Why I heart her so much...

Guarding Piggy boy while he was napping

she must be thinking... "er ..wish I could join him up on the sofa"


I can't explain why I heart this dog so much...,
I can forgive her for all her mischievous acts,
I can endure all her scratches,
I can allow her to jump onto my lap and
allow her to snuggle against me
and even allow her to lick my face,
I can allow her into my house and sit on my sofa, and
share all my bakings and ice-cream with her....
strange enough ....she is the one
who brings laughter with her clowning acts.
Yes...she is a clown alright and worst still
I have allowed her into my heart......and
I asked myself ....why I heart her so.......

Steamed Yam Cake

Last weekend was kinda fun...with my piggies back for the weekend. Piggy gal couldn’t bear to be away from home thus she changed her mind and came back with Piggy boy despite a load of assignments waiting to be done . A weekend filled with good food and lotz of fellowship…a weekend filled with fun and laughter :)) Eating durians by the roadside was one of the fun thing to do…a year back Daddy will not want to do that :))))

I had wanted to bake some durian puffs for the Piggies but unfortunately there were some missing ingredients in the pantry and I was too lazy to go out to the mart since weekend will be crowded. So Steamed Yam Cake will do for the Piggies . I spent Saturday afternoon making this so yummy yam cake. This is what I heard Piggy gal telling Ernest “ Her Steamed Yam Cake is very nice ..have you tried it ? ” haha…. my Piggies always think good of their Momsie’s cooking (“,) I am so blessed to have Piggies to be my taster and I have added one more piggy to my taster list… hmmm ‘Piggy Ernest' ….sound nice ! (",) (^^)

Steamed Yam Cake adapted from Goodbites

600g yam, peeled and diced
100g dried prawns, soaked and chopped
1 tbsp preserved radish (Tai Tow Choy)chopped
1 tbsp garlic, chopped
1/2 tsp five spice powder
1 chicken stock cube
1 1/2 tsp salt (or to taste)
1/2 tsp pepper
4 Tbsp oil
For the batter:Mix and strain

300g rice flour
75g tapioca flour
5 cups water
1/2 tsp alkaline water

Garnishing:2 red chillies, diced
2 tbsp fresh spring onions, chopped
2 tbsp fried shallots

Method:

• Heat up oil in wok, stir fry chopped garlic and dried prawns till fragrant. Dish out one-third for garnishing.
• Add diced yam, preserved radish and five spice powder and fry till yam is three-quarter cooked.
• Pour the strained batter into yam. Mix well. Add chicken cube, salt and pepper to taste.
• When batter has thickened, pour into a greased steaming tray and steam for one hour or till cooked.
• Turn off fire and sprinkle with the fried dried prawns. When cool, sprinkle with chillies, spring onions and fried shallots.
• Serve with a garlicky chilli sauce.

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Hearts Of LOVE

I spent the whole weekend baking these beauties..yes little hearts of love for Piggal gal. She requested for these sesame wheat cookies. She loves to eat. Snacking on these while doing her assignments and studies. She couldn’t come back for the weekend due to a load of assignments , . Poor Piggy gal…. I thought she didn't like the sesame seeds, but turned out she loves it!!!

I used a heart shape cookie cutter for these beauties…:) so that every bites will remind her of Momsie’s love for her. How creative can this Momsie be and the motive behind these beauties….(",)

A tupper full of love for Piggy gal..:)))) Enjoy these cookies of love and remember this, Piggy gal…Momsie loves you lotz and the most important thing is I love making these adorable little hearts for you…..

Weekends are the time when there is a little bit more.. well, time. For things like baking cookies and having fun cutting out these little hearts with a cute little heart cutter.

My little hearts. You are golden brown and crispy, and smelling delicious...yummilicious sesame wheat cookies.

Piggy gal was delighted with these little heart shaped cookies when she received it . Not only was she delighted with it but thrilled to bits with such cuties.

Click here for Recipe

( Aunty Yochana's blog)

Yummz Artery Clogging Burgers

Uncle Burger seems to be doing well in Ipoh Garden East. We were taken aback and filled with dismay when he told us that he will be moving out to the Ipoh Stadium Food Court starting Jun 2008. Eeeek…there's goes our uncle burger , we gonna miss his burgers but not him :))))Not that it's far but compared to just outside your housing area , within walking distance…,it is :O !!!

But the good NEWS is, he is back operating at his usual place. A humble looking stall situated just behind the Ipoh East Coffee Shop. He operates from 9pm till 11.30pm. He even takes phone orders (“,) His H/P no is 016-5383318 . So now we can continue to have this artery clogging burgers for supper…yay! ** My Piggies, Daddy and nephew love his burgers. Only when the Piggies are back that I allow this sinful indulgence **

It is cheap and juicy nice…. :) Sizzling beef with added extras cost under RM5. The basic ones cost RM2 plus. A good price for a good burger…it’s money worth. Don’t judge the way he wrap his burgers , it is cost effective …remember , we consumers will have to pay more for attractive packaging. :)))) And don’t get me wrong , I am not paid to advertise for him…just wanna share something good with the residence of Ipoh Garden East ;)

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Btw, I have permission from the owner to post up the

Irish Cream Liqueur Ice-Cream recipe on my blog :)

and I have made some and to my delight it turned out

to be sinfully delicious and lips-smacking.

Will update you guys on it in my next post.

Stayed tuned :))

Baileys - The Original Irish Cream

Woohoo….I recently got a bottle of Baileys …duty free -RM72 for a 1 litre bottle…haha you know what…. I came across this ice cream recipe using Baileys :P wow…can’t wait to try it. Will post up the recipe as soon as I get permission to do so. Homemade Irish Cream Liqueur Ice-cream will be my next ice-cream project :)))))

Thanks Honey :))) that's her name , for getting this bottle of Irish Cream for me when she went to Australia last month.

This weekend, I have lotz of baking and cooking to do coz Piggy boy has requested for steamed moist chocolate cake, egg tarts, mango ice cream and yam cake.......haha another fun weekend for me. I love having my Piggies back for holidays!!!

He drools over my bakings....smsed me that I must bake for him when he sighted anything nice on MY BLOG ( ",) Piggies luv eating is my blog description,very aptly named!! I look forward to making my own ice cream ...my lastest interest heehee......it's a challenge to do it without a domestic ice-cream machine and I loves challenges !!! Homemade ice cream is so decadent, so indulgent, yet so simple. All you need is milk, sugar, eggs, and your imagination.

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Note: Hooked on one Hongkong drama lately thus no baking the last few days ;)

My Signature Fried Vermicelli :)

When I was young, my mom used to cook flour vermicelli for me when I was sick or rather when anyone of us were sick. So , vermicelli or ‘ mee suah as the Hokkien say or meen seen as the Cantonese say ’ is associated with ‘ taken when sick’. But today, vermicelli has become a famous noodles sold by hawkers all over the country. It can be prepared with basic soups or fried with bean sprouts and prawns. Sitiawan, a up and coming town in Perak, is famous for this noodles cooked in red rice wine. I bought all my rice vermicelli from Sitiawan. They are famous for it. Only recently, I grew to like it. I had my first taste of fried vermicelli with bean sprouts and prawns in Penang last year. I went to attend a government seminar and put up in Hotel Malaysia. Next to it was a food court called Red Garden Food Court. We had our dinner/ supper there. I was more adventurous, I tried their fried vermicelli . The vermicelli was not soggy at all and it was so tasty that I went for a few more helpings before I left Penang :)))))

Since then, I came back home and tried my hands at frying vermicelli…haha after a few attempts I managed to get it right. It has become my signature noodles (“,) My Piggies love it too.
For dinner yesterday, I fried vermicelli with bittergourd, prawns and egg. It was well done and we finished it in seconds!!!
I ate it with WASABI (“,) It goes well with the prawns…hmmmm it was so yummilicious . Haha…I am Wasabi Queen and I can’t live without WASABI!!!! :)))))) I have Wasabi with my meals almost everyday. I eat it with fish and any meat dish…can ??? I still have two cans of wasabi powder…crazy …right? :)))
Wasabi being "hot and fiery without burning," which changes to a sweetness that lingers in the mouth makes it so darn addictive.

I googled and found this interesting fact about wasabi. It has more goodness than meets the eye.

• wasabi's effectiveness against stomach cancer cells.
• wasabi may be effective against the tooth-adhering ability of the bacteria Streptococcus mutans, thus inhibiting dental plaque and decay.
• The risk of hormone-related malignancies, such as breast and prostate cancer, may also be lowered.
• wasabi's ability to stimulate the liver and gallbladder, aiding in the digestion of fatty foods and the processing of food nutrients.
• wasabi include its effectiveness against diarrhea, blood clots, inflammation, and asthma.Its pungent aroma may help relieve sinusitis and bronchitis.
• wasabi reportedly also contains potassium, calcium, and vitamin C.
• Wasabi's antiparasitic, antimicrobial, and antibiotic abilities may be preventive against food poisoning. (notes from http://www.answers.com/topic/wasabi?cat=health )

Sorry I have digress, back to the recipe for the above fried vermicelli.

Signature Fried Vermicelli

Ingredients:

3 pieces vermicelli (3 pieces for 2 persons)
Half bittergourd – sliced thinly (can substitute with your fav. Greens)
10 medium-sized prawns – cleaned and deveined
1 egg - beaten
3 pips of garlic – chopped finely
4 chili padi – slice thinly
2 tbsp of olive oil

Mix tog sauce/seasoning:
4 tbsp of water
½ tsp of black sauce
1.5 tbsp of oyster sauce

Method:
Boil ½ pot of water. When water boiled , put in the dried vermicelli and stirred till it loosen. Once loosen, take out and run over cold water and drained dry. Put aside.
Meanwhile , heat up the olive oil in a non stick wok, sautéed the garlic and chili padi, then add in the prawns. Dish up the prawns and keep aside. Add in the bittergourd and fry till half cook, add in the beaten egg and fry till it is cooked. Add in the vermicelli and use a chopstick, loosen the vermicelli up and add in the mixture of seasoning and stir fry till the vermicelli is dry and well mixed together with the bittergourd and eggs. Add in the cooked prawns and stir fry for a min and dish up. Serve hot.

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Sesame Wheat Cookies

I came across this Sesame Wheat Cookies recipe from Aunty Yochana’s blog . I was attracted to it by the ingredients used and from the picture she posted on her blog ,the crispness of the cookies.
Since I was free the whole Sunday afternoon, I set out to bake this healthy cookies :)
I halve the recipe coz Piggies are not back this weekend. But alas to my despair, I halve everything except the 1 EGG!!! Gosh, I was supposed to use only half an egg but I used one instead so the dough came out a bit soft. According to Aunty Yochana’s instruction, the dough needs to be chilled for 2 hours. But becoz it was a bit too wet, I left it in the fridge for 2.5 hours .

I only realized my blunder when I rolled the dough to a thin sheet but can’t retained the shape of the cookie. Too soft and I had a hard time lifting the cookie to the baking tray without the shape being distorted (“,) . I had to rolled it to a thicker thickness…haha thus after baking, my cookies are different from Aunty Yochana. Hers are crispy and thin in thickness .Mine are thick haha..It is definitely a KEEPER. A good snack food for my Piggies .

As you can see,mine are thicker but Thank God they are crispy despite the blunder(",).
I took some to the office as snack…heehee the taste is good and I like it becoz it is not sweet and the light buttery scent together with the sesame seeds flavor makes the cookies NICE as snack. Will bake for Piggies to take back to college (“,)
Thanks Aunty Yochana sharing for the recipe..haha a keeper for sure..will be baking this again next weekend:)))

Recipe by Aunty Yochana

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Crunchy Sweet Corns

Have you tried eating this species of sweet corn raw? Well..my colleague Nan, went up to Cameron Highlands on a project inspection yesterday and came back with these beautiful pearly jewel like sweet corns. And she gave me a bag of these sweeties.....how sweet of her :))))

I was so happy and could not suppressed the happiness and excitement...coz my brain was already working overtime...many ideas ran through the mind... make pudding, ice cream or muffins ??? But my frens told me to eat it RAW . I remembered reading from
Jackson's blog of his experience in eating this raw and he said it was fantastic so........

as I have never eaten it raw before, I was eager to try taking it raw and to my utter surprised it was crunchy and it was so sweet ( cane sugar sweet ) and bursting with juices...mama mia you should try it to believe it .

* Piggies...I would love to keep some for you but for the time being just droooooool..... (",)

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~Love changes darkness into light and makes the heart take a wingless flight. ~
Helen Steiner Rice

She Has Wormed Her Way To My Heart

She is simply adorable and she has managed to worm her way to my heart. She ain't beautiful but darn cute :) She connects with me I guess.

She has this very pathetic look at times that makes me wanna hug and cuddle her. She has a very warm, affectionate and protective nature in her. Each time I come home from work , she will wag her bushy tail and will be waiting to jump up and hug me. She will do the boogie-woogie thing. And if I allow her, she will lick me all over :))

I bought this toy (poky green ball ) for her when she was 2.5 mths old and since then it has become her favourite toy and she learned to fetch . Gosh , she is intelligent too ! :))))

Hmmm see how much she loves the green ball and it must be yummy too :)

Wow..she practically has the whole ball inside her mouth :0

Why the puzzle look? Taste good is it? :))))

It is really that nice? Haha I guess so. The designer is smart to design such a hardy ball and it won't slip away so easily....

She looked tired here...haha can't blame her coz she she has been wrestling with the ball for almost an hour and that was about the hour I spent cam -whoring her :( I am tired too (",)

See, she can hold it in her mouth. She just wanna show off her skill in balancing the ball in her mouth. Told ya she is intelligent!

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Bear-Bear is 6 months old now. Medium size, Cute, Affectionate

and clever to worm her way to my heart and my BLOG :)