My birthday 2009

A back-dated post on my birthday last month.

Again, hubby and I took half day off for some good food and a movie.

We went to the Bavarian Bierhaus German Restaurant and Bar at The Curve to try some German pork knuckles.



We ordered the pork knuckles with garlic and herbs sauce and some German sausages. It was overall a nice luncheon. The food was quite yummy, the only drawback was that the pork knuckles was more to the dry side. Otherwise, it would've been perfect.



Oh I must also mention that the portion was very big! We we totally stuffed when we left the place.


What is a birthday without a cake right? Hubby wanted to mix and match all the flavours at Secret Recipe to form one whole cake for me. As much as I liked the sound of that idea, I had to ban it as I would not be able to finish all those cake slices on my own. So in the end, I just asked for a cupcake from Cupcake Chic.

The lavender cupcake we tried did look good but flavour wise, hubby said I can make better ones... :P



After the lunch and cake, we went for a movie (Where Got Ghost) and had a good laugh, not to mention, the movie was FOC thanks to my stupidity LOL! :P

Jack's Place: Super Rude Waitress!

Had the chance to go to Jack's Place at One-Utama last week for lunch. I don't really want to blog about it but a rude waitress there really deserved a place on my blog!

The food was nothing to brag about. I ordered the set lunch of a pan fried dory fillet with tarragon sauce which came with soup of the day, dessert and tea.

The food tasted rather bland. The rude waitress certainly added some flavour of *bitterness* to the luncheon experience!

The expression on her face would make you feel as if you're the waitress and she's the customer. Whenever we requested anything from her, she would look so impatient and unwilling to serve us, at some point to the extend of raising her voice to show her dissatisfaction.

The more I write about her, the more angry I feel. I just feel like sticking her head up her butt!

Here are some photos of the food there JUST to make this blog post fancy. But unless there's a food shortage on earth and Jack's Place is the only place you get food for survival, please think twice before going to this restaurant!

Our third wedding anniversary: Dining at the Le Bouchon

Today is a very special day. It's our third wedding anniversary. And we've decided to take half-day off from work to chill-out and fine-dine, as a means of a mini celebration.

Having spending too much time watching Asia Food Channel on Astro, hubby and I have always wanted to try some authentic French cuisine. We've set our target on the Le Bouchon restaurant for quite sometime, but haven't really go for it... you know, waiting for a special occassion where we can shamelessly pamper ourselves without feeling guilty (like today).

Just try to google for French food in Kuala Lumpur and this restaurant will pop up as one of the popular spots. And I just found out that Le Bouchon actually means "The Cork". Now that explains the abundant wine bottle corks in the restaurant...

We spent quite a good hour circling the area looking for the restaurant. Being not familiar with the area certainly did not help (but the Samsung Omnia II that hubby bought later certainly would've helped... with the direction, as well as with pushing me down hubby's Chart of Importance -- I'm now sitting at Number 3, after Facebook Mafia Wars and Samsung Omnia II... *duh*...)



Guilty as charged: Visual evidences that Mr Yap was ignoring the wife in what was supposed to be a romantic dinner on a third wedding anniversary, due to a new-found love called Omnia II...
We arrived early despite having made a reservation of 6.30pm. We did not take too much time to select our menu as we've already browsed through the online menu and have more or less decided on what to have.

Hubby ordered the RM148 Gourmet Menu Set which came with 2 appetizers, a main course and dessert:
- Gratin of asparagus with Champagne sabayon and black truffles from Périgord
- Grilled sea scallops with wild mushroom fricassee and Port wine sauce
- Mountain honey roasted duck breast, confit shallots and fricassee of vegetables with sundried tomatoes
- Crème brûlée with raspberries

I ordered from the ala carte menu the followings:
- Homemade goose liver terrine served with fig jam and grilled sour dough bread (Terrine de Foie Gras maison)
- Duck confit with melting potatoes, grilled vegetables and pan fried goose liver
- Warm melting Valrhona chocolate cake, white chocolate ice cream and Tahiti vanilla sauce

The foie gras was one of the items that we have in our must-try list before we went to the restaurant. After all, it is one of the well-known French delicacies (okay, I know about the fact on cruelty to animals...). At first taste, hubby and I recognized some familiar flavour...

Hubby's verdict: It tasted like chinese fermented beancurd. He joked about asking for a bowl of white porridge to go with it LOL! :D
My verdict: It tasted like chinese century egg... still goes great with a bowl of white porridge! :P

Note: Please excuse our suaku-ness (country bumpkin-ness). This is our first French food dining experience, ok?

Something
Gratin of asparagus with Champagne sabayon and black truffles from Périgord
Homemade goose liver terrine served with fig jam and grilled sour dough bread
fermented bean curd century egg foie gras on sour dough... well at least hubby seemed to like it :)
Grilled sea scallops with wild mushroom fricassee and Port wine sauce

Mountain honey roasted duck breast, confit shallots and fricassee of vegetables with sundried tomatoes

Duck confit with melting potatoes, grilled vegetables and pan fried goose liver
Warm melting Valrhona chocolate cake, white chocolate ice cream and Tahiti vanilla sauce

So very yummy!
Crème brûlée with raspberries: It tasted good but not my cup of tea due to the sourish raspberries...
Of all of the dishes, to me, the chocolate cake dessert was the star of the day. It was so to-die-for-yummylicious!

We left the restaurant with a good dining experience and a RM300+ damage to his pocket... :P

Overall, I had a good anniversary celebration and thank you dear hubby! Muacks!

Hubby and I

This and that

It's time to do some update, so here's a little bit of this and that.

QianNing: She's learning quite a lot of new words and it is always amazing to see her say them out loud. She's also getting to be more and more picky, troublesome and such a complainer... Mr Yap said she inherited that from me. Oh well!...

QianHui: She has learned to sit without support and getting more and more vocal (she's so into "screaming contest" with her sister so yes, we do get headache every now and then when the two girls start to scream non-stop at each other *slaps forehead*). On a happier note, she enjoys playing with her sister although the term "playing" now is only confined to QianHui sitting at one corner and laughing at her sister jumping up and down and contributing to noise pollution...

Home: This is the most Yippee! thing revolving around my life now. We're getting ourselves some nice looking kitchen cabinets and most probably a new set of comfy sofa. Yay! Finally, we're going to get rid of the old sofa (which has dutifully served us for the past 4 or 5 years) in exchange for something which looks nicer and is better suited for couch potatoes. I'm eyeing on this one from Ikea.
So very yummy...

Leading by example

This is a reminder to myself that I should really really mind my words going forward.

A few days ago, QianNing and I were at the living room. She was playing while I was doing something (can't remember what).

I dropped something and "Shit!", the word slipped my mouth.

QianNing continued to play with her toys as if she did not hear me. Relieved.

BUT barely 30 mins later, her color pencils rolled off her table and she said "Shit".

*slaps forehead*

A mother first, above everything else

Life has changed tremendously since the birth of QianHui and my change of job. I hardly have time for myself. My new phone, after 2 weeks in my possession, is still using the default ringtone is the perfect proof of that. The old me would've downloaded tons of fancy ringtones and stuff into the phone. Of course, the old me did not have to take care of a fussy baby, losing sleep and at the same time trying hard to adapt to a new job.

I've to admit that I'm still struggling in juggling my priorities while trying to not sacrifice things that matter...

I happened to watch an episode of The Oprah Winfrey's show and came to know about a tragedy where a mother left her toddler in a car and totally forgotten about it, causing her to die of heat stroke more than 8 hours later. The mother blamed it on her hectic lifestyle and the desire and pressure to be the perfect mom. Sounds like an excuse?... But no excuse in the world could change the fact that the mother has indirectly caused the death of her own child and nothing could be more heart-wrenching that this, especially to the mother. I could not imagine the amount of pain that she has to live through for the rest of her life.

But one thing I really like from watching that show, was something one of the viewers said. She was asking, who set the yardstick of the perfect mom? Why do people expect us to live up to the perfect mom standard; with the most tidy house on earth, the most well-behaved kids, always happy and probably having a good job too?...

Having 2 kids had really changed my lifestyle. There are many things that I won't be able to do anymore. But there are also many things that I wouldn't be able to do if I did not have 2 kids. Like getting all excited when QianNing learned a new skill. And not being able to stop a tear when she learned to speak a new word...

I guess life is like that. You lose some, you gain some...

You know you're a mother above everything else when you get so excited looking at an apple that doesn't look like an apple and can't stop snapping pictures of it, just because your child drew it...

I drew the face and the ears, and QianNing added the eyes and the skinny arms LOL!

Baking buns

I came back to work today with an aching body, sort of like the after-effect of too much physical exercises... just that mine wasn't from any exercises.

I got this from baking buns.

The calories I burnt from kneading the doughs, was probably more than the calories I normally burn in a month!

Oh well, but I had fun and I guess that's what truly matters.

I made sausage buns on Sunday.

Looks can and do deceive. These buns looked kind of appealing (Hubby disagreed though. He said they looked kinda sad, which roughly told us how they'd taste with just a look... bleh!). Anyway, these buns were so dense I could probably kill someone with them if I threw them off a high-rise building.

And with those sarcastic remarks from hubby, I set off to redeem my dignity with another batch of buns on Monday. I made some cinnamon rolls which turned out surprisingly good, although there is still room for improvement. But with these, you'll probably survive if they get thrown onto your head... :)

Yippeee!

Image: http://www.gsmdome.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/sony-ericsson-c901-greenheart.jpg

Yup, this is my latest toy. A 'be-earlied' birthday present from hubby... ^_^

Sony Ericsson C901. Mine is not the Greenheart version I think, but nevertheless still looks very hemsem...

Keypad with blue lights... yummy!

And it has a 5MP camera. *winkz*

With macro mode somemore! Sweeeet!

*grinning ear-to-ear*

Sample picture taken with the phone:

Now, everyone will be happy for a veeery long time, coz mama is veeery *happy*! LOL!