What's Baking?

Other than the carrot cake, I have tried to bake (ahem!):

1.New York Cheesecake, recipe provided by allrecipes.
A friend's Verdict 'Yumm….,The cake is delicious, moisture enough, it reminds me
of the cheese cake I brought from the Singapore best cheese cake shop………

My Verdict: not satisfied with the base. It was oily and too moist. Also, the pan the I used is not big enough, the cake rose above the pan while in the oven, so it has a funny shape on top, ha..

However, the second time i baked, I try to mix and match with another recipe and it was not as nice anymore :((

look at the funny shape :p

after some decorating

2. Chocolate Banana Muffin
My housemate gave me a recipe book as my birthday present in April, so I tried out the muffin recipe from the book. Turn out to be just a normal muffin, nothing special, I dont really like it.


3. Crispy Rock Biscuit (translated to chi kao soh 脆口酥 in hokkien)
My parents brought me a chinese cooking magazine from Malaysia when they came to the UK early this year. My mom tried the recipe, and it turn out nice and they like it. However, mine is a total disaster. I've decided to add some walnut, so I reduced the flour and didnt add the sugar. It turns out to be too soggy to mold them into dough, so I just add more fluor without
weighing them till they are solid enough. The biscuit turned out not sweet enough and also too
compact.

4. Chocolate Cake
Grace gave me this recipe and its from allrecipes as well. Very easy to make and delicious as well, and its a vegan chocolate cake!

So far, the carrot cake is still the best!

a Night at the Dogs

Went to nottingham with my colleagues last week for greyhound racing. I went without understanding what it is, and thought it will be something like a dog show, hee... Didnt know that its serious betting! I bet twice and lose, its just too difficult to guess which one will win! Anyway, its a good experience, but dont think I will go again, coz its not a place you'll have fun if you are not betting... I would prefer to go to a dog show rather than this :)

the greyhounds

the starting point

this is how fast they go... 500m in less than 30 secs

the finishing line

all I need is.....

and...

hahaha...

Have a Good Time

Yesterday it was my birthday.
I hung one more year on the line.
I should be depressed.
My life's a mess.
But I'm having a good time.

I've been loving and loving and loving.
I'm exhausted from loving so well
I should go to bed.
But a voice in my head says,
"Ah, what the hell."

- Paul Simon

眼泪

眼泪流出来
而不想让别人看见的时候
你 是不是
想自己那时候是在水里面
这样
就可以分不清 是水还是泪
还是
这样一来
眼泪就不会流出来了... (真的哦,我试过了,嘻)

又或者 可以学类的方法
类说...
当你眼泪忍不住想要流出来的时候
如果能倒立起来
这样 原本要流出来的泪 就流不出来了

Snowing again on a beautiful April Sunday

Woke up at 6.30am this morning (yea, to go pee, haha) and cant believe my eyes when I saw the snow! But I am still as excited. After a few shots of photos (yea, from my room window :p) I went back to sleep. Woke up at 9am and decided to go jogging and snapped some pictures with my new Sony Ericsson camera phone, since its too troublesome and heavy to take my beloved olympus camera. And soon regret when I realised how bad is the quality of the photos taken by the phone :(

These are shots from my olympus camera:

cute paw prints

These are photos taken with my camera phone:

didnt realised they have this till today

a dirty-cute snowman :)

Tori kara age

I got this recipe from the wagamama cook book. Its a japanese dish, but this recipe has introduced western ingredients e.g. thyme and oregano. The chicken is marinated with sake, ginger, soy sauce, sugar and oyster sauce, and then coated with egg and herbs mixture for deep-frying. I like the taste of the chicken, its extremely delicious :) Oh yea, I also made some vietnamese sauce (fish sauce + chillies + garlic) to go with this dish. The idea of the sauce and side dishes (salads and pickled carrots) is from my friend, Doreen's cooking blog :)

Summer Time starts today

The UK push time forward by one hour for daylight saving time today, and so UK is now 7 hours behind Malaysia again. I didnt realised until I went to Morrisons supermarket after my morning jog to buy something. It was 9.30am when I reached Morrisons, and the sign is showing that the store only open at 11am on Sundays. Strange thing is, the main door is already opened and many people were already inside the store as well. I went up to the customer service counter to confirm, and the lady said this time is for browsing only, and I can only make payment at 11am. So I went away, feeling bewildered, why would these people here browsing for 1.5hours??? isnt that too long? Only after hearing the repeated announcement over the PA system : the shop is only open for browsing only from 10.30 to 11am, it finally clicked that.. 'hey... daylight saving starts today... tat's why... hehe'

Carrot Cake

I made it! Hehe, now at least I knew how to bake one type of cake - the carrot cake. My mom is good at baking, but somehow I never pick it up from her. I remembered she used to bake birthday cakes for us every year when me and my sisters were kids, and we loved it.

Now that I have so much free time during the weekends in the UK, I've decided to indulge myself in baking (yeah, indulge... just love the smell of something-is-baking :) and so I've asked Grace for her cake recipes, and she has pointed me to this carrot cake recipe. Its quite easy to make, except the grating part, coz I dont have a food processor. First try, the cake turned out to be too moist, coz I use the wrong size of grater that produced too much carrot juice. Then thanks to Grace again, for taking a picture of her grater and showing it to me. and Voila, the cake was perfect at my second attempt!

The UK celebrates Easter with Snow!

Easter marks the official start of Spring, but we had snow this morning, on the 1st day of spring! According to the news, this year easter is the earliest in last 90 years, i guess that's why. Woke up at about 6.30 to go to the loo with sleepy eyes, which brighten up when I saw the snow outside the windows.

poor cat, who took a shelter from the snow

Its Spring!

altho its still freezing cold in the UK :) nevertheless, all life have started waking up. These photos are taken in Edinburgh..

a new beginning!

spring style furniture display from John Lewis

Happy Mothers Day

oh no, I did not get the dates mixed up... the whole UK is celebrating Mothers Day today, and not in May as when we Malaysian will celebrate mothers day. This day in the UK falls on the fourth Sunday of Lent, which is exactly 3 weeks before Easter Sunday. Apparently Malaysia follows the American's mothers day, which falls on the 2nd Sunday in May :) and when I 'wikipedia' it, other than these two, Mother's Day is actually celebrated on different dates throughout the world!

Anyway, since I am now in the UK, Happy Mother's Day to all mothers in the world :)

Earthquake!

another first experience for me, but i guess its not a good one...

Was woken up by the loud noise (like a big truck passing by) and the shaking. The first thought that came to my mind was "oh dear, what is the neighbour doing at this time of the night", then i realised its not, it must be an earthquake because everything in my room is shaking! But not sure why i did take it seriously and didnt feel scared at all, after it went away within 10 sec, I just take a look at my h/p, note down the time (so that i can check with people in the morning, hee) and went back to sleep.

Didnt realised how ignorant i am till I met my taiwanese friend in the morning, and we talked about this. Taiwanese are educated on how to react during earthquake because their country are proned to this natural disaster. She told me that she was on alert 'mode' even after the shaking has stopped, because it may be a signal that a bigger one is coming!

Anyway, luckily nothing happens after that :)

See the BBC report here.

A girl and her sushi

This little girl who used to work at Wasabi visited me last week, and made me some fabulous sushi.. yum..yum.. There are crabstick sushi, tuna with sweetcorn sushi, cucumber sushi and salmon sushi.

and in return, I made this Viv's special Banana Boat for her :p
Little girl: I bet you guys are drooling now, hiak hiak hiak....

Celebrating CNY in the UK

with...

1. Lion Dance in Old Market Square, Nottingham



2. Chinese new year themed Fireworks at Highfields Park, Nottingham



3. Fried Nian Gaothis tasty nian gao is made by a fren here from Hong Kong... I just fried them. yum yum

4. Jiu hoo char (without the jiu hoo, haha)

Candy got me some 'bangkuang' (which is called the Yam Bean, or Jicama in English) from London, which is the most important ingredient of this nyonya dish. See my last year post where we cooked a big pan of this dish every year during cny at home.


Oh yea, and I cooked the steam chicken as well :)


5. Ang pows

Double ang pows posted from Penang by the newly wed Alind & Kong

Sunday Walk

another first for me, thanks to my housemate, Cat and her dad for letting me tagged along. Cat's dad told me its sort of a tradition for the english to go to the pub at noon for a few drinks, then go for a walk.

With a map and Bryan Waites' Walks in Historic Leicestershire and Rutland, we started off driving from Leicester city to Manton in Rutland. The starting point of the walk is from this pub called The Horse & Jockey, which is quite popular with cyclists.


Finally got the see the sheeps up-close, hee.. They didnt look as cute as I thought they would. Hmm, in fact, I dont think they are cute at all now :p


Look at their dirty bums
Then we walked through this parish village, Martinsthorpe,where the only building left here is this old farm.
walk across this peaceful Rutland field... freed my mind
me & Cat.. i think you can guess how windy it is from the look on our face.
and finally, we saw a small part of the scenic Rutland Water..
took us about 2 hours to finish the route as instructed in the book and we are back to the pub with nice food waiting for us.

Let's welcome the year of the RAT

This is the first year (in my life) that i am not home for chinese new year :(( sob sob... I missed all the good food especially bak kean (which my sis insist that bak kean is me, so i shouldn't have missed it), jiu hoo char and the sea cucumber soup.

I still went to work as normal since today is not a holiday in the UK. However, thanks to the chef in our office canteen, we had a chinese new year lunch today, which look like this..


not very nice, i find it too 'soupy'. but still.... its better than nothing.

& look at what I had for dinner tonight!
Yeah, its the chinese dumplings! Thanks to Enya who made these and teach me how to make them as well :)

This weekend, I am off to nottingham. Will be looking out for all the CNY events especially the lion dance & dragon dance!

GONG XI FA CHAI!!!

Interesting News

Two interesting news on today's *free* Metro newspaper:

1. Sickie Monday

I didnt call-in sick (becoz i am a hardworking bee :p), but I have decided to sleep for an extra half an hour and catch the later bus to work, which also means I was late about 20min. However, I always work extra hours after work.... so i am still a hardworking bee, haha...

2. Shrove Tuesday a.k.a Pancake Day

Tomorrow is Shrove Tuesday. Read the history about Shrove Tuesday here. On this day, christians obtain absolution for his/her sins by confessing and doing penance. This day is also called Pancake Day because it is customary to eat pancakes on this day, last chance of a feast before the Lent (fasting).

This article left me dreaming about Paddington House of Pancakes ever-so-delicious pancakes, which is only available in Msia, aaaarghh...

Too bad I have my weekly Lindy's class tomorrow, so no time for me to flip a few pancakes, keke.