Wishing you nien nien yu yee” bit is a
common Chinese saying during Chinese (Lunar) New Year, it literally
translates to “Wishing you every year got fish” but it’s taken to mean
that you will have enough food to eat every year, kinda like “Good
luck” except this goes “May Famine not rear His black horse behind
you”. 😉
Here’s how it looks like – there really is a whole fish and it’s
quite large. It’s about the size of…well, the plate is a standard
dinner plate so you can infer the size of the fish from there. It costs
RM 8.88 (8 is considered a good number due to the pronunciation) and
comes with steamed rice and Sugarbun’s pickled vegetables on the side.
The sauce they poured over the fish goes well with the fried fish,
though I would add chilli for taste. The fish is fried well, crispy but
soft on the inside and there aren’t many bones to get in your way.
This is what the inside of the fish looks like. I even had both sets
of eyes, they fried it well on the outside, but the inside is still
nice and gooey. The fish I got and the one my gf had was slightly
differing in size, but not to a great degree. I don’t expect whole fish
to be exactly the same size, but it’s not that different so they must
have some sort of quality control on the sizes. It’s good, I liked the
Prosperity Fish Meal and with a whole fish to go with it, I don’t think
the RM 8.88 price tag is unreasonable.
Besides, with all the bites I got out of it, I feel much more prosperous already.
Day 3 of the
Convocation: Melbourne, Australia (December 2003)
series.
I woke up after a solid 26 hours of sleep on Monday. This is the
third day I’m in Melbourne and I realize that I’ve technically wasted
one whole day sleeping. 🙂 I woke up feeling famished and went
in search for food again and to take some photos of Melbourne city. I
went pass a McDonald’s and saw that they had this Salads Plus menu with
healthier options. McDonald’s in Australia has been pitching this angle
for quite a while now so I decided to sample their Salads Plus menu.
The Salads Plus menu consists of a variety of low fat and more
nutritious options that have 10 grams of fat or less each. I’m not
watching my weight or anything…people say I should gain a couple of
kilograms, but work and the related necessities to maintain
productivity has the effect of suppressing appetite and increasing
metabolism at the same time. I digress. The reasons I’m attempting to
eat the entire range and review it should not be foreign to long time
readers – I just want to. 🙂
Chicken Foldover
This is touted to have only 9 grams of fat per serving. It’s made
with Bega So Light cheese and has roasted chicken breast meat and
veggies on a herbed toasted flatbread.
I didn’t expect much from it, but was pleasantly surprised to find
out that it actually tastes good! It could be the 26 hours without food
though, but still, it’s pretty good.
Vege Burger
This one has 10 grams of fat per serving and it’s Sanitarium vege
patty in a herbed foccacia bun. The patty is made from chickpeas,
vegetables and spices a.k.a. fake meat. It also has a piece of beetroot.
I didn’t like this one…the patty tastes like potatoes. Not that
there’s anything wrong with that, but generally vegetarian meat
substitutes tastes unpalatable to me. The only thing that saved it is
the sweet chilli sauce inside. I couldn’t have chocked it down without
that.
Berrynice Yoghurt Crunch
It just says 97% fat free on this one. It looks like ice cream, but
it’s actually yoghurt. There’s strawberries and blueberries in it
though, and it’s topped with oats. They use Nestle low fat yoghurt.
McDonald’s partners up with other food manufacturers in the Salads Plus
menu if you haven’t noticed.
That was what I had in the first sitting. After walking around and
taking more photos, I passed by a different McDonald’s and decided to
see if I could eat through the whole Salads Plus menu. 🙂
This McDonald’s has a fridge at the counter with the salads and other stuff:
The salads occupy the first two layers and the third one has yoghurt
(including the Berrynice Yoghurt Crunch) and fruit juice. It looks like
the Berrynice Yoghurt Crunch is prepared and packaged instead of made
during your order. I decided to have a salad this time, since after
all, this is the Salads Plus menu. There are two salads – Garden Mixed
Salad and Roast Chicken Salad. Naturally, I went for the second one.
Roast Chicken Salad
This salad features roasted breast chicken, Bega So Light cheese,
lettuce, tomato, and cranberries. It’s 97% fat free and there are three
dressings to choose from – French, Low Fat Italian and Mango and Sesame.
It’s served with bagel chips. The above shows the salad with the
small container of bagel chips and a packet of dressing. Here’s a close
up of the bagel chips (croutons?):
This is the dressing I chose – Mango and Sesame:
The salad looks like this after everything is added in:
No, I didn’t toss it because I wanted to eat it like this. It tastes
surprisingly good (again). I was puzzled to find that I actually
enjoyed eating this salad. The mango dressing is really good, goes well
with the salad and complements the cranberry pieces well. It’s also
very filling, but that could be due to the fact that I’ve already eaten
two hours ago…
Orange & Poppyseed Muffin Lite
This is also 97% fat free and it tastes like the normal McDonald’s
muffins…I could barely finish this one. It’s quite large. It’s a
muffin, can’t describe it much more than that. It’s had orange pieces
in it and crunchy poppyseeds on top. I reckon I’ll have an excuse
should I test positive for opiates at customs…”Officer, I swear, it
was those damn poppy seed muffins I had. I hear they produce false
positive for opiates in urine tests”.
That’s true by the way – poppy seeds have morphine and codeine which
(if you eat enough) will cause you to fail a drug test. You’ll still
have explain away the cannabinoids and amphetamines positives though. 😉
Anyway, I didn’t manage to eat through the Salads Plus menu…I
didn’t go to Melbourne just to have McDonald’s everyday. However, the
only items I missed out on is the Garden Mixed Salad, Raspberry Muffin
Lite and the Granny Smith red & green apples (which you could get
at the supermarket anyway). My apologies for not eating though the
menu, but I covered the meat (no pun intended) of it, so this ends day
three of my Melbourne trip.
