Instant Nasi Briyani ... almost!

I feel slightly guilty if I dont cook on dinner on Sat nights. Cos its the only day we get to eat dinner alone (just hubby & me, Bryan too of course) and on most Sats, we tapau something simple like fried rice, fried noodles and these days, hub is hooked on this nasi lemak with fried chicken from pasar malam that he accidentally discovered!

While at Carrefour, I spotted some instant nasi ayam, nasi briyani and even nasi tomato packs which I thought was a good idea since it was so quick and simple to prepare. So I decided on a nasi briyani as a start.

Asked mom to help me marinate some chicken thighs in curry powder (Indian style) overnight. And I was thinking of something simple like just fried eggs and fresh cucumbers as side dishes to complete the meal.


The brand that i bought was Chef Bop. It consist of one package of brasmati rice and another smaller package of curry paste mixture. All you have to do is to wash rice (as per normal lah) and add 480ml of water then add the curry paste mixture into the rice and mix thoroughly. Add a pinch of salt. Then cook rice (as per normal lah again) in rice cooker for abt 20 mins. At this point, I added some golden raisins and almonds and gave it a quick stir. Continued cooking rice for another 10-15 mins until done. That's it.

Verdict:

Rice does not taste like Briyani at all (ha!ha!) Maybe more like nasi kuning than briyani. But it was ok. I liked it cos it was different from our daily brown rice. At least this one has got raisins & nuts .. hehehe.

Will I buy it again?

Yeah why not? This pack can feed abt 5 adults (average eaters lah) and it does taste ok. Its more like a flavoured rice and can be convenient for entertaining small number of guests.

Baked Cheese Rice

Cooking or baking something for the first time is always a complicated process. Even when it says, melt butter in wok and add in garlics, stir fry till fragrant - I have to read it like 3 times! What to do ... inexperienced in the kitchen mah.

Every weekend, I will have to scratch my head to think of what to cook for the 2 of us. Yes, now I know how our Moms feel ... every single day they have to dish out lovely dishes for our dinner .. and yet sometime we complain this not nice, that not nice. Now its my turn to cook .. and I know exactly how that feels!

I had lots of cheese (friend of mine bought me some when he went back to NZ to visit his kampung) and after my pizza attempt, I was thinking about cheese baked rice .. ala Wong Kok Char Chan Theng style ... hahaha.

Eh, not bad leh. This is the chicken version. Next day's dinner, I did a seafood version (fish, prawns, etc) for MIL, SIL & BIL and that was good too!

Pizza for 2

Our weekend meals are very very simple. Cos its only for the 2 of us. After having enough of chicken rice and fried rice, I decided to make some pizza. A few days before, I dropped by Cold Storage to get some frozen pizza bases based on recommendation from a friend. Tried Carrefour, Giant and Jusco recently, can't find them. Thought I saw some there before .. but anyway.

My simple pizza ingredients. Canned skinless tomatoes, roast chicken pieces, sliced fresh button mushrooms, canned pineapples diced into smaller pieces, parmesan and mozarella cheese.



Ready for lunch!



Hubby says not enough cheese. When I makan, I feel more than enough, but he is right, actually, its not enough"cheese smell" ... so next time I have to tambah extra dose of parmesan cheese I think.

The brand of frozen pizza crust that i bought was .. Piccolo something. Made in Malaysia one. Not super nice but just ok. Any other brands anyone can recommend and where to buy them please??

New Year Celebration Cuppies

Having had a really joyous Christmas dinner with turkey and all, we settled for a quiet New Year's eve. The after-dinner cleaning that week was quite torturous you know! But thank god for SIL's maid and Moi Cheh (my confinement nanny when I had Bryan - yeah, we keep in touch!) they helped me with the cleaning the dishes, etc. Was sooo glad!

Mom was cooking the usual home dinner for New Year's Eve but I suggested to her to cook an extra dish cos I had in mind to invite my MIL, SIL & BIL over again for dinner. They are getting the house painted for the CNY and the kitchen was in a mess, so I thought, why not invite them over again for a homely meal. After all, it is New Year's eve.

On New Year's Day, I got a bit bored when Bryan was having his afternoon nap. I decided to embark on a cup cake making journey. It's a journey I have never been before. The ingredients are simple and the method is pretty simple too, so why not give it a try. So off I went into meddling with icing sugar for the first time in my entire life!!!!

Guess what? I think I just was soooo proud of myself! The texture of the cupcake was almost perfect. It taste no different from those that I used to buy from. I was beaming with glee! Icing was good too! It was easy to whisk into form and easy to work with (no melting).

The only down side of this all was my skills lah. I mean, this is the first time ever I am making my own icing, no proper tools, nothing. I used by butter knife to slather a bit of the icing over the cuppies, threw in some sprinkles and topped it with some store-bought flower icing.

I made a total of 14 cuppies. 2 went into hub's tummy right after. I had 2 too *wink*. 4 went to MIL's house that same night. 2 more for my mom & sis the next day. Hubby whacked another 2 more the next day and so did I.

Oven & Kitchen Time!

On weekends, I try to cook or bake something really simple? Why simple? Cos that is the only thing I am confident of ... wuakakakaka! So it has been fried rice or spaghetti for lunch/dinner. Else tapau chicken rice ... nyek nyek nyek. And oh! Tried baking some chicken wings too!

Baked 2 types of muffin last week. One is the plain type (cos I dont wanna waste my ingredients while trying out a recipe for the first time!). It worked out well, so for the 2nd batch, I added some cream cheese cubes & choc chips. Yummy!

I also tried my hand at steaming a tray of 9-layer kuih. I tell ya, taste and look was really good. But was wondering why mine so hard sampai so difficult to cut with my plastic knife (yeah, for this kuih have to use plastic knife to cut one .. why .. i dunno ... i find out and tell you in my next kuih post, okay). Thinking and thinking then I realised, oooh I forgot to add 500ml of plain warm water in addition to my coconut cream .. ahh no wonder lah! Bau so fantastic but cannot cut nicely leh. Nevertheless, good 1st try. At least I tried mah! So next week, i am more confident of attempting it again ... yeah!

Condensed Milk Pound Cake

This must be one of the most easiest cake recipes I have ever attempted. It is a perfect recipe for bake-dummies like me *grin*. In fact, it was sooo easy that I actually doubt it will work. Nevertheless, I decided to give it a try since I had an hour to spare at mom's place and mom willingly took care of the brat while I prepared the ingredients to bake.


Ingredients

3/4 cans of a large condensed milk tin
4 eggs, lightly beaten before pouring into dry ingredients
120gm of self-raising flour
50gm butter, melted & cooled

Method

• Preheat oven to 180C and grease a 8in round pan.
• Pour all ingredients together into a bowl and mix well. I used a hand-held mixer to bring it all together for 2-3 mins or so.
• Pour into pan and bake for abt 30-40 mins or till cooked. Test with skewer for doneness.
• Remove from oven and rest on wirerack to cool.

Some suggest that you sprinkle with some icing sugar while its hot but I omitted that. This cake is just mildly sweet as there is no sugar but just some condensed milk. If you still prefer it sweet like any other cakes, do try dusting the ready cake with icing sugar.

While baking, nothing happened for the first 20 minutes. I thought that most probably, this will go into the bin (just like a few other recipes that I have previously tried) but surprise .. surprise .. it raised well during the last 10 minutes and I managed to finish baking it at just the right time at the right doneness *smile*.

I only had one decent shot of the cake. Hubby commented that I always take the same shot of my cakes for my blog. So I decided to try another shot. Not being a pro at photography and on top of that, photo was taken at night, so please excuse me for a bad picture. The rest of the pictures were just blurrrr.....

If you are looking for an easy recipe without much fuss and simple ingredients, this is it!

Chicken Rice - $30

Do you fancy paying for a RM30 chicken rice???? Well, last year I got a shock when I first bought this for my office lunch!

I don't know if its the price that made me biased but when I tasted it for the very first time, I felt it was no better than the RM3.50 ones you get from the chinese stalls. However, after a few times savouring it, I must say it does indeed taste good.

I must highlight that this chicken rice is served by a 5 star hotel in the city centre. I usually do a take-away for office meetings and most of my guests quite like it. Some even take 2 portions in one sitting! Due to the location of my office, there are limited chinese food available in the vicinity, so the hotel's coffee house is the best choice - and the easiest too!

Report Card # 1

Guess what! Guess what!

I lost a total of 10 inches from various parts of my body combined & 1% of internal body fat in 2 weeks!

I also managed to increase my body's water level from 39.9% to now 40.2%. Hmm ... seems like the 3 litres of water/day is doing me some good. That's the good news.

But the bad news is ... I only lost 1 kg in weight. Cry. Cry. My metabolism rate is damn bloody slow and damn stubborn too!

Well, according to my health plan coach, this is quite a good achievement. She says she hardly comes across anyone who can loose 1% of internal fat within 2 weeks. Some even take up to 3 mths to show similar results it seems.

Here's sharing with you the breakdown of my first report card :-

Chest (Upper) - lost 2 inches
Chest (Lower) - lost 1 inch
Waist - lost 1 inch
Hip - lost 1.5 inches
Thigh (Right) - lost 1 inch
Thigh (Left) - lost 1 inch
Arm (Right) - lost 1 inch
Arm (Left) - lost 1.5 inches.

So there you go ... my 10 inches in total.