We all love steamboat! We just had our last round few weeks back, when SIL came down to KL on her last trip. We had plenty nice steamboat ingredients for our steamboat that night. Unfortunately my stomach was too weak to experiment the hot and spicy Tom Yam soup that day.

Good that I was able to refrain myself from eating too much otherwise I could not fit into my cheongsam during my brother’s wedding the following week. Surely I have to look presentable for this wedding, even if I could not fit into the slim gowns from
bari jay like those worn by the bridesmaid.

This place is very famous for its coconut iced blended. Each time we go back to Melaka, hubby will want to go to this place for our evening tea.

The last time we were there, the boys had fallen asleep in car so we had our shake take-away. I saw they mixing in some Walls Vanilla ice-cream into it to blend with some sugar cane and fresh coconut flesh. The recipe looks really easy! Maybe I should try this at home

Besides coconut shake, many people come to this place for their Nasi Lemak bungkus too. Priced at only Rm1 per packet, the steamed rice is really good because it is cooked with lots of coconut milk!

Hubby’s birthday is around the corner and I bet a visit here will be just good enough to treat him a birthday meal. Of course I would also get him one of the gifts for him that I have been eyeing for long.

Although I have been losing some weight effectively (most likely due to stress instead of tonning up with supplement like san myotest), I do not think that loosing weight this way is healthy.

Must really find time to check my body again, before it is too late.

My little twin boys have been hitting from stool, to my pans and biscuit tins at home so you can imagine how noisy it is when they start “drumming”.

Although we can easily afford a simple drum set like the one I saw at Conklin Bass (although I simply cannot imagine how noisy our house will be like then), attending to the classes are very costly in long run.

I hope we will be able to afford sending one of our kids, to enroll seriously into music one day. Music should be appreciated from young. If only music class it not too expensive….

Dim Sum at Melaka, Jalan Ong Kim Wee

We went back to Melaka on Cheng Beng festival. However I did not join my parents for the ancestors prayer. Too hectic and too crowded, with the kids tagging along.

Time flies and it has been two years since since Grandpa passed away. I still remember how father and uncles were busy making arrangement with the funeral checklist.

Stayed for just one night during the weekend but we had lots of fun going back this time.

Karaage Chicken for the kids

Instead of making Sushi and Temaki like we usually do, we made some Tori Karaage (Japanese Fried Chicken) because I have 2 deboned chicken thighs, sitting in my freezer.

Ingredients

• 2 pieces deboned chicken thighs (cut into small pieces/cubes, so it is easy for kids)
• some ginger juice (extract from pounded ginger)
• 2 tablespoon soy sauce
• dash of pepper and sugar (I omit this)
• 1/2 teaspoon sake (I do not have sake at home, so I used Chinese Wine instead)
• few drops sesame oil
• Corn starch to coat the chicken
• Oil for frying

Method

1. Best to marinate chicken cubes overnight
2. To dust with corn flour, place marinated chicken cubes (a little batch at one time) into a plastic bag that contains flour. Reason is so I do not have to use so much flour at one time just in case of wastage
3. Shake the mixture so that chicken cubes and evenly. Lightly dust off before frying.
4. Fry on a pan on medium heat (I cut the cubes very small, so they cook real fast)
5. Serve with salad, some mayonaise and a cut of lemon if you like

**Some tips to share

• You might wanna deep-fry twice so that the chicken pieces stay crunchy for longer time. How to do that? Just fry as normal, and after complete frying all the chicken, put it through inside wok and give it a rinse with hot oil.
• Instead of using corn flour, another alternative is to use self-raising flour (we use this a lot at home for all our deep fried because its very crunchy!) or potato-starch flour.
• Since I am cooking for the kids, I usually have my chicken thighs deboned before steam or frying. We keep and freeze the bones for our soup in future.

Original Karaage Premix -soft type

But if you are lazy to pound and squeeze the ginger extract (which you should not omit because it would makes a big difference), a good option is to get the Soft Karaage Premix. Do take note that there are 2 types of Karaage Premix, and the one I am using is the soft batter type, in original flavour (the sales girl from Shojikiya told me Pasta Zanmai outlet is using the same one).

Do note that the above tips are solely based on my personal experience and this post is written not related to any affiliate marketing.

As we grown up, Grandma then sold away the swing because we no longer spend our evening there. Looking  back, it would be really nice to have a swing in our house compound for our little kids, just like those sold at patio swings at PorchSwings.com.