Yummylicious in red

Fresh cherries for hkd 23+ per kg. These are not too sour, almost sweet. Good source of vitamins A and C.

Second round of lychees. This time I remembered to photograph these red wonders.

A close-up.

Tau ewe bak

Got the recipe from an online site dedicated to peranakan recipes (thanks to ahkim bel). Thought it would be the same as how mama used to cook it, but hers was much more simple. This recipe requires crushed peppercorns, for that added flavour. My version was also much leaner with tremendously lesser oil.

Pea sprouts

This is one of my fav veggies. It's from the taugeh family minus the plucking of the tail and head,.. equals to less work.

Pea sprouts with cabbage.

Oyster sauce chicken

My second time cooking this dish, and this time with more ginger.

Red on the outside, white on the inside

Bought some lychees the other day. HKD 15 for 2kg - can never get that price back home. No, actually, getting fresh ones is almost impossible. At least in Mlk. I love lychees, the fresh and sweet ones at least.

After the peeling. So tempting till I forgot to photograph the whole fruit.

The juicylicious sweet fruit that is full of vitamin C goodness. Annabel had two, and daddy enjoyed his in his iced ribena (ala sirup laici).

Breakfast today

We went english for the first meal of the day today. The breakfast set consisted of smoked bacon, fried eggs, baked beans, fresh tomatoes, english muffins, and good ol nescafe.

Hubby's

Mine

Ayam masak tempra

My first time using chicken for this tempra recipe. It's easy to cook. The combination of sweet-sour-salty taste is a delight to the tastebuds, giving this dish its unique tempra-taste. So unlike the tempra dish that we ordered at a local peranakan restaurant in melaka quite sometime back. It tasted kicap all the way. They can bluff their way to other customers (non-peranakans) but definitely not this one!

View from the kitchen

Yeah, I know, the window needs cleaning!

More flats!

Makan-makan and catch-up outings

June has been a fun month as we had three different visits from friends. It's really nice seeing familiar faces here. The irony of it, of all places, we managed to catch up here. *smiley*

My first trip to The Sweet Dynasty was with Ren En and Noreen. It was also my debut outing to the much publicised Tsim Tsa Tsui. More weird (and rude) people can be spotted there (and also on the way there, on the mtr).

The Sweet Dynasty is popular for their taufoofah, which came in a wooden bucket (good for keeping warm). Very smooth taufoofah - nice. But I still prefer our local gula melaka with ginger syrup. Annabel also enjoyed her share.

(clockwise from top left): Some sort of pork noodles, chee cheong fun (the way i like it), veggie wanton, and a pork dish.

Our second outing was with Cynthia. We brought her to Tasty Congee & Noodle Wantun Shop, and later dessert at Honeymoon Desserts, both at IFC Mall.

(clockwise from left): Fried prawn dumplings with sweet sour sauce (no big deal. i still prefer the one behind the old federal/rex cinema), fish congee (this is really nice and smooth - yummy!), chee cheong fun wrapped over yew char kueh (not bad - something different), and fried kueh teow with beef (yum-yum).

(clockwise from top left): Walnut soup & almond tea (mine), mango with taufoofah (cyn's), and mango & grass jelly in vanilla sauce (hubby's). Over here, one cannot go wrong with any mango desserts!

My second visit to The Sweet Dynasty was yesterday, with Elfie and Wei Chieh.

(clockwise from top left): Pork noodles (this is really nice and tasty), chee cheong fun (yet again), veggie wanton (and again), and fried rice (so-so only). Of course we also ordered the taufoofah but didn't take photos of it as it will still look the same as the first time!

Day four in London

On the way to the palace... such lush greenery.

The Buckingham Palace.
We managed to catch glimpses of the changing of the guards. There were loads of people and we couldn't really get a good spot, hence glimpses only. Oh, the photos were taken with (almost) maximum zooming. Anyway I wasn't in the mood to snuggle among the crowd just to get an excellent view. Plus I despise crowds. In the end, the changing of the guards was just that. There are some things that you just got to do when in London, and this is just one of those things.

More photos of the surrounding area.

After that we were off to Leicester Square again, this time to actually get our tickets and to a theatre performance. We took ages to decide on what to watch. Is it gonna be the Phantom (hubby watched already), Wicked (am currently reading the book),... and we finally settled for Les Miserables.

Then lunch at a nearby Burger King.

Of course we had to drop by Harrods for some window and souvenir shopping.

And later we stopped by Oxford Street again for some last minute shopping.

We ended our fourth day with Les Miserables. All that walking and sight-seeing were really tiring. I was snoozing on and off throughout the performance. But that doesn't mean that it wasn't a wonderful show. The actors were superb, not to mention the singing and all. It was a great experience, minus the napping.

Dry chicken curry

My third attempt (i think) at MIL's dry chicken curry. I think this one turned out just about right. Will try the one with more gravy next.

On this day, the present

The many cute faces of Annabel. These were taken while lepaking with her just before leaving for dinner.

Mommy and little girl while waiting for the food at Zafferano.

Daddy's tandoori chicken pizza. Annabel had her share too. Mommy was starving and had forgotten to take a snapshot of her chicken tikka beriani.

On this day, two years back...

Happy second anniversary, dear!!!

Braised Mackerel with Tomatoes

The recipe called it as such. But it is actually one version of sweet sour fish. I sticked to the given ingredients (minus spring onions - didn't have lar) although I know very well that I could have added cucumber, pineapple, onions etc. I will surely add more stuff the next round. But I did throw in a teaspoon of chinese cooking wine.. just couldn't resist it!