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Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Wish I was little again

M is so lucky to have a little girl she can play dress up with. Tinkerellacreations on etsy makes these adorable dresses for little girls inspired by fairy tales, don't you wish you were little too!


This blouse and shorts set, can I have one in my size please!!!!!!!!


So sweet......

Fantasy Garden

It is the Chelsea Flower Show Season and I was admiring their gardens online. One exhibitor was showing off a garden of carnivorous plants and it looked really pretty. The winner of the best garden was this


but my personal fav was this.


I can imagine, instead of stepping out of the typical london flat into their signature long thin back gardens, you have a pond complete with stepping stones and how cute is the remote control boat!They call this a recession-impacted garden and that the toy boat keeps crashing into the rocks symbolizes the current times.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Getting lost

( image via flickr)

Today is one of those days I wish I lived elsewhere. I just want to strangle the people and the road system. After spending considerable time and effort copying road directions of google maps yesterday, we set of this morning full of confidence. The mission was to locate two furniture shops, one in Shah Alam and the other in Puchong. The former is north-west of the city and the latter, south-west of us.

We managed to get on the right highways and at the final turn, we messed it up due to brillant road signs that mysteriously disappear as you get to the turn off. At first we were not miffed as we have done this many times before. Solution is to find the next exit and U turn back on the highway and try again, of course being in KL, the U turn leads you to a completely different area. Anyway long story short, we managed it and got on the right highway, only to mess it up at the eleventh hour due to some other misleading signs.

3 U turns later, we found the place but it was NOT a showroom, only an office. "Showroom round the corner, very near" the receptionist said assuringly. "Just drive back to the traffic light and turn right".

Drove up to the lights and there was NO right turn, only left which leads us back to the SAME highway !. ( pulling hair )

We eventually got more lost and decided that plan B was in play and the first furniture shop is a goner. By now it has been 1.5 hours of driving. We decided that we need to plan better and we go to the second shop without much drama. Parking was an issue so we found somewhere away from the shophouses.

Now begins the searching for the shop. The road names in this city as you know makes no sense, They have no names, only numbers and to make things more interesting, the numbers do not have any particular order. We entered one random shop to ask what street we are on, and guess what, they don't know.

God help these people......

Monday, May 18, 2009

Sweaty bugger

Today I went to the gym for the first time in 6 months. My friend C was there too and she was attending her daily hot yoga session. After much persuasion, I agreed to join her. After half hour in boiling 50 degree heat, I recall why I stopped going! This is really hard work.

The instructor was on a 1 year stint from NYC and he wore the smallest shorts I have ever seen....in red..

Survived the session but I gave up on some of the poses, it was just too hard and I am way too inflexible. Still, I think I will go back since C goes too and it is more fun having a friend to go with.

One of my fav. relatives is celebrating his birthday soon and I am thinking of gift ideas. He is a photograper and husband of T's sister. Besides being very cool and sometimes bizarre, like he has a obsession with Nigella Lawson and follows the celebrity news seriously, he also has a great sense of style and is very dramatic in speech. I found this website that customizes stationery and it would be perfect for him. I might order him a set of his own monogrammed stationery. I think Imight get myself some too after browsing through the site, some of the stuff really gorgeous. Here are some of the designs, have a look here.



Friday, May 15, 2009

Trip Well Worth It

The trip down south started off with low expectations. Storm clouds were brewing while we were driving towards Melaka and when we finally got there, Holiday Inn I booked for a night was characterless. I didn't want to make a mistake of booking into a "boutique"hotel when the they advertise with words like "cosy" when they actually mean miniscule and windowless.

Anyway, the skies were grey but no rain so we started off for the famous Jonker street where the food beckons and antique stalls were abundant. I am told that since 2008, Melaka has been taken more seriously as a historical tourist spot and there was a concerted effort to spruce the city up. Streets were landscaped beautifully, bus stops were poshed up, everything was clean and well organized, unlike KL. What a relief.

We headed off to Jonker for the famous Hoe Kee Chicken Rice but though the restaurant was housed in a charming traditional old building, the food was ordinary.


After unstatisfying our appetite, we headed down the winding streets in and found it very sweet. Some of the antique shops looked genuine, with all sorts of junk piled on top of each otherr, others were well manicured and where everything was labelled and had a price tag. Some shops were so huge there were 200 ft deep, it was fun pacing amongst the old and not having the shopkeeper following you around.

This is a T shirt shop.




There were art galleries and funky shops selling trinkets, everything looked quaint and not too touristy. Between every few shops, there was a small bistro offering cool drinks and local coffee. The one we stopped at decorated the entire ceiling with tiny disco balls and the walls were painted a wild pink.

Old men with rickshaws.



I bought a blue china ceramic pot for my hydrangreas at home but that was the extent of my shopping.

After the boring lunch, we didn't have much hope for dinner. Driving about 2km away from the hotel and towards the beach, we found the old Portuguese settlement. It was a mini East Coast Seafood Centre with 10 seafood joints. We picked the busiest one and looked at the extensive crab menu. They offered salt and pepper baked crabs, steam crabs with ginger, pepper and several others, after little deliberation we settled on the sambal crab.

It was divine! We even bought our own bottle of wine and the uncle asked "want ice with that?"haha.

Melaka is a sleepy town at night, so there wasn't much to do. We were driving back when we saw the new mall showing Star Trek so we went for a late movie. Anyone seen that yet? Good movie to watch.

I will come back to Melaka again, it is so close and such a nice change to the bustle of KL.

Monday, May 11, 2009

More on food

Since the last post on the chicken rice, I am now hunting down more good food. Last time D and Z were here, they wanted to eat claypot rice but I didn't know where to go..... well not anymore!! I found this place after reading some blogs and will go and try before bringing you guys.

Address:
Restoran Busy Corner
83, Jalan ss 22/11
Damansara Jaya

GPS: 3.130532, 101.621143
Tel: 03-7729 0116

They have a prawn sambal claypot rice , sounds amazing....

Quick D, book your tickets and we go !!


1800-Flowergirl

Over the weekend, I came across KL's flower wholesale market and it was so fun. The place is not big but bursting at the seams with all sorts of flowers and accessories.

I spent RM 100 there and lugged back as much flowers as I could carry. I wanted to experiment on designs and here is what I did.

Like?!



Quick Getaway

So we are getting out of KL for a night this week. Just for the hell of it, at first Cameron Highlands was high on the list as I wanted to escape the sizzling heat but the drive will take 3 hours. Melaka on the other hand is only 1.5 hours away plus T has never been.

It must have been more than 10 years since I was last in Melaka and I can't remember who I was there with or, what I did, so this would be like a first trip for me too.

I am after the glorious food like the Chicken Rice Balls and the famous pork satays. The food blogs like Eating Asia and KL peeople KL food have been extremely helpful with tips and maps of the street eats.

This pic is courtesy of eating asia's blog. Makes me drool, I can almost taste the ginger and soy........


That settles lunch, for dinner we are advised to head to the portuguese settlement where they have seafood joints all along the beach. Much like Singapore's East Coast Seafood Centre. Heaven !!!!

We are leaving on Wednesday and staying one night so will take more pics and post them.

Friday, May 8, 2009

Weekend Is Here !!

The weekend is upon again! What do you have planned? I know M and family is off to the Coast for a weekend break, have a fab time guys! I am being treated to nice dinner at 789 and a nice bottle of wine. The rest of you, have a nice time you guys and see you Monday.

In Petal Paradise

Vesak Day is on Saturday and the temple is brimming with florals. I only volunteered two days and today was day 2. The transformation was astounding, I am in complete awe of these designers, the final product was pure artistry. The photos show the before and final productions.

Before

After

Before


After


Thursday, May 7, 2009

Yumskies


Jamie is truly a Recipe God. Tonight I made his lamb chops and it was a brillant success.
This is a pic from his website and the recipe if anyone is interested.

Super easy too, no marinating needed.

lamb cutlets with special basil sauce

serves 4

This dish is fantastic and you can literally have it ready in just over 5 minutes. Use either wild mushrooms that are in season, like girolles, trompettes de la mort and pieds de mouton, or more readily available farmed mushrooms like field, chestnut or oyster, as these are really tasty when cooked properly.

These lamb cutlets are best cooked on a hot barbecue with wood or charcoal, to give you a wonderful smoky flavour. Otherwise use a preheated ridged griddle pan. Slap the cutlets with the heel of your hand to flatten them slightly. Then bash up your thyme in a pestle and mortar and add a little olive oil. Mix together, then rub the oil over the cutlets and season both sides of them. Put to one side.

Cook the mushrooms dry on the bars of your hot griddle pan. This is quite an unusual way to do it, but it gives you a nutty flavour that you wouldn’t get otherwise. Just grill them on both sides to mark them and put them into a large bowl. Once the mushrooms are done you can put the lamb on the barbecue or griddle pan.

If the cutlets are about 1.5cm (3/4 inch thick), just give them 3 or 4 minutes on each side until they’re really golden. This should cook them medium. (To be honest, I’m not really into rare lamb cutlets, but if you prefer them like that then cook for a little less time.)

When cooked, put the lamb cutlets into the bowl with the mushrooms and drizzle with a little olive oil. Tear over the parsley, in quite large pieces, and add a good squeeze of lemon juice. Season lightly and toss around. Place to one side to rest, to allow all the lovely juices to get sucked up by the mushrooms.

Meanwhile you can make a really quick sauce. It looks a bit like pesto, but although it contains basil and pine nuts it has no similarity in flavour. In a pestle and mortar pound up the pine nuts until you have a mushy pulp – this will give the sauce a creamy flavour and texture. Remove the mixture to a bowl, then use the pestle and mortar to bash the basil up into a pulp. Add this to the pine nuts and loosen with extra virgin olive oil so that the sauce easily drops off the end of a spoon. Now you need to balance it with quite a lot of balsamic vinegar to give it a good zing, almost like a mint sauce, but add it to taste.

Give the lamb and mushrooms a final toss. I like to serve this up on a big platter and let everyone help themselves. Have the sauce and a simple watercress salad on the side.

Art Collection 1

The search for interesting artists continue and I have come across several more. Presenting - Megan Brain, an artist who specializes 2D art. Her creations are fun and cartoony. Her work can be seen outside the gallery like she produced the characters for madagascar 2 and done commercials. I like them because the colours and composition are fun and 2D art just pops out at you, literally.

Here is one that I am thinking of buying, called Carnival Dancer. Don't you just love the tush.


She has done a commerical for United Airlines too and here are the stills from the commercial. Click on the pic for bigger picture.



Watch the mini-movie. I think this artist is really talented.

Monday, May 4, 2009

More Tealights Z?

Z apparently is starting a tealight collection and has amassed a growing pile of them at home and at L's. Came across this little cutie. What do you think Z?

Posh Nosh

Last weekend we were invited to a cocktail soiree at Sevenatenine. There is a new manager in town from Manhattan and they just hired Emmanuel Strobant from Singapore's St Pierre to be the new execu. chef. Justin from 789 is very eager to please as he is a newbie in Kl with the cool job of running 789. Emmanuel didn't make an appearance but his signature touch was seen in the menu.

St Pierre used to be THE lunch place to be seen in for the oil crowd as E. Strobant specializes in foie gras. Sinfully yummy.

Here at 789, he created the ultimate bite sized burger with wagyu beef topped with foie gras. What is there not to love?!!!


No picy of the burger, it was devoured faster than I can whip out my camera. :)