Poultry on the plate.

My yummy Ginger Chicken Stew with Brocolli, one of the dishes for the night; just another comfort food for my family. A dash of Shao Xing Wine just perfect for the taste and smell too.

Fun to make - Oatmeal cookies

Why I love making these cookies?

Because my little one love these very much and it is the only making her eating and digesting oat and blackcurrants!

Every now and then I have these little cookies at home. I did made some for my family members as a Xmas gift last year and also I made these for the Chinese New Year too. Everyone loves it, as it is healthy and I put less sugar so not so sweet as well.

The flour I use is Wheat flour so it is healthier for both adults and kids.

I just love making them and it is easy to make too.

I follow the recipes from these two sites in the net; of course I reduce the sugar and replace the raisins with blackcurrants.

Oatmeal Cookies Recipe & Video - Joyofbaking.com *Tested Recipe*

Grandma's Oatmeal Cookies Recipe Simply Recipes

You can have a go too! Enjoy baking!

Oysters Oh Oh Oysters

Oysters and Tofu........ yummy. I happen to have some fresh oysters left behind, because it has been around for quite sometime and I guess it is not so fresh after hiding in the freezer for more than a week, so I decided to cook it and eat rather than just some lemon and tabacos sauce.

This is quite a simple dish but it needs a few preparations before hand.
1. Wash the fresh oysters with some water and lemon juice.
2. Boil the oysters in the water for about 4-5 mins.
3. Cut the half cooked oysters in half. (bite size)
4. Diced the tofu.
5. Chopped some garlic and spring onions.
6. Prepare the sauce - Oyster sauce + Sesame oil
7. With a wok- fry the garlic with some oil.
8. Add in the oysters + sauces.
9. Add in the tofu then the spring onion.
10. Viola - done!

Now enjoy these wonderful oysters and tofu dish!

Kusudama project

I have been doing some research on flower folding techniques and I found out about this Kusudama Flower ball which caught my attention. So I decided to give it a go myself by following the tutorial instructions, well not bad indeed right? The picture above shows only one flower with a combination of 5 petals. Ah Yes... this is a Sakura (Cherry Blossom flower).

Here the picture shows half of the flower ball, which has a total of 6 flowers. So if you want to create a flower ball it has to be a total of 12 flowers. Interesting huh! I use some origami folding paper and some recycle paper for this project. So now you can reuse your recycle paper for a decorative idea. Hurray for going GREEN!

If you would like to know how to fold this go check out the tutorial in this website:

Folding Trees » Kusudama Tutorial part 1
Happy Folding!

A Disaster

The Earthquake and Tsunami that hit Japan recently made me think a lot about our own fate in future. I know how it feel like when the earth beneath you shake profusely non-stop (which I experience before). It is uncontrollable, unpredictable and nothing you can do. We are lucky here in Malaysia that we do not have disaster like earthquake only bad floods and hot sunshine throughout the year.
I am thankful to god that I am here rather than in elsewhere where disaster often strikes. What made me think of lately is that, I am thankful that I am near my family, so whatever happens we are near and close to each other. What matters most these days are that my loves ones are beside me so if anything really happened, we are not far from reach.
Sad to say that many people that I know are far from their family because of career and living ideology. They choose to be far away........ most elder people I know of are left behind by their kids. Partly because of a better living in another part of the world or a better choice of career opportunity in other places.
No matter how far they are, home is always home and this is a fact they could not be change. If there is a choice, I believe all parents would love to have their children beside them.

Sweet Potato - My comfort food diary

Whenever I have a feeling that a flu is coming down on me....... oh this Sweet Potato soup dessert will come into my mind. This is one of my comfort food, simple, nourishing, easy to cook and eat.

Simply boil the sweet potatoes with enough water, include some red dates, ginger, some Pandan leaves, and some brown sugar to taste. Good comfort food for me!

More surprises...

My little one has so far adapt to her new home quite well. She loves her bedroom so far and I have already started to let her sleep alone in her room. So far it has been good and now she has gradually use to it and sleep through the night with no more cries and tears. Phew!

These days I am setting new routine for her to get use to it, that is reading her a story before she goes to bed. Hope she will get use to it soon.

Now she still prefer her bottle rather than solid foods, so this is actually a problem that I need to solve before she turns 18 months. No matter how I try she still insists on her bottle. Will try my best to make her not to become so picky on her food.

New Dress

This dress was made for Chinese New Year 2011. I tried to find some nice ones in the market but could not find anything that I like. So I bought this bright red cotton and made a dress for my little one. I even handmade those little cute pink flower on the dress myself! First attempt of mine, not bad right? Isn't she cute! I hope she likes it too..... LOL.

Impressive, Expressive & Suffocating!

Recently I have watched the movie Burlesque which is a 2010 Golden Globe award winning musical film directed and written by Steven Antin and starring Christina Aguilera and Cher. Well, I have always love Burlesque performances; although I did not watch any live one for real, only the movie. SO anything to do with Burlesque had caught my attention, like Dita Von Teese is still my favorite though. Well, the picture above is quite interesting as it portrays a romantic, sensual yet sexy lady like what an ideal woman should be. Well, guess it is just my interpretation only.
The interesting part is who the illustrator is. He is Vania Zouravliov, I was not familiar with him until now. And I think I kinda have fallen in love with his style of illustration and really wish I could illustrate like that. He really reminds me of Aubrey Vincent Beardsley, an english illustrator whoose works are similar in the style of grotesque , the decadent, and the erotic. Well, Vania's more chilling in the sense as his works have more details.

Don't you just love these images by Vania? Really impressively chilling, yet amazingly beautiful!

New Year, New Place... First-day: Part 1

It has been a while... I have stopped blogging. Sorry folks, I am not on vacation but am so busy moving house.

Indeed, I have a new place now, so I needed to pack things up and furthermore add to all these packing and moving..... is having to work part-time and also The New Year preparations and house-warming parties. All in all, I have a very busy start in the beginning of the year which also means I have a lot to blog about.

First of all I am wishing everyone a very Happy New Rabbit Year and Gong Xi Fa Chai!
Here I am First day cooking in my new Kitchen.
We had a little praying ceremony after entering the house. After that will be eating, so I had to cook which is supposed to be some of the things you need to do when entering a new place, I guess. Well, we invited some family members to have lunch together. Since it is during the Chinese New Year, I cooked something simple instead of having steamboat again.

Most of our family members are elderly so we had porridge and some other dishes to accompany it. Some vegetables, some roast pork from the market, some noodles made by granny, and some fried eggs; Simple and just nice for everyone.

After the short meal, we had some photo shooting session. We had ask one of our friends to come over and help us shoot some family photos for memory sake. It was a formal one so everyone kinda dress up and the mood was quite serious but well it went well in the end. This ended the first part of our housewarming party. More to come later in the night!!