A day in May

It was over to Gid's parent's place first thing in the morning. I got to play with the dogs for a bit while Gid helped fix his mum's internet connection, then it was back home again for breakfast.

Today's juices were pineapple and honeydew. I am so loving our new juicer!

We spent the day organising to get our new American Staffy pups delivered to us so we stopped off at the vet to buy two dog travel crates then drove over to the bus station to get the crates delivered to Tawau where the pups are. They'll be arriving by courier tomorrow!

I bought a range of pasta sauces from Muji when we were in Tokyo this February. I busted them out today for an easy dinner. I also made a quick salad of snow pea sprouts, onion, cranberries, tomato wedges, and sunflower seeds in a red wine vinaigrette. No pics of the salad as it was gobbled up too fast.

His: Squid ink; Hers: Arriabatta

After dinner we drove to ZenQ for a Taiwanese dessert of shaved ice, pearl bubbles, and jelly. I was kinda tickled to see who made the cool metal spoon that came with our dessert!

Gid and his mango juice. It gave him brain freeze.

Vanilla and cinnamon rice pudding

I was feeling rather miserable last night with the beginnings of a scratchy throat developing and a headache nagging at me. "It's not nice having to be heavily pregnant and sick." I moaned to Gid.

Thankfully this morning my throat feels a bit better and my head is clear. This calls for a special breakfast celebration so I whipped up a pot of homey comfy warm vanilla and cinnamon rice pudding with plump raisins scattered in.

Gid isn't a fan of any kind of sweet rice, so he had Eggle waffles with maple syrup and cornbread. He found Eggles for sale in the freezer section of the new City Grocer in Suria. He grabbed a box claiming he used to love eating this as a kid in Michigan. I can't say I'm much of a fan (they're a bit dry) but as long as he likes it :)

Vanilla and Cinnamon Rice Pudding (adapted from Shutterbean)

Serves 2

1/2 cup arborio rice

1/8 cup raisins

2 cups whole milk

1/4 cup vanilla sugar - plain caster sugar is fine too (I used slightly less than this)

A dash of cinnamon

A dash ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract (use a whole teaspoon if using plain sugar)

Place the rice, raisins, milk, vanilla sugar cinnamon and ground ginger into a medium saucepan over high heat and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover and cook, stirring occasionally, for 25-30 minutes or until rice is tender. Stir in vanilla extract just before rice is cooked.

I chilled the leftovers as a delicious cold pudding dessert for later.

Colour block nails

I drove over to Citymall this morning for a mani/pedi. My favourite girl Viona resigned awhile back and unfortunately the two girls left working there are not very experienced. One cut my cuticle twice (ouch!) and the other botched up one of my nails and decided to paint over it many times so I now have a very lumpy finish on one finger :S Oh well, time to look for a new salon. Gid rang to say that he will be trying to make it home from camp tonight. I have my fingers crossed. X

I'm back :)

Well hello there! Long time no blog. Well I'm back, for today at least :) I've kinda missed this little blog of mine. Things have been busy around here to say the least. When I last left off my dear doggie Pinkie was very unwell...well the good news is she has made a 100% recovery and is as obnoxious as ever much to Gid's despair! It turned out she didn't have kidney failure and had a blood parasite instead which was treatable with a course of antibiotics...so all is well on the doggy front :) And in other other news....I have a bun in the oven! Yep, Gid and I baked up a little wee one back in November and he (yes it's a BOY!) will be due in early August. I actually have only a month left in KK before I head to Perth to deliver this bub. I'll be staying with my parents for about 4 months before we come back to KK. I still find it hard to believe I'm going to be a mum. It's just been Gid and I for the past 11 years and now we are going to add a new buddy to our pack. It's exciting and surreal and a little nerve wracking at the same time. Anyways, I took a bunch of food pics today that I want to share. First up we have breakfast!

I had these grand plans of whipping up a batch of hollandaise sauce to go with my eggs but after I got out my blender and re-read the recipe I put it in my "too-much-work-for-one-person" basket and decided to just go with Kewpie mayo as an accompaniment. With a sprinkling of paprika, salt and pepper, it worked out really nice. We also bought ourselves a Hurom Slow Juicer this week. I've had my eye on this lovely machine for ages and was so stoked to find a dealer selling it over here. When I saw their demo stall set up in City Mall I squeezed Gid's hand so hard he complained I bruised it lol. Today's juice was an apple, orange, cucumber and guava concoction. I love that I can just gulp down a glass and not have to worry about my fruit consumption for the rest of the day. The best thing about the juicer is that it takes me about 3 minutes to clean it up so I don't mind using it every day. Plus watching it poo out all that colourful pith as it grinds is endlessly entertaining to me for some reason.

My morning entertainment - Hurom poo pith!

I also baked up some honey cornbread which I slathered with salted butter - it was sweet and soft yet had a bit of crunch from the polenta. I had two fat slices.

Lunch was home baked bread with ham, snow pea sprouts, cheddar, mustard, and cashews.

Hard Decisions

I keep waking up before 7am, no matter what time I go to sleep the night before. As soon as there is a sliver of blue morning light at the curtains, I wake up.

After much flip flopping about in bed, I got bored and got up and had breakfast. Cereal! Yes, i was excited! I haven't had cereal in about a year. I kept buying healthy cereal flavours that were gross and I'd end up throwing a nearly full box out, so I stopped buying it. This one was really good though, Kelloggs Honey Cornflakes. Not quite as good as Crunchy Nut which they don't sell here, but nice enough.

I went over to my in-law's place after breakfast to give Pinkie her medication. The silly dog ate poison up at camp about a month ago(she went over to the adjoining plantation and ate poison pellets there). While she survived the initial poisoning, the poison damaged her kidneys, and kidneys cannot be fixed :( My father-in-law says we should put her down as she has lost a lot of weight and will have to be on meds for the rest of her life, but G and I want to see if she will respond to the medicine first. I'm just buying time really until I can figure out what to do. Pinkie has been a camp dog her whole life, but bringing her back up may not be possible as her medicine needs to be kept below 4C and the generator only powers the fridge at camp for 7-8 hours of the day.

So, we'll just wait and see for now. I actually googled "kidney transplant for dogs" the other day. I'm dreaming of course as a procedure like that for dogs in Malaysia is basically science fiction.

I was starving after playing with the dogs and went home and made a pizza. I used the leftover meatloaf as a topping along with ricotta, spring onions , cherry tomatoes, parmesan and fresh parsley sprinkled over at the end.

Dinner: Cold green tea soba and salad with wasabi-ponzu sauce.

Dessert: Can you spot my Meiji chocolate wrappers? Just lazing in front of the tv. Looking forward to G coming home tomorrow.

Ricotta Baby

I made two batches of fresh ricotta in the last couple of weeks and I've been enjoying this creamy mild cheese in just about everything, including pancakes. Bill Granger's Ricotta Hotcakes got a big thumb's up from G. I don't think I'll be making pancakes any other way from now on. The ricotta and the whipped egg whites made the softest fluffiest melt in your mouth pancakes I've ever had.

This morning I made baked eggs with ricotta, spring onions, marinara sauce and cherry tomatoes for breakfast. They puffed up like crazy in the oven (yay!) but quickly deflated when I took them out.( boo!)

They were a little tricky to unmould. Next time I'll just serve them up in ramekins. I had them with a little Japanese mayo.

Lunch was spaghetti with garlic prawns, ricotta and marinara sauce (the sauce was hiding underneath the pasta) with a little seven spice Japanese pepper sprinkled on top, and a simple salad of cucumber, cherry tomatoes, mint n spring onions with ponzu n olive oil.

I'm supposed to be going out to run some errands today but it's bucketing down so hard. December is normally rainy here in KK. I just realised this is the third December I've had living here. Time is really flying. I'm a lot happier here now, but I'm still looking forward to the day when we can move away, either back to Melbourne or somewhere else.

Update: My dinner. I admit, when I make up my own recipe, it can be 50/50. Sometimes it comes out great n sometimes it's just meeeehhhh. This made up tofu chicken meatloaf however was very moreish. No, I didn't put ricotta in it, I used parmesan instead. With egg, breadcrumbs, spring onions, garlic powder, parsley, dried thyme n paprika. Smeared with a tomato bbq sauce on top, then baked at 180 C for 45 mins.

Home again

The holiday ended for us on Saturday and it was straight up to camp on Sunday. We came back a little worn out with both of us nursing bad colds but oh what a fantastic trip we had!

Singapore was hectic as usual where we walked for miles and miles all over Bugis Junction and Orchard. I bought colourful tops at Kiss Jane and gold glitter polish at Sephora. I had lunch with my grandma and got to do some long overdue bonding with my cousins at the wedding. I had bak kut teh (pork bone tea soup) for breakfast, I had tofu cheesecake for brunch, I had chicken rice for lunch and black pepper crab for dinner.

And then it was on to Penang, where we ate even more, scouted around the antique shops, searched high and low for Assam laksa, got familiar with my heritage at the Peranakan museum, drank RM80 civet poo coffee (tasted kinda like regular coffee), and stayed in an old coffee shop that had been converted into a beautiful Malaysian terrace house.

I have heaps of photos of the trip but they are stuck in our real camera (not my phone :p) and I'll get them out and stick them on here when I'm feeling a little more motivated.

For now, I'll leave you with a few pics taken since we came back.

Two sickies need chicken soup. This is the violet-hued chicken soup I made at camp. The violet bit was purely accidental and came from the pretty purple cabbage I added to the broth. It was good to get back to pure simple foods after all the heavy food we had on holiday.

I then made a tuna and pasta salad. You can see I'm really loving this purple cabbage. I'm scattering it in everything.

Is it a dog...or a giant cat?

This photo of Milo cracks me up. His crazy ears and long tail make him look positively feline from behind.

This is a rare shot. Even though you can't see Pinkie's face, I managed to snap all five dogs in one frame.

Pinkie was feeling a little under the weather and was extremely grumpy. This is the type of baleful looks she was shooting me all day.

A Birthday!

Happy Birthday tooooooooooooo G!!

Birthdays should start out with present opening. This one was not so secret because he picked it...but I still wrapped it up all the same. It's his new work watch which he can get muddy and do manly things with.

We went over to G's parents place at about 8.30am. I always like checking out all the fruit trees and vegetables growing over there. First up, I spotted a big bunch of bananas growing outside the front gate.

Mas Dian, my in-law's new gardener had been harvesting coconuts, they were everywhere!

This tall spindly plant is called Sayur Manis (sweet vegetable). You can only eat the tips of the stalk as the leaves, middle and base sections gets very fiberous. I like the slight crunch it has when I have it in stir fries.

One of the many papaya trees (or pawpaw as it's known in Aussieland) growing around the house. I like my papaya very cold and eaten with a squeeze of lime. It's the perfect remedy to the tropical heat over here.

There was a sack of these funny green knobbly guys on the back verandah. My mother in-law said they were 'breadfruit' and it was what the locals ate a lot of during the Japanese occupation in world war 2 as there was not a lot of food to go around.

She had sliced the breadfruit thin, dipped them in a flour and cinnamon batter and fried them up as fritters earlier. I ate a few....well more than a few, they were delicious. Slightly sweet and the texture was starchy, like tapioca.

I made a healthy afternoon snack for G while he did some accounting work at home.

And a not so healthy snack for me. Milk Rocky!!

We're having a family dinner at a Chinese restaurant tonight for G's birthday, then tomorrow we are off on our Singapore/Penang trip! I'm hoping we have free wifi in our hotels. I'll try do a few blog posts if we do :D