Sundays – Page 2 – HEALTH FREAK MOMMY

Cassandra’s First Ice-Skating Lesson @ Blue Ice Snow Park, Pavillion Bukit Jalil

Sunday, 25 Sept 2022 ~ Cass’ wish finally materialized today when her dad sent her to her first ice -skating class at the Blue Ice Snow Park skating rink @ Bukit Jalil. And paid for the lessons too. He told her that she could keep the money that she’s saved for years for the lessons!

I told Cass that she’ll have to use the savings to pay for her laptop when she goes to college in another four years 😐

Cass told me that she will use part of the savings to buy her own ice skates as she doesn’t like those common ice skates at the skating rink. The skates chafed the skin of her feet even though she wore thick long socks the first time she skated at the skating rink two weeks ago. Today she wore double socks and this managed to prevent her feet from chaffing.

We’ll be back at the skating rink over the new few weeks for Cass’ lessons. And hubs is happy with this as he gets to indulge in all his favorite foods at his favorite restaurants 😁

There was a Pokanime Planet Cosplay competition held at the Exhibition Centre, just next to the skating rink, thus there was a huge crowd today.

We had a light brunch at Dragon-I before sending Cass to the skating rink.

The food quality at Dragon-I has dropped considerably. Everything that we ate tasted rather insipid. I kept dipping my noodles and pau into the chili sauce and vinegar to get some flavors to my food. Only the smoked fish was good but it didn’t taste like smoked fish at all – it’s more like deep fried sweet and sour fish that you’ll find at ‘tai chow’ stalls.

After Cass’ ice-skating class, we had lunch at Grand Harbour Chinese restaurant. Hubs finally noshed to his heart’s content as he was very satisfied with the food. We couldn’t finish the fried rice and dim sum and had it doggy-bagged for Sherilyn. We dropped off the food for her in school as she had to go back on a Sunday for Library Week preparation.

Love the red bean tong sui with black sesame filled tong yuen.

Yuet Kwong Hor (Moonlight hor fun) was silky smooth, had generous amount of pork slices, pork lard and full of ‘wok hei’. Hubs couldn’t get enough of it and is already planning to order this dish again this Sunday when Cass attends her second ice-skating class.

No. of times viewed = 298

Yi Sheng Huat Seafood Restaurant, Pudu, KL

This is a throwback post.

Sunday, 5 June 2022 ~ Hubs brought us to try a ‘new’ Chinese ‘tai chow’ restaurant – it’s a first try for us but not for him.

As catering functions have picked up ever since Malaysia reopened its borders and economic sectors, hubby’s catering business has been making a rebound. He’s been busy almost everyday, including Saturdays and Sundays. His business was at an all-time low for almost 2 years during the pandemic with on-off lockdowns. Only God knows what we’d gone through during the difficult 2 years.

Anyway, onwards and upwards!

If there’s a Sunday that hubs doesn’t have to work, he will drag all of us to ‘jalan-jalan cari makan’ (loosely translated in English to – walk around and find food) with him.

Pudu is a place where one can find many good eateries, from street food to cafes, ‘tai chow’ stalls and decades-old -restaurants that withstood the test of time with their good food.

Yi Sheng Huat at Pudu is famous for their ‘tai chow’ dishes, especially steamed fish. We were there a little before 12 noon, which is the start of their operating hour and waited for almost half an hour, with growling tummies before the dishes arrived.

Stir-fried ‘sang cheong’ (pig’s intestines). Not my kind of dish but hubby’s favorite.

Steamed lala clams with Chinese cooking wine and ginger.

Deep fried squids, which is our favorite dish.

Food was great and we enjoyed our meal thoroughly. We’ll definitely be back again to try other dishes when hubs is free again on a Sunday. This time, I want the entire steamed fish all to myself! I’m a sucker for restaurant-style steamed fish.

Yi Sheng Huat Seafood Restaurant
357 & 345, Jalan Gajah,
Pudu, 55100 Kuala Lumpur
Opening Hours: 11.30AM – 2PM; 5.30PM – 11PM
Contact: 012 – 2685 638

No. of times viewed = 1569

Legend Seafood Restaurant, Bandar Mahkota Cheras

For weeks hubs had been raving about this Chinese restaurant that he went to a couple of times with his besties at Bandar Mahkota Cheras. This restaurant requires advance booking from their customers before going. If you plan on a walk-in, chances are you’ll be told that they are fully booked. Their dishes are often sold out due to their popularity.

The restaurant only opens at 11 a.m. and we were there a little before 11 and waited for about 20 minutes before the first dish arrived.

The first dish is pork lard rice, one of the restaurant’s signature dishes.

The pork lard rice came piping hot in a rice cooker. It has generous amounts of pork lard and gravy with bits of pork belly. This is the ultimate killer dish to thwart your diet plan if you’re on one. This dish is so delish and addictive that it’s just so hard to stop at just one bowl.

Totally stunning combination of flavors – rice mixed with aromatic crispy pork lard, gravy, and chopped raw garlic.

Sauteed baby French beans with smashed dried shrimps, red chilis and big onions.

Steamed chicken drenched in garlic sesame oil, served alongside minced ginger and house-made chili sauce. The chicken is so beautifully glossy with a luxurious mouthfeel.

Big prawns cooked in Nyonya style curry.

Squid rings cooked to tender perfection in a concoction of aromatic spices and chilis. The squid rings are all infused with decadent flavors.

Fried pork neck with an inhouse made dipping sauce. By the time this dish arrived, I was already very stuffed, so didn’t try it.

Silky smooth ‘Choy Heong’ tofu topped with fried minced pork.

The bill came close to RM300 for this meal.

After lunch, we segued into Ding Dang, a titbits shop just a few steps away. This super huge snacks shop is a paradise for junk food lovers as it’s replete with hundreds of types of biscuits, chips, nuts, candies and every snack you can think of. We bought some snacks home, of course. It’s really dangerous to walk into such an enticing titbits shop if you lack self-control. It can be hard to leave the shop empty-handed when every step of your way in the shop has something luring and screaming out to you to take it home 🤪

Legend Seafood Restaurant
Jalan Laksamana,
Bandar Mahkota Cheras,
43200 Cheras, Selangor
010-254 3216

No. of times viewed = 395

9 May 2021 ~ Mother’s Day

My sweet eldest daughter got up early to prep a surprise breakfast for me and her grandma. The one who hates cooking, can’t even cook a decent meal for us and abhors all kitchen chores actually cranked up the stove to cook me breakfast!! She also made us fresh orange + lemon juice using a manual juicer. The set also includes a rose origami, which she handmade, in my favorite color, pink. 🥰

Cass gave me a RM10 note and told me to buy something with it without sharing it with anyone 🥰. She also gave me half an hour of massage.

My middle child whipped up this salad for me.

Mother’s Day cake from hubs. He also helped to wash all the dishes and brought the garbage to the refuse chamber. Must give him 10 brownie points for this as he hardly helps out in house chores!

After breakfast, Cass and I brought Haru to the jogging trek of our condo for a walk. Cass always puts Haru in a recyclable cloth bag and brings her for walks around the condo.

Sizzling hot at 11-ish a.m., but we got our daily dose of Vitamin D!

To my overseas readers, our country is currently in another lockdown (MCO 3.0). Schools are out, most of the shopping centres including our most popular neighborhood supermarket in the HIDE list (these premises have the potential to turn into a Covid cluster if no preventive measures are taken) have been ordered to close for 3 days. We’re also advised to self-isolate for 14 days and not go anywhere to break the chain of infection.

I’d like to wish all my readers who are mothers a very blessed and happy Mother’s Day!

No. of times viewed = 28

Sunday, 21 March 2021

Cass finally met up with her two BFFs from primary school today. Her bff, A, who’s now studying in an international school, has moved to our neighborhood. Cass and J went to A’s house to help her with unpacking and arranging. A’s mom brought them to Domino’s for pizza. If it wasn’t because of her piano class, Cass would have stayed at A’s house the entire day to catch up with her 2 bffs to make up for lost time. They should have had a graduation in school, a farewell party and lots of fun year end events together with tons of photos taken but sadly none of these happened last year.

Onwards and upwards! A is now in our neighborhood, which means more opportunities for them to meet up to catch up. And J is in the same high school as Cass. Though not in the same class, they may still bump into each other. At least they have something relevant to talk about as they’re in the same school. I really hope that A, J and Cass will be best friends forever.

While Cass had a great time with her friends, hubs, mil and I went to Restaurant Eight Treasure in Cheras for lunch. Alycia and Sherilyn stayed home – Alycia for SPM revision and Sherilyn to attend online church youth meeting.

Steamed ‘ma cau’ chicken (chicken fed with horse grass), steamed tofu with fish paste, fried yau mak and assorted yong liu stuffed with homemade fish paste. This restaurant serves the best steamed horse grass chicken. I don’t like eating steamed chicken but this chicken is an exception. The texture, taste and doneness are cooked to a tee – smooth, juicy, right amount of grease and aromatic. The ginger dipping sauce gives the chicken moreishness.

Hubby’s catering business is slowly but surely making a comeback. It will take months and perhaps even a year before it reaches its heyday again. He’s working very hard and we’re very thankful that we have many friends and even my blog readers who have been supporting his business.

I’d like to thank one of my blog readers from Australia who ordered food from Catermate for a surprise party for her relatives in KL. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your patronage ❤️

Nasi Briyani with ayam masak merah, mutton rendang, fried fish with sambal cili, Dalcha vegetables, acar and Nyonya kuih.

No. of times viewed = 59

RMCO Day 89 ~ Sunday, 6 September 2020

Today is the eve of Cass’ exam but this brat is as usual super chillax and not at all nervy or hung up 🙄 She’s always been one who’s able to hold her nerve in most situations and that’s the reason why I can leave her alone at the hospital overnight for 3 nights.

Last night she stayed up late to finish up the thank you card for Ms L, her erstwhile class teacher and asked me to bring her to the post box to drop the card.

Then she dragged me to the stationery shop so that she could have her homemade bookmarks laminated. She’s been drawing these bookmarks whenever she had the time. She walked to the stationery shop and told the shop assistant that she wanted her stack of bookmarks laminated without first checking on the cost. When I went into the stationery shop and asked whether she checked the price with the assistant, she said NO 🙄. The laminating, cutting and smoothening of the edges cost RM7, duh! I could have bought a stack of bookmarks with RM7! Feeling guilty, she said that she would pay for the laminating herself 😁

Drawn by a true-blue Potterhead:

Hubs has been working at full steam the entire day today with events at a corporate client’s place. I went to his shop twice to collect extra food for us.

Blimey, what a lot of food! The girls could have the yummy seafood + mushroom pasta for a few lunches.

In the evening, my good friend B, Whatsapped me whilst she was on the ETS train from Ipoh – KL telling me that she’s got a surprise for me and would be meeting me at my condo at 6:30 p.m. But a little drama happened at Rawang and the train got stalled and another train had to be summoned to ferry the stranded passengers back to KL. Despite the 2 hours delay, B still dropped by my condo at night to pass me my favorite mooncakes from the famous Ming Yue Confectionary in Ipoh. I am really touched beyond words and blessed for having such a wonderful friend. Thank you B 😘

Ming Yue Confectionary in Ipoh sells the cheapest mooncakes without any compromise on the quality and taste. The assorted nuts mooncake at only RM10 a piece (only RM10!!) is loaded with fresh and crunchy nuts and seeds and not coyly sweet. Every bite is loaded with fresh crunchy nuts! Perfect for those on keto diet. If you’re thinking of trying their mooncakes, be prepared to spend at least half an hour to an hour queuing up.

No. of times viewed = 48

DuJour and Slow Coffee @ The Hub SS2, PJ

Last Sunday hubs took his entourage of girls to The Hub @ SS2. It’s our first visit to this lifestyle residence hub at SS2, PJ. Lush verdure lawn, soothing water features and ample parking spaces are some of the plus points of hanging out at this place on your Sunday afternoon. This hub houses a great Italian restaurant, several spanking cafes and eateries, a bar, hot pot restaurant and PJ’s first mini golf arcade.

Our first stop was at DuJour for lunch. DuJour may sound like a French restaurant, but its repertoire ranges from nasi kerabu with ayam percik and ulam, nasi lemak, doing tasty justice to Kelantan traditions (RM23 as a lunch set with iced lemon tea), to terrifically tender-textured salmon quiche (RM9) and decadent chocolate muffins (RM7.50), all baked here, served in an alluring space that brings a bit of the outdoors inside.

Our favorites were the nasi lemak and lasagna. The breakfast set, waffles with tomyam eggs and Four Seasons Omelette were pretty run-of-the-mill. We find the waffles too doughy and not crispy enough to achieve the moreish factor. The nasi lemak was very well executed and has a tick on all the boxes.

Tangy and effervescent passion fruit kombucha for Alycia. Niko Neko matcha for me and black sesame charcoal latte with edible flowers for Sherilyn.

After lunch, we segued a few steps away to Slow Coffee for coffee and cakes. A Sunday lunch will never be complete for the hubs if he doesn’t get to enjoy a cup of coffee ☕️with cakes 🍰

Below: Strawberry lemon cake, earl grey grapefruit cake, taro cake and avocado lime tart – the cream on the cakes is light and the cake texture is light and fluffy, thus the cakes are not cloy and overly sweet. We enjoyed the cakes thoroughly but found the lime tart lacking in flavor.

When the Japanese-inspired ‘fuwa fuwa’ souffle pancakes came, hubs and I thought that they look very familiar. We later found out that Slow Coffee is spearheaded by the folks who run Happy Garden’s Neighbour’s Coffee Bar, which also specialises in these comfortingly warm pancakes. Hubs and I tried the soufflé pancakes at Neighbour’s Coffee Bar recently. The portion was so big that we only managed to eat half the portion. This time we had our 3 piranhas with us and the soufflés were polished off in a jiffy. We both agreed that the soufflés at Slow Coffee taste better — fluffy-as-a-cloud, perfectly airy yet creamy and paired really well with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream, strawberries, kiwi and blueberries.

Slow Coffee opened its doors in December 2019. We really enjoyed the cakes and drinks and will be back to try the main course menu which includes Confit Chicken, Mushroom and Omelette, Slow Benedict with pulled BBQ Chicken, Jerked Barramundi, among others.

The surroundings at Hub SS2:

At DuJour, the portion of roast potatoes for three of the dishes that we ordered were so huge that we had to doggy-bag them home for dinner. Sherilyn mashed the roast potatoes with some steamed carrots and pumpkin using a hand blender and seasoned the mash with ground black pepper, cumin and fresh milk. We had this for dinner. Waste not, want not – I never like to waste good food and am glad that we doggy bagged the roast potatoes home and transformed it into a yummy new dish 🙂

Du Jour
B-G-01 & B-M-01, The Hub SS2, Jalan Harapan, Seksyen 19, 46300 Petaling Jaya, Selangor.
Opens: Mon, Wed-Sun, 10am-7pm.
Tel: 03-7931-3717

Slow Coffee
B-G-03, The Hub SS2, 19 Sentral, Jalan Harapan, Seksyen 19, Petaling Jaya, 46400 Selangor.
Opens: Mon-Sun, 930am-6pm
Tel: 03-7931 9690

No. of times viewed = 1308

Botanica + Co @ Vertical Podium, Bangsar South

I just realized that tomorrow is Sunday and I still haven’t posted food photos that we took last Sunday when we were at Bangsar South (AGAIN!) for lunch. I have a hunch that the hubs will be going there again for lunch tomorrow, or even for dinner tonight! The bite-list at Bangsar South is replete with novelty cuisines, from The Sphere to the Vertical Podium. We’ve still not tried so many restaurants there yet.

Back to last Sunday’s lunch! This time we tried Botanica + Co, a restaurant inspired by the botanics. The feeling of dining outdoor amidst lush greenery is captured inside the restaurant as you dine amidst a greenhouse-themed interior.

Photo credit – EatDrinkKL

Pizzas are a cornerstone here and my pizza devotee girls ordered a Maui pizza.

No prize for guessing who ordered this refreshing salad with lemongrass chook.

Big breakfast set.

Sherilyn ordered this Mexican wrap and she didn’t quite like it. She made something similar recently and it tasted way better than this, ahem! And her tortillas were made from scratch, as with her guacamole and salsa. That girl certainly has good taste (thanks to the foodie hubs who brings us on a food hunt every weekend ), is aesthetic savvy and a perfectionist too when it comes to cooking, baking and dancing.

The Pasembur features crunchy deep fried prawn and vegetables fritters (with generous amounts of vegetables) against refreshing raw strips of yam bean, cucumber and bean sprouts as well as hard boiled eggs, potatoes and tofu strips. I love the peanut sauce that goes with this Indian rojak. All the ingredients work together harmoniously to deliver a gastronomic delight. This is definitely an item that I’ll order again when I dine at this restaurant again.

Grilled chicken, which has a hint of cumin and middle East spices. It tastes very much like the grilled chicken thighs that I usually cook for the girls 😉

Botanica + Co’s menu is a passport to cross-border cuisine-hopping, ranging from the Middle East mezze of textured hummus, spicy muhammara & creamy baba ganoush with house-baked flatbread to the American hot Reuben sandwich with pastrami, salami, melted Swiss cheese, BBQ sauce & an extra flourish of kimchi. Portions are constructed for sharing if you’re not an extremely big eater. Our family of 6 shared everything you see here and portions were just right for us, though we had to doggy bag the Pasembur home for dinner.

Overall the food that we ordered was average. I love the Pasembur though. The menu is quite extensive and the next time we visit again, we’ll try Sam’s Crab & Crayfish Laksa, which, from my online research, has garnered positive reviews. Botanica + Co is a great place for Insta-worthy photos to boast, good place to people watch and for photography as lighting is amazing. I love restaurants with natural lights.

Botanica & Co
G5 Podium, The Vertical,
Bangsar South City,
No. 8 Jalan Kerinchi,
59200 Kuala Lumpur.
Tel: 016-965 6422

Business hours:
Mon to Thurs: 11.30am – 10pm
Friday & Eve of Public Holiday: 11.30am – 12am
Sat: 9.30am – 12am
Sun & Public Holidays: 9.30am – 10pm

No. of times viewed = 106

Sunday, 29 Sept 2019

Today the mil returned from New Zealand after a 2-month long holiday. She came home early in the morning while the girls were still in bed. Today is also the eve of Cass and Alycia’s final exams for 2019!

Despite today being a Sunday, the girls got up at 7:30 a.m. to welcome grandma home and to see what goodies she’s brought back from the land of honey, kiwi and avocado. As usual, there were loads of Whittaker’s Almond Gold and hazelnut chocolate slabs (everyone’s favorite!), jumbo size avocados, apples, panoply of gourmet cheeses, honey, healthy bread, beef jerky and a replete supply of snacks for the next 1-2 months 😊 😋

My favorite healthy nut bar from Pure Delish:

The hubs dragged everyone to Bangsar South (again!) for lunch. Alycia and Cass were not really keen to go as they wanted to stay home to revise for their exams. But hubs said Sunday is a family day, the only day that he can have lunch with all his girls; so yeah, everyone has to go. So they brought their books along to the restaurant 🤭

Dessert was ice-cream at Sunbather Coffee:

And had roast vegetables takeaway from Parklife for dinner:

Sherilyn baked a loaf of keto chocolate brownie for breakfast and it was yums! Ingredients are composed of organic oats powder (instant oats blitzed in our Blendtec blender), organic extra virgin coconut oil, 6 eggs, organic cacao powder, sugar-free dark milk chocolate, pinch of salt and vanilla extract.

No. of times viewed = 16

Sunday, 4 August 2019

The mil left for New Zealand last night, for a 2-month stay with her third daughter and family；which means that I’ll be slogging in the hot kitchen for the next 2 months dishing out lunch and dinner. No fun for someone who finds cooking a chore! But what choice does a health freak mommy have huh? I haven’t found the mojo nor momentum to cook yet but I’ll soon wing it. Bring on the pressure cooker! But I’ll need to have a short refresher session with my mum when she visits this Friday before I use the PPC again. Mum is an expert in pressure cooking. She uses it to make all her dishes and some of her bakes.

Sunday for me is all about leisurely lunch with family, indolent and languid, best time in the week. But I had to be up at 4:45 a.m. today. It’s day two of Cass’ camp in school today. Though I had a hard time getting this slugabed out of bed and only left the house 10 minutes before the session started, we weren’t late. It took me under 10 minutes to reach school vs. 20 – 25 minutes on a regular weekday. The roads were super clear. If only KL roads were like this every single day, my life will be so much less stressful!

Lunch with hubs and the two older girls was at Paradise Dynasty @ Pearl Shopping Gallery.

Paradise Dynasty Restaurant is well-known for their colorful Xiao Long Baos, handmade noodles and Shanghainese delicacy.

The dry la mien noodles look simple and unassuming but they pack a phenomenal flavor punch of fried onion oil. Springy, silky and flavorful, each mouthful offers so much euphoria that you’ll have to stop yourself from stuffing this sinful oodles of carbo into your mouth!

The fried rice is gloriously good and filled with ‘wok hei’ (that complex charred aroma that fleetingly cloaks the rice).

After lunch at Paradise Dynasty, hubs segued into KyoChon to get takeaway Korean fried chicken for the girls’ dinner as I don’t cook on Sundays 🤗

Happy Sunday folks and may your new week ahead be filled with incredible luck and joy 😊

No. of times viewed = 40

Parklife @ The Sphere, Bangsar South

We went to The Sphere again to have lunch last Sunday and did a joyful cafe-hopping eating marathon, hopping into three different eateries and ending at the Aeon food court to get takeaway for the girls for dinner. This is my ideal kind of Sunday as good food is the pulse of our life; and Sunday is the only day of the week that our family can have lunch together.

After lunch at Home Noodle Vermicelli Kong, we segued into Sunbather Coffee (again) for our second round of lunch and just as we were planning to leave The Sphere, Parklife caught my attention. The very enticing colorful vegetable salads displayed next to the glass windows were like magnet to my eyes. I’m a sucker for colorful vegetable salads, especially if beets, pumpkin and egg plant are involved and what I saw was my kind of meal and I told the hubs that I wanted to get some of the salads for dinner. To wait for the staff to pack my salad takeaway, hubs got everyone into the cafe and ordered cakes, coffee and tea. That’s our second round of dessert after our main course!

The hubs ordered a slice of decadent carrot cake and a slice of super delish gluten-free very chocolaty chocolate cake. I love both the cakes as they ain’t very sweet. The homemade granola bar was a tad sweet for my liking though.

I chose Set A (RM23), comprising of a choice of 3 types of healthy salad. I chose steamed beetroot with apple, feta cheese and caramel walnut; roasted shiitake and oyster mushrooms and Palestinian cauliflower.

Parklife is a hive for healthy eating that emphasizes the pleasures of playful alluring vegetable recipes. Looking as much a farm as a park, this perky venue is a labour of passion by Penang-born chef Ling, returning to his homeland after decades of honing his craft everywhere from London to Moscow to Osaka.

Mediterranean vibrancy meets Middle Eastern vibes throughout much of the fare here. The bounty of Parklife’s harvest is spread out as a cornucopia of colourful salads for customers to view before ordering, while proteins are prepared to order in the kitchen. This place is definitely a place where I’d love to return for their healthy salads and decadent cakes.

Parklife
Unit 5, Level Upper Ground, The Sphere, Bangsar South City, Jalan Kerinchi, 59200 Kuala Lumpur.
Daily, 10am-10pm. Fresh meals served 1230pm-230pm, 630pm-830pm.

No. of times viewed = 551

The Farm Foodcraft @ The Sphere, Bangsar South City

Today the hubs decided to bring us to try something new for lunch. So to Bangsar South we went! We were impressed that within a short span of one year, so many eateries have opened up at The Sphere. We were there for the first time over a year ago and The Sphere was still pretty much empty with only a few eateries. The lifestyle hub now features about 24 restaurants as of end May 2019 and does not only stop at local cuisine but a host of international options as well. The Sphere is split into four levels with its anchor tenant, Aeon MaxValu Prime Super-market, covering a large section of the lower ground, acompanied by Miniso, Juice Lab and SOG Eyewear.

After a 15-20 minute walk around The Sphere, deciding on which restaurant to try, hubs finally settled on a new eatery ~ The Farm Foodcraft, which we later found out from the staff that it opened its doors just 4 days earlier. No wonder the menu was still pretty limited. Hubs ordered almost all the main courses in the menu and we left feeling totally satisfied with our meal! We were told by the staff that more exciting items to the menu is under way.

Inquisitive me also found out from the staff later that the herbs and some of the vegetables that we had in our salad were harvested in the restaurant’s own urban farming lab within the compound of the restaurant. What they can’t grow, they source from the local farmers and vendors. There’s no middleman, no long drives to a remote farm for organic produce. Their ingredients get to the kitchen the same day they’re harvested.

Happy Harvest salad and Green Supreme juice for me. The salad serving is pretty huge and is enough for our family of six.

Ox tail soup and truffle mushroom soup, both served with a crispy thinly sliced of buttered toast.

The main course items on the menu are fusion inspired and combines the best of both Asian and Western worlds. The creamy mushroom pan mee with an assortment of different mushrooms (with sambal as condiment) was superb and curry beef lasagna comes with a bowl of mildly spicy aromatic curry.

East Meets West curry noodles is a flavorful curried broth with noodles and seafood. It’s spiciness level is so mild that I can stomach it very well. I can’t take the typical fiery Malaysian curries but this spiciness level is perfect for me!

Everyone’s favorite dish here – Nasi Kerabu with very aromatic herbs and spices in every mouthful of rice.

Kuih Gulung is a marriage of Malay and Western flavors where the traditional Kuih Ketayap is metamorphosed into a whole new image, adorned with ice-cream and caramel cage to give it a restauranty edge. The ultimate utopia was that moment when I took the first bite ~ the familiar fragrant dessicated coconut cooked in palm sugar nestled within the soft pandan kuih, oozing out as I popped the spoonful of kuih into my mouth, heaven! One mouthful is definitely not enough. I can actually chomp down the entire kuih by myself and not share it with anyone! The girls can take the ice-cream and spun sugar, not the kuih! This has to be one of the yummiest desserts I’ve ever tasted.

It’s not easy to please my bon viveur hubs and he’s pretty happy with the food, service and ambience. We’ll definitely return again; this time to try their new dishes. We’ll order the Nasi Kerabu and Kuih Gulung again for sure.

After our meal here, we segued into Sunbather Coffee for desserts! That’ll be in another post.

Level Ground, The Sphere, Bangsar South City
59200 Kuala Lumpur.
Tel: 03-2242 0964
Hours 10:00 AM – 10:00 PM

No. of times viewed = 3271

Mother’s Day 2019

Mother’s Day 2019 was a super busy day for me with 0% rest and 100% stress! It’s the eve of Cass’ mid-year exam! And I’ve got to stretch my patience to snapping point revising BM with a cool-as-cucumber laid-back kid who almost made my blood vessels rupture. My mil can vouch on that now. In the past, she used to tell me to be more patient with the brat but lately whenever she sits down to attempt to teach the kid Chinese, she’s sure to bounce off her seat huffing and puffing away within 5 minutes, every single time 😂

On Saturday, hubs brought us to a Chinese restaurant for dinner. Being the eve of Mother’s Day, the wait for insane. We waited for over 1.5 hours before the food came! And because he did not make any reservation, we had to be seated outside the restaurant, in billy boiling heat wave temperatures, with lizards all over the ceiling and one lizard even pooped on our table 🤮

By the time the food came at 9:30 p.m., our dinner turned into supper! Nonetheless the food was good.

From top clockwise: Pomfret fish steamed Teochew style (this fish alone cost RM200 but was super fresh), stir-fried assorted vegetables with caramelized walnut and macadamia (my favorite among all the dishes), fried pork ribs with red dragon fruit, sauteed ostrich meat, braised beef tendon (didn’t try this as it’s not my kind of food!), fried sotong rings and fried rice.

After a 1.5-hour wait for the food while feeding the mozzies, it took us only 30 minutes to polish off all the dishes. After dinner, the hubs suggested going to a cafe for some cakes and coffee for a pre Mother’s Day celebration but the girls and I said NO! We were all tired and sleepy after a long and tiring busy Saturday. Luckily the smart mommy stashed a revision book into her handbag and managed to steal some time to go through the book with the couldn’t care less kid while waiting for the food to arrive, else what a waste of our time.

Mother’s Day lunch was at Fei Fei Crab. Fortunately, the food came in a jiffy this time with top notch service. Hubs ordered Super Crab, stir fried vermicelli with lala, sauteed shell fish, BBQ pork ribs and fried mantou to go with the salted egg yolk sauce from the Super Crab.

Although the hubs bought a Mother’s Day cake for the 2 mothers in his life, I had zilch mood to cut the cake by the time he came home from basketball at 9 p.m. to cut the cake with us. I was completely zonked out with house work and mostly by the little brat who has super powers in zapping away all my energy! Weekends are no helper days and yesterday the mil cooked a big pot of sambal. I dread cleaning up messy greasy kitchen 😞

Eve of exams on Sundays are cheat days – the girls get to feast on fast food! This time, I left it to Alycia to order McDelivery.

Let’s dig in! Forbidden food always taste so good, huh?

And guess what? As of typing this post, the Mother’s Day cake is still sitting nicely inside the box in the fridge and I don’t even have the mood to remove it from the box to snap a photo of it. But I managed to copy a picture of the cake from the RT Pastry Facebook page 😁 Hubs bought the lilac color yam cake with the word MOM on it. Guess it’ll be the girls’ dessert after dinner tonight 😄

How was your Mother’s Day? Did you receive any gifts from your little ones and hubby? Happy belated Mother’s Day to all the mothers reading this 😘

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Sunday, 5 May 2019

5 May 2019 marks the 10th anniversary of Cassandra’s first surgery – a Uretheral Reimplantation Surgery to fix a Grade 3 Kidney Reflux on the right duplex kidney. That surgery got into an unfortunate complication and despite a battery of X-rays plus a CT-Scan, multiple ultrasound scans and a Fluoroscopy, all the scan images did not pick up anything abnormal in the guts. Baby C kept throwing up green stuff and her stomach kept ballooning by the day with a fever. Can you imagine the amount of radiation absorbed by poor Baby C’s frail tiny body? Two weeks later, she was operated on in an emergency surgery and the surgeon found a kink at the end of her guts. That 3 weeks at GMC Penang was the darkest period of my life. Can’t believe that it’s 10 years already!!

10 years on and my Baby C has grown from a super adorable baby into a very ~~determined~~ headstrong girl who recently always bumps head with me. I was told by a doctor that it’s what she’d gone through during her babyhood that forms her pig-headedness with a high pain threshold. Nonetheless, she still has a very special place in my heart and I am sure that one day, she will finally understand everything that I do for her.

But hey, it’s onwards and upwards from here! New research has shown that stubbornness, it seems, is a really good predictor of a child’s future success in life. Guess who earned the highest salaries in the end? The kids who ignored both rules and their parents. So, if your kid always demands a bigger cookie or other whims and fancies, they’ll probably grow up to demand for bigger bonus and more perks. Makes sense, no? 🤑

OK, back to our Sunday and foodie talk!

Despite the next day being Alycia’s exam and in a week’s time it’s Cass’ exam, we spent the entire afternoon at Pavillion – digging into glorious food, desserts, boba tea and shopping for Nike shoes! The girls even asked to watch End Game, but I said NO!

After a sumptuous lunch at Rakuzen Pavillion, we went to Nike and hubs said everyone could choose a pair of shoes and other stuff! 🤩

After 1.5 hours at Nike, check out the big shopping bags that the girls are holding here:

Damage was 6 pairs of sports shoes, 2 pairs of slippers, 2 sports bra for Alycia and Sherilyn, 3 shirts and 2 basketball pants and socks for the hubs. I chose a pair of running shoes in dusty pink, my favorite color 😊 Don’t ask how serious the damage was!

Dessert was at Miru:

And we tried KOI boba tea. Alycia waited patiently for half an hour to get her golden boba milk tea and Konyaku jelly milk tea with quarter sugar for me.

And the verdict: The tea is more expensive than Tealive and Cha Time and does not taste as good as all the ravings have been. There’ll be no more second time. I’m sticking to Tealive, Cha Time and Gongcha.

I guess Sherilyn has been the happiest today. Not only did she get herself a good pair of Nike running shoes, she and her friend got through the Berjaya Teen Star Challenge audition (modern dance event)! But this shall be in a separate post ☺️ Stay tuned…

No. of times viewed = 22

Sunday Lunch at Stone Nine by Jiro Shabu @ Old Klang Road, KL

We had a sumptuous lunch of Japanese hot pot at the newly opened Stone Nine by Jiro Shabu today. Upon entering the restaurant, we were awed by the awesome interior decor. The center piece of oranges in a steamy pool was breathtaking. The restaurant covered in shades of wood exudes a sense of tranquility while the dining utensils were elegant.

As expected, the price tags are hefty. Do expect to spend a minimum of RM40 onwards per person (depending on what item you choose from the menu), with the cheapest beverage (Green Tea) priced at Rm 5 (but it’s refillable). The dining experience is exclusive and we enjoyed our lunch so much that I have already requested for the hubs to bring us here again on Thursday for my birthday! Alycia was so disappointed that she was left out in today’s lunch as she has a 3-day camp in school, which only ends tomorrow.

Everyone gets to savor his/her own personal hotpot and the ingredients are impressively fresh. You can choose from a variety of different flavored soups from chicken to winter melon, miso, spicy miso, seaweed, tom yum and much more.

When the raw meat arrived, we were again awed by the impeccable presentation and quality. The premium New Zealand Scotch fillet was both top notch in quality and the presentation was superb.

Hubs ordered a plate of Iberico pork that’s fed with acorn and the meat tastes delicate and superb.

We ordered 3 pots of soups (chicken, winter melon and spicy miso). Each pot costs RM6.

Plenty of choices for toothsome dipping sauce and condiments to go with the meat.

Handmade pork balls with cheese within and house-made fish paste.

Sea grouper slices

Watermelon and lime juice, on the house..

The damage was RM317.45. Pretty expensive for a lunch but worth the price as the ingredients were of good quality and fresh. As the portion of the food was pretty small, we were not overly stuffed. In fact, I wasn’t exactly full after lunch 😬

The food passed my very sensitive throat test too, i.e. NO unquenchable thirst after lunch, though I’d guzzled down a lot of soup and yummy dipping sauces.

Address:
Stone Nine by Jiro Shabu
C-G-1, Southbank Residence.
No 179, Jalan Kelang Lama
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Thus, we could still have a very meaty and heavy meal of Ba Kut Teh for dinner! And walloped everything clean!

Have a great week ahead all and sundry! It’s no holiday for me though it’s the school holidays. Tomorrow I have to wake up at 6 a.m. for school run! 😩

No. of times viewed = 2811

Sunday, 3 June 2018

Today a guest pastor was invited to preach at the 5 p.m. evening service. Good thing the girls followed me to church as the topic was such a profound and important one, especially for children and adults too. The topic was on Honoring Grandparents and Parents. When the pastor touched on the punishment for dishonoring parents, which is “punishment by death” as stated in the bible, I made sure that the girls were listening and paying attention to the pastor. In many verses in the bible, it is written that the punishment for dishonoring one’s father and mother is death. “Honour thy father and thy mother” is one of the Ten Commandments in the Hebrew Bible.

I don’t remember myself as a wayward and stubborn child when I was young. My brothers and I were very fearful of papa. He was very stern, short-fused and man of few words. And I’ve inherited my papa’s short temper and impatience😟 Now I know why papa was always deep in his thoughts and short-fused. He has mellowed down so much now that he has retired and enjoying his twilight years traveling the world with mum, with zero stress in life. I don’t understand why my kids are so different from me when I was their age. We dared not answer back our parents rudely, lest we got slapped on the face or whacked with a cane with no warning. My girls, when given NO as an answer would retaliate rudely and arrogantly and fight all the way till they get a YES from me. But I have learned not to succumb to their whims and fancies. The girls have learned to accept ‘having to live with dad and mum’s decision, period’. I always get my nerves shot arguing with my girls. Someone once told her friend that “my mum is crazy” and her sister whistleblew it to me. Of course I was mad as hops. Long story short, yesterday’s sermon on honoring thy parents was an apt topic for the girls and me as well.

We were supposed to finish up all the leftover food at home for dinner, but the hubs had a whim to eat steamed fish or Ba Ku Teh. And he asked me to accompany him. I don’t fancy going out for dinner on Sunday nights or a weekday as we will be back late and the Cinderella in me has to be in bed by 10 p.m. But the girls said that I should go on a date with their dad and forced me to go. And there’s an ulterior motive behind these cunning little Machavellians! When the cat is away, the rats party away! Before I left, I gave instruction to Drama Queen and Alycia to keep any unfinished food in the fridge, wash the dishes, wipe the table, keep the clothes and mop the floor. They promised me but I had this motherly gut instinct that these brats wouldn’t honor their words and I was dang right!

When we were back an hour later, nothing was done. NOTHING! Not even half a task. I couldn’t believe it. Someone was hooked on her phone at a dark corner while the other was locked inside her room, God knows what she was doing inside. The littlest one was using my PC to do her homework. The house was in a frigging mess with cold food and dirty dishes still on the table and sink. The wok was not washed. The pot with sweet potato tong sui inside was lying on the stove. And it was already 9-ish p.m. I could not accept the fact that they took my instructions and their promise lightly without any care or worry that I would be mad if nothing was done. This means that they didn’t even give a rat’s patootie to their mother’s feelings. I was mad as a wet hen and harangued at them profusely, with words as sharp as dagger that should never come out from my mouth flying out from my hothead. During the tsunami of harsh words and flying temper, all 3 girls were suddenly SO good and were like angels, putting down everything they were doing to do what they were supposed to do. Within half an hour, all the chores were completed.

Though I was burnt to a crisp after a long day, I was insomniac, with fire still burning inside me. It didn’t help that the food that we ate for dinner had SO MUCH frigging MSG in it that I was downing cups after cups of water yet the thirst was unquenchable. Double whammy! I was up every 2 hours to pee. I woke up the next morning feeling like shit, with all my energy sucked out from me.

Someone had her phone confiscated and had to steal her sister’s phone to bring it along with her to tuition the next morning.

Delish like crazy but the aftermath was disastrous!

Moral of the story for me:
Do not go to a new eatery on a Sunday or weekday night. Only go to an eatery that I know has little or no MSG or won’t make me thirsty as a desert camel.
Do not go out for dinner on a Sunday or weekday night leaving the 3 brats at home alone and hoping that they will help to complete unfinished chores.

No. of times viewed = 11