It was a pretty busy week in our household last week with me at yoga all week (it stayed just as amazing by the way. Inspired!), and The Engineer working hard. So when we got to Friday afternoon (our usual challenge completion time), The Engineer didn’t have anything planned for my challenge. I kindly offered him one that I’d be considering for him (the Century Egg), but there were none in stock in the supermarket. I was glad (definitely rather him than me on the century egg front), but it left us in a bit of a sticky situation.
Fortunately, despite the fact that our supermarket is very westernised, there are still some interesting Asian things around. We considered weird drinks, various fish flavoured snacks, and some odd looking cakes, but the thing that really caught The Engineer’s eye was Grass Jelly or Chin Chow.
The grass jelly.
We had tried grass jelly drinks previously (at the Hash running), and I was pleasantly surprised. So I thought I was getting off pretty easy this week. There were a few different flavours to choose from, and we chose Nata de Coco. I foolishly thought that Coco might be chocolate flavoured. But actually Nata de Coco is fermented coconut in syrup.
All the components.
Up close and personal…
The instructions said to add all the syrup to the jelly, and enjoy, so I did.
Well, except for the enjoy part…
The jelly actually wasn’t too bad. It looked a bit soft, but had a good jelly texture to it. And it hardly had any flavour at all. The syrup/Nata de Coco, on the other hand was not at all pleasant. Way too sweet for me, and with a really weird flavour.
My gorgeous sampling faces.
I gave it a few chances (and pulled some funky faces) before admitting defeat, and concluding that this was not going to be the dessert for me.
I’ll stick to having my jelly raspberry flavoured, I think!
The Engineer's Wife 
Normally I’d add ice to the mixture to dilute the syrup a bit, maybe some fruits like lychee. Once you get used to it, it’s a pretty awesome dessert!