Tips to prepare easy meals

I am always cooking for myself in the afternoon and for the boyfie and I for dinner. It is not easy to cook wide array of food choices when there are only the two of you so I usually cook more to be kept for the boyfie's lunch to work the next day. Anyway, from my cooking experiences, the easiest are:-

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1. Soup with noodles.

You can cook soup enough to last for dinner or just simple minced meat with vege soup. It is so much healthier than cooking instant noodle all the time and yet is is as easy as instant noodle. Just make sure you have supply of minced meat or chicken breast (healthier) in the fridge and some vegetable. Usually I will just cook the soup enough to serve as a dish for dinner as well to save time. Also always keep a variety of noodles (dried ones) in the storage. For minced meat soup, add in tong chai (a type of preserved vegetable) - as per picture, it makes a whole lot difference.

2. Fried rice
If you have leftover rice, simply fry the rice with anchovies (another great item to keep), prawns, vegetables and egg. Add in some onions and garlic. It makes the fried rice more fragrant. If you do not have prawns, it is okay as anchovies are great too. You can add pork or other meat other too. I've been having lots of fried rice too.

3. Sandwich
Bread, lettuce, tomatoes, tuna or eggs and you are good to go. Always my favourite healthy quick fix when I have bread supply. I rarely have bread supply though so lots of noodle soup and fried rice for me. Sandwich can never go wrong. Drop a dallop of mayonnaise into your tuna! Less healthy but so much more yummy. Also keep a bottle of mustard if you like mustard. AWESOME!

4. Porridge
Other than fried rice, when you are VERY lazy, just add some water into the rice and boil it to make porridge. Add in vegetables and minced meat. Add soy sauce and pepper to taste as well. But it is soooo extremely easy, not making healthy lunch is not an excuse.

So for healthier meals, do keep supply of fresh food like meat and vegetables! Usually for easy dishes for two, I will upload the recipe as well but these ones I don't. =)

Penang Bazaar Ramadhan 2012

I am trying to collect information on bazaar Ramadhan here in Penang because we all know how much Malaysians love food. It has just been 5 days since they started fasting so not much photos online or information online on where to find bazaar Ramadhan. People fasted whole day, we are the ones excited to go find food. =P

From past experience, I know relatively a few places but will continue searching. At the meantime, check these places out.

1. Pasar Ramadhan at Tanjung  Tokong Malay Village. Although CK Lam from what2seeonline.com blogged about this place 2 years back, I think it is still there because it has been there for years!!! It is situated somewhere opposite Tesco Tanjung Pinang. There are plenty of small Malay villages over there so I supposed you can find fairly good bazaars there.

2. Queens Street. I've found an article on this food bazaar in Queens Street and according to another blog that I stumbled upon in my 'research' which was written a good 7 years ago, the food bazaar in Queens Street sells more 'Mamak' (Indian Muslim) style of food with lots of Indian cuisine's influence. A good change perhaps? Although that post was written 7 years ago, the article by the Star shows that this bazaar still exist. Whether it is the same, I am not sure, let me know if you go there. There are also pictures from last year in Facebook.

3. Jalan Makloom, parallel to Jalan Sungai Pinang. Another place recommended by what2seeonline.com which was written 2 years ago. Hopefully it is still there. No harm trying! Look at the pictures, it makes people drool.

4.  Bazaar Ramadhan at Bayan Baru. Another post from last year in http://abekamil.blogspot.com showed that there's a bazaar at Bayan Baru.

5. A friend told me that there's a bazaar near Sunshine Square which this blogger is referring to. Her post is 2 years old but bazaar does not simply run about you see. They are often at the same place every single year unless they gradually move or new bazaar mushroomed over the years in new places. According to this blogger, it is at Lintang Mayang Pasir which is near Sunshine Square.

Will keep updating. Hopefully tonight the boyfie and I managed to go to the pasar malam opposite Teluk Bayan Food Court and buy some food since they are fasting and most of the yummy food we want are from the Malay sellers. AWESOME FOOD THESE PEOPLE. <3 Till then.

Starting from Scratch

I started my blog at www.ahbu74.blogspot.com about 6 years ago with a haze post. After blogging hard for 6 years, I managed to get some people reading my blog and get daily hits of a pathetic 50-70 people (whether they read or what I am not sure since I was not blogging for about a year). After my transition period of moving from being a degree student to work a little and then back to Masters student, I figured that I need to change my blog link as well. I have long outgrown that blog that I used to write in. So I moved. At the same time, many of my buddies who were once blogger stopped too (Read: Jen, Swee Win) while some slowed down (Shan Shan, Diana and a few others).

If you think 50-70 ghost readers are pathetic, now I have only 7 readers a day. T_T I am not even sure if it's just me keep coming back to check on my sidebars to see if any bloggers updated. So yes, I am starting from scratch but hopefully one day, I'll build a castle out of it.

Korean Pancake - Pa Jun

As I cooked the stew and do not want to overpower the taste of the stew with other main dishes, I decided to go all Korean and googled for Korean pancake recipe. I needed a fast dish as the boyfie is coming back and I still need another dish to make it presentable on the table (some freak who cannot just eat stew and rice cause she wants to impress the boyfie). Anyways, I hurriedly googled for Korean Pancake and decided to make a carrot one as I do not have any scallion (scallion pancake are one of the famous Korean Pancake).

Got my recipe from http://koreanfood.about.com/od/vegetarianrecipes/r/Scallionpancake.htm

• 2 cups flour (I anyhow used wheat flour and anyhow estimated my two cups)
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1.5 cups water (I added water until I feel it is watery enough)
• 1 bunch of scallions, halved and cut into 2-3 inch lengths (I replaced this with carrots)
• 1 tsp salt
• Oil for cooking

Preparation:

1. Mix all ingredients together and let sit for about 10 minutes. Check consistency before cooking – batter should be a little bit runnier than American pancake batter, so that the Pa Jun cooks quickly and evenly.
   
   
2. Heat a saute pan over medium heat and coat with a thin layer of oil.
   
   
3. Pour batter to fill pan in a thin layer (about 1/3 of your batter should fill a regular saute pan).
   
   
4. Cook for 3-4 minutes until set and golden brown on bottom.
   
   
5. Turn over with help of spatula or plate (or flip it in the air if you are good at that) and finish by cooking 1-2 more minutes, adding more oil if necessary.
   
   
6. Serve with soy or spicy dipping sauce.

Extremely easy and the boyfie loves it. So another day accomplished with boyfie rubbing his tummy in satisfaction. And I loveeee my Korean fix. This Korean Pancake will be a hit from now on when I need some snacks.

Kim Chi Stew

Korean food is one of my favourite food (alongside Japanese and Nyonya). I can almost never say no to Korean food as the chances of having them is rather rare. All cause of the price and also the fact that we cannot share (some rules in the Korean food restaurants in Penang).

Anyways, my favourite are always bulgogi and the stews. I did try a bulgogi sauce which I made two whole big bottle of but they don't actually taste like bulgogi that I have in Dao Rae. Will blog about that some other time since today I did not cook bulgogi.

Today, I decided to cook Kim Chi stew since I still have leftovers of Kim Chi since my last craving for Korean food some weeks ago.

Ingredients
Soup base
3 table spoon of Pre-packed Kim Chi (or up to your liking but it can get rather sour).
1 table spoon of hot pepper sauce (you can get this at any Tesco outlet in Penang - cheaper than Korean grocery shops here, the same for the kim chi.)
Salt to taste

6 big Prawns
Minced pork
Sliced Chicken
Cubed carrots
4 Chinese dried mushrooms (soaked till soft before adding)
1 tube Japanese tofu

1. Add 3 table spoons of pre-packed kim chi into a pot of 100ml water (you can add water later). Then add the hot pepper sauce.
2. Mix in minced pork, sliced chicken, cubed carrots.
3. Let it simmer for a while before adding tofu, mushrooms and prawns as these cook faster. Add salt to taste. Let it simmer for a while more.

Makes a good pot of kim chi stew with everything inside. Perfect for single person meal or two person meal. If single person, half the ingredients. Easy and fast. You can eat it with rice or any noodles of choice.

 Hot pepper sauce

 prepackaged kimchi.

Salted Fish in Tamarind Juice (Ikan Masin Masak Belanda)

This is by far one of my most favourite food in Ah Ma's kitchen. Each time I am home, she will cook this (if she has any salted fish) because we are the two people in the house who appreciates salted fish as much as the onions. My family loves onions and if salted fish are cheaper (damn expensive now), it will be a very cheap dish that perhaps poor people eat back in those days. I got to cook this because my sister went to Pangkor and got me some salted fish (Ikan Kurau ones). I know right? I damn aunty, my sister went Pangkor and got me salted fish and anchovies to cook. T_T.

My grandma is a self-claim Nyonya who wears sarung and not pants, who cooks all sorts of Nyonya food but really is not a Nyonya at all. Oh, the comfort of wearing sarung. I suppose this dish is one of the Nyonya food she cooks.

Anyways, this dish is fairly simple with just a few ingredients.

Ingredients you need:-
Salted Fish (meaty ones, try to avoid the ones with bones)
Chopped Garlic
4 Onions (cubed)
1 Red Chili
Tamarind Juice
Sugar

Method
1. First fry the salted fish and remove them into a plate.
2. Then fry till fragrant chopped garlic, onions and red chilli.
3. Mix in tamarind juice (I use tamarind pulp and add in some water to make the juice). At this point, you have to taste your sauce, if it is too sour, add in some water.
4. Let it simmer a while and add in some sugar for that sweet taste. Add in your salted fish into the pan.
5. Simmer a little while before removing them onto plate and it is ready to serve.


So extremely easy and so extremely yummy. Need to go home and learn more tricks from the granny.

Life of a self-proclaim housewife

Now that I am unemployed and on my holidays, I do a lot of housewifey stuff like cooking, washing, cleaning and lazing around. Not helping that there is renovation work going on and they are drilling drilling drilling all day long. Noise pollution at its best. And I have a feeling it is the house above mine or fairly nearby cause it is super loud.

Anyways, I actually have tonnes to do but no motivation to do anything at all for the past 3 weeks. Almost a month of not doing anything real or substantial. I have thesis to prepare, lesson plans and camp stuff to do actually but all I did was just the housewife stuff.

Looking at people's holiday pictures is pulling out the holiday bone in me and I am dying and longing to go for a break. Tho I really don't deserve it. I am unemployed and feeding on my mum's money. Sometimes it makes me feel useless but oh well, when I'm working, I will be whining about not getting this luxury of free time. ^^ That's just me. So I'm gonna embrace this whole unemployed thing and enjoy my free time before I snap back to reality and work start piling up.

WILL DO CREAM PUFF AND POPSICLE TONIGHT. That's cause I don't have to cook. Going out for dinner with the fam.

Boyfie's mum is asking for HPV vaccination for me. WHY ME? *shudders* I thought it was for his sister.