x'mas lunch at madeline & michael's place


every year, for the past two decades, without fail, we will turn up at madeline and michael's place - actually, it's madeline's sister's place at jalan ma'mor - for a christmas day lunch. the may primary group of people comprising mrs huang, christmas lee, kay poh, lilian and mrs gnaes will be there. i used to meet two of my former students from balestier hill secondary at the same gathering.

we would enjoy the same kind of food each and every time. every year, without fail, there will be turkey, beef stew, ham, fried chicken, salad, curry chicken, meat balls, sausages and pie. for dessert, we would have chocolate cake, sugi cake and pineapple tarts. and without fail, we would have agar agar jelly. but, this year, we waited and waited, but the jelly failed to appear.

so, when i got home from the christmas lunch today, the first thing i did was to get the ingredients to prepare my own agar agar jelly. there was one packet left from the last purchase and following the instructions faithfully, i came up with 1.5 litres of solution for the jelly.

just found out that the stuff that i made this afternoon is the soft and wobbly type of jelly. the ones we used to savour at the christmas lunch were the solid type which can be dislodged from the container or mould.