The usual…

My brother-in-law and his family in Bintulu did not drive home for Christmas as the weather had not been very good and the road conditions were absolutely horrendous as they were taking their sweet time in upgrading and resurfacing a long stretch along the way between Sibu and Selangau – I heard that my blogger-friend was caught in a crawl for around half an hour along that stretch when she drove to Mukah recently.

Then he, my brother-in-law, appeared at our gate one evening with, among other things, a bag of freshwater prawns for us. I would say that was timely indeed as it is virtually impossible to get any at the market nowadays owing to the current bad weather so I think we will stuff those in the freezer and save them for Chinese New Year. What a relief it was when he told us that the road works had been completed so we would not need to go through that slow and bumpy ride when we sent Melissa to her school at the end of the holidays.

Anyway, my other brother-in-law, the one in town who was at our Christmas dinner a few nights before that, called and asked us to join them all for dinner here the following night…and we had the usual – their pandan chicken…

…and their butterscotch prawns…

…both of which were as nice as always.

The sweet and sour fish…

…was good too though we wondered why they had cut the fillet into such small bits – something that they did not use to do before.

Their own-made tofu was good as usual…

…and this was very nicely done – the claypot pork belly fried with salted fish and dried chili…

My brother-in-law had this somewhere else and loved it so much that he wanted it again so he requested specially for it – the fried omelette with Chinese sausage (lap cheong)…

…but personally, I think I would be able to do a much better job at this. It was all right, nice enough…just nothing to shout about.

There was also the not-to-be-missed sea cucumber soup and for some reason or other, this came last – the cangkuk manis fried with egg…

…by which time everyone was already too full to eat much else so they had to tapao (takeaway) most of it home.

All in all, even though the things on the menu were the usual that we have been having over and over again every time we drop by this place, it was nonetheless a delightful meal especially when it was with one’s own family members…and the best part was I did not go home feeling like I had had an overdose of monosodium glutamate. For that, I would give them the double thumbs up!!!