Eazy Meals - Thai Red Chicken Curry with Bamboo Shoot and Beef Salad with Roasted Brinjals

Red Chicken Curry with Bamboo Shoots - Gaeng Ped Gai Naw Mai

2 Chicken Breasts Sliced

2 Cups Bamboo Shoots Sliced

1 small packet low fat coconut milk

2 Tablespoon red curry paste

2 Tablespoon Fish Sauce- nampla

few lime leaves or lime zest

pinch of sea salt

sugar to taste

crushed chili flakes/powder for garnish

1. Heat some coconut milk to boiling and keep stirring. Add the red curry paste. Stir until well mixed.

2. Put in the chicken. Stir until the chicken turns white-half cooked.

3. Pour the rest of the coconut milk and bamboo shoots.

4. When chicken and bamboo shoots are cooked, add in the rest of the seasoning.

5. Serve hot with some sprinking of red chili flakes or powder.

Beef Salad with Roasted Brinjals - Pla Nuea Makreua Orn

1 Cup sliced beef

4 smalled sized Brinjals -sliced lengthwise and quartered

2 shallots sliced

2 Green Bird eye Chilies - cili padi sliced

2 Tablespoons Lime juice

1 Tablespoon Fish Sauce - Nampla

Sugar to taste

1. Line a baking pan with aluminum foil and spread the brinjal. Drizzle with olive oil and sea salt. Broil in the oven.

2. Stir fry the beef in a little oil until cooked but not too dry.

3. Mix cooled brinjal and beef with the rest of the seasoning.

4. Can be served at room temperature or hot (just heat it in a pan). Eat as a meal with rice and other dishes or wrapped in lettuce leaves as appetizer.

Eazy Meals - Healthy Lamb Chop

1. Marinate any cuts of lamb slices-rib, loin or t-bone in your favourite marinade or just get the one already marinated from good supermarkets.

2. Broil in the oven (using the top heating element only) and the meat should not be less than 4 inches from the heat source. Remember to line the bottom rack with aluminum foil to catch any drips from the cooking lamb. Turn over when the top is done to your liking with a pair of tongs.

3. While the lamb is broiling, line a square baking pan or the metal oven tray with aluminum foil.

4. Spread washed and dried vegetables on the pan or tray. Asparagus, capsicums, broccoli, onions and garlic are some of my favourites. Be adventurous with other vegs too!

5. Drizzle the vegs with extra virgin olive oil and some sea salt.

6. Chuck them below the broiling lamb chops.

7. After the lamb chops are done, put the vegs near the broiler and wait a minute or two when its done and serve with mint sauce! Yumm

This is hubby's favourite western food. He says he could eat these everyday :)

Watching local TV concerts-Mentor

Last Sunday Jeremy and I went to Shah Alam to watch the Mentor final concert. We got free tickets courtesy of Ujang, our dear friend who is a talented guitarist..we always look forward to catch him on tv for live shows in TV3, RTm and the other channels and watching him on the telly makes hubby and me appreciate more of these local shows...I happened to catch this show called Mentor where a few well known artists auditioned and selected their proteges from thousands of hopefuls, and the journey began from there for a few talented and lucky people..Thanks to Fara and Ujang we got the good seats and best of all we were in the middle of Black's group of fans..i've been rooting for him since I first saw him on the show and I am glad he won in the end..he was the hardest working protege from day 1 and shown the most improvement too...now i just hope his shining star won't end at the final concert but he'll continue to rock the local music scene..

If you've never been to these local shows before, do give them a support..most of the concerts are free and listening to live music is just awesome plus we get to mingle with other Msians...one Malaysia?? its eazier than u think if u only start with yourself :)

Visiting Friends...Day Trip to Muar, Johor

As we did not arranged for a long vacation this CNY, we managed to do a couple of day trips..one was to Muar with a friend, to visit another ex-colleague who had been inviting us to visit her hometown there.

The three of us worked together before with a property developer but in different departments and we left the company one by one for almost two years now...but it's so great that each of us still do try to keep in touch with one another...the eaziest way of course is using the phone and we do sms occasionally too..but having a long week ahead and squeezing one day to travel to a distant town knowing someone is there waiting for you and would be bringing you around was so terribly eazy I thought... esp more so when my sweet Muar friend's hubby is a professional tourist guide! just need to get the direction over the phone, filled up the gas tank and off we went!

Muar town is about 2 hours away from KL city. We left the city sometime before noon meaning to reach Muar for lunch. We reached Muar in good time and proceeded to meet my friend at her family house which is located in the heart of the quaint town. It is a 3 storey tall shophouse and her family has been living there for generations. Now the ground floor is rented to a local cafe chain but the family still gathered at the top floor of the house during the holidays. Even one of the floor is already so huge! I can only imagine the house in its most glorious form...when the ground floor was a shop where rubber was traded and the family lived in the upper floors.

The building with my friend's family name...amazing history behind it..the exterior now are painted yellow as there's some kind of law where different streets have their own colour coding...interesting concept!

The ground floor is a now a modern kopitiam or cafe

After some historical lessons on Muar and the Chiew family, we headed out somewhere 30mins away to the beach for lunch. It's a fisherman village and we could see the jetty where they docked their wooden boats

Lunch was a simple affair as everyone needed a break from all those days of pigging at home and relatives houses! A must have is the Muar Otak-otak or grilled fish paste..here it came in a big slab, fried and cut in pieces..but it's still as fresh, with lots of chunky fish meats and off course fragrantly yummy as what they're most famed for!

After the light lunch, we walked around the jetty a bit and then drove around for some sightseeing around the beach and the park next to it. It was a sweltering hot day! We saw a huge government officer's house..can't remember what his position was but it's a govt house located just next to the beach. What a great place to call home! The barricade at the foreground is just feets away from the sea..it's to prevent motorists from entering the beach...

Somehow, part of the beaches and the govt house reminded me of Tanjung Aru Beach, where I grew up in Sabah... and especially when I saw the park adjacent to it..it doesn't look too similar but Tanjung Aru Beach has a park next to it too..Back then when I was still in trainer bras I used to walk to the park and beach nearly every evening for a jog and sometimes for rollerskating as it used to have an open air skating ring too.



Can you count how many monkeys there are in the picture below? It's pretty difficult for animals to live at the beaches..unless you're a crab or cockroach I guess...I don't think there's many fruit trees or any good sources of food for that matter but thankfully this beach always have some kind people visiting to unwind alone or with their families. I saw a few of them stopped to feed the monkeys some peanuts and breads. As it was still CNY holiday week, saw a lot of kuaci (roasted sunflower seeds) skins on the ground too..



After enjoying watching the antics of the adult monkeys and trying to count all the baby monkeys that we could see from the safety of our car, we adjourned to the next beach where we could see the other side of Johor...

This is the ferry cruise that brings tourists along the straits...


Later we went back to Muar town to buy some goodies to bring home..bought a lot of local biscuits, candies, crackers and even its famous local coffee mix...we had a jolly good rest at the spacious top floor of the house, someone even managed to catch a wink or two! and then we had dinner at a popular food court to have more yummy local dishes before we headed back to KL.

It was a very relaxing and carefree trip, no rushing around..it was like we were just regular Muar townfolks coming home to visit our hometown kind of feel...nothing touristy done..well except that shopping for local goodies but when we were there, there were more local people compared to tourists! My friend even got to met her old hometown friends buying stuff at the same store! They now live in KL so they were stocking up on their favourite snacks!

It was a very productive trip-we get to keep up with each other's news and at the same time created new memories to talk about at our next meet up!

The girls...looking so fresh and happy...and we all agreed this is due to having left a particular terrible place with lots of horrible people you won't believe exist in this world hahaha...

The hubbies-guess which one is Muar's very own homebred warmest and best tourist guide you could find in Johor and some say even in KL?

Proudly showing off the heirloom hand carved calligraphy of the family business name..it used to be hung on top of the front door of the olden day shop..really heavy and solid wood..they don't come like that in this time and age anymore..it's also been restored using 24k gold leaf!

The two vertical boards are beautiful poetry that incorporated the characters in the family name and has a flowery way to describe the business and give good wishes..this is believed to bring good feng shui for the family and business. If you see the first character on the horizontal board is used on the first vertical board on the left and the second character is the first character on the right board! How I wished I could read the Chinese characters and understand the subtle yet powerful meaning!

Thank you Alan and Jennifer for a most delightful way to spend our day in a new town. It's so eazy when you have caring and loving friends around you! May the Most Gracious God bless the Chiew and Kok families for many many more years to come!

CNY Annual Gathering with the In Laws

Gosh, it's already been over 2 months! but I felt like it's only 2 weeks ago! So let me pick up from where I stopped...

On the first day of CNY, it's tradition in DH's mother's side of the family to meet at her mother's house. They usually started coming in after their breakfast and just hung around the house catching up with everyone and playing some 'family' games such as mahjong til late nite. Usually DH and I would come over somewer around 2 to 4 when most of the family members were already there and in good time to start the bbq fire. My day would actually started much earlier at home where I would make lots of lychee konnyaku jellies and two pairs of gold fish jellies to bring over. Just realised I never took pictures of these! It's always a hectic mad dashing day I would say, that's why but I do hope next year I'll remember to take some shots!

So here's a quick glimpse of what we would normally do every year at PoPo's house...



Play mah jong and other 'family' games...






Toss the loh sang...

Eat a lot..we usually have a bbq with prawns, chicken wings and lamb chops...this year we also had grilled hotdogs and mushrooms..

Loads of drinking...some had started in the morning..

Last but not least, collecting ang pows and taking family pictures!

This year's gathering we had a new addition to the family...he had already started contributing to the craziness...well actually he was a really nice baby n didn't cry that much n sleep a lot too...looking forward to see more of him awake next year :)

that's me with the loh sang.. this year we actually used the whole round table to be a giant 'plate' for the loh sang! covered the whole table top with layers of aluminium foil and arranged 4 sets of store bought loh sang on it...had a feeling this will be a new tradition for years to come!



The next day is reserved for visiting the other side of my in laws..usually around lunch time after a short prayer at a Chinese temple nearby. Ah Ma , DH's paternal grandmother, usually will have a fiesta of a lunch prepared for us...and always the same menu too hehehe..lots of roasted pork, duck, fish ball soup, stir fried veggies, steam chicken, more pork and duck dishes and always a can of 100plus! Did not take much pics coz something wrong with my SLR camera which need to be sent for service soon...I think something to do with the zoom lens...altho I still have the 50mm lens but it had already spoiled my mood to take any more pictures after that...just managed to take some portraits of the elders in the families for keepsakes.

Taking Candid Pictures at a Wedding

With all the commotion that comes with a big event such as a wedding, it's not difficult to keep snapping away without the crowd noticing, especially when they are busy posing for the official photographer...



but once in a while you might just get that precious shot when one of them do notice and look your way...especially when that person is the reason why you were there in the first place :)



The Candid Shots

And the posing posing ones...had to put these in here as I'm too lazy to upload to FB (too slow!) and I just had to show off my pretty friends here :) Thanks Sherine for warmly putting up with me the whole day! Had a blast! More pics of the bride

Chinese New Year Eaziest Dinner

Gong Xi Fatt Chai! We still have 5 more days of festivities for the Chinese New Year Celebrations until Chap Goh Mei which is the last day of celebrating. So another 5 more days to eat like prosperous pigs!

Well, you must be wondering what is that colourful platter on top...no no that is not food for the ox...I've been preparing platters of this yummylicious stuff to entertain people at home for the CNY. First was for the in-laws for the CNY eve dinner or reunion dinner, then twice more for separate group of close friends..

Being lazy as I am nowadays, plus also lack of time to prepare anything else, I resorted to this menu which I think I should submit to Guinness Book of World Records as the world's easiest 3 course menu for home entertaining (that involved cooking la!)

So, what what was the menu like?

Starter was this dish called Yee Sang except there's no Yee (fish) which is considered a good dish to have for CNY. Its a mixture of several kinds of dried and pickled vegetables with freshly grated carrot or radish, topped with crunchy fried crisps or wanton skins, peanuts and sesame seeds, while seasoned with plum sauce, a bit of pepper and five spice powder. Well that is the original version, the one I had here came in a nice plastic bucket, with all the ingredients cleverly put in little plastic containers, that I bought from the supermarket. All you need to do is get a big nice plate and put everything on it. As you can see the store bought kind do not have the fresh carrots and radish but they still taste good anyhow...

Most importantly is to have this dish so everyone can stick their chopsticks in it, pick up the bits as high as they could while loudly saying all the good wishes for the new year. After a minute or so, it will probably end up looking like a pile of mess but that's what we want..all mixed up and ready to eat! Loh sang! yumm...

This Yee Sang plate fed 5 adults and 3 children!

The main course is Steamboat! also known as Chinese Hot Pot..basically just prepare any fresh vegetables, thinly sliced meats or seafood, mushrooms, assorted types of fish balls or meatballs, toofoo, or whatever you think would taste good in a clear soup. The soup base I made from a cube of chicken stock, some dried scallops and dried mushroom.

You also need a hot pot or an electric pot to heat up the stock in the middle of the dining table and once it got to a rolling boil just add in the goodies..of course start with those that needs longer time to cook first and the last one should be the seafood like prawns and fish as well as the leafy veggies. Cover the pot and wait til it boils again to be sure everything is cooked. Just put in a few things first and continue this several times as the meal progresses.


Before even finishing this platter off, everyone was already begging for mercy to get out of the dining table..not that I chain my guests to their chair but this dish is very addictive as even when you're stuffed to high heaven, one can't seem to stop fishing out those steaming hot morsels out from the pot to their plate... so watch out!

With a succesful main dish like that, there's no sweeter dish to complete the meal other than this classic Chinese dessert! hehehe its one of my favourites and it's a wink to prepare too! Double points for Cold Almond Jelly with Lychee! I'm not shy to say that this also came from the supermarket...well in a box, premix so I just boil some water and add the mix. Although I tend to use a lot of pre-packaged mix nowadays I like to give my personal touch to it too...so the secret in this almond jelly is to substitute some of the water required with fresh milk or just add one or two tablespoon of dry creamer. Once it's set, just pour a can of lychees and stick the whole bowl in the fridge until ready to serve. Voila..