: : Comments : :

Since Haloscan has been unrealiable for the past few days, am enabling the comments feature from Blogger.

Sorry that you can't see the old comments anymore. Ah well.

: : Onion Biscuit : :



I could not believe it when one of my collegues offered me some onion biscuit! Well, more like spring onion biscuit. Seriously though, it tasted really good and also sweetish!

I used to buy this biscuit by the tin (it was a huge coffee powder tin) and put it in the office for everyone to eat. This is one addictive biscuit. If you like it, you'll really really love it.

My collegue bought the biscuit from a local supermarket called Everrise. Well, I'm glad to be able to taste a little bit of memories from 5 years ago.

: : Gawai Celebrations : :

It's the end of harvest celebration starting tomorrow. The celebration is known as Gawai and it will be two days of public holidays for everyone.

There is an Open House at the Kuching Civic Center tomorrow 1 June 2004 starting 10 am to 3 pm. I believe that it's organized by the Politicians and food will be provided. I wonder whether there will be any cultural performances or not?

Anyway, do drop by. It's an interesting and fun time. Of course, the traffic jams would be seriously bad but not too worrisome. Am planning to go early, take some pictures and get out of there really quick before the lunch crowd appears.

Cheerio!

: : IMBB No. 5 ~ Catch of the Day : :



For IMBB No. 5, we are doing the fish. Oh yes. Smelly fish. Pungent fish. Glorious fish. We are making it the dish catch of the day on THE DAY. The day is 20 June 2004.

Now, what is IMBB? An acronym for Is my Blog Burning, it started off as an idea from Alberto to have a blog cooking day where a theme is selected and everyone makes a dish centered around the theme. We've had soups, tartines, cakes and rice dishes from all over the world, serve in different and yet delicious ways. If there ever was a time that an ordour option where smells can be sent via the internet be invented, this would be a great time to do so. Not to mention that the last IMBB on rice saw more than 50 entries on rice alone!

So, for no. 5, let's make something from fish. Yeah yeah, it sounds like something out of the Iron Chef series. Note that only the 4th edition and this one is based on a cooking ingredient and the previous 3 editions were more on the type of dish. Still, it's an amazing event and the number of participants just keeps growing and growing and growing.

How to do it? Well, it's easy. Post up a writeup with recipe on a dish where fish is one of the ingredients anywhere on your blog or website. Drop me a comment or an email to say where the link is and I will post up the links the following day. If you do not have a weblog, you can email me your pictures at myremi@gmail.com along with the writeup and I will post it up on my blog for you. Even if you would like to share a favourite recipe, I would love to hear about it and can easily post it up for you.

You can use any fish ingredient, be it fresh fish, frozen fish, canned fish, fish balls, fish cakes, fish patties, fish skin or fish soy sauce. Just be fishy as fishy as you want your dish to be. Only rule here is to use fishy fishy fish fish.

It's fun. Do join us. We love to hear from you on how your cooking preparation and your meal went. So, let's make it a date to have a huge even on 20 June!

Cheerio!

: : Granny's Visit to another physician : :

Thanks to everyone who have given words of encouragement and support. It truly means a lot to hear it from all of you and Granny thanks you as well.

The morning apppointment went well. Granny has been given a set of new medication and so far, till this moment, she is feeling as she usually does : chirpy, perky and ready to roll. We will be going to have her chest X-ray done as well as a blood test to follow-up. Also, once the results are in, I'm to bring her ECG report from the other doctor to this one as well. I'm in the process of getting her medical records from that other doctor to pass to this one.

With this other doctor, I learnt a new 'trick' : to check the blood pressure of both arms and if there is a huge difference, something is not right. So now, the daily blood checks at home will be on both arms.

Blood test and X-ray will be done on Thursday next week because the labs are not opened during the Gawai Festival next week until 3rd June. Will be taking the morning off and going with Granny to get it done.

Anyway, we're both happy that we met this new doctor and a lot of our worries have eased up. Although it was an expensive exercise with the previous doctor although his charges were cheaper, nothing beats getting a good doctor to ease one's worries. And when I think of how much it costs to go and see a doctor in a Western country, the RM320 (USD84) fee that we paid for consultation, medication for a month and echo scan, it was well worth it.

Note that both doctors are not GPs but are specialists known as physicians. I was informed that a physician is one who carries out tests and investigates to why a person is sick. Not sick as in flu sick but illnesses that are difficult to diagnosed. Doctors aren't a bad sort but like anyone who is working, some are better than others.

I'm off now to read up more on high blood pressure and geriatrics, not to mention the medication that Granny is now taking. So, cheerio!

: : Granny's Condition : :

Today is both a good day and a bad day.

Bad Day
I know that Granny's doctor got mad at me when I questioned him about the high-blood pressure medication he gave her was making her feeling tired and losing her appetite even though it was controlling her blood pressure. Reason is that after I told her not to talk it after feeling so bad this week, she recovered her appettite slowly but surely over the past two days.

How did the visit went? To me, I could not understand why he did not immediately give me alternative solutions until I asked him directly after much prodding. I know doctors are stressed out and all that, hence no firing or loud words. But still, I didn't feel comfortable. Even though he could be right that the calcium blockers should not make her lose her appetite or make her feel tire and lethargic, he still could not explain why it as soon as she stop taking the medicine, she felt better. Of course, he did recommend for a full checkup as there could be another problem, which I did agree to but not at his clinic and never again will I bring her there. The only reason we went there was because she needed to have a checkup before her cataract operation and this physician was the nearest.

I should have been more suspicious when we went into his clinic and it was not jammed packed with patients. In Asia, if a specialist is very good, his clinic is so pack that you cannot see him without an appointment. If one can just easily pop by to see a specialist as easy as a normal GP, well, bears thinking a bit.

And like I said, even though he could be right, the way he dealt with Granny and myself leaves much to be desired for.

Good Day
After a phonecall to Miri to another doctor cousin, I found another physician. Another cousin in Kuching who knows this physician has so graciously made the appointment to see the doctor on Saturday morning and agreed to show us to the clinic. Even found out that my uncle doctor goes to him. I feel a lot better now.

At the same time, I bought a blood pressure monitor tonight from the pharmacy so that I can check on Granny's blood pressure. Surprisingly, the monitor registered her at 140/86 at night compared to this morning at 180/95 at the doctor's. Note that she has not taken any medication for the past two days. I'm getting suspicious.

We'll see how tomorrow goes. Not feeling so good at the moment. Am thinking why didn't I bring her earlier. Both of us thought it would not get this serious as she is getting old and suffers the occasional backpain (she had a slipped disc years ago) and leg pain. Sigh.

And reading this article about calcium blockers doesn't help at all.

Common Blood Pressure Drug May Not Be So Useful for Heart
Blood Pressure Drug May Increase Risk of Death
Blood Pressure Meds: Pricey Isn't Better
Popular Blood Pressure Medicine May Do More Harm Than Good

Another point to note : the brand of drug that she is taking is not even listed on WebMB which makes me suspect that it hasn't pass approval for FDA. Not to mention that the 2nd batch of pills that she had from this doctor did not come packaged individually but loose pills. Wonder how old they are.

I'm just tired of this and so is Granny. I hope that tomorrow will be a good day and we'll finally see the end of this whole problem.

: : Long Beans, String Beans, Curly Bean : :

My streamyx connection is still down. Bah! Because of this, it's getting harder to blog via the Jaring connection but occasionally, it's possible. Anyway, let's have a look at one of my childhood favourites. My father was so happy that he had identified one of our favourite vegetable dishes because my sister and I seriously did not like eating vegetables when we were young. The dish was stir-fried long beans.



So, here are the long beans all chopped up into smaller pieces. I still prefer eating it this way rather than having the beans cut into longer strips.



Granny keeps some pounded dried prawns in the fridge so that when she needs it, it's ready for the cooking pot, in this case, wok.



Throw some chopped garlic into a heated pan filled with 2 tablespoon of cooking oil. Once the garlic is soft and fragrant, throw in the chopped long beans and stir them. Remember, the fire mustn't be too hot that it'll burn the beans.



Add in some salt and we also added in some MSG so that it gives a sweetish taste. It was about 1/2 teaspoon of MSG that went into this dish. One thing about MSG is that it makes a dish sweeter but we usually don't put a lot. Crack at egg in the middle of the beans and continue cooking until the beans are soft and have changed to a darker greenish colour.



Voila! The finished dish. Yummy and tasty. I love this stuff.

: : Cherry Flambe : :

I suddenly have an urge to have cherry flambe with ice-cream. The last time I ever had one was at my Dad's restaurant (which has since closed down years ago). My all-time favourite dessert that for some reason or another is no longer on dinner menus.

And it all started out after reading the Asian Online Recipe site on Flambe.

: : Food Porn Watch : :

I'm a little bit late posting this. Alrite, more than a little bit late. I'm WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY late.

A brilliant work on catching up with most of the English food blogs on a site titled Food Porn Watch. Yes, we food bloggers are a devious bunch to tantalize you with the temptations of wonderful cooking. Pictures galore with tons of recipes to boot.

Courtesy of Jarrett Byrnes

: : IMBB ~ Around the World in a Bowl of Rice : :

Wena : Aik! Today is the day lah!

Granny : Eh! What day?

Wena : Neh! Cook the fried rice lah.

Granny : Aiya! We have to go to market and buy the black black thing lah!

Wet Market.

Granny : Got aw kana or not?

Seller : Got! Last packet!

Granny : Old or not ah?

Seller : No lah! Not that old lah. Still ok one.

Granny : How much?

Seller : For you, ah, auntie, one ringgit only. Young people dunno how to eat this now lah.



And this is the aw kana which is similar to black olives. The skin is black but the flesh on the inside is very dark purple. It is extremely salty and the packet that we bought came from China. For today's IMBB, since we are going around the world, we got rice from Thailand, the olives from China and a wonderful granny previously from Penang but residing in Sarawak now. These black olives are very very salty. It is so salty that once you put them into a little jar and chuck them into the fridge, it will be good to eat for at least one year! Granny says that it's good to eat with porridge as it gives a nice salty taste to an otherwise bland meal.

Anyway, onto cooking the fried rice with aw kana. We had it at Lok Thian about a month ago and it was delicious. So, we decided to make it at home for the IMBB hosted by chez pim.



We cut some slices of chicken. Note that it needs to be in small strips.



Heat up some oil in a wok and stir fry about 1 teaspoon of the olive as well as the chicken until it's cook.



Throw in about 3 cups of rice. The best rice to use is those that have been cooked the night before so that most of the moisture has dried up and the rice is less wet. If there is too much moisture in the rice, the final fried rice can be soggy. Anyway, mixed the rice and press down on it to mix it with the aw kana. If the skin of the olive is still in big pieces, use the frying stick to break it up into little pieces.



An egg is added into the rice and again, mixed and stirred until the whole dish has been cooked.



As the dish looked a bit colourless, we opened a packet of cashew nuts (salty ones) and used the nuts to add some colour and flavour to the dish.



And this is how it looks like : Fried Rice with Salty Black Olives. Nice, no? Believe me, it tasted really good. And I broke my Atkins fast today with this bowl of rice. The last time I ever had a bowl of rice was 4 weeks ago. It tasted so good! Note that if one would like a more salty flavour to the dish, just add in more black olives but be careful though! It is immensely salty!

For more dishes this Sunday, check out Pim's blog for updates!

: : Homecook Egg Dish : :

After 3 weeks of not being able to connect on to streamyx, I got on for about 15 minutes and then it went berserk. So now, am back to using my trusty old Jaring account. The inside word is that Telekom Kuching knows what is the problem in the Tabuan Jaya area but does not do anything about it. Stupid. And Telekom being an IPO company. Not to mention people who like to 'work' from the canteen rather than at their desk. Telekom Malaysia likes to brag that their broadband services are cheaper compared to most countries. What they fail to mention is what you pay is what you get. Bah!

Anyway, here is a great homecook dish. I'm sure some of you would recognize it.



Beat up 2 eggs. Add some pork, salt and pepper into it as well as a splash of water. Then steam it until it is cook. And voila! We have a delicious steam egg dish with meat inside. Some people would like small pieces of salted vegetables into the dish and of course, more meat than what is shown here. Goes extremely well with rice and is one of my favourite childhood dishes. Very easy to made.



This is how it looks like inside. Other than pork, one can substitute the meat with minced chicken or minced prawn. Not sure whether it would go well with mince beef or mince lamb though. Anyway, this was my lunch dish on Friday last week, I think.

: : Warning! GORY : :

Proceed with caution! Gory pictures ahead. If you have no stomach for blood and internal organs, please do not proceed any further. Today, we're going to look at how to cut up a fish.



Uncle Cyril came home at around lunchtime after spending the whole night fishing out at sea. Came back with 3 big Ruby Red Snappers. Looks beautiful, no? It weighs about 3-5 kilos each which is pretty hefty. Well, thought it was time I learnt how to cut a fish properly. Surprise that Wena doesn't know how to? Well, better late than never. So, this is how Granny did it.

One thing's for sure, after all that cutting up, I'm glad we did it outside. All three of us got sprayed with sticky water and occasion droplets of blood here and there.



First of all, one needs this handy tool : a descaling device. Looks very wicked and if one is not careful, the spikes can do serious damage to one's hand. However, it's extremely useful to remove the scales of a big fish faster than using a knife.



Some of the smaller fishes that Uncle Cyril caught. The top two are called banana fish. Don't ask me why because I seriously have no idea. I think he mentioned that the bottom one was a sardine.



Anyway, here is the scaling device in action. The huge spray of fish scale just went everywhere. Looks like flakes of ice shavings flying around, if you ask me.



Next, remove all the fins from the fish, especially the ones on the top and bottom of the fish. Be very careful when you do so because most likely, there will be quite a lot of sharp pointed ends on it. Use the cleaver to spread them out and then give it a good whack to chop it off! Also, cut off the tail.



After that, it's time to remove the head. Make a diagonal slide and start cutting it away. At this point, it's good to note that one must have an extremely sharp cleaver to do is and also be prepared to whack the fish really hard with it. The bone is quite thick so it's going to be hard to remove. Although the bone is not as tough as chicken bones.



With the head removed, it is now much easier to remove the internal organs. Be very careful when doing this as not to burst the green sac which is the gall bladder. If you do, the contents from the bladder will make the flesh of the fish very bitter. Believe me, you do not want the fish to taste terrible. After that, the fish was divited up into 2 parts to be frozen. Granny usually cuts the fish into smaller pieces once she's ready to cook them.



Now, we also cut up the fish head to make assam fish head curry. The head is sliced into have and the gills must be removed.

Granny : Must remove this part (gills) wor! All the germs there!

Uncle Cyril : Ya! Even at the restaurants they remove it.

Granny : Humph! I don't think so! I see it still there lah!



The rest of the catch. Smaller fishes and the spotted one is a tasty grouper. Not the greasy version but one that can be steamed with no problems. I prefer the grouper to be fried rather than steam because the flesh tends to be hard.

Anyway, we double bagged the fish and squeeze them into the freezer. There was enoough fish to last us for at least a month!

This is the reason why I have a healthy respect for fishmongers and butchers. Imagine having to do this every day for hours!

: : Italian Dining in Brighton : :

Just read about this at the gastroblog. Carlo has rented a small restaurant for the night and will be preparing a wonderful night of good home-cooked Italian food! Wow! It's the first time I've ever heard of this happening : a food blogger doing it. Sounds very very interesting.

Unfortunately, I'm stuck 16 hours away from Brighton, England. Darn! Else, it's a steal for 15 pounds! From the menu, it looks like an extremely delicious four course menu.

It's by reservations as only 25 places are available. Contact carlo for a reservation.

: : Chicken Salad : :

Yes yes, another scrumptious (don't frown now, the lines may be permanent) salad.



This time, instead of ham, I added in some chunky pieces of chicken into the salad as well as some Cajun seasoning. The vegetable ingredients were the same as yesterday's salad but I added in some tomatoes this time. When cutting up the tomatoes, I removed the seeds and the soft bits so that the salad doesn't get too soggy.

It came out tasting quite good but the Cajun seasoning would have tasted better with the chicken if I'd had marinated the chicken meat overnight and then later grilled/sauteed it rather than mixing it with already boiled pieces of chicken.

On another note, I've lost a total of 17 lbs (7.7 kg) after weighing myself today and this was immediately after lunch! Feeling good now. Getting there after all the effort.

: : Template : :

I am thinking of changing the layout to this blog. Nearly 12 months of the same colours.

Well, will think how to do it later.

: : Eating Healthy : :

And you bet it's all about eating healthy. Well, to a certain portion of people it is. In fact, I never used to like eating salads that much because it was always so bland. But now, I know how to make salad that I like.



One of the many salads that I've been eating the past 4 weeks (can't believe that it's been that long!) is a basic salad that I make using strips of ham, lettuce, celery, cucumber and mangkuang @ hikama/jicama. I mixed it with some dried dill but my mistake with this salad was adding too much cummin seeds. Then again, I shouldn't have added it in at all.

But! What is the secret to a good salad? Well, seriously, I do not know. All I know is that I love COLD salad. And, it must be very very cold so that the vegetables are extremely crunchy. I tend to keep salads in the fridge overnight so that when I eat it in the morning or for lunch, it's so crunchy and surprisingly sweet as well! This includes the celery and cucumber. Mangkuang @ hikama/jicama is always sweet anyway.

I notice that the vegetables get partially iced up. Well, only slightly as it doesn't taste too ice-y but just nice to give it a firm taste. I also notice one thing about eating celery : do not eat it immediately. There is some after taste after cutting it that I'm not at all sure what it is. However, after chilling it in the fridge for a few hours, it tastes a lot better.

The only problem with making salads overnight is that a lot of the water comes out of the vegetables. In the picture above, I got at least 1/4 of a cup coming out which I had to pour away. Other than that, no complaints from me.

And, would you believe that what you see in the picture was all I ate for lunch? I still sometimes feel hungry late in the afternoon but it's bearable. And, I feel a lot better after I got over the sugar and carbohydrate cravings.

Yeah, it's not for everyone. Am I a good-food-eater? No way. I ate a plate of indian rojak today that was just divine. Ah well. Not to mention crabsticks. So, there you go.

: : Salads, Delia style : :

I'm scouring the net for more recipes on salad. Suddenly found a nice way to eat salad : REALLY COLD!! Now I realised why I never seriously got into the salad bug. It's because the salad were never cold enough. Now, suddenly everything that is green tastes so sweet when it's been in the fridge for some time.

Anyway, found some salad recipes from Delia Smith's site. She's seriously amazing and her recipes look so easy to make. Having said that, I bought a recipe book about 2 years ago at half price at the local bookstore (couldn't believe that it was half price). It's the Delia Collection : Book One but unfortunately, it's mostly eggs, potato, rice and baking bread! However, she does describe in great detail how to cook the egg properly. Oh yes, it's not easy to just simply fry an omelette.

One of her recipes on a rice salad looks pretty good to eat and to make for the next IMBB organized by Pim. No, I'm not making this but it reminded me of another of my Granny's recipe that we haven't had in a long long time. So, think will do that instead. Until the 23rd of May!

: : Waste Not, Want Not : :





One thing about us Chinese folks is that we would eat nearly all parts of a pig. Like this soup of tripe. What is tripe? It's part of the stomach lining which is soft and chewy but not tough that you cannot bite into it. It's easy to cook it as a soup but one needs to cook it with black peppercorns. It would also take a long time to cook so one needs to put the pot under a slow fire. The picture was taken last year during one of the lunch outings.

The problem with cooking pork tripe is that one would have to get it from a Chinese butcher who would have already treated the tripe such that one doesn't need to prepare it before cooking. Granny's gone to bed already so couldn't ask her how it's done. All I remembered was that it involved alot of washing and squeezing out the water. There's probably something added into it to 'clean' the tripe but offhand, I can't remember what it's suppose to be.

But, it's still a very yummy dish. Granny sometimes cooks it at home with some chicken or pork meat to add to the flavour of the soup. Yum!

: : Juicy : :



Ah! Haven't had this in a long long while. Let's see, it's been 4-6 months now since I had a sweet tasting watermelon. I've not hit the craving stage yet so so far so good. Other than cheating on fried ice-cream and sushi over the weekend.

Seriously have to take more food pictures. My archive of unused pictures is getting used up pretty fast these days. On another note, Blogger got a new facelift and I'm impress. Very very nice.

Tomorrow is another day so this little gal is off to have a bit of rest. Cheerio folks and have a great week ahead!

: : Soup for the Soul : :



Good Atkins Food : Chicken Soup which I had about two weeks ago.

Bad Atkins Food : Sushi that I had for teatime. It had rice inside it! Argh!

: : Fried Ice-Cream : :

Huai Bin has put up the pictures including the one on the fried ice-cream. So nice.

Sigh. I hope that I do not put on anymore kilos to the 4.8 kg that I've already lost. Not to mention the inches that I've lost as well. I've shrunk by 12 inches and I hope it remains that way!

: : Changing to Gmail : :

Am changing my email to Gmail at myremi@gmail.com.

: : Kuching Bloggers Meet ~ Hot Seat : :

Well, made it to the Bloggers Meet today at Hot Seat. Unfortunately, I didn't set the settings properly on the camera so most the pictures came out overexpose. Well, Huai Bin also took all the food pics so check out his site for updates later. I could only salvage two pictures so here they are :



Because there was no more peanut sauce, the chef(s) came up with this great satay mix and it was so delicious. I don't know what is in it other than marinated satay but it was fabulous. I had one of this on top of my chicken chop. Fina had it as well. Huai Bin ate 3 dishes and this was one of them. That dude can really really eat.



A meal ordered by Dee's friend, OO. Well, it was lamb with pasta with a great tomato sauce. It was seriously very very nice. But, by then, I had already finish my meal, including the famous fried ice-cream with chocolate sauce.

Yes, I broke my diet today by eating fried ice-cream. I just couldn't resist because it was so tempting. Everyone had a plate of it except for Mac, I think. Believe me, it was seriously great. The ice-cream was still very cold and firm, smothered completely in chocolate sauce.

Who else was there? Well, there was Aida, Lizzy, Joyce and Gette. Also, Melvin joined us later on as he was in town.

We were all very satisfied with the meal and had to sit down for a LOOOOOOOOOONNNNNGGG while to digest everything. I left early at about 10 p.m. to get some quick rest.

Darn, the ice-cream is not sitting too well in my stomach. Suffering from a sugar high at the moment. So, cheerio until tomorrow then.

: : Dynasty : :



During my trip back home to Miri, I had a wonderful dinner with the Khoo Clan and my parents. We had a delicious meal at the Dynasty Restaurant at the Dynasty Hotel. I must say kudos to the chefs of this establishment. Even the chef at the Dynasty Coffee House is amazing. The way the meals are served are absolutely terrific. Not to mention that it is forever tasty. Note that although the Coffee House is halal, the Chinese restaurant is not.



When we entered the restaurant, this was the first thing that we saw. I think the left hand statue is Quan Yin @ Goddess of Mercy and the other chap is one of the Gods (prosperity? Anyone?).



Once we settled down, it was a time to prepare the chillis that acts as a condiment for the entire meal as well as having some tidbits to settle our hunger while waiting for the food to come. It was a choice of chopped chilli with garlic and sugar or just plain cut chillis. The chillis are put into a small and cute little sauce bowl. If one is having cut chillis, black soy sauce is added although some people would add black vinegar instead. For my family, we would also add in some chopped garlic into the mixture of cut chillis and soy sauce. As for the tidbits, we had some pickled cucumber (that is sweeten) and boiled peanuts. I love boiled peanuts so had to seriously control my intake that night.



This was such a tasty dish that I just had to have two of them. The tauhu is fried first and then hollowed out so that chopped mushroom and pork is added into it. It's like a little treasure chest, no? In the middle of the dish is some stir-fried chai sim. Chai Sim is something like spinach only that it's very crunchy.



Another interesting dish : steam fish, mushroom, carrot and ham with an eggwhite sauce poured over it. On the side, the entire dish was surrounded by boiled brussel sprouts which was covered with oil, I think. Still, it was very nice altogether and fairly easy to do. Well, it look easy to do anyways.



As my young cousins were with us, we ordered this plate of roasted chicken especially for them. The chicken is salted so needs to be eaten with some rice or veggies. The crackers on the side is made from prawn mixed with flour and later deep fried. It's very crunchy, by the way. Roasted chicken is a favourite for kids and just about everyone loves it. If it's done well, the skin would be extremely crispy but the inside flesh is still moist (or perhaps oily).



The star of the entire meal was the roasted pork leg. Yum yum! It's difficult to get good roasted pork leg around here and this one was done very nicely.



The waitress then started to cut up the pork leg into smaller pieces for us to eat it. It was so soft that the cutleries just slices through it easily. Needless to say that everyone "pigged-out" on the crispy skin as well as the soft and tender meat in between. Wah! So delicious.



Dynasty Hotel is located in one of the old parts of Miri. Growing up, the restaurant used to be part of a shopping mall area which closed down some time in the 90s. Not sure what happened to the upper floors but the ground floor was converted into this restaurant, or rather, the restaurant moved from it's old location on the 1st floor of the hotel to this Ground Floor. It's a very popular family restaurant and one needs to have a reservation during the weekends to dine here. Chinese families like to go out and eat during the weekends and enjoy the time together as a family on a favourite pastime : EATING! Including us, that is. Well, we were a mixture of Chinese and Kelabit family members all put together but the food was definitely so tempting!

: : Relief : :

Phew! Luckily, I'm still about half a kilo down from last Friday. Not too bad but not too good either. Not losing enough though! Haven't bought the swimsuit or goggles yet. Just didn't have time yesterday.



But anyway, this is the sauce that I make regularly to eat with my salads. I have metamorph myself into a rabbit. I eat everything but raw carrots. It's raw cucumbers, raw celerys, raw capsicum, raw jicama and raw lettuce. Why? Because I'm looking to increase my fibre intake. Since I cut out a lot of rice, I now need to get my fibre elsewhere. I suppose another way would be to take fibre tablets but those stuff contains apples and I can't exactly eat any fruits at the moment. Oh well.

Anyway, back to the sauce. It's a mixture of herbs with mayonnaise and some Dijon mustard which is absolutely fabulous with the mayonnaise. Don't add to much unless you want the entire salad dressing to be very sour. Just a little bit will do and you'll be fine. Also, since I cannot touch tomato sauce or chilli sauce, this is my OK-go-ahead-no-worries dressing.

I'm too obsess with my dieting.

Ah well.

: : Guilt : :

I confess.

I ate chilli crab which had sugar in it. Not to mention the butter prawn as well. Plus, I had some oyster omelette with flour in it.

ARGH!!!

Ah well. Once in a while. Cheating.

Must try again for better control. This time, it was one week before I gave into my urge for carbohydrates.

: : Dietgal to the rescue : :

And she definitely is. It's always great to know that one is not alone having to deal with weight problems. It also helps for motivation and to strive on to achieve our targetted weight. She's amazing, having to do it for more than 3 years. Me, I've just started.

Having said that, I must go and get some tights for swimming. Since I started Atkins' and Unisense, my cellulite is showing and it's pretty bad. Then again, I just might just go ahead anyway and just swim for the heck of it, irregardless of what people say. It's my body and I'm doing something about it.

So, in conjuction of having lose weight (about 3-4 kilos), I'm off to buy a new swimsuit and some prescription goggles. Probably tomorrow since it's still a public holiday.

: : Hot Seat : :

Now these shots were definitely taken during my pre-Atkins-and-Unisense Days. Why? Look at all the carbohydrates heaped onto it. Not that it wasn't tasty, mind you. It was quite nice. Can't wait for the day when I can eat it again. Must remember, only AFTER 12 June!

The dinner was eaten at Hot Seat with Min Yen after a stressful day at work. I just wanted to have something nice to eat at the end of a really long long long day.



Now this was a refreshing drink : ice-blended milo. Very cooling and filling at the same time. All it needs at the top was whipped cream or even a scoop of chocolate ice-cream. Hmm... better not say too much now.



I ordered the grilled fish which came with a tasty sauce made from tomato and dunno-what-else as well as some salad and mash potatoes. It was a great dish alright.



Min Yen decided to have something small and ordered some satay. It came in a mixture of chicken, beef and lamb. I love the lamb satay. So tasty. And, the peanut sauce was so delicious! Very thick, sweet and salty at the same time. Good to go with the satay as well as rice.

Ah well. All I can do right now is look at photos. Surprisingly, I don't feel so tempted to eat these stuff anymore. Don't know why. It's been 11 days since I last had a full carbohydrate-filled meal. Did have a few bits of the stuff when I wasn't suppose to but other than that, haven't had any lately. At the rate I'm going, I'm going to become a rabbit soon.

: : Healthy Sushi : :

What is a girl to do when she is dieting and still wants to enjoy a bit of Japanese cuisine? Remove the rice out of the sushi! I can hear a few people screaming 'SACRILEGE!' Well, what with rice having so much starch in it and not to mention carbohydrates, I did exactly that. Also, I didn't do it using a rice mat but never mind. It's me eating it, and not others.



Because of one pesky mosquitoe, I woke up at 3:30 a.m. on Sunday morning wide-eyed and alert. So, as I had to go and help out at the PERKATA Charity Sale today, I decided to make some snacks. So, cut up some ham, celery and cucumber, I made some sushi. Not so symmetrical because I cut everything into short strips. You can see the bits and pieces of vegetables sticking out on one end because after I rolled them, I cut them into half so that it sits more easily in the container and smaller so that it's manageable bite-sized portions.

Uncle Cyril : You didn't make any for me to try ah?



So I made somemore sushi but time using capsicum and jicama/hikama as well as beer ham and fresh salmon. Beer Ham? Well, it says that one the label. Bought a packet of it at Choice Daily Supermarket and it looks to be made in Thailand. Has an interesting sourish taste that one can taste a litty itty bitty bit. Other than that, it's pretty good. As for the salmon, made in Klang, believe it or not. Or so it says on the packet. Still, pretty expensive at RM15 per packet. Well, this batch of sushi will be my lunch for Monday.

On another note, the PERKATA Charity Sale went very well yesterday. How much did we make? Quite a fair bit. Cannot believe that between two of us doing the body painting, we did up above 41 pictures. Phew! By the time we left the place, our backs and necks were aching from being stuck in that position for such a long time. Anyway, everyone went off pretty satisfied with their pictures on their hands and arms.