Stir Fried Zucchini

My normal preparation is minestrone soup or stews with mince meat for Samuel. Today I tried the stir fried.

None of the few recipes I surf from the net looks appetizing, so I mix and match some of the ingredient I have here at home and stir fried it Chinese style.

I diced all except for the Eryngii mushroom which I sliced them in thin pieces. And oh, the garlic and ginger were finely chopped of course.

Zucchini, carrot, dried shitake Mushroom, Eryngii Mushroom, big onions, chicken
Colorful ain’t it?

It turns out that only Samuel and I fancy the Zucchini.
Hmm... that will not stop me from cooking it again though.

And here’s a shot of Tuesday Cheesecake after it’s chilled for a few hours.

Awesome!

Baked Cheesecake and Stitch and Sew

I’ve been meaning to do a live blogging on my cheesecake baking debut just now but as usual, pictures taking slipped off my mind again.

So I don’t have a before or in-midst photo to share.

This is the cheesecake fresh from the oven a few minutes ago.

I still gotta chill it in the fridge for at least 5 hours before it can be served.

The making of this cake (ya, watch too much Hollywood “The Making of….." already :p) was not without any bumps.
I’m not too sure why that I had this urge to bake the cake since this morning. I was busy the whole day and could only find the time to get around it at after 10 just now after watching one of my usual soap.
Just as I was about to get all my ka-chang out, I realized that I ran out of eggs. I had two choices then; defer my plan or drive out to a 24hours store.
I chose the later and lugged my lazy bum out.
As luck would turn out, the cafe downstairs was still opened and spared me 2 eggs.

:O
That’s the sign.
Yup, I had to bake the cake by hook or by crook :p.

Hence the baked cheesecake.
The ingredient I used:
Cream cheese
Sugar
Eggs
A pinch of salt
A spoonful too much vanilla essence
A bit too much milk
Butter
Crackers

Lets see how the cake turns out tomorrow.

On another note, I sewed another hobo bag last week.

Looks better this time I think.

I find this style quite versatile and can be used for almost any occasion saved for formal dinner.

I’m on a quest to sew another half a dozen more. So may be I’ll post them up altogether then. May take me forever though.

Thoughtful Gesture

Heh. It’s hard to hate visiting hospitals nowadays.
Although the long waiting hours are still there, the hospitals' hospitality is at par with those of five-stars hotels.

: O

While we were waiting at the hospital the other day for sis’s follow-up appointment, we were served warm tea by a sweet looking soft spoken no-less trainee nurse.
She went around the hospital premise with trolley, tray, tea, serviette and all

and offered them to visitors.
It beat our agitation there and then.

And today as I was getting frustrated from circling endlessly around the hospital compound looking for a parking space to pick up my sis from her physiotherapy session, the hospital served sis this.

How thoughtful!

It supressed my rage almost like a magic.

Stitch and Sew: Hobo Bag

It has been a month since I last sew. June had been a busy month for me.
Just as I was about to start on another sewing project, something came up and I gotta delay my thoughts.

Well, while waiting for my plan to get back in course, I busied myself with something I’m more familiar with. Bags.

I tried smaller size bag this time. Hobo style with minimal pattern.

The outlook looks quite OK at a glance.

But on second look, flaws surface one by one.

The inner pockets are proportioned incorrectly,

One part of the zip is sewed too close to the teeth,

The material is a tad too soft and the color is not catchy enough.

This is how it looks hanging up.

Usable nevertheless.

Head to Toe Matching

I am quite sure that you’ll cringe just by thinking about it…

Let alone trying out the look….

Especially when it’s the bright colors we are talking about ……

Worse still for an office do!

:O

Well, yesterday I felt like committing this fashion crime...Felt it. Done it!

Not floral-ed or patterned. Just plain bright baby blue with pinches of pink. (I could almost hear you gasp :p )

A mono-colored shirt

And a tiered knee length skirt

With a salmon pink open-toe ribbon pumps

(You can stop shaking your head now cos..)
I’ll be kind and save you the horror sight.
Here’s a fraction of the blue. I complete my look with dangling pink earrings and pink lipstick : )

And oh ya, I did not forget to lug my almost pink shoulder tote too.

I Like Him

I meant to post this this morning at 2 something but somehow couldn’t connect to Blogspot.
Yes, I was up. I was watching the Michael Jackson Memorial Service screening live on 8TV.

I’d been lost for words for the past days. It was only this morning that I felt right to write about it.
I cried.

I admire him as an artist despite whatever said.

Yes, I like him.

The Wills That Move the Wheels

Not too sure if I have mentioned it here before but I love driving. More specifically self-drive!
Not only because of my motion sickness problem where I ought to steer the car to control my own motion but because I just simply love to drive.

The feeling of cruising hundreds of miles over breath-taking sceneries…

the feeling of being completely frees owning your moments…

the excitement of anticipating what’s lay ahead of ‘ya….

I love ‘em all!

My first car was an 850cc Kancil. I got it as it was a car that I could afford then. It’s relatively quite an easy to carry car; easy to park, easy to maneuver, easy on my pockets : )
It was a manual-geared car.
That was when I fell in love with driving. I like to be in control of my speed. Though it is achievable via auto-geared car too, somehow playing with the manual gear gave me a tingeing sensation that I couldn’t explain.

I was young then, I drove my car over 200 km back to my hometown alone within the month I got her. I did not shed a sweat!

I drove her back on another occasion alone again at wee hours in the night; way past midnight after I’d attended a cocktail party and I did not think that it was a big deal.
I thought I had too as I was rushing home for the QingMing the morning after.

Ya… I was that daring then.
And ya, I was that in-love with driving.
But make no mistakes; it’s driving, not racing. :p

Things have change now. If I’m placed in a situation where I was to go on a long drive, I would find myself thinking twice.
Is it needed to or is it because I want to?
Yes, I love driving, but I ain’t 18-22 anymore.
Can I withstand the long exhausting drive?
Am I fit to?
And most importantly I have other passengers to think off too.

I find myself slowing down. I would rather break my journey into a few shorter drives with rest in-between.
I would rather have another back-up driver traveling with me just in case.
I would rather not travel in the middle of the night to the middle of nowhere.

But I still love that tingeing sensation of in-control of my own speed. I did not get myself the auto-geared car after my faithful Kancil era. The new (then, old now) car I got myself is still another small manual car.
And I still love her to bits!

Till The Cows Come Home

…. and come home they did......

My sanity knocked me back to reality in the nick of time to save our neighbors’ eardrums from having permanent damage due to extremely-loud-cum-high-pitched-shrieks exposure.

As I was reversing to park my car back at our small town home, I ran over these;

It wasn’t only me, Mom was as puzzled too.
Why would there be any dung that’s so humongous looking yet so artistically scattered across our green?

Upon closer look, they were not dung but gigantic cute wilted fungus.

Poor house, waited for us to come back until grew mold liao :p

Smelly Worry

Yup I love durians but no thanks, I don’t wish to smell like one.

I’m not trying to be divas, but I will try to use fork and spoon whenever possible when I eat durians.
For one and only one reason, I don’t seem to be able to get its sharp smell off my fingers easily.

I had to go back to the tap again and again after last-last feast to wash my hands to a point being falsely perceived as a hygienic freak.
Make no mistake, I’m somewhat a hygienist, just not a freak ; )

I tried almost everything ….
Well, may be a little less than almost everything
Errr….. may be just half of everything …
Errr… ok la, may be just a few pathetic tries …
:p

First, I washed with tap water available at the Pasar Tani. Of course the smell of the king of fruits was still there.

Logically then when I reached home, I re-washed with soap several times. To no avail, the smell was still around.

Then I cut my fingernails short to kill any stubborn residues that might be stuck in-between. Still not working.

I was getting a bit paranoid with the cleaning at this point already.

I reached out to the bottle of Dettol placed on our loo's shelf and washed my hands.
Smells like a sick fella still a better option eh?

True enough the smell went away but only for a while. After the Dettol smell worn-off, the durians came back.

Arrggggghhh!

After exhausted almost all sane ideas that I could think off then, I grabbed my dishwashing liquid…
Yuppie!

Problem solved!

Minestrone Soup

‘Ya know how we Chinese like to bustle over overnight food? How non-nutritious it becomes or how heaty or windy or stuff like that?
How we will go all out to finish the food the instant it’s cooked or that it ought to be consumed not a minute beyond the day?
To the point that ‘ya fear your parents will come knocking on your door to remind you to throw away overnight food?

OK, may be not that.
But close.... :p

I take left over food all the time. I stock cooked food in my fridge all the time especially food that I deem to wasteful to be thrown away when I couldn’t finish them there and then.

So when I came across the Minestrone Soup recipe from the net that says

add cheese and serve immediately
or
even better leave it overnight

I did not jump like a bean in a hot pan. I did not bite my teeth nor scream in disbelief.

I cooked a pot-full of Minestrone Soup last Friday.

Served immediately with Spaghetti Carbonara, that was not made by canned sauce.

I still had half a pot soup leftover then. I left it overnight.

It does taste better.