Unfamiliar…

Back in February, we had run out of butter so I went to one of our neighbourhood shops to buy. Unfortunately, there was none available at the first one so I went to the other shop but they only had the canned ones, Golden Churn, no less, at RM26.00 a can.

The other day, I saw that again, there was no butter in the house so off I went to the former and yes, they had a lot of stock, different brands. I think most probably because of the pandemic and the lockdown, these people are facing a problem getting fresh supplies and they will only be available when they do come, like not too long ago, I could only manage to buy cooking oil (Knife) in small bottles, take it or leave it – we usually used Neptune but they did not have that and of course, we always run out of Bovril, always out of stock and at one time, those clams in soya sauce too.

Well, there were all kinds of brands available that day. I checked their Golden Churn, brick and if I was not mistaken, it had gone up in price so I looked at the other brands. There was this unfamiliar one, one that I had never seen before…

…a product of New Zealand, selling for only RM9.80. When it comes to imported “real” butter, anything under RM10.00 can be considered a steal so I bought two.

I tried it the other morning on my toasted Low GI bread…

…with my JIF peanut butter, creamy…

…and yes, it was good. If they maintain it at that price, I certainly would want to buy it again when we run out.

Talking about peanut butter, the other day, my friend, Rose, in Kuching blogged about how she and the children prefer Lady’s Choice, creamy while the hubby likes Jif, crunchy. I don’t think I’ve tried Lady’s Choice – all this while, I thought it was made in Malaysia. So far, I’ve only bought their mayonnaise. I like Tong Garden, made in China…

…but they only have it in small bottles at the shops. Maybe when my bottle of Jif runs out, I’ll try Lady’s Choice to see if it is any good.

Going back to the butter that day, I bought Westgold as well, also from New Zealand, selling for RM10.20 each, to keep in the fridge so I would not have to go out again all that soon to buy…if there is any stock available, that is.

Which way…

I have a friend, an officer in the department at the time, a petite, classy, very elegant, gentle and soft-spoken lady and once, at a hotel breakfast, I saw her eating her half-boiled egg…or half-cooked, whichever way you would like to call it.

She had it served in an egg cup and she tapped the top gently with her teaspoon to break the shell and remove it. Next, she added a bit of salt and pepper, available in those shakers at the breakfast table, before proceeding to eat it daintily with the spoon.

Just then, another officer joined us at our table and he went looking for a saucer or a bowl…

…to eat the eggs, the way we usually do it here.

I tried doing what my friend did to see what it was like and yes, it did go all right except that I would very much prefer the egg the way we usually eat it – with soy sauce and pepper…

I went looking for a youtube video on how to eat a soft-boiled egg and found this one. He does not do it as elegantly (4:45) as my friend – I guess guys tend to be a bit kasar (rough/coarse) and yes, he dipped his toast in the egg to eat too (5:30). I do that…

…as well and I would say that I enjoy eating it like that.

This couple (1:30) used an interesting metal contraption and I was quite amused by how the thing worked.

Whatever it is, personally, I would feel most comfortable enjoying our typical Malaysian kopitiam breakfast…

…and eating the half-boiled eggs in a saucer or a bowl with soy sauce and pepper, the way most of us would do it here. What about you?

Haven’t seen you…

Those were the exact words that nice lady at my favourite fish and seafood stall said to me when I dropped by there late Friday morning, “Haven’t seen you for a long time, sinseh (teacher)!”

Yes, I did mention in my post that day that I had not gone there for a while simply because I had bought quite a lot of fish from her and we just ate the last ikan terubok two Fridays ago and sometime last week, we had one of the or chio/ikan bawal hitam/black pomfret and right now, there are two more left in the freezer.

I bought 2 kilos of the not-very-big pek hay (seawater prawns) in early May for use as ingredient (cho liao) when frying vegetables or noodles, for instance and there are still 3 or 4 packets left. Gosh!!! That was such a chore – removing the heads and the shell and deveining them. I sat there doing it the whole morning till my legs went numb, all needles and pins and it took quite a while before I could get back on my feet again.

When I got to the stall that morning, I saw the lady busy peeling the shell and getting rid of the heads of the prawns. She said that there were no customers at the time and since she was free, she decided to pass her time doing that and sell at RM18.00 for 600 gms., normal price RM18.00 a kilo (There were smaller ones going for RM13.00 only a kilo.). Of course, I was delighted to see that as it meant that I would only need to devein the prawns when I got home and I asked her for 600 gms.

I saw that there was sotong (squid) of assorted sizes too – my girl loves those but the last time I bought 2 kilos, my missus also spent the whole morning cleaning them (while I was doing the prawns). The lady offered to do that for me since she was very free so I told her I would take 1 kilo…

…of the bigger ones at RM20.00 a kg.

The last few times I was at the stall, she did not have any of the big prawns, RM45.00 a kilo and I was wishing we had those for our Father’s Day steamboat dinner that night. In the end, we just had to make do with the small cho liao ones.

I told the lady I wanted a kilo…

…and I got 30 altogether. That would work out to only RM1.50 each. They may give you two or three with your noodle dish outside and charge you an arm or a leg for such big ones.

Right now, we have not decided how we are going to cook these prawns and the sotong – we’ll just have to wait and see when the time comes and if it is anything blogworthy, I certainly would blog about it.

The total for my purchases that morning came up to RM78.00 and the kind and generous lady said she would give me the rest of the prawns she had peeled, at least 200-300 gms, I’m sure. In the end, I had quite a lot…

– I’m sure this will last us for quite a while.

I paid her RM80.00 and told her to give the change to her helper, a young boy from Daro, for a cup of coffee or something but no, she would not hear of it and insisted that I took the money back.

The fish stall is located to the right of CCL FRESH MINI MARKET against the wall at that end of the block to the right of the Grand Wonderful Hotel (2.309601, 111.845163) along Jalan Pipit, off Jalan Dr Wong Soon Kai, if you go in via the entrance where San Len Tyres is located, just before the Petronas petrol station a short distance from Delta Mall.

None of the above…

The other day, I saw my blogger friend, KY’s post on Klang style red wine mee suah with minced meat, complete with a video clip some more. Yes, we can use anything we want to cook the soup – as long as the soup is nice, the mee sua would be great. Why! In my growing up years, my mum would serve it to us in Bovril soup and we enjoyed it so much at the time!

The Foochows here will usually serve the noodles in their traditional red wine and ginger chicken soup but there are places that serve it with char bee lau (fragrant herbal root) too kha (pork trotter) or chicken or pek ting eyok (eight treasures) but personally, I prefer the latter with duck! I don’t know if there are any stalls selling it outside but I do know that there are a lot of people who enjoy it in egg drop soup with lots of traditional Foochow red wine and ginger as well.

Well, I also had mee sua…

…the other morning for breakfast but if you ask me how I had mine, I would have to reply: None of the above! LOL!!!

It so happened that I spotted two packs of the tips of chicken wings sitting in the freezer so to get them out of the way, I took them out to defrost and boil and simmer to make some chicken stock. I fried some sliced ginger in sesame oil till fragrant and added some dried shitake mushroom, soaked to soften. I also broke an egg into the wok and scrambled it well before pouring in the chicken stock (after getting rid of the tips of the chicken wings) and lots and lots of the traditional Foochow red wine.

I could not find the wolfberries – dunno where my missus has kept them so I took some dried red dates and soaked them to soften and cut them (s0 the sweetness would come out) and added them to the soup. After letting it simmer for a while, I added some seasoning (bottled chicken stock) and it was done.

We had the soup for lunch and dinner that day and since there was some left, I had it with mee sua…

…for breakfast the following morning.

Yes, I fried an egg to serve with it. Normally, I would flip the white over the yolk so I would get the egg looking like a pouch but I did not do it completely that day so everyone can see the yolk, runny and whole…

So, in actual fact, I had the mee sua in chicken soup just that no chicken was served with it. LOL!!!

Don’t feel a thing…

I remember how I did not like anything coconut at one time. Come Christmas & Chinese New Year every year, when my mum made her coconut cookies and coconut cake, I would not eat them…if I could help it. It was the same after I got married – I was not into the ones my missus made either.

I don’t know when my taste changed but I can recall how I loved the coconut tarts here but of course, I shall not be buying those to eat anymore because of the sugar content. The same thing applies to all the coconut cookies, buns and whatever available at the shops, I’m afraid.

Well, thankfully, I got these very delightful ones…

…from this bakery…

…a cookies company in Ontario, Canada…

…from my girl for Father’s Day.

They tell you on the pack that they make their cookies using real coconut…

Some of those cheap(er) ones that I used to enjoy never claim anything like this, unlike this one that does not mince their words in declaring all the pros…

…regarding their product including the fact that it is sugar free.

I don’t know what sweetener they use or whether they use any at all (none that I can identify in the list of ingredients) but the cookies…

…are slightly sweet, not as sweet as regular cookies but I would not say they are not sweet at all. Having said that, if there is any difference between sugar and any artificial sweetener that they may have used, I must say I did not feel a a thing!

I love the “real coconut” in them and if you are like me in the past, you probably will not like them because of this.

They are over RM9.00 a pack at that supermarket in town that sells all the imported stuff from all over the world, very much cheaper than those Scottish shortbread which, like the coconut tarts that I love so much. I would not be buying anymore because of the sugar content.

TA KIONG EMPORIUM (2.2933,111.82713,783) is located at No. 42-46, Jalan Tuanku Osman.

Sandwich…

There was bread in the house, Low GI and bacon in the freezer and we also had fruit jam in the fridge and peanut butter and bananas as well. In other words, I had all the ingredients for my favourite Elvis Presley sandwich but I decided to resist the temptation even though there isn’t really all that much sugar in it other than what’s in the jam – I can always leave that out or just apply a little bit of it only, and the bananas.

In the end, I had this…

…instead.

We had fried tempura chicken nuggets with vegetable (Marina’s and yes, they were nice!) for our dinner the day before and there were some left over so I took two and sliced them in halves…

…for my sandwich. I arranged them on a bed of lettuce that I had placed on one piece of my Low GI bread that I had buttered generously.

Next, I put a few slices of sliced tomato…

…followed by one fried egg…

I made sure that the yolk was moist but not runny as I did not want the yolk dripping all over the place while I was enjoying the sandwich.

Last but not least, I added another piece of lettuce before covering the sandwich with another piece of the aforementioned bread to which I had attached a slice of mozzarella cheese…

…and putting the sandwich, thus assembled, into the oven to toast for a bit.

Once it was done, I cut it diagonally…

…and I was somewhat pleased that it looked good and of course, the best thing was that it tasted really great. I did add a bit of chili sauce while I was eating it to bring the taste to a whole new level.

Luckily…

Last Sunday afternoon, Father’s Day, I had to go out for a while and despite my attempt to rush back quickly, I did not manage to escape getting caught in the sudden downpour. That was why I had to wash the car once I reached home.

It was around 4.oo p.m. and still raining with a bit of thunder and lightning, just a bit, when my girl came out to tell me that there was a sudden blackout. I saw my neighbour coming out to look at his meter so I guess they were in that same predicament.

Oh dear!!! Like what I had mentioned in yesterday’s post, we were planning to have a steamboat dinner and for that, we would always use the electric multi cooker…

…that I bought in Kuching many many years ago when my girl was still little for over RM200.00.- and it has served us well all this time. Things made in the past are certainly of a better quality than the ones today – those that we buy nowadays do not seem to last very long.

I was not unduly worried as we have one of those mini gas cookers using those aerosol gas canisters. My girl was using that when she was at her school in the jungle and when she moved back to town. we took it back with us and all the unused canisters of gas. We could take that out and use it instead and I guess we could light some candles and eat in the dark…and as it was raining, it was not hot that evening and anyway, we have three of those fans that run on both electricity and rechargeable batteries so we could take them out and use. I bought two for my girl to use in the jungle school where blackouts were frequent and may last for days and weeks and I kept one at home in case of an emergency.

In the meantime, I quickly called my ex-student who holds a managerial post – customer service at our local electricity board, Sibu office and she was so surprised as everything was all right at her house. She said she would check and call me back which she did to inform me that the people were on the way to check the sub-station for my area and work on the problem right away. It did not take very long, around half an hour, maybe, when power was restored, praise the Lord! We were thus able to have our steamboat dinner as planned!

As you can see in the above photograph, we had sweet corn, fish maw, bean curd sticks and quail eggs already in the multi-cooker and my missus also bought these thinly sliced pork and beef for shabu-shabu or hotpots…

…at one of the meat shops. There are so many of them these days, all over town. They use machines to slice the meat while frozen so they are able to get them in such paper-thin slices.

She also bought these mussels and cuttlefish…

…and threw in some of the prawns that we have in the freezer to use as ingredient like when we fry vegetables for one. I have not gone to my favourite fish & seafood stall for sometime now as I bought a whole lot of fish at one go. We just ate the last ikan terubok on Friday and and there are still a few or chio/ikan bawal hitam/black pomfret in the freezer. That was why we did not have any fish paste so we did not make any fish balls for our steamboat.

We also had these mushrooms, baby corn and lettuce…

…to throw into our steamboat and instead of tang hoon (glass noodles) that we would usually add, my girl wanted this udon…

…that my sister gave to her the other day instead. Well, she did like it a lot, that much I would say.

We sure enjoyed our steamboat dinner to the max that evening, dipping everything in the super tasty chili dip…

…that my missus made. That was so good!

I must say that I had a great Father’s Day that day despite that little hitch with the brief blackout in the afternoon. Luckily, it did not last very long.

My day…

Sunday, the 20th of June, was the 3rd Sunday in the aforementioned month – Father’s Day. Of course, the end of the pandemic does not seem to be anywhere in sight and the lockdown is still in force here so I had no plans whatsoever for any kind of celebration.

I don’t know when my girl went out or maybe she asked the mum to buy for her when the latter went out once a week to stock up on our food rations in the house but early that morning, she gave me this very nice paper bag…

…filled with a whole lot of goodies.

There were two packets of wafers, vanilla and chocolate…

…both sugar free and three packets of shortbread and coconut cookies…

…also sugar free.

I have not opened them to try yet so I don’t know at this point in time whether these Canadian imports are any good or not but I am quite sure they are sweet from the use of artificial sweeteners, just that I haven’t the slightest idea exactly what they taste like. Whatever it is, you can expect that when I do start eating them, I shall be going a whole lot slowly, nibble nibble…a little at a time unlike before when I could finish one whole packet in a single sitting.

Well, that’s not all! My girl insisted on a little celebration so for lunch, we had this spaghetti carbonara with bacon bits, lots of them and pan-grilled slices of smoked duck breast…

Yes, that was nice and this was followed by a steamboat dinner that evening but that will be in tomorrow’s post. Do stick around for that!

Make a choice…

The other day, I tried the cup noodles from a certain brand, tom yum flavour, and I did not like it at all, not discounting the fact that it was quite expensive. Personally, if I were to make a choice and pick my favourite tom yum flavour instant noodles, I would pick the ones from the made-in-Thailand Mama Brand…

I tried the shrimp creamy flavour sometime ago, way back in February last year and I thought it was very nice and the other morning, I decided to try another one…

– the shrimp tom yum, non-creamy…

Inside, with the noodles, you will find two sachets…

…one with the powdered seasoning and the other with the tom yum paste.

I boiled some prawns in a bit of water for the stock and once done, I fished them all out before putting in the noodles and emptying the contents of the sachets into the saucepan. I also boiled an egg to go with it and once done, I poured the noodles and the soup in a bowl and served them with the prawns and the egg plus some fresh lettuce and some Korean seaweed snack, garnished with a bit of chopped spring onions from my garden…

I sat down to try right away and much to my delight, I thought it was really so very nice. I loved it!

My girl would not bother adding all the extras when she cooked hers so I guess hers would have the “original” taste and she thinks the creamy one is nicer. As for me, I love them both and anyway, if one likes this one creamy, one can always add a spoonful of santan (coconut milk) to it, no problem at all.

Good 4 u…

I went back to the bakery to grab another loaf of the Low GI bread and this time around, I saw this one with cranberries and walnuts…

…and of course, I wanted that!

I’ve known about the health benefits of cranberries for a long time now and everytime I saw packets of the dried ones being sold at the supermarket, I certainly would grab one to enjoy…like eating raisins. You can read all about those benefits here and according to this website, they actually lower blood sugar but do take note of the warnings in the article regarding canned cranberries and also cranberry juice.

Owing to the sweetness of the cranberries plus the walnuts, it is nice to eat it on its own like how folks around here love those butter scotch bread from Gardenia.

However, I decided to have it differently the next morning for my big western breakfast…

I toasted a slice of the bread…

…and applied butter to it generously and served it with a slice of cheese plus a fried egg on top. In addition to that, I fried two slices of bacon till nice and crispy and one sausage and I pan-grilled a tomato cut into halves…

…to go with the aforementioned. I prefer tomato raw, not a fan of it cooked but I love it grilled this way.

I sure enjoyed the breakfast, a bit too heavy for me these days as I no longer eat that much, not as indulgent as before – I guess once in a long while is fine. As for the bread, it was good but at RM10.20 for a slightly smaller loaf, I think I would just stick to the regular ones with all the seeds, sesame, pumpkin and what have you as those are nice too and are much cheaper, only RM6.30 a loaf.

AROMA BAKERY (2.311151, 111.831515) is located at No. 36 (G/F), Taman Damai along Jalan Dewan Suarah, the second shop in the block on your right as you enter from Jalan Melur, after the Maju Tyre shop.