16 posts tagged “food”

Ever since I got my new Sony-E W810i, I've decided to follow JQ's example, and make this a semi-food blog. Semi, because I'm too scatterbrained in my interests as well as the fact that I'm a lazy bugger. Why, in fact this post shall be my usual mish-mash, but with added pictures! \o/??

In any case, as the food section shall be pic-heavy, I'll put that last. Though, I have to say, the paiola papayas Haz got for my family are DE-LI-CIOUS. I didn't manage to take a picture, because I ated them!! OMNOMNOMNOM. She says you can get them at Carrefour and selected Jusco outlets, as well as some high-end fruit shops, though it is not organic. Get them if you can, seriously. I usually only get this kind of papaya scent out of a bottle.*hearts* It's smaller than the average papaya, so keep an eye out for them.

(The thing about trying to keep a food blog, I personally find, is try NOT TO EAT THE THING BEFORE TAKING THE PIC. ^_^;; Like the yee sang I had at Hakka Restaurant, at Jalan Kia Peng. Steamboat very reasonable price of RM20/pax btw. It serves pork, tho, but you can ask it to not be included in the standard set.)

(and why we, the office, went there:

me: haaahaa

  tmr have office dinner

  we're having an american guy over

11:39 PM who apparently keeps kosher

  so we're like, ok ok, no pork no pork

  but then we have this filipina lady here too

  and she can't take spicy

  which pretty much decimates .... 90% of malaysian dishes

  so... *thinky thinky

11:40 PM then: seafood! steamboat!

  *make reservation

  today, boss comes in, hey you know, kosher also means no shellfish

  (i completely forgot!!!)

  so we're like, <.<

  >>.>>

 Tracy: omg UR DOOMED

  DOOM

 me: "....so, how kosher is he??"

11:41 PM Tracy: RUN SCREAMING

  HAHAHAHA

  oh my god that's like a JOKE.'

 me: "maybe it's just no pork!!"

 Tracy: FOR SERIOUS.

(Hold on, that didn't sound right... correction: 'only white people of the Jewish faith would have dietary restrictions.' White people at large, despite past history, do not in fact eat Jews.)

This part is about make-up
Hani accompanied me to the Pavilion yesterday, since we both had the day off, thanks to FT day. It was a very pleasant day trip, much like a tourist-y kind of outing (we even took silly pictures with a mascot guy. In this case, the Carl's Jr Happy Star). I wanted to go as part of my personal 2008 photo project. Anyway, I was testing out my Lumiere mineral makeup sample, which finally arrived, and I convinced Hani to spend most of the day with Giorgio Armani's Luminous Silk foundation applied to half of her face. Lumiere's foundation is USD18 (plus USD5 for shipping), which is about RM60, while Armani's foundation is RM149. The reason why I convinced her to try the Armani one is due to Paula Begoun's positive review for it. The foundation claims to give a silky, skin-natural finish, and good for combination skin (it addresses oily and dry skin concerns), iirc. In any case, it became a test run for makeup on opposite ends of the price range, and in both cases, we respectively love what we had on, which we subjected to an almost 8-hour wear, which involved a lot of walking, indoors and outdoors (though it must be said, we walked in post-rain afternoon KL, so the humidity may be high, but not the heat). We both loved the finish of both, and Hani said that there is a noticeable difference between the side with the foundation and the side without, in regards to the shine control. I was wearing a Lumiere foundation in the Cashmere line, and while I think I need a better primer than the Veena Veil sample that I wore, for my nose (always an issue), the shine isn't too noticeable and the finish is as comparable as the Armani one (very creamy, silky look, which I think can definitely be attributed to the silk powder in the ingredients). It definitely was more wearable for fairly vigorous use than the Signature Minerals one that I tried (tho I've decided to order a SM finishing powder as well, to use as a primer of sorts, since it has kaolin clay).

So evidently, in regards to performance, they're both comparable. So I'll take a plunge into mmu and will probably order a Lumiere starter kit. And Hani did say she would consider buying the GA foundation, if she decides to splurge (for the moment she's much too taken by the ease of Benefit's Some Kind-a Gorgeous though, haha).

Cons for Lumiere: online retailer - shipping takes about 10 days != instant gratification; foundation and blusher shades need guesswork - this is where samples come in, and let's just hope you're the sort who can guesstimate your own shade based on the website.

Cons for Armani's Luminous Silk: all the usual fiddly things with liquid foundation applies; the price.

Paula Begoun, ever since I was introduced to her by Maybs, have been such a valuable personal resource. It's really helped me a lot in becoming more savvier about the cosmetics world. Which is good, since I'm such a pushover for marketing. XD

This is the part about the food

FWIW, McDonald's has come out with the Prosperity Foldover, which made me glad I haven't got time to have the Prosperity yet, because the pita bread is a damn sight better than the buns. And that leaves me enough justification to have the curly fries, mwahaha.

As for other stuff that I've had lately:

The very excellent cheesecake Hani and I had at the Times' Pavilion cafe. (Let's not waste time with a base, onwards with the cheese!). It was the teatime set (for RM10) that we had. She had the coffee, I had the English breakfast;

The Sunday meal we had at Silarasa Cafe in the Curve - Mak Milah's Nasi Briyani and the Laksa Johor. I actually wanted Laksa Penang (sourish broth; glass noodles), but my brain glitched and I ordered the Laksa Johor (creamy gravy, spaghetti noodles). It was very good though, but my family weren't so satisfied with their fare - our home-style briyani would replace ghee with olive oil, corn oil and butter, and we're more used to having more dishes to go with the rice;

Chef Loong in SS2 - Lil took me to this place, and we also had the mango-pomelo-sago dessert, but I accidentally deleted the pic. Yes, I am made of win. It's a chilled mango puree/soup, with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream, with bits of pomelo flesh and sago pearls. Omnomnomnom. The durian pancake above was not too shabby either. Though now I'm actually hankering for the durian creampuffs I had from that small shop in Petaling Street.

My brother isn't allowed to name things again. EVER. Also, Bush is a very spoiled kitty. Trust me, these two things are related.

The story is this: my brother rescued a ginger kitty on Saturday. I needn't tell you from where as the name my brother bestowed on him says it all: Drain. He's a wee little thing, with a gimpy right hindleg and a tail bent twice at the tip. In the end however, we gave him away, as Bush wouldn't go near him, hissing and clawing. Bush is never the most psychologically well-adjusted cat at the best of times, still a nervous thing, though somewhat affectionate with us his family, so in the Bush won and this house is still his.

Financially, I'm still under some very unlucky stars, but I won't dwell on that as there are other things in my life that deserves more joyful contemplation:

1. It's hard maintaining Bush's mellow mood if we carry him inside. Him being an outside cat meant that if we bring him indoors, he'd be too excitable to stay mellow. But today was a drowsy lazy afternoon, and I plopped him next to me on my bed and we had a nap together. It was awesome.
2. Double-faking friends is very exhausting but also very enjoyable. Making Fabian organize a surprise party while we're actually doing something to surprise him requires a rather epic entry in itself.
   
3. E-royce' chocolates are teh awesome. I was naughty and had some of the champagne liquor ones, but there was hardly anything to be intoxicated by and oh... the texture. I had dreams of cocoa so much I had to go down and make myself a mug of rich hot chocolate. Perhaps, if I can afford it next month.... ^_^
4. Incidentally, oh what comedy of horrors when you find yourself having to speak broken Japanese to a Japanese operator with no fluent English. It's right laugh riot I tell you, what more when your senior was sitting across you. Aaaaaaaa. ^^;
   

Technically speaking, I made an apple and quince pie, if indeed the golden apple at the back there is quince. Heh, heck of a find, and I have TJ's grandma to thank for bringing it over as 'buah tangan' (a small gift one brings when one visits a home). 

Basically, the filling is stewed apples, and this time I didn't burn the pastry (once I've figured out that the new oven doesn't quite bake the surface evenly, so had to rotate the pie 20 mins in). The pastry was still hard to handle though -- I'm such a baking n00b.

Look at how it crumbles at the slightest touch! Oh well, I made custard cream to go with, so all's well!

Great for dessert! No pictures. It's all in my tummy by now.

You need:
- A huge DOLLOP of plain yoghurt. It's up to you, you can start small and add more at the end.
- 1 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder (or Milo, in a pinch)
- 1 tsp honey. (the quest to finish the Gagarra honey my uncle-in-law bought continues!)
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp vanilla powder/essence/extract
- a few drops of lemon flavour (I was afraid to try the juice. There's a reason I barely passed chemistry, people)

MIX IT UP. There ya go.

Am making pastry wtf. Having a new oven, and conquering one's fear of baking does not lead to good, carb-free things, I find.

That said, I may just have added a wee bit too much butter to the pastry but we'll find out tomorrow if that's an offence worthy of me committing suicide.

Work continues, at a more frantic speed, as we realise that the deadline is looming. A publishing date of October doesn't mean we have seven months -- it means we have until May, to be comfortably ready for the nitty gritty technical bits of getting a book printed. More writers are hired to do the writing, and STILL I have to the writing for some of them, because none of them would dare to do the rewrite based on Malay sources. =_=' Oh for crying out loud, you don't even have to write in Malay. And it's newspaper Malay, not Hikayat Dendan Setia. (*saves the rant on the dubious bilingual capability and functional Malay literacy of the people of this country for another day*)

I sort of straddle both worlds (which really means I mangle both languages equally well), and it bemuses me to know people on both sides of the divide, who are essentially frightened (worst case scenario) of communicating in the other language.

Anyway, tomorrow is The Great Apple Pie Experiment. We shall see. At the very least everyone will lie to my face and tell me how enjoyable it will be.

Now where the hell is my Hikayat Dendan Setia... Buying/reading classic literature at the tender age of 12/13 is one heck of a misguided notion let me tell you. It scared me off Shakespeare, and for years all I remember of HKS is the violent birth (lightning! thunder! baby crashing through the floor to the ground unharmed!), which, Adibah Amin tells me in her SPM BM column, a sign of a princely and royal birth. Hardcore.

I better spell 'resuscitate' right.

Things I've learned (general):

• To cook dhall, one must be prepared for the hairy little buggers that come crawling out of the lentils AS SOON AS IT'S SAFE (for them, i.e. once one has been safely purchased and brought out of the store). Am I being merely histrionic? Go buy a cupful, have fun!
• Carbs taste good, no shit.
• I HAVE A WRINKLE! OMG, IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD. I MUST NOW COMMIT SUICIDE. What the hell, world, how the hell am I now *twenty-six*? I'm careening towards middle age, and I haven't yet sold my soul to the High Gods of Corporate World (in exchange for a shitload of money, benefits and years' worth of therapy). Self, you fail!
• I apparently, as you have no doubt noticed, have a talent for drama.
• I actually finished '26 Things', but am much too lazy to post them up. That and relearning CSS is driving me bonkers.
  

Observations (Bali; yes, went on holiday):

• The land is truly, blessedly, gorgeous. For the first time in a long while, walking, even though on the outer courtyards, along the stone paths of the temples, in the middle of the jungle, or on cliffs overlooking the ferocious Indian Ocean, I felt the urge to pray, to meditate. It's so easy to feel like the Divine has touched you there -- I suppose the bigger challenge is to hold on to the feeling when you're back surrounded by concrete and glass and plastic.
• That said, it clearly is a place driven by tourism. Visiting during the low season underscored the desperation, I think. They're not all desperate, that's not really what I mean, but even here (especially here), everyone's looking to hustle.
• I really like looking at all the daily offerings lying about -- another group of people more devout than I! :D
• Package tours are a walletsaver, but the buffet offerings kinda suck. Went to Bali, did not actually have nice, proper Balinese food, teh irony, woecakes etc. Tuna satay is awesome though, and should be encouraged here.
• While I'm mostly bemused and cynical at the incident involving Malaysian govt officials on a trip that was being footed largely by an owner of a construction company and us girls, I'm terribly amused that a night out for Asians TOTALLY, TOTALLY meant karaoke. (more karaoke this weekend -- I intend to slough the mental grime off).
• Pictures on the way, see above, re: site & CSS.
• I AM SO GOING THERE NEXT TIME. I'll do proper shopping and everythin', and actual beach activities! Involving waterskiing, and possibly dolphins! Probably not at the same time, but wouldn't that be awesome? (The dolphins waterskiing, I mean; yes, I'm deranged.)
  

Coffee ran out. Decided to be adventurous and buy a brand other than the one Yasmin recommended. ^^ It IS bad idea to have a cuppa now, isn't it?

Oh yes, went to Times Warehouse Sale. Tonnes of guidebooks, and fiction as usual. I got Michael Palin's Hemingway Adventure! YES! And a fountain pen with green ink. I may just go back and buy the one with the purple or aquamarine ink. MMM.

I parked just outside Devi's. Got fined RM100 for my wilyness. HAHA, oh well.

What else? Went to The Star resource centre today to look at old photos. Tomorrow's gonna be hitting NST I reckon.

Covered a society event tonight. Good thing I had dinner beforehand, is all I'm saying.

Or, Boy, What On Earth Possessed Me To Start A Blog On A Service So Committed On Creating Its Own Community It Won't Allow Anonymous Comments, i.e., People I Care About Who Can't Be Arsed To Create Another Blog Login ID?

Thus!

I've always wanted to pick up the art of speaking randomly into an empty canyon.

(Am reading a collection of short stories by Dave Eggers. I've begun imprinting on his narrative voice. HELP.)

(reading Pratchett will possibly aggravate the situation.)

(unrelatedly, 500 ml = 500 cc != 500 g. Apparently.)

(there's no such thing as beginner's luck in cooking.)

My maid's back from kampung, and there's a whole mound of fresh ginger. I begin to plot! So this weekend, it's a toss-up: carrot ginger soup or pumpkin ginger soup. Maybe I'll go for the pumpkin. Maybe this time I'll buy the proper butternut kind and not the sweet kind. ^_^

Learning about food photography can in fact make you lose your appetite entirely. Glycerine, motorcycle oil... yargh. Read about it before, but am reading about it again, and man, now I remember I don't really enjoy food photography anymore. Knowing the actual ingredients translates into an immediate recall of the actual taste (hypothetically - I don't, as a rule, eat waffles with motor oil. AARGHS.)

Pumpkin ginger soup!