AaronSpruit

Two posts in a week.  Craziness I say!

Here she is, the future wife.  This was taken quite awhile ago when we were down in the Smokies.  I have a ton of great pictures to pull from, so now that I have the site up and running better, hopefully I can keep things going.

After getting the site all up and running, it’s amazing how much I miss sharing the great pictures I’ve taken.

I know it is difficult to tell on the site, but I have dilligently been updating various things on the site to make it “just right”.

• Utilizing the Featured Image functionality of WordPress.  Now that SSP has released a nice Director plugin for WordPress, I can finally start utilizing the Featured Image functionality of both WordPress and the AutoFocus Pro theme.  This way I’m not hiding pictures with CSS on the page, and things should load faster as all the images are hosted in the WP directory (instead of pulling from Director on page load).  I’m about 75% done with this, as I’m having to touch pretty much every post.
• Updating all the categories.  As I touch every post for the above, I’m also fixing the category mess this quickly degraded to.

As for the picture, with Yow-Yow and I getting married (there should be pictures up of her soon too) in Hawaii, I thought I’d wet some appetites with a picture of a hidden beach along Kalalau Trail.  We’ll be taking a boat ride along the coast for our rehearsal dinner, and I can only hope it will be as gorgeous as this picture is!

I forgot to mention it in the last post, but while in Singapore for any amount of time, you should really get Makansutra for your Hawker’s delight.

The layout sort of sucks because it is laid out in either type of food or macro location (N, S, E, or W).  What they really need is a good map for each location.  The Singapore locations are not obvious (unless you are a local), and even the road names confuse me at time.  Unless you have a data plan on your phone for some online maps lovin’, you really need to plan ahead.

Highly recommended, and while I’m away Tom is marking up my copy that I picked up in Singapore.  I wish they had a Kindle version though.

Ever since Tom arrived to the project, we have been going on a culinary visit of the various food locations.  I definitely can’t complain, as everything we’ve had has been delicious.

Here are a few of the items we’ve had, with accompanying pictures (in order).

• Fish head curry.  Technically, Tom was the only one that had this.  When the lady asked him “for how many?” he should’ve realized it was going to be a rather large lunch item for one.
• Actually, later that day we hit up a grilled fish place in Chinatown.  Turns out this place is actually a chain (we found that out later), but man was it good.  We had a whole snapper in a mildly spicy, but fragrant broth, rice, szechuan beans, and spicy chicken cubes.  Quite delicious.
• Over the weekend we decided to venture out to where Top Chef had the season finale not too long ago.  I had heard that this is one of the finer Hawker’s squares.  First stop was the Bedok food court.  Holy cow was this place packed!  Had some delicious fried noodles, and some sort of soup (no pictures and don’t remember the exact name).
• We then headed to the beach.  Silly us, we decided to walk, so when we got there we were thoroughly parched.  Insert one deliciously chilled coconut.  Incredibly refreshing.
• Our man date then consisted of a walk along the beach.  It was nice because they have a huge park that extends the whole way.  It reminded me of Chicago’s lake shore path, but with a different view into the water.  Yes, those are tons of ships.
• Then we finally decided to gorge ourselves and eat like kings.  The seafood out on the East Coast Lagoon Food Village was epic.  If you get there early enough you can even get a good seat.  Tom was in charge of food, and I kept the beers refilled.  So tasty.
• Laksa from Roxy Laksa
• BBQ Fish
• The leftover shells from our king prawns
• Chili clams and squid
• Chili crab
• Chili crab and fried rolls (for sopping up the delicious sauce)

Needless to say, we rolled out of there and felt incredibly full.

I’m back in Chicago now, getting ready for the wedding in HI and then honeymoon in New Zealand.  Should have more to post about those and my ongoing trips to Singapore!

What the heck has Yow-Yow been watching while I’m in Singapore that these are recommended?!