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Well, yet another soap review. And it is again from the same seller on eBay. I don’t know why but when I need such soaps, I will try to buy from the same seller. The reason is actually very simple – you know that they will not cheat you since you have already purchased items from them before. Of course that does not mean that they will not cheat you later on but at least it is much safer. I took a chance with this seller since the seller had very little ratings but luckily it all panned out. I am rather pleased with his or her service actually.

Anyway, I bought this charcoal soap to do some cleansing. I have a slight rash on my right leg. Not too sure why it happened but it did not go away. The rash remained so I am thinking of using some very neutral charcoal soap to wash it daily. Hopefully my rash will go away soon. It is beginning to leave a little ugly mark on my leg. A bit unsightly if I go out in shorts. Not that I worry about how I look, being so old and ugly. People usually look at my face and they stop looking at me after that.

Yes, came all the way from Korea. Apparently they have many cute things in Korea and girls love them.  I don’t know I seldom buy things from Korea. The eBay seller is idreamone. Sells some other Korean stuff as well.

See it is made from charcoal. Supposed to be very cleansing and can help whiten the skin. I am not looking to whiten my skin, I look like a ghost already. But the cleansing part is very important. This rash must go or it will fester and my leg will rot off. I definitely would like to have my leg intact if possible.

The ingredients are “Coconut Oil, Palm Oil, Glycerine, Sodium Hydroxide, Sorbitol, Junipar Berry Essential Oils, Charcoal Powder”. I think it should be Juniper Berry instead of Junipar Berry. Next weight is about 85g.

The side view of the soap. This soap does have some charcoal soap but it can be very difficult to describe it. And to make matters more complicated, they have added other oils into the mix, so I cannot easily describe the smell. Overall, I don’t think it is too offensive at all.

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The weather these days seem to be weird don’t you agree? In the mornings, it would be very sunny. Then just after lunch it would rain cats and dogs. I guess this is what happen when you abuse the weather. It comes back and abuses you. Anyway, I bought this candy from….well…..Singpost. Apparently Singpost is now more about retail than a postal service. You go there to buy some stamps, instead you are bombarded with candies, mobile phones, Christmas cards, DVD players and so on. Felt like I have entered some retail shop than Singpost. God damn it, I just want to buy some stamps!  I don’t know about you but I feel that Singpost is going the way of SMRT. SMRT instead of concentrating on providing train and bus services, spend all of its time and effort on retail and property. That is probably why we have so many MRT breakdowns. Some of which occurred daily and blamed on whatever they can think of, even the weather you can get MRT breakdown……  And looking back at Singpost, you will see tons of complains about Singpost’s postal services in the forums.

Okay then, enough of my complains. It is now time to review this Dextro Energy. Some sort of candy made from dextrose which is supposed to give you “fast” energy. Something like bananas, only cooler and you don’t feel funny eating them outside in public.

Dextro Energy Blackcurrant with Vitamin C. Lookie here, it states – direct energy. I have no idea what “direct energy” means, most probably saying that the energy from the candy can be accessed by your body fast.

Hmmm…Dextro Energy provides fast carbohydrates in between meals and on the go. Dextrose enters the bloodstream directly. Idea for work, school and sport. They have other flavours like lime and raspberry. The blackcurrant flavour I have is pretty nice. I had expected it to be overwhelmingly sweet but surprisingly it isn’t. Although I have reduced my sugar intake drastically, I think this would work as a quick pick-me-up during meals.

Made from dextrose. You know the kind of “sugar” that last time your parents force down your throat when you were feeling ill? Usually mix into water. I think the name is Glucose. You buy the glucose in a can and it is all powdery? I remember having them (mixed with water) when I was little.  The taste is exactly the same! Oh, this candy is made in Germany.

Ingredients are dextrose, maltodextrin, critic acid, calcium carbonate, magnesium stearate, flavouring and vitamin C. What the hell is magnesium stearate doing in my candy? And why is there calcium carbonate (chalk) doing in my candy as well. Me don’t want chalk. But from what I read, apparently calcium carbonate is now used as an dietary supplement if someone isn’t taking enough calcium.

Yes, the actual candy themselves.

One piece of candy. Actually overall not too shabby. If you are looking for something easy to consume, this is it. There is definitely no intense sweetness and the blackcurrant flavour is pretty weak. Feels like I am eating glucose with just a hint of blackcurrant. Too bad it is not a mint.

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Apparently Google doesn’t like my blog anymore and they stopped indexing me altogether. Not too sure why. Perhaps it is because I changed my wordpress theme and they hated the spanking new design? Even my previous rankings have all fallen and I can’t even find my site on their search. Even with the phrase “Kefir Singapore”, my site does not appear in the results at all. I don’t think I have done anything illegal or whatever. Just regular postings and original content on the blog, yet they seem to have problems with my site. Kind of sad. But hey, it is not like I am making money from this blog right? I will just keep on posting and hopefully Google will let me get back up. If it doesn’t, no harm done.

Anyway, I bought this from eBay. It is some sort of propolis soap from Korea. Propolis as in the one found in bee hives. For more information on Propolis, check out this wiki on Propolis. It is supposed to be some sort of super food and when applied to your skin, has anti-bacterial effects. I am not doctor but that sounds pretty good to me. If you are interested, the eBay seller is idreamone. They sell all sorts of Korean nicknacks and sometimes you will find soap available.  At the moment, the seller seems to be selling some weird warmer hats. Not for sunny Singapore I guess.

One bar of Propolis soap. Converted to Singapore dollars, about 4 to 5 dollars. From what I read, this is supposed to be a natural soap without any sort of chemicals.  Pretty good if your skin cannot handle harsh chemicals.

Nice? Some Korean words I have no idea what they are saying. I think it is the brand or something. Nowadays Korean stuff is getting pretty popular, especially among the young. They have been watching too much shows and listening to too much songs from Korea liao.

Soap Ingredients : Coconut Oil, Palm Oil, Glycerine, Sodium Hydroxide, Sorbitol, Propolis Oil & Extract. Still cannot understand why is there a need to add Glycerine to the ingredients? Shouldn’t the oils and the sodium hydroxide combine to form Glycerine? I mean that is what natural soap is made from right?

About 85g. I think one bar should last me about 1 month or so. I bath twice per day only, so don’t sniffing me too much. Unlike the previous soap I bought (the rice soap), this did not have much of a smell. I was expecting like honey but it smelled pretty neutral. Which is good actually. I do not like my soap with too much aromas.

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It is Chinese New Year, so it is time to buy all sorts of CNY goodies. Somehow I bought this brand of stick wafers and I regret it. EGO is a pretty popular brand in our supermarkets and some of the snacks they make are pretty decent but for this cream stick wafers, I think it is probably the worst I have ever tasted. I kid you not. The wafers are just too thick with too little filings. It is like you are eating just the stick wafers. As for the chocolate filing, the taste of chocolate is non-existent. More like sugar than chocolate if you ask me. Too little chocolate taste, too little filing, too much wafers, it becomes tasteless. I know you can save some money by reducing the amount of chocolate cream filing, but this is just too extreme liao. Even the Shop N Save housebrand stick wafers are much much better than this. I am very disappointed, especially when you are expecting something nice for Chinese New Year and all you got is tasteless crap from EGO.

One can of the EGO Chocolate Flavour Cream Stick Wafers.

You look at the picture and it shows you the stick wafer full of chocolate cream filings. And when you open up the can, all you got is a tiny weeny amount of filing. And hardly any chocolate taste at all. Felt like I was cheated by my best friend. EGO, what have you done to me!?

The ingredients are wheat flour, palm oil, sugar, butter, eggs, soya lecithin and chocolate flavour. I think they add sugar instead of any chocolate. Taste like sweet filing instead of chocolate.

Some information for you.

Some nutritional information for you. If you are thinking “healthy” then you got to get your facts straight. These snacks are seldom healthy. Seems to have quite a lot of “dietary fibre” though. Perhaps this is a good alternative to eating vegetables. Or not….

This is the lid where to pry open to get to the goodies inside. Sorry about the dusty photos. The place where I am taking the photos seems to attract a lot of dust. I don’t know why.

Kept in a foil to prevent air from getting into the wafers. Yes to keep the wafers crispy. If not, I would add one more complain to the list already.  This little snack like I got tons of complains……

The real photo of the stick wafers. Very thick wafers and very little chocolate cream filing. If you were me and you was expecting something great, you will be disappointed as well. I nearly cried when I tried the first wafer. Thank the gods Shop N’ Save was open during Chinese New Year. If not, I might have cried myself to sleep that night.

Normally chocolate wafers would have this “chocolate stripe” one. But this wafer does not have any stripe at all.

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Call me Mr Fancy Pants. That is what I am now. I have started drinking wine. As to why? Because someone bought me a bottle of wine. Yes, I said someone bought me a bottle of wine. I normally don’t go out and buy wine simply because I can ill afford the expensive wines. You have to be practical here. If I am not wrong, a full bodied decent wine is about S$30-40 or so. So honestly, wine drinking is only for the well-to-do.

Anyway, this is the Chateau Haut Cardonnet Bordeaux 2010. I believe the wine maker is Haut Cardonnet and the grape variety is Bordeaux which is from the region of Bordeaux in France. Seems that the French likes to simplify everything. The year of the wine is 2010. Seems that nowadays wine are aged pretty fast. Just pass 2011 and we already have wines from 2010. Could be that nowadays wine makers are much better in blending to get the correct profile and thus wines taste acceptable faster? You know, time is money right? As for the result, I really don’t know. I have not drank enough wines to give you a definite answer. Of course if you are willing to sponsor some wines for me to try out, I will do my best.

The bottle of Chateau Haut Cardonnet Bordeaux 2010. Sorry about the photo. These few days the weather was so warm that just one or two minutes after taking the bottle out from the wine, condensation took over. By the way, is it okay to keep the wine in the fridge?

13.5% alcohol. Product of France, obviously. I am pretty sure there are numerous other wineries in other countries using the same grape variety as this one. I wonder whether they can be called Bordeaux wine as well? If I read correctly, I think the French had spent a lot of effort to protect their trade mark and their wines. Well I am no wine expert. And you should avoid buying wines that come in clear bottles. Exposure to light tend to damage the wine, that is why most wine stores have rather dim lighting. I once thought that they were trying to be cool to have this kind of lighting, till I realize that wines don’t do well in the light. That goes for supermarket wines as well.

You see, just right outside their gated mansion is the vineyard. And the big gate opens right into the vineyard! Poor things. The land there must be pretty limited.

13.5% alcohol.  About 750ml of wine for you to enjoy.

Nice colour.

I swear, this is all I drink in one sitting. That is all!  Drinking wine is not my pastime. I know there are quite a number of people in Singapore who actually enjoy drinking wine and can afford it. But for me, I merely like to read about wines. And feel “high-classed” about it.

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Well, this is the “cake” you can buy for S$1.50. Some rich powerful elite thinks that you can find carrot cake in the hawker centres for S$1.50 but we mere mortals know that that is no longer possible. At least no longer possible in most cases. Even that Ang Mo Kio Central famous Carrot cake is like S$2.50 now. And so small portion one. But it seems that our rich and powerful elite doesn’t even know the thing they themselves have created – massive runaway inflation. Sad. Anyway, we are here not to talk about carrot cakes or even generals, but we are all here to read my little review on this Singlong Peanut Cake. This is a true peasant food – there is no doubt about it. What is expensive about little cakes made from peanuts and sugar (mostly sugar)? Nothing. In fact, this little box should not cost more than 50 cents.

See, the ingredients are peanuts and sugar. Product of Malaysia. There is nothing manufactured in Singapore anymore. Everything is made somewhere else and then trucked to you. As you can see it is Sing Long Foodstuff TRADING Company. The net weight is 200g. I am sure 80% is made of sugar. But then in Singapore sugar is expensive as well. There is nothing cheap in Singapore anymore. I bought this from Shop N Save if I remember correctly.

Pieces of peanut cake for you to enjoy.

A more detailed view of the peanut cake. These are compressed sugar/peanut mixture. I used to eat them by the tons when I was young. But at least when I was young, it actually tastes like peanuts. Once you place them in your mouth and you start to chew, the peanut mixture will simply melt into your mouth and teeth, creating this nice little gooey thing in your mouth and you can’t talk because it sticks. It is like eating peanut butter. Now after about two decades, I find it just too sweet. But hey, still enjoyable. Childhood snacks never fails. That is why even after so long and with tons of competition they are still so popular.

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Yes, even I buy cool stuff from Korea. Seriously, this bar of soap came all the way from Korea.  And it is an all-natural soap which means that this soap doesn’t have all the harsh chemicals the commercial soaps have. For your information, it is not so well known that most soaps we buy from the supermarkets are actually not soaps, as in they do not contain glycerin. Glycerin is made from lye and oil and is what people in the past use as soap. Now I guess they are made from different types of chemicals. One reason is cost. It is much more expensive and time consuming to make natural soap than it is to mix a few chemicals together. Note that soap making requires you to “dry” the soap, which can take up to a month or so.

I bought this from eBay. It has become my favourite place to get all this kind of stuff. Price wise it is pretty reasonable. If I remember correctly this is about S$5 (plus shipping) or so. Nowadays even commercial soaps can cost more than that.

Comes with “protection”. Thank you for purchasing our products. Have a nice day. Hahaha.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. That is the sellers nick if you are interested.

One bar of soap. About 80g or so.

Check out the website if you are interested. It is in Korean though. The ingredient are Coconut Oil, Palm Oil,  Glycerine, Sodium Hydroxide, Sorbitol, Vegetable Oil and Rice Extract. What I don’t understand is why they need to add Glycerine back to the soap? The oils and Sodium Hydroxide (lye) will combine and convert to Glycerine right? I honestly have no idea. The smell is pretty good though. But it does not smell like rice extract – smells more like sweet molasses with a hint of honey or something like that. Anyway, I only just started to use this soap but it does feel pretty gentle on my skin. And unlike the olive soap I had been using, it does not get soft when exposed to the air. Weird.

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From the famous Tong Garden. Bought this the other day from Shop N Save and if I am not wrong, it should be available in most supermarkets in Singapore.  But since it comes with Macadamias, it is slightly more expensive than the rest of the packaged “nuts”. No, I am not being a snob or anything. But it is really more expensive than the rest. The thing is I like Macadamias – it has a very different texture – softer and easier to eat, and tastes wonderful. Of course Cashew nuts taste great as well. Old folks like me cannot eat those hard peanuts, so please forgive me. It wouldn’t be fun if I broke one of my tooth on a peanut.

The Tong Garden Honey Roasted Cashew Nuts and Macadamias.

Comes in a ziplock bag. So if you can’t finish in one sitting, you can still keep the nuts fresh. And this is supposed to be superior quality fun time crunch! Fit for (4) active lifestyle. Kind of like writing those text messages kids like to send to each other. Perhaps they hired some young kid just straight from Polytechnic and made him/her their chef designer or something?  Anyway, this is a cholesterol free food and no trans fat, my friends. All is good fat.

Just 160g of nuts.

Premium Grade. Since 1963. Has it been so long? I remember their sugar coated peanuts, one of my favourite snacks of all time. Or was that Camel? Memory is a bit hazy nowadays.

The back of the pack.

The ingredients are cashew nuts, macadamias, palm olein, sugar, honey, corn syrup and anticaking thingy. Made in Thailand if I am not wrong. I somehow missed taking photo of the manufacturer location.

The nutrition information. I have to admit that this isn’t exactly as healthy as it seems, mainly due to them being roasted. But come on, nowadays the snacks we have in the supermarket are much worse. This is actually one of the more healthier snacks you can find there. And honey goes very well with Macadamias. It is not too sweet though, so if you have problems with sweet stuff, this shouldn’t be that big of a problem.

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Not that I enjoy eating instant cup noodles but sometimes it is unavoidable (especially if you are lazy like me) during the holidays. And for the past few weeks, we had Christmas and the New Year Holidays, so I bought a few to stock up just in case. Not to mention the upcoming Chinese New Year. And lo and behold I did make use of them. I was too lazy to go out and buy food, so I had these cup noodles for lunch on both the holidays. Even though I don’t consume cup noodles often, I find this brand quite okay. Sure it can be a bit salty but compared to the rest, still acceptable.

Nong Shim Korean Claypot Ramyun. If I am not wrong, it is a kind of spicy soft noodle that is very popular in Korea and now starting to export to other countries. Nong Shim is one of the highest selling brand of instant noodles in Korea. Don’t know why such unhealthy foodstuff is so popular in Korea. The people there do look very good though. Maybe it is the weather. Maybe because they eat a lot of Kim Chee and Ginseng.

Korean Clay Pot Ramyun. I really don’t find any difference in the texture of the noodles. Maybe just slightly thicker. But then I am not a big fan of instant noodles, so I didn’t really pay any attention.

I think they say add boiling water and wait for 3 minutes or something like that. And oh, beware of burning yourself you dumb dumb.

Item is Korean Clay Pot Ramyun Noodle. Ingredients for the noodles are wheat flour, palm oil, starch, salt and acidity regulator. As for the soup powder (to make the soup base) salt, soy sauce powder, soy bean paste powder and sugar. Kind of disappointing to realize that the soup base is just so simple. The vegetables are dehydrated cabbage, dehydrated carrot, dehydrated chives and dehydrated seaweed. Everything dehydrated.

Hmmm…..made in China. Like everything else in the world. Even Korean foodstuff are made in China!

Some nutrition information for you. If you consume too much of these, you will most likely see your hair fall out very soon. Well, that is what they told me. Luckily I eat at most like a few cups per year so that shouldn’t be a problem for me. The biggest hair problem I have is white hair. I am growing freaking old! Kind of sad when you see your entire life doing nothing and one fine day you spot white hairs on your crown. The feeling is like damn low. So if you are feeling depressed and want to wallow in even more depression, a nice cup of Nong Shim Claypot Ramyun would be great. Remember not to get burnt when pouring the boiling water into the cup!

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I remembered the first time I was introduced to Turkish Delight – I was like 5 years old or so. And surprisingly it was at NTUC or some shopping centre where there was this lady who went around showcasing this little sweet. They also gave out little samples for us to try out. Remember it was like in the 1990s or so. Honestly then, I didn’t know what all the fuss is about – it is a sticky little soft nougat-like sweet. Nothing too special. Of course I was like too young and my palate wasn’t really that complicated. I just wanted things that are sweet, even overly sweet stuff taste good to me. But now I find Turkish Delights more appealing. One of the most appealing aspects of Turkish Delight is that although it is supposed to be a sweet, it isn’t overwhelmingly sweet. Or at least the real Turkish Delight shouldn’t be overly sweet.

If I am not wrong, this was bought from Candy Empire. Price wise I forgot liao. Shouldn’t be more than a dollar or so, since this is just 56g and made from starch and sugar. I might be wrong though, considering the prices in Singapore is rising like nobody’s business these few years.

Authentic Turkish Delight, rose flavour. 45g of soft chewy sweet. Basically  some sort of gel (mix of starch and sugar) which has been harden slightly to produce this small gooey squares / block. They add some powdered sugar to prevent them from sticking or clumping together. The texture is a bit like rice maltose just a bit more starchy and easier to eat. I like it.

Hmm….made by Real Turkish Delight. So there is no question that they made authentic Turkish Delight. However, since I have never tried the real thing before, we can only hope that this is indeed authentic Turkish Delight.

Product of Australia. Not Turkey. Maybe made by a Turkish immigrant or something.

The ingredients are sugar, wheat starch, glucose syrup, water, flavour, colour and food acid. May contain traces of nuts. From what I read, the Turks love them with nuts like pistachios and hazelnuts or walnuts. So this should be the cheap version. Too bad they don’t add real rose water (as in authentic Turkish Delight), just rose flavourings.

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