Just 24 more hours to go!

Mmmmmm....damn, this is one heck of a long day. 

Am guessing that tomorrow will be the longest day of my life until I get myself to the airport. Am hyper now even though I only had 5 hours of sleep last night. Yes, excitement and chaos reigns in my heart right now. Am guessing that I will be much more jittery as tomorrow advances.

It's wonderful how the start of a new chapter in life begins in 24 hours with a smile and a hello. =) 

p/s: Thank you, Mother Nature for keeping your end of the bargain. Airports running like usual, and the snow has reduced! Cheers! 

A Day of All Sorts!

Oh, what a day!

Recently, I have been frequenting Kepong a fair few times with my oven being de-commissioned and all. I have to say, these table top ovens are rarely accurate - with at least a 50 degree celsius difference, one time it went up to a 100 degree celsius difference, hence the need to get it repaired. Imagine my poor burnt breads. Ah, yes, my "aunty-ness" levels have just tripled over the number of weeks - with all these baking and cooking.

By the way, Kepong is one hell of a confusing place to be in. Fabulous road side stalls there but roads are hay wired, cars moving in all directions, lorries suddenly appearing. Ok - I may be exaggerating a wee bit. In any case, it's still a confusing place to drive in. But the place that beats Kepong is Selayang and Batu Caves. My girlfriend and I decided to give the Selayang Pasar Borong (Pasar Boring = Wholesale Market, for the Malay illiterrate) a visit and ended up somehow at the KL Pasar Borong. Don't ask me how, but after the number of U-turns and wrong roads, a lost sense of direction and a huge splitting headache at the end, we managed to get there. I pride myself on being quite road savy, but after this day, there are definitely some places where a GPRS would be useful especially since Malaysian road signs are either non-existent, inadequately worded or inappropriately located. It also doesn't help that most roads in that area are dotted with many potholes.

The KL Pasar Borong was interesting with all fresh fruits, vegetables and probably meat or seafood produce - everything sold in cartons and bulk. We arrived rather late, not being much of a morning person, so the meat or seafood section was already closed by then.

Also, note to self:- For any future visits to any pasar borong, it is a necessity to dress like an "aunty", maybe go dressed in track suit, huge baggy t-shirt and those big round geeky black glasses from my primary school years with my hair tied up in a bun. I have never ever had in my whole life altogether, so many men staring and whistling at me and my gf at the same time. All heads turned and worked stopped. It wasn't just the foreign men, but also the local men. We were there after all just to look at the food produce and not to be looked at. And we were not dressed in anything sexy : my usual t-shirt, shorts and slippers.

I really felt like I was on sale together with the vegetables.  It was quite uncomfortable and as we left, we made sure that we double locked the car. Better safe than sorry.

It was a day to remember, but not a day to be repeated.

Countdown : 7 days!!!!

Finally, the final week is here! Just a little bit more of patience is necessary and a lot more of praying. 

"He's arriving soon!" Through all that snow and distance between us, that is if Mother Nature will answer our prayers, let down her defenses for just a little while and let the plane through all that horrendous weather. Yes, no doubt we deserve it with all the havoc that we caused you. But I promise to double up my efforts on recycling and maybe become a total maniac on it. Even carry my lunch box around in case I need to "tapau" food instead of getting those little plastic boxes. Thank you, thank you, I will be ever so "grateful". *big smile*

Just thought that I would share my happiness with the world. Don't hate me for it. =) 

Homemade Thin Crusted Pizza!

Love the smell of fresh oven pizza?

Well, make your own right at home. It is really simple, ie dummy proof - of course provided you have these few equipment in hand, (1) Your Hands (A food processor with a dough hook will shorten the time, but your hands would do just fine); (2) An oven (even a round convection roasting oven works); (3) A pizza pan (10 inch), and lastly (4) A strong craving for your own fresh pizza at a marginally lower price.

Am going to share the recipe here, just in case any of you have a sudden pizza craving but don't want to reach out the phone for Pizza Hut or Dominos.

Dough Ingredients:-
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon instant dry yeast
3/4 cup lukewarm water

Instructions:- (a) If kneading by hand
1) Add the flour, salt, instant dry yeast in a bowl and pour the water in slowly to mix the ingredients with a spoon until the dough is ready to be formed into a ball. If the mixture is too wet and sticky, salvage it by adding some flour (in my case half a tablespoon to one tablespoon).
2) Remove from bowl to a clean table surface. Put some flour (1/2 tablespoon to 1 tablespoon) on it and dust your hands with flour to avoid the dough from sticking to the table and you, of course. Knead for about two to five minutes.For the newbies, kneading consist of rolling the dough into a ball, holding the dough with one hand and with the other hand pushing outwards to stretch the dough, and then pulling it back, then half turning the dough and repeating the same thing.
3)  Shape it back into a round ball and roll out by hand into a circle to fit your pizza pan. (I cheated here by using a rolling pin to flatten it to a 3mm thick layer. There should be some leftover dough. The recipe was meant for a 12" pizza)
4) Place dough on a slightly oiled pizza pan and viola, its ready for you to put your desired mixture on it - mine for the day was my 1 cup of uncooked pizza sauce, a slice of ham, mortadella, slices of salami, white mushroom sliced, and sliced onions. (One of my sins is gluttony, it definitely had too much of a good thing in it but it tasted so damn good! Reduce the filling in order to have the crust at the bottom to be well crusty. Or remove from pan in 2/3 of the required baking time and place on a wire rack to continue baking).
5) Preheat the oven to as close to 500F for roughly 10-15 minutes (some ovens don't even reach 500F, mine only up to 450F). Bake pizza for 10-12 minutes, and put a generous mozzarella cheese only at the 11th minute of baking or if you prefer, after it has been taken out of the oven.

As for the homemade uncooked pizza sauce, prepare it before you make the dough to avoid any waiting time. Ingredients are as follows:- 7 oz. of crushed tomatoes (you can blend them but do not over blend, you still want them to be a bit chunky), 1 oz. of tomato paste, 1 tbsps parmesan cheese, 1/4 tsp Oregano,  1/2 tbsp minced fresh garlic, 1/4 tbsp black pepper, 3/4 tsps sugar and 1/2 teaspoons of basil. Whisk all together and allow flavors to blend for one hour before using.

And there you have it, delicious thin crusted pizza! Bon Appettite! :)

Seafood Cravings at PJ Seafood Restaurant, Tropicana

PJ Seafood Restaurant is located at Kampung Cempaka just off the road in front of the Tropicana Golf Club before the tunnel. It took us some time to reach there as the roads had changed, there was a traffic jam as usual and plenty of U-turns had to be made to even reach the place.


Since time immemorial, PJ Seafood Restaurant had always been famous for its "Lai Yao Hai" (butter crab) and "Ham Tan Hai" (egg salted crab, and yes, my Ping Yin is still crappy as usual. =P ). My memories of this seafood restaurant extended as far back as six years ago. I've always had a great time eating here on numerous occasions years back when they still had a fishing pond that actually allows its customers to catch their own meal of the day. My usual favorites then was the steamed cod fish and the sweet sour crabs with fried mantao. The dishes were always fresh, crabs a good size, prices reasonable and service good. 

It was however, a big big letdown during our recent trip there. Our list of complaints were really long:- Firstly, the lady was pushy in recommending her more expensive dishes; the steamed rice served was probably leftovers; the order for "ku loh yok" came in as a sizable medium which we thought was way too much as we had ordered 5 dishes for a company of six girls; the steamed tilapia fish was way too small; and the famous butter crab had shrunk in size. Taunted as a medium, it seemed more like a small. Is it me?!!! Or has food in Malaysia decreased in size except for the price tag. And the worst was that the sweet and sour crab wasn't at all fresh. We could distinctively smell the staleness under all the sauce. Exercising our consumer rights, we had it changed at the price of a pretty sour face that gave no apologies. 


Being a typical Malaysian crazy about food, I usually would have my face stuck in my food especially seafood. But our experience left me with little appetite. The only two saving grace was that the thai coconut water was just nicely matured with some thicker amounts of meat to chew (pointed out by my friend which wasn't even made by them) and that the fish was quite fresh. 


Luckily the damage was not a huge amount - RM25 per person. But our unanimous verdict from the girls for the day was an unfortunate resounding "Never Again"!!! Visit at your own peril.