How to feed a family of four on US$3

There is a place across the street called a Hawker Center (or Centre if you want to be technical). There are outdoor eating areas like this found all over Singapore. They consist generally of a sheltered area with many small eating shops. Since we are so close to Little India, ours is smattered with several Indian places amongst the Chinese ones, though I'm not sure if this is the case everywhere.

So when it gets to be 6 p.m. and you realize, "Hey, I have no inkling whatsoever to make dinner and I highly suspect that nothing is going to materialize on my table by itself" you grab your wallet and head out the door.

Such was the case tonight, so while Erik took the kids swimming, I went first to the Indian Muslim place where I bought some lamb curry and potato curry with yellow rice (S$3) and swung over to the Tong Siew fried rice stall to get the kids' favorite dish (S$2). The couple there was serving it up at such a frantic pace it reminded me of the fish and loaves story from the Bible - where was all that rice coming from? They were also jabbering at each other in what I can only guess is Hokkien, the local Chinese dialect. I tried some Mandarin on them but it didn't take.

Really, it's so cheap we should just eat there every night, but I think that might be a little more curry that our bodies can handle. So for now it will just remain a convenient standby.