4th Birthday Celebration

I was on leave this Wed just for my gal's birthday celebration at her day care center in the morning. She felt so happy after she woke up as she knew that she got some exciting task to do later on. When I wished her Happy Birthday, she replied me the same. Alamak.... this is because I always tought her that whenever people wish you something, for example Gong Xi Fa Cai, you must reply the same. So got to explain to her not to apply the same methodology in this case.

Her best friends, (from left) En Xuan & Annabeth

Cake cutting

Present from the day care center

"this is for you..." Audrey was distributing her goodies. Remember she packed one special goodies for her own? She insisted on holding it while distributing the goodies. By mistake, she gave away her own pack to one of them. Not sure who was the lucky kid.

Japanese Buffet

We like to take Japanese food especially hubby. He likes the food more than I do eventhough I'm the one who brought him to Japanese food for the first time in his life. He likes wasabi and sashimi a lot.

Last Sunday, he suggested we go for Japanese buffet lunch at Xenri, located at Menara Hap Seng. Xenri is currently having promotion for their buffet style. 1/2 price for buffet lunch everyday from 21/2/09 ~ 29/3/09. We wasted our parking fee after knowing there were no more place for walk in customer and even with phone booking, it's full until the last day of the promotion, unless we are willing to sacrify our leave and come on weekday. The place was crowd and I saw many people went in and came out with unhappy faces. As to find out the truth, hubby went in to check for us and found the place was fully occupied. He complained that the services from the restaurant was loussy and unprofessional. No one entertained him at the first place, waitress shown long face and not helpful probably they felt like we/walk in customer are giving him/her problem. But still, many of them willing to wait at the waiting area. But we choose to leave as our children were hungry.

Since we were eagerly wanted to have Japanese food, finally we went to Saisaki which was a good idea too as I've not been there before. No doubt there is no promotion going on over there, yet the place was still full of Japanese food lover. There are plenty of food served in many variety. We only have 1 1/2 hour before the buffet ended, so I don't really have enough time to make survey on the foods and just grabbed anything to fill up my empty stomach. However, we are quite satisfied with the food served and services provided.

Preparation For Her B'day

We did some shopping last weekend to buy some childish delight to be packed as a goodies for Audrey's friends during her birthday celebration this Wed. She is so excited to help me to do the goodies packing.

All these delight costed me RM50++ which could be packed for 30 pax. I think it's quite worth to spend that money as you will see 30 happy faces of children who is going to receive it. I think the happiest one would be my little gal. She already packed one special goodies for her own indeed.

Cute Hair Style

As I told you all before, Audrey likes to snap photos. This time, I offered her to snap photo while I'm showering her sister. I purposely made some cute hair style on the little one and asked Audrey to snap. The photo in fact includes the untidy looks of mummy as well as the messy bathroom, but I have cropped it using Microsoft Office Photo Manager.

Valentine's Fine Dining

We seldom celebrate Valentine's Day after we have kids. How to be romantic if the kids are yelling around for something and become moody half way during dinner? It will definitely spoilts our moods as well as other couples in the restaurant. But occasionally, hubby will still suggest places to go for dinner and usually we will celebrate it earlier while hanging around shopping mall.

Early last week, someone invited us to have a celebration together on the Valentine's eve. And most important, NO children's allowed. After many thoughts on arranging someone to take care of Audrey & Shannen on that night, hubby let me have the call. Beside that, I also needed to consider the $$ of the dinner as I knew that we are going to have fine dining this time. Finally we decided to join them as we already saved money on Valentine's gift so we can spend a bit more on dining.

We went to a French restaurant located at Jalan Loke Yew which was recommended by a friend, Cafe Cafe KL. As we entered the restaurant, we could see a few couples sitting here and there, holding flowers, snapping photo with their loves one. Wow.... never expect many of them celebrating on the eve as well. As we are in bigger group (6 of us), we needed a bigger table which was located on the first floor.

Staircase to first floor

After glancing through their normal menu (quite a simple menu though, as I thought for fine dining the menu would be very much complicated) as well as the Valentine's set menu, we have ordered 1 set from the Valentine's set and another from their normal set menu for each couple. We also ordered a bottle of champagne and red wine. Before we started our meals, we managed to snap some photos around the place. The interior design of the restaurant is more like a French/English style, it's unique.

To cut the story short, let see what we had for our dinner that night.

Breads were being served

This is the Valentine's set menu, starter : Escargots with garlic.

Fried frog with herbs rice

Main course : Cod fish with special gravy, very nice!

Dessert : Tiramisu cake (my favourite!)

Starter :Foie Gras (goose liver)

Main course : Braised Lamb (highly recommended)

Dessert : Truffle Cream Puff

Overall the dinner was fantastic. We enjoyed a lot more on our dinner as we were free to chit chat and laughed without the hassle of having children around. This is a truly the best and amazing Valentine's dinner.

I wish I could have another similar fine dining for next year Valentine's Day. Fyi, Valentine's Day for 2009 falls on the first day of CNY.

Almond London - recipe

As per Qi Qi's mummy request, and for those who are interested to make Almond London, here is the recipe. But in Malay language, guess it shouldn't be a problem for anak Malaysia.

250gm butter
150gm gula aising
1/2 sudu teh esen vanila
450gm tpg gandum
1 biji kuning telur
2 sdt emplex
badam berkulit (bakar)
badam cincang (bakar)

Topping:
- cairkan coklat bar dgn cara double boiling (put the choc bar inside a bowl, place the bowl inside the boiling water to melt the choc without direct contact with the hot water)
- letak sikit "shortening" supaya choc bar nampak berkilat and senang dicairkan.

Cara-cara:
- mix butter dgn gula, kasi sebati
- masukkan telur dan esen vanilla, kacau sekejap
- campur tepung dgn emplex, uli sekejap
- ambil sebesar telur puyuh dan leperkan
- bubuh badam di tengah-tengah dan buatkan bentuk bujur
- lepas itu bakar dalam oven 180'C, dlm 10 min atau sampai masak.
- sejukkan, lepas tu celup coklat yang dicairkan
- letak dalam paper cup and tabur badam cincang

Happy Baking!

Piece & Puzzels

Audrey likes to play puzzels. We bought her a new puzzels last month. We wish to train her to be more patience by teaching her to play puzzels and obviously she enjoys playing it a lot. She will be feeling happy and satisfy when she be able to get every piece of puzzel fixed on the right position. Of course some time with our helps and guides. Wondering whether we could borrow and return puzzel from any organization like how we borrow books from library to save our money.

Her First Teeth!

Ha ha....her teeth might be knowing mummy's concern in the past few days, so quickly grows out. My MIL called me to inform me the good news. Her first teeth grows from her lower jaw, I think majority of the baby's teeth start to grow from lower than upper jaw. I'm not sure the reason, how about you?

Do you know that teething will not cause fever, diarrhea, vomiting, convulsions at this age? Many of us were being told when our baby is having fever or diarrhea, the reason for it might be teething. But we don't know the explanation behind. However, I have experienced this on Shannen who was actually having serious diarrhea due to virus but we thought it was due to teething and delayed doctor visit. Luckily I brought her to doctor after feeling something not right and this happened just 2 days before CNY and on the very last minutes whereby the clinic was about to close for CNY long holidays. Huh...sweating man. So if your baby seems ill when you think he/she is teething, consult your doctor: he is either ill and teething, or simply ill.

Car Lost!

It's so shocking when my friend told me this morning that our friends were being robbed yesterday night. My friends are staying at a condo in Sg.Long. I can't recall the condo name but knew their condo is facing Mahkota junction or the main road. I was told that the robber pointed out a knife to them and asked them to give all their valuable belongings (handphone, purse, wallet, car key). This happened while they were waiting lift together with their toddler son at their condo ground floor. After having the car key (I think the robber already make his plan much earlier), he drove their car away. It's a brand new Toyota Camry, white color which they just got right before CNY. First thing came across my mind, where is the security guard? Sleeping ka? My friend's block is the closer block to the guard house, why the guard didn't give rescue or do something on that? My friends were panic in the first place because after 5 years staying there, they never expect that robber nowadays is so expose and brave, some more with security guard around. Later on, I found out their security is actually not that strict as compared to others. You can easily go into the condo by telling them any no. of block and house without any further registration. The guard will then tell you not to simply park your car especially those car park with number printed on the floor. I don't know why such security services can be appointed to be "security" to look after their safety.

Do you think how many of the security providers in Malaysia are professional that they train their staff well before certify them as a security guard? What is the minimum requirement to become a professional security guard? Are we paying too little to them until they can't get someone qualify? With the no of unemployment today, can we demand higher quality services?

11 Months Old Shannen

My little gal will turn to her 11 months old tomorrow, em....Valentine's Day. We are wondering why her teeth still refuse to grow out. A toothless gal like her is really "tong chia", she will ask for food whenever she saw someone eating (of course excluding strangers). She will yell loudly until the food reaches her mouth. Therefore we got to take turn to eat our meal and make sure there are always something for her to keep her mouth shut, otherwise our ears will be suffering.

When comes to X'mas time, we will be going around the shopping malls in the town for photo shooting as the decoration over there make us feel like 'Christmas'. At the same time, we will make our own comparison which shopping centre does the most beautiful X'mas deco. Last year, we have spent our weekend to 5 shopping centre and the most amazing mall that won the title of "Greatest X'mas Deco" goes to 'Star Hills'. Below are some of our photo shooting at those shopping mall.

Midvalley - one of the shop lot, can't find the photo we taken at concourse

The Garden

Ikano - Not ready yet!

Ikano - A lot of snow

The Curve

Starhills - very grand looks

Pavillion - fattest X'mas tree in town?

Almond London

Still remember I told you that I was busy making my first CNY cookie and will come back to you how was it. I only make cookie (without a "s"), unlike my dear friend Chin Nee http://www.demoments.net/blog/ who is so capable to try baking few types of cookies for CNY.

I don’t know why this year I intended to make cookie for CNY. Maybe it’s because my colleague was making it during her Raya celebration and she kept on mentioning it’s easy to do it. Since it’s the first time she made it and it tasted good, I wishes to challenge my talent as well.

She passed me the recipe and I have asked her many many question about the ingredient and process of making just in case some unusual stuff may happen during the making. Few days before CNY, I found some free time to do the baking without any disturb from my gals.

After spent 5 hours in my small kitchen, finally my Almond London cookies are done. I only managed to make 180pcs. Felt so tired liaw. What a good experience! I packed those cookies into small canisters and gave it to my sisters, my mum and my MIL as a CNY token. Each of them only share small quantity of cookies. Hope they don’t mind.

Before going into oven
After baked and dipped with Choc

I would give myself 78 points for the cookies in term of taste. To me the taste is up to my expectation and delicious. However for the appearance, I only give 70 points. It can be better look if I use normal choc bar instead of imported quality which took longer time to be harden.

Tuan Yuan Fan

For the past 30 over years, (wah... sounds so old liaw), my family used to have lunch at home as our "tuan yuan fan". Even after we get married, our tuan yuan fan time and venue will be the same without changes except for adding more and more copstick.

This year, my mum has requested to have our tuan yuan fan at the restaurant instead of home cooking. Poor mum, she pays for the bill yet need to get our premission first. Perhaps she felt very tired to handle lunch for more and more headcounts. Of course we fully support her as we have more time to gather for chit chating without any kiosk running here and there to prepare food and arrange utensils.

So finally we went to a restaurant called "Cha Wong Zi Ka" (can be translated into The Tea King's House) which recommended by our "shek ka", my brother. The restaurant is located at a double story shop lot and we were placed at their second floor open area. Basically that floor is meant for us as no other customer occupying on that day.

I would said the dishes served that day was fantastic as their cooking method is different from normal restaurant. And this is the first time I tried "geoduck". I find it so so and nothing to shout about.

See the no of children in our family could fill up a round table soon.

Our PC is Sick

Hubby noticed our PC was functioning unusual before CNY. Whenever we browse our photo files, it will hang for some times and getting worst when it started to restart automatically. Since CNY was around corner, we just leave as it is. Therefore I can't do blogging like those day. We decided to wait until the celebration over only send for reformatting. We didn't send our PC to computer service shop but to his ex-colleague who is really really helpful to solve our problem. We took the opportunity to send the hard disk over his place during our CNY visiting. I think we owe him a lot as from day one we bought this PC, he had been helping us to install necessary software to our new PC and on off hubby will seek his expertise on computer. A big thanks to him.