The Pizzazzy

Finally we did it… this weekend was the lucky one and our fishing plan got executed successfully.

The players in the game were me, hubby, our friends Amol and Neelum with their son, Aaditya. After my original idea of fishing from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., 12 hours, was met with mixed reactions, it went to 3+1 hours economy pack.

Yes, like everything else in Singapore there’s a deal in fishing as well. But, this suggestion again got cut down by 3 hours and what remained of the plan was only the 1. You guessed it right, I, gave in to the 1 hour plan.

But did we manage to catch any fish.

Hmm… now that’s my story right. Read on.

We left the house and walked towards the Pasir Ris Town Park. You’d be surprised that recreational fishing is a popular pastime for many Singaporeans. And watching them on our way to the MRT has been mine for some time now.

It is hardly a rare sight to find uncles, aunties, babas and babies (of course, they are much older than they appear) with tanned bodies hunched over the ponds with their fishing rods in hand and verities of baits by their side.

Hubby and friend were discussing on the techniques they would employ and any passer by would have thought they were experts. But that’s beside the point.

After payment, we observed how to hook the bait. So, as truly said we were going to catch bigger fishes using the smaller ones. Gross! Is it? Well not if this is going to keep anglers from catching fishes during breeding seasons, the very reason, of having artificial ponds meant for recreational fishing only and that takes care of breeding fishes separately.

We settled for an hour in one of the Sure Catch ponds. It seemed simple: bait, hook and pull. So, the bait was hooked to the line, the rod was angled expertly and we were ready.

We took turns to hold the rod, and with quick observations at our neighbors we figured out how to angle the rod and the line. But the equally expert fishes mocked us by lightly tugging at the bait and ending up eating them completely: lock, stock and barrel.

The third bait, a piece of prawn proved luckier. The catch came gently, tugged at the bait. And from the two previous failures we knew that we should give this one some time, and humored it and played along while it tried to tug at our bait. Finally it caught on the bait and the hook, and started moving around.

After 3-4 minutes of simply moving about the pool round and round, the fish gave up the fight and started surfacing; our friend maneuvered the fish successfully out of the pond while hubby kept instructing something in the background.

We cheered at the sight of our catch, our junior most player was the most excited about the ‘ish’, and some shots of the prize catch followed.

As, we still had some 30 minutes remaining we geared up again. Luck didn’t shine again but sure enough the sun-tanned uncle near by was having catch after catch. We saw what he was using as bait and it made sense. Why would anybody come for a dead prawn that too in pieces when they had the choice of live gold-fishes, even if we are talking fishes here?

And soon enough our 1 hour was over. But, it was real fun and we learnt a new game and its rules.

Our catch looked like a sea bass and weighed about 1.5 kgs. For first timers we definitely did fairly well. I wouldn’t want to depress you by adding what happened of the fish later.

=======================

Here’s a rerun:

I had to write about this cool dessert which I really loved.. real Yummy…

The other day we went to Downtown East for lunch. This has become our Saturday routine to laze around in the mornings and then get ready around the lunch time and hit the food court here, primarily because Downtown East is so conveniently located bang opposite to our Condo.

After lunch while just casually browsing through the various shops I actually noticed the Yogurt Place. Even with all my adventures and experiments with food, my aversion to sweets kept me away from trying out what this place has to offer for quite a few months and had really not paid much attention.

But the tempting picture of red strawberries against the white base of yogurt is mouth watering.
I thought of giving it a try with the taste of lassi in mind. They offered small mini cups for tasting. I tried strawberry and mango flavor and immediately fell in love with the Strawberries flavored yogurt.

This simple dessert made out of yogurt beaten to a thick cream and sweetened with different fruits like strawberries, blueberries, mangoes, grapes, mulberries etc for variety in flavors and added with syrup of the same flavor, is definitely a very innovative idea of a dessert and quite different from the lassi.

The sweet sour dessert is an absolute delight especially for a person like me. Chocolate is also one of the flavors on the menu, so, it gives you an idea as to what all flavor can be created using the yogurt base.

So, when hubby dear is busy relishing his Ben n Jerry ice-cream I can enjoy my strawberries or mulberries yogurt.

I am also planning to create the look and the taste at home so that back in India I can treat friends and family to a taste of this yummy yogurt. So, all my health-conscious and not so health-concious friends can look forward to this fat-free dessert, of course! minus the syrups to make it a complete sugar-free dessert.

For the time being please enjoy the pic only