The week that was

You girls light up my life.

Chicken rice Sunday family dinners. I like cooking for the family but I don’t like messing up my mother’s kitchen.

I love Woolies for their free fresh fruit for kids. It’s such a great intiative, Coles tries but isn’t consistent.

My Saitaoha packs a pretty picnic lunch. She is actually really meticulous in her planning and how everything looks and is categorised. Why am I not more like my child?

Saitaomei for Movember challenge?

Friday red wine and red meat nights. We’ve been doing these for a few weeks now and it’s nice to unwind with the husband in anticipation of the weekend ahead.

And hooray the weekend rolls around again!

TGIF

Hehehe 😂

So glad it’s Friday! I was still groggy from the lack of sleep for the past two nights. Kids are sleeping terribly.

But the yummy lunch we had today made up for it! I met up with my nephew and sis for lunch, I love being able to hang out with my sis all the time so much. I hope she works in the city forever. The scallops were so good, we really want to come with my mum again.

Another favourite was seared salmon, yums.

Oh these gorgeous bunch of people that I used to work with. It was farewell drinks for the last member from my team, heartbreaking but I’m so happy for him because he’s chasing his dreams.

Met up with the family for a Pepper lunch dinner. This is Saitaoha’s serious aiji eating face.

Hehe her squinty grin.

Papa, I want aiji too!

Looking forward to the weekend with the kids. Please sleep well tonight, thank you 🙏🏻.

Kueh Chap and Popiah TGIF!

Another good weekend bites the dust but I don’t feel that bad because a long weekend is coming up next week! And it’s R’s birthday too, so that means lots of great food and celebration (^___^) ahead.

Jo, HC and I went to Manise (William Street, Northbridge) for lunch during the weekend. It’s been a while since I’ve been to Manise and the food is still lovely. This little Indonesian shop is deserving of a full blog post but we were too full to have a proper lunch, so here’s a picture of their lovely cripsy empek empek instead.

We had another TGIF (thank god it’s family day) dinner today! I spent the whole afternoon in the kitchen, it was hard work but actually really fun and satisfying at the same time.

First up was nasi lemak lunch bento for tomorrow.

The popiah was a bit of a rush job at the end of the night so it didn’t turn out as well as I would have liked it to.  I’m going to give it a real go and full concentration tomorrow night so let’s see how that will turn out.

This was the dish that took up most of my afternoon, Kuching’s Kueh Chap, a popular herby porky dish that is well loved by my family members. Don’t bother asking me for the recipe because it was kindly given to me by my mum’s friend (whose family is apparently the pioneer kueh chap seller in Kuching *___*). So this is a family secret and I feel really privileged that dear Aunty Jenny was nice enough to share it with me.

The verdict? Pretty close to the real thing but definitely room for improvement. The part that I’m most chuffed about, my first attempt at cleaning pig intestines (tedious job ) turned out pretty good and my intestines were not foul smelling (there is a reason why they’re called offal you know) at all. Yeah, so I learned something new today and I’m happy. Hooray for TGIFs.

Next TGIF might be bak zhang night 🙂 Any other suggestions for TGIF food?

TGIF …

no longer stands for Thank God It’s Friday because we don’t have TGIF nights anymore 😦

While I’m always glad when Friday rolls around, I’m usually too tired on Friday nights to go out and do anything. So for the past two Friday nights I stayed at home watching Masterclass!

Anyway, nowadays TGIF means thank God it’s family day. For some reason our Sundays(and most Saturdays too) have morphed into family nights where Jo and HC either come over to my house or we go over to theirs for a family dinner. It’s always very relaxing and involves good food, random Australian tv (luckily Masterchef is on nowadays, once we had to resort to watching The Voice *shudder*) and lots of laughter.

During the week Jo had texted me saying that she was craving pumpkin soup. So I told her we would have a 3P theme for our Sunday dinner, 3P as in Pasta, Pizza and Pumpkin Soup. I made the pumpkin soup and lasagne but Jo and HC brought over the pizza. Of course we knew there would be tons leftover, but hooray for yummy lunch bentos for the next few days.

Perhaps I should have called it 4P since there was a lot of parsley involved. My parsley patch is flourishing and we’re having to add parsley to all my dishes. I have to admit, parsley chai po(pickled radish) omelette is actually very yummy. This batch of curried pumpkin soup was too light for my liking, my fault coz I didn’t prepare enough cream.

I think the last time I made lasagne was almost two years back!   I should definitely do it more often, it’s fun and cheesy and Jo loves the meat sauce. Anything for the pregnant lady.

So it’s back to the daily grind tomorrow, I’m wondering what our theme should be for the next TGIF? Oh yes, Jo said it’s kueh chap and poh piah, so Jan, we’re practising for the holiday trip already, hopefully I will have the recipes down to pat by the time we get to London.

You know, Jo got her Australian permanent residency application approved this week. It was a huge sense of relief not just for Jo and HC but for my parents as well. My ah pa told me that he felt as if a stone had been lifted from his heart :). From a completely selfish point of view, I’m so glad that Jo and HC are here to stay. I can’t imagine what life in Perth would be like without both of them being around. Hooray for more family nights to come.

Camera weekend

It’s the long weekend !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! But Friday is already over (T______T) but never mind, at least there’s still Saturday, Sunday and Monday ahead (^____^).

I thought I had better put up the photos from last weekend before embarking on this weekend. It was a fun one, on Friday, the guys met up for badminton.  Jason is very very good at badminton and was the star of the match.

Saturday morning was a yumcha session at Regal on Roe with the boys. Dimsum for Sunday brunch is always best.

The boys all look so stern and solemn.

After that Richard and I went to the city for camera shopping! It was so exciting, he finally bought the Nikon D90 DSLR which he has been coveting for ages. I brought him to Crumpler where he bought his new camera bag, very cute right, I think it looks like an owl.

Saturday was dinner at Al Sito’s with TGIF gang minus H. Jason was back from Geraldton, in fact, he’s back again this week and we’re meeting him for dimsum on Sunday (I think), it’s always nice when Jaso from Gero returns because it means lots of foodie adventures.

Jo and Hieng Chiong, try to ignore the bottles of wine in the middles, we didn’t drink that much this time.

Al Sito was really packed and I only managed to secure us a table outside, but with the heaters and candlelight, it was actually quite cosy.

After that we went over to Soto’s for coffee and cake where Gerry and Sandra joined us. Jason had fun playing around with the settings of my new camera. Do you like this photo he took of the cafe street?

Sunday afternoon we went to the Thai Perth Festival 2009. held at Russell Square in Northbridge.  It was my first experience at the Thai festival and it was really nice except it started to rain halfway.There were performances by the Ellington Jazz Club (not very Thai I know) which we listened to while hiding under the VIP tent.

I liked all the Thai food including these satay pork sticks which were tender and tasty, I think Bryan had about 3 of these.

Eggy strands of dessert, quite interesting and sweet.

My Som Tham salad which was made to order, it had bit of mini crab in it, very odd, I didn’t know how to eat it, but the salad itself was really spicy, sweet and sour, such an eye opener, I loved it.

Jason, Wendy and Richard engrossed with examining the D90. I don’t think they even noticed I was taking their picture.

Happy rabbit and his new camera.

This is a picture taken by his new camera of my new camera.  Seriously, after using a DSLR, all other cameras kinda pale in comparison. But I must say my new camera looks really pink and cheery here.

Ok, end of last weekend’s post, bring on the upcoming long weekend Y(^__________^)Y!

Foundation Day long wkend

The sneakers are back on the far end of the shoe shelf. Comfy jeans tucked away. Black boring office wear hung in front of wardrobe.  All signs that the long weekend is over. SIGH. And such an eventful weekend it was too, included Vietnamese hotpots, trips to the hospital (?!), coffee with friends, and as usual, lots of eating.

Friday

It was another stressful day at work, luckily my boss let me off early and I was racing out of the door by 4. Start of the long weekend! Dinner at Adrian’s place where Amy (his gf) cooked us Vietnamese hotpot!

Amy’s Vietnamese hotpot had lots of ingredients, enoki mushrooms, bean sprouts, slices of beef etc. Hidden underneath the flavourful broth was nice Korean clear noodles.  I felt quite bad for Amy because I know it can be stressful cooking for lots of people (there were 7 of us in all).

Her entree of springrolls which had bits of minced prawn and was really very tasty, I must ask her for the recipe for this. Amy are you reading this? Can I have the recipe for your springrolls please?

Our contribution was dessert of warm mud pie with vanilla icecream. We bought the Boston mudcake from Cheesecake Factory and it was rich and gorgeous warmed up in the microwave with lashings of velvety vanilla icecream

It was really a farewell dinner for Norman who was returning to Malaysia after a short holiday in Perth. Norman is Adrian and Bryan’s best friend (I call them the KK 3 Amigos), I’ve heard so much about him so I was glad to meet him finally. He’s a lovely guy, cute, generous and engaging.  I know the guys really enjoyed spending time with their old friend and hopefully he enjoyed his time in Perth as well. He mentioned that he was surprised how much good food there was in Perth, in fact, on the last night, he suffered from a mild form of indigestion. I hope you come back to visit again Norman!

Saturday

A long indulgent sleep in. Jo steamed rice dumplings for brunch.

A bit late for Duan Wu Jie a.k.a. Rice Dumpling Festival but better late than never. I didn’t eat these vegetarian rice dumplings which were a present from Gill, but Jo said they were good. Wanting to return the favour, after lunch at the new Thai gourmet cafe with Brio, I went shopping for sweet treats for the TGIF gang. It was a TGISaturday gang that night, and I finally met up with Jaso and Gerry after 4 long weeks.

Dinner was at Toto’s which food standard is dropping drastically (much to my dismay). I know Mark would be happy that Gill ordered the Crab and Sharksfin soup though, unfortunately, it was more like fake sharksfin. Even though the food was lacking, the company was fantastic. I only wish Jason wasn’t sick, it’s difficult as a friend to watch him looking weak and tired everytime he returns from Geraldton. Makes me want to bundle him away, hide him in Perth and force feed him with hot porridge and creamy soup. So no photos of Jaso this time. Hopefully he will be fully recovered in July *fingers crossed*

My teh tarik high at Makan2 afterwards. If you want o get me to talk, just buy me a mug of that evil, sugar ladened orange drink.

Dessert was the cute mini tarts that I bought from Lawleys bakery in Mt Lawley. Don’t they look cute? I love the colours.  My pick was the lemon tart which was tart, sweet and sour. Made my little eyes disappear.

Sunday

It started innocently enough with a futsal game. But ended up with a rush trip to the after hours GP at Hollywood Hospital with Din Yaw and Xinlong. Poor Din Yaw aka Jason has been suffering from a bout of injury proned bad luck for the past month. I hope this is the last of it, the soccer ball hit him in his right eye and he couldn’t see at all for a while. Even though Xinlong and I were secretly fearing the worst (I blame this on the Moonlight Resonance tvb drama where the father had a serious eye injury), we kept up with a steady strem of ‘mei wen ti/no problem’ ‘nothing to worry about’ statements. I was impressed and touched at Xinlong’s actions that afternoon, he was a wonderful pillar of support to Din Yaw and was so kind and considerate towards his friend. I’m so used to guys who are always so afraid to express emotions or concern  towards their friends (instead opting for a  ‘he can fend for himself’ attitude,is it a guy thing or what?) that it was wonderfully refreshing and touching to see signs of true friendship.

The good doctor referred us to the Royal Perth Hospital emergency ward where Ding Yaw received treatment at last, it was a pretty substantial injury to his eye, but the doctor says he should be 100% in a month, *phew*.

Rushed home after the hospital to have dinner at Manise with Gill and Jo. Jo calls this activity ’empek-empeking (TM)’. They just love love love the empek-empek at Manise and I must admit it was hot, crispy and yummy that night. Hehe I love this cute photo of Jo and Gill.

Coffee and cakes at Exomod with TGIF gang even though Jaso is not in the picture.

Jaso took this artistic ‘blurry background’ photo of the cake. Nice or not? And then it was goodbyes and another 5 weeks before we see Jason again.  Maybe I’m growing older, but I wish I could be in a situation where I could see and spend time with my family and friends all the time, I wish my family members could all be in Perth and my good friends as well. Wishful thinking.

And so it’s June and  the official start of the winter season. I think it’s going to be a season of change, I’m excited!