Memorable moments in 2010

Julian wrote about some of his memorable moments in 2010. I do not have a lot, I have a few which I think are some good ones

Our wedding last month topped the list. I am now married to the most patient and nicest man. I do not deny that I was quite frustated on our wedding day on some imperfections that occured once a while but Wee Liem stood out and take care most of them. I am really glad I have lots of sisters because now is the time they shine of all. Yvonne came to Penang earlier 3 weeks for her TOEFL and stayed with me until our wedding day. She was a great help in everything and ran everything according to my order and plan. I already thanked everyone on my previous post about our wedding so I am not going to repeat all over again here. Wee Liem and I promised to walk our life together as long as we live, and we mean it.






I always try to make a trip to oversea annually and this year Wee Liem went along or I should say I went along with him and his friends. We had a freezing yet warm trip to Shanghai and Hangzhou early this year and the memorable moment here is the Wee Liem proposed to me during on the day of our anniversary at night. Wee Liem popped the question on the first day we reached Shanghai at Shanghai Bund




Another memorable moment is the very short period my family spent staying at our new home during chinese new year. I drove them to Penang on second day of chinese new year and back to Klang the day after. It was the first time in my mom life she ever come to Penang. This year she made 2 visits. One during chinese new year and second was on my wedding. My family stayed at our home!


There are some food I made for the first time this year
Tang yuan (glutinuous rice balls)



Lion head meatballs which Wee Liem said its the best food so far



Bak zhang


lemon ice cream and many more...

Glutinous rice balls with peanuts filling

The other night my mom phoned me and informed me that "dong zhi" falls on the next day. I replied innocently asking if it's the "zhong zhi" making time again. Mom was shocked that until today, I still don't know what is "dong zhi" and corrected me that it means it is time to make "tang yuan".

I was rather relieved that I have a packet of glutinous rice flour in my pantry and a container of peanuts in fridge. So on that night itself, I pan roasted some peanuts and grounded them into powder form.


Returning from work on winter solstice festival day, got over with preparing dinner and I began making the glutinous rice dough. After dinner, I wrapped some glutinous rice balls with peanuts filling and cooked in malacca sugar, screw pine leaves and ginger soup.










Finished product

Fried spaghetti fusion style

The other day, I was in my unusual adventurous side, wanting to try doing something different from usual. So I was thinking of cooking pasta chinese way.



First of all, boil pasta in a pot of water until al-dente according to your packet instruction and set aside.

Prepare ingredients:
Cut pork into strips, about 150g in total
4 dried red chilies, cut small pieces
2 tablespoons of dried shrimp, rinse in water
30g carrots cut strips
2 crab sticks, cut small
3 cloves garlics

Saute garlic in 3 tablespoons olive oil in a wok (Chinese way :P)
Add in all other ingredients
Add pinch of salt and stir until pork turns pink
Add in pasta, a lot of basil and parsley flakes, and 1 tablespoon of soy sauce (Chinese way :p)
Cook for about 10 minutes and serve hot.

Something fresh to try, I kind of like it

Random update

I finally had a hair cut after so long waiting. I wanted to cut my hair short since months ago but I have to hold my wish because of wedding. I want a bun for wedding and I don't want to use a fake hair/wig to create it. This is the first photo of my new hair right after I came home from hair cut. I have been getting all sorts of comments related to pregnancy at the first time someone sees me, like : "Why that cutting your hair short is a sign of pregnancy?" , " Why is that cutting hair short is to prepare for pregnancy?". Okay, if I am really is.. I will cut it even shorter. This is like shoulder length, easily grow past shoulder in a month time. -_-


Today I dropped by MNG during lunch hour with Her Hau to see if I can get anything for myself. It is their year end annual sale. I got myself a black dress and a bag. Love to max. They are not very cheap though after discount so I am not sure what I bought them. Maybe because my head keep thinking I really need a black dress. A basic black dress that every girl should own one.


This is the wedding biscuits we ordered from LianBee's bakery for guo-da-li. These packages were given to relatives by my parents to inform them their daughter is getting married!

Three cup squids

I was looking at Rasa Malaysia today and saw three cups squid on the blog. I wanted to eat those squids! So while on groceries, I picked up some squids.

I made the three cup squids based on this:

3 squids cut small
1 lemon grass
1 big onion, sliced
ginger, sliced
1 clove garlic, minced

Heat some oil in wok. stir fry onion, ginger and garlic until fragrant. Add 1 teaspoon dark soy sauce, 2 tablespoons sesame oil, 1 teaspoon sugar, 1/2 teaspoon salt, soy sauce, basil leaves and 3 tablespoon shao xing wine. Let simmer for like 2-3 minutes until onion is soft. Add squids and cook for another 2 minutes and serve hot with white rice

Note: Serve 2

Next phase, please!

Our wedding had finally completed. After the wedding ceremony and reception in Penang, we had another wedding luncheon back in Weeliem's hometown on Sunday afternoon to introduce me to his relatives. It was really a long journey to and fro, 16 hours man... I was exhausted in the trips and the past weekend wedding that I slept at 10pm every night. I don't have any mood to work during my 3 days presence in the office last week. There were a little chaos and flaws during the wedding but everything still went thru superb with help from my siblings especially Yee Voan who had been here for the last 3 weeks before my wedding. I am glad that she was around because she typed, planned, remembered and memorized everything so she could direct the others when I was busy on the big day. Now is the time for me to mention a little about some highlights during my wedding.

This is a group picture of my direct family members. They came far away for my big day. Pin and Kevin flew all the way from Australia and returned the day after. Hong had her final sem paper until 6pm on Friday and she took bus directly from hostel and reached Penang at 2am with my mom's best friend Aunty Ying. She had the go back to continue her final exam after my wedding. Yee Voan came for her TOEFL in Penang earlier and stayed with me through my wedding, has been a great help and company in everything I need. Father and mother rushed from finishing their work at 12pm on Friday and drove all the way after that to Penang looking exhausted. My sister picked my grandma on her way up to Penang drove 6-7 hours to reach here. I was so thankful they all made it for ME. I love my family. When I told them about my problem in this event is mainly on transportation, they offered to drive here instead of taking flight. Everyone managed to make it for a dinner together except Hong and Aunty Ying. My dad's aunty family flew all the way from JB but they had their own plans on Friday, they didn't join us.




This is another sharing from the stuff I prepared for my wedding. Pin was holding a basket of items required to be brought over to groom place, teapot set, 5 types of beans, a scissors tied with red string at the end, sewing set and a mirror. I bought a basket and glued lace around the edge so it looks rather lovely. The beans were stacked in an used pepper glass bottle. The basket base was layered using the leftover fabric from the flower ball I made. Forgot to mention, her dress is super pretty. I love it. She bought it to wear especially on my wedding.



Yee Voan and I checked in to hotel on Friday and decorated the place. We already did that to my home earlier on Wednesday with my DIY things ; the flower balls, red pattern cuttings and flowers. This picture showed what we did to the hotel suite.


The next 3 photos are the places where I sticked the pattern cutting I did at my home (read: the groom's place). Note the minnie and mickey mouses on our quilt, I got them from LA Disneyland 3 years ago and kept for this day.





I love this picture , don't know why. I was walking here and there finding the bridal car. Surpringly I was holding the fan beautifully while running left and right.


Less attention was given to my pair of bridal heels during the day. I just want to say I love this pair very much. I searched the perfect heels for a very long time but I can't find any that suits my mood. I found this pair of gold heels in Aldo. They are perfect because so coincidently my actual day morning gown was in champange colour and my dinner gown is gold in colour!



I didn't know it was so hard to get red colour baby bath tub, wash basin and potty in Penang. I went to many places to find and at last I found them at different places. I refused to buy them at the wedding shops because they overpriced them. We didn't have any young litle boy to break the red potty paper so Weeliem got his friend to do it. This was funny.


At last the babies were fed. They came late because my friends had to feed their babies. Baby Matthew and Ting Ting are both 1 year old. We let baby Matthew rolled on the bed first later followed by Ting Ting, Cheryl and Celine


The rest of the pictures are all my 2 nieces. They are very cute and lovely. Our precious gems in the family. I love them being anywhere close to me. They ran, jumped and rolled happily in the hotel suite the night before because there were so many people. This is even better than Chinese New Year because we never had chance to gather everyone together. The last time we had gathering was during our Australia trip.

One of the greatest moment in Life

Same day edit (SDE) by Trinity photography

Click

Jimui's gear

Yesterday was our wedding day. It was indeed a good day because there were full 10 couples in the bridal house for makeup service for wedding dinner at the very day. Let me introduced another DIY thing I did.

I made sash and hand corsage for my jimuis during my wedding morning session. For the hengdai, I just made a chest corsage. I bought RM8 satin cloths back in Klang and sewed 11 sashes out of it

This photo of the product was taken by my uncle, Sean. He was taking photos all the time and he is a good photographer apart from Trinity, my official photographers for the day


The photo of my 11 jimuis wearing the sash and hand corsage. They were so creative with the sash. One made it into a rose and pin it to the chest like a brooch. One used it as hair band and some as the original purpose, a sash.

The birthday boy is getting married in less than a week!

I haven't been writting anything lately because life has been so busy. Anyway, I will post more things after my wedding. But we had an early celebration for Weeliem's birthday today. I love you baby. Growing old with you for another year, it's a bliss

Tauchiu steamed pork rib

I don't post recipe lately because there was no new food to write about. I can't be making new food everyday right? For people that know me very well, they should know I am a pork lover. I love pork since I was like 10 years old and that's the time when my mom started to venture into making restaurant type dishes for us every dinner. This is one of our family favourite, or I would say one of MY favourite since childhood; tauchiu steamed pork rib. I don't remember if I ever post this before, but here it is..



I use the finely smashed tauchiu sold in glass container ;) Careful not to buy the salted tauchiu because it's too salty. Omit salt in making food using this ingredients because you don't want to lose all your hair by 35 years old. My mom loves to add some taufu in because it can suck up the juicy tasty gravy came from steaming tauchiu pork rib. Both taste equally good.

1. Marinate overnight with this ingredients
small square pieces of pork rib cut out of 1 rib
1 tablespooon tauchiu (soya bean made sauce)
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon corn flour
minced 3 cloves garlic
pepper
2. Add about 4 tablespoon of water into the bowl with #1 and steam for 20 minutes

Serve hot with rice ;)

Halloween @ Chicago Ribs House

Hello all! I feel like ages since I last wrote here. The just past weekend was Halloween. We did not celebrate any but only realizing that when we went for dinner at Chicago Ribs House for my birthday treat. There were many people with costumes walking around the Gurney place and live performers on stage singing lady gaga's, justin bieber's Baby, Shakira's and many other songs.



It was full house and we were lucky to still get a seat although weeliem phoned to reserve seats for 2 and they didn't jot that down. I didn't want to take photos of the waitress because their makeup and costumes looks a bit flabby and not pretty. :P

Before this I heard from friends and blogs that the waiting time for food is very long but we got ours in less than 15 minutes. So we ordered starters, fried mushroom. It was not nice at all but the dipping sauce is good.

Fried mushroom


I ordered Chicago pork rib and Weeliem picked beef ribs and they were superb.

Pork rib & Beef rib


We were so full after dining and I wished I didn't order the starter. hehe.

Another great year ahead

When I need to use the potato..

Today is another day that I need to finish up one specific ingredients in the kitchen whether it's almost EOL or for the reason if I still keeping it, will lost the freshness. This time it is the potato. I bought like 4 potatoes back then to boil ABC soup and only used 2 of them. The left over 2 laid comfortably in the dry ingredient's basket for quite a few weeks until yesterday I saw roots began to grown from their heads. Coming back from work I was thinking how am I going to cook it when I wanted to finish up the left over baked BBQ chicken? and there was only 1 leg! So I came up with this set of dinner for him. BBQ chicken, mashed potato and coleslaw while I cooked my favourite spicy nissin noodle. By the way, that's the only instant noodle I eat. Before liking this, I used to hate all instant noodle because their texture is like made of some powder.



I think dinner went all fine.

BBQ pork

I came back from work feeling a few kg heavier. So I went running but stopped half way as because I can't breathe. Terrible. My menu for tonight is bbq pork (char siu) and stir fried cabbage. I marinated the pork last night using this recipe

Here is the close up picture I took of the pork. I didn't grill it, because I feel too tired, just roasted the marinated pork in oven



I am going to rest for the night

ABC rice vermicelli soup

There was once when I was in primary school that I saw my mom squatting down in front of the fridge looking into it at very early in the morning. About 6.30am, I was getting ready to go to school, I asked what was she doing there. She told me being a fulltime housewife is not an easy job. Other than the normal house chores and cooking skill, a woman must be smart and creative. She looks into fridge every morning and creates a menu for the day. A healthy menu to feed all the girls at home, with consideration who doesn't eat what and who likes to eat what. Sometimes she will say she is cooking x's favourite food today and I will pull my face. But she will make my favourite the next day!

I am a working grown up lady. I only go to market once a week. Sometimes I stop by to grab additional vegetables on my way home if they were gone before the week end, either rotten or I cooked extra the day before. I buy all the meat and poultry from supermarket or wet market on weekend. This means I create menu for a week when I buy raw material. I need to pamper the big boy, he has his prefered diet I have to follow so normally I need draft out what I am going to make for everyday when I stood in the middle of market.

There will be normally leftover if I make soup and the leftover will be brought to the next day as soup, or as BROTH for a noodle dish!


This time I have ABC soup . I made mihun soup (rice vermicelli soup) using the broth.



Blanch vermicelli in boiling water, drain and set aside in bowl.
Heat up ABC soup, add water if needed. Add salt, pepper, soy sauce ;)to taste and greenies if you want. I normally add small bai chye. Bring to boil.
Pour the soup into the bowl and serve hot

Pork rendang

I have been having this very bad internet connection at home. We subsribe the 1M package, but streamyx sucks to the worst than you can think of. The speed cannot even go up to the 384 package. Someone really need to sing about this issue seriously.

Last week I cooked my legendery chicken rendang. The photo in my previous post doesn't look very tempting, maybe because of the post processing I did. I don't make this dish often because the time required to prepare the chicken rendang is normally up to 3 hours, due to the preparation work cooking like, peeling a full bowl of shallots, processing the herbs, pan roast the coconut grates and grained them. I didn't feel like wasting the leftover rendang cooked-paste because this time it wasn't that hot for Weeliem, in another word, it's perfect. I kept the paste in sealed container in fridge and used it today for this dish I called pork rendang.

Very simple, just pan fry the pork small slices in 2 tablespoon of oil and add in the paste. I added 1/4 bowl of water so I have enough liquid to simmer the pork. Simmer for 10 minutes and serve hot. Great for a weekday cooking because it's quick and appetizing

Lemon ice-cream recipe

I made lemon ice-cream to welcome weeliem back the last time he went on a business trip. This time, I rushed to buy ingredients on Monday after the teambuilding because the lady was going to reach that night. I prepared this dessert to serve my friends because they were coming over after dinner the next day.



Recipe from userealbutter, my favourite site



Apart from that, on another story, these are the gifts I received from the warm hearted people for my incoming wedding day.

This one was given to me by our department lovely admin whose last day was yesterday.



and this is the silverware set from the new parents, Ai Chee and Chun.



Thank you beautiful!

Stew pork rib with braised peanuts

Basically I don't know what is the name of this dish therefore I am giving this name merely based on the main ingredient that contributes to the flavour of the stew. It is introduced to me by Weeliem's mom.



Ingredients:
~10 peeled chestnuts
2 cans 170g braised peanuts
4 medium size chinese mushrooms
300g pork rib
4 cloves garlic

Steps:
Add 1/4 teaspoon of sugar into a bowl of water and soak chestnuts overnight.
Clean the leftover skin and half the chestnut
Clean pork rib and cut into smaller pieces
Soften mushrooms by putting them in warm water for about 15 minutes. Slice
Heat oil in a wok and saute garlic
Stir in the mushroom and chestnut. Then add in the pork ribs.
Cook them for about 3 minutes and pour in the braised peanuts
Add roughly 1/2 cup of water, 3 tablespoons of soy sauce, 1/2 tablespoon dark soy sauce, salt to taste and pepper.
Bring mixture to boil for about 1 minute and cover work with lid.
Simmer the stew mixture in low heat for about 2 hours. Add water when neccesary.



We came home pretty late after work so I only managed to stew it for 80 minutes. Anyway it tasted good as well. It can be better if we can cook for another 20 minutes.

Fish curry

I have a bag full of okras (ladies fingers) from my dad from the home trips. For the past days and weeks, I have been eating a lot sambal stir fried okras and it doesn't stay long this way. I am bored of tasting the same thing. At first I was thinking of making fish head curry but Weeliem did not favor that because there is not much to scrap out of a head. So I changed the recipe a little , fish curry. The other day we celebrated Malaysia Day by going to Tesco and bought ray fish. This is it, the hot lunch on a super hot day, with a lot of okras



Steps:
Process onions, shallots, garlic, dried chillies and cumin powder. (*1)
Cut fish into pieces and sprinkle salt onto them and let sit for about 10 minutes.
Heat oil and saute *1 until fragrant.
Put in fish curry powder and tamarind juice from soaking pulp in water for about 10 minutes.
Let the mixture boil
Add in fish, coconut milk and vegetables (okra cleaned and halved, tomatoes wedged) and salt to taste

Chinese pattern cuting- Double happiness with twin birdies

I know I said I only want to make 2 of these but I can't resist another one. My hands are itchy tonight so I cut another. This time it's smaller but cuter.



I received a lovely wedding gift from my buddy today, couriered from Korea by her favourite person in the world. It's a laneige face powder which the casing looks really cool, something like a cellphone with mirror at the top. There is a very pretty card with the gift.



Not forgetting an ex-coursemate who purposely dropped by Penang! with his wife last month and passed me this. His wife will be giving birth sometime close to my wedding day and it is impossible for him to make it here

Of life, like it or not

Work has been slowing down and I am happy to enjoy life, example writting, cooking and making my DIY things.

I received a few responses about how good that I did the DIY stuff and save money in my wedding. Honestly, I did the DIY stuff for my wedding is merely just for my interest of doing so. There are no cost saving here or what I mean is the saving is negligible. The saving of few ringgits doesn't impact the whole wedding expenses at all. I am extremely happy of doing one or two but absolutely not happy if I am to make 50 or 100 of those, because it is not fun anymore.

The same reason goes for cooking. I cook everyday because I feel happy when I made yummy food. If the food doesn't turn out good like what I expected, the rest of the day will be a sad day for me. If I were to ask to cook for a party, it will be different. It will be tiring and much more effort required. At this point, there is no fun of doing what I like. You know, volunteer to do something and being assigned to do something are totally two different things. But when you were assigned the task, it is not of your own will or probably you are just too shy to reject for not liking. Most importantly is your will. You do what you like to do.

We do things because we love doing them. That's how I sustain living in this cruel world, by doing something that makes my heart grows fonder of staying home keeping safe. It is similar to some people, example for liking to shop, sing karaoke, outings, yumcha sessions, sport activities, playing computer games, facebooking. I am perfectly fine if my friends like to sing-k and I don't think it is a waste of time because that's what you choose to do during your free time. I am very serious when I said I don't like K because I don't sing. It is not of any other reasons like I don't like joining the clique or too pricey or someone is a thorn in the gang. But I really do appreciate the invitation because it is making me feel that I am still wanted in the group. That's why I love my lunch gang and colleagues. They still invite me although 98% of the times, I rejected. Thank you very much people.

Once I encountered a somehow similar experience during some pretty old days. I like making cards. Birthday cards. So I made for friend, and another next because I like making them during my free time. Eventually people started to expect the same thing happening for the other friends. It is not that I don't like the friends, but it is of my interest. I don't like to do it when it became a task. I know it sounds ridiculous, but that's me.

I believe everyone has their own opinion. I don't go againts people. You can like anything and don't like anything, freely.

Chinese pattern cutting - Double happiness featuring mandarin ducks

Not going to waste time during this long holiday, I to cut another patttern using the remaining red paper I have. That's all ;) This time it's fast, I completed within half a day.



Note: Future MIL took it because it's too pretty lol

Flower ball deco

This is another DIY thing I made for our wedding. The flower ball deco made of red fabric. I bought some few metres of red lining which cost less than RM10.

I saw some shops selling the flower ball for RM39.90, RM49.90 which is a ripped off.

It will be used to hang at our home entrance.



I hope it will look nice when being hung up. We'll see..

Chinese pattern cutting -double happiness

I had done some DIY stuffs for our wedding for the past few months. The latest that I am working and had completed one is the chinese pattern cutting work. I had this problem to search the double happiness "xi" word in google because I can't write the word. I pinged Yi Chong because he is indeed very good in chinese, I guess. Haha. I wrote "si" in messenger to him and asked if he can type the word in chinese for me.He was all puzzled and quicky rang me wanted to hear me pronounce the word. He was relieved. He thought I am going to write suicide note in chinese.

After thanking him, I tried googling the image of "xi" and it returned me numerous results, some suitable for pattern cutting and some not. At last I picked this.

I had painful finger for 2 nights because of "manuevering" the small size scissors to cut small edges. I am glad it was worth the pain.

Our wedding electronic invitation

As some of you might have known, we are getting married this year. Here posted is the electronic invitation that we sent out to colleagues and some friends. To Ailene, Peili, Kim and other Klang buddies, we have both mutual and virtual invitations in facebook Hot Chicks group so there is no need to have multiple invitation right? So I am sharing this to you all who are willing to share happiness in our coming special day.

If you already gotten this invitation and not yet RVSP, please do so love.