2 Weeks Of CNY Celebration

It's been a wonderful 2 weeks of Chinese New Year celebrations as I stuffed my tummy to the max. I know I am going to regret it but as Garfield the cat  says:

It all started with the reunion dinner at my older brother's place the week before CNY. We had a barbecue this time, something different from the norm. Too bad I was busy eating and forgot to snap photos!

Then came the reunion dinner at my parents-in law's place on the eve of CNY. We had steamboat. There's nothing like sharing a meal around 2 pots of boiling soup...in an air-conditioned home, of course!

Then came the customary lunches and dinners, as I visited my parents, relatives and friends. 

Tossing the yee sang for many blessings
in the coming year

SweetTeen collecting her angpow

This year's gathering with my long-time friends was a little bitter-sweet as there was one child missing among our kids. One of my friends lost her 17 year old son to leukaemia just a few weeks ago but we were glad that she and her family decided to join us for our annual CNY gathering. 

Valentine's Day fell on the 5th day of CNY and since hubby was still on leave we decided to have a simple lunch at Levain...but I guess lots of people had the same idea as the place was filled to the brim and we couldn't even drive into their carpark! So we headed further down Jalan Tun Razak and ended up at Delicious instead.

I had quiche - something like an egg and meat pie

Love their desserts!

And on Chap Goh Mei, the last day of CNY, we finally managed to locate our favourite claypot chicken rice shop, Restoran Makanan Teow Chew which had shifted from their previous premises to Taman Segar, Cheras.

My family loves this place because the food
is quick and tasty

Finally...the opening of my kids' angpows after which hubby will deposit the money into the respective kid's bank account for their future use.

My kids tell me that everyone has been generous
in their giving this year :)

Remember last year I posted up a video showing a lion dance doing the shuffle dance? This year it's the 'Gangnam Style' lion dance...

Some More Pics

The weather has been extremely hot lately and this morning when I opened my handbag to get my lipstick this is what I discovered...

My lipstick had melted into a misshapen gooey lump!
Ah well, at least I've got an excuse to go buy
another lipstick!

Many of my son's friends now have their driver's license. At first it's quite a thrill to be able to drive but after a while, with all the traffic jam, driving around doesn't seem so fun. So they car-pool. 

One day, a few of them decided to go to the mall. One of my son's friends drove over to our place and since my son was the designated driver for the day, we allowed his friend to park his car at our porch. When I peeked into the car (after they had left, of course!) this is what I saw...

The strange things people keep in their car:
notice what's in the compartment near the gear stick?

Here's a closer look...I was giggling so much
that I forgot to focus my camera.
Answer: dentures
(might be his dad's or mum's)

I think it is good to have marked pathways for the blind. Have you noticed them around town on the pedestrian walkways? They are yellow with raised stripes for the visually disabled to 'feel' with their cane, to help them stay on the pavement and off the road when they walk.

However. there's one pathway that really defies logic. Do you see where it leads to?

Some friends invited us to a German restaurant in Bangsar and being meat-lovers, hubby and I feasted on pork knuckles, Bratwurst sausages and rack of ribs...yum!

On another occasion we were invited to a vegetarian dinner and when this arrived on our table it looked like soup with lovely chunks of meat, right?

Wrong. It's all vegetarian...which means it's not meat 
although our brain may tell us otherwise!
 I marvel at how it closely resembles the real thing.
Truly a work of art, and a tasty one!

Just Some Pics

Here are some things that made me scratch my head and wonder...

Went on holiday and saw this.
Notice the location of the bath tub 
and the shower head. Did the
contractor need glasses?

Perhaps the wind was too strong for
these metal dividers? Most of them lean
like this in the entire area (somewhere in Cheras)

And here are some things that brought a smile...

Knowing that I'm an Angry Bird fan, my friend
bought me these paper cups for baking cupcakes!

Another friend visited Korea during Christmas
and she helped me buy these
Skinfood skincare products at less than
half the retail price in Malaysia :)

She even brought back lots of samples.
(big big smiles)

First Attempt at Rainbow Cake

I decided to try baking a rainbow cake for hubby's birthday. The idea came from some photos I saw in Facebook, so I looked up YouTube for the proper way to make it.

I used a normal butter cake recipe as my sponge cakes usually don't turn out too well. Bless my Science teacher in school for drilling into our brains the correct order of the colours of the rainbow - this is how I remember it:

Roy G. Biv...just pretend it's some guy's name, and there we have...

Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet!

Prepare the cake batter and pour into 7 paper cups,
each cup with the same amount of batter.
Add colouring.

Pour the first colour (I couldn't get it to turn red
no matter how much red colouring I used,
so pink was the next best option)
into a cake tin lined with non-stick baking sheet. There's nothing worse than
a beautiful cake stuck in the pan after baking!

Pour the next colour in the middle of the first colour.
Lift the pan about 5cm from the table
and let it drop so that the colour will spread evenly.

Repeat with the rest of the colours.
Bake.

This is how it looked like when taken out
of the oven.

I realised that I should have added a smaller amount
of batter for the last colour to get a more balanced layer.

There were lots of 'ooh' and 'aah' when the cake was cut and lots of photos snapped before the cake got eaten :)

This was a simple and quick way to make a rainbow cake. Next time I'll try the more time-consuming one...baking one layer at a time and assembling it (gasp):

Kicking Back In Kuantan

Had a 3 day-2 night break in Kuantan during the Christmas week. With the monsoon season in full swing and pictures of floods in the news we were at first a bit hesitant about going, but we had already made bookings for the accommodation and decided to just go ahead. After all, God had been kind in blessing us with good weather up in  Penang a few weeks before, so we trusted that He would be more than able to grant us good weather for this trip as well.

And so He did.

Kuantan town was flooded the day before we arrived but throughout the 3 days we had good weather except for some slight drizzle. Then the rains started again as we were leaving Kuantan town to head back to KL. God is good :)

Puddles everywhere when we arrived.

Bright sunshine and dry ground the next day :)

As is our current trend during family vacations, we went scouting out the shopping malls. The Berjaya Megamall was a bit disappointing. It used to be bustling with activity the last time we went about 2 years ago, but now many of the shoplots are unoccupied. The East Coast Mall is a whole lot better and we managed to get some really good bargains at the Brands Outlet shop. My daughter, SweetTeen, was thrilled to get her hands on her favourite RotiBoy buns as well.

On the first night we had dinner at Pak Su Seafood Restaurant which we had  visited a few times before on previous trips. The restaurant used to be very crowded but this time there were only a few tables of customers. The bill came up to around RM200 for the 7 of us (we usually travel with my parents-in-law and hubby's sis). On the second night we decided to try this restaurant that we had noticed while we were having breakfast, the Alor Akar Seafood Restaurant. This place was very crowded, the food was good and most of all the price was so unbelievable at around RM90...and it was the same number of dishes as the night before!

Steamed fish in sweet and spicy sauce.

Large and juicy 'lala' stir-fried with ginger.

We visited our favourite park at Taman Gelora and walked along the beach at Teluk Chempedak. I posted some pictures in Facebook and my sis-in-law commented that she didn't know Kuantan was so beautiful...it looked like we were in Australia or somewhere overseas!

Gelora Park

Teluk Chempedak beach

One thing I always remember about Kuantan is the incredibly large road signs which I wish we could have in KL as well. I can even read them from afar without putting on my glasses...well almost, since I'm very short-sighted!

See how the road sign is almost as long
as a MYvi?