Pizza night (prep)

In preparation for Pizza night, we got a lot of ingredients such as tomatoes, green peppers, pineapples, Cheese, pepperoni, bacon, tortilla, olives, button mushrooms and tomato paste. This was inspired from a post from Oh! I See Red. I thought it was a good idea when I first saw it in her blog, especially when all it requires is a frying pan, no oven needed. This is actually a backdated post from October, I'll be splitting it into two post as there are too many pictures. Although I already tried reducing some. Pictures of ingredients and our preparation process. My sister and I cleaned, chopped, sliced and fried up everything we need so we could have a smooth operation all the way, I assumed that we need to work fast for fear of burning the tortilla.

Tomatoes, green peppers

Cheese, bacon, peperoni

Australia Flour Tortilla, pricey but good

Interesting seeds inside

Fascinating but geli at the same time

Chop to bits

Western Family canned pineapples

Canned pineapples

Tomatoes

Slice tomatoes

Colorful like the colors of traffic lights

Heat oil in frying pan

Fry bacon

Pepperoni

Fry pepperoni

Dropped a Pepperoni, dog gobbled it up

I hoped this picture isn't offensive to you guys.

Button mushrooms

Sliced

Pitted olives

Sliced olives

Tomato paste

Check out what we've done with all these in another post coming soon!

The Social Network

Image borrowed from Wikipedia

Official website: http://www.thesocialnetwork-movie.com/

I'm CEO, bitch. What is it like to be the youngest, self-made billionaire in the world? No doubt with wealth and success comes a lot of privileges, it might also bring you some enemies. The social network is a movie based loosely on the life of the creator of world-renowned social network site- Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg. It shows Zuckerberg's life before he created Facebook, what drives him to come up with the idea for The Facebook, how his relationship with his best friend Eduardo Saverin deteriorates and eventually what drives his best friend and the Winklevoss twins to want to sue him.

Andrew Garfield who played Eduardo Saverin is seriously hot but I think the real life Zuckerberg is cuter than Jesse Eisenberg (no offense to Jesse) I really can't help getting jealous at how smart these people are, of course they wouldn't make it to Harvard without brains like theirs. I couldn't even do the coding for changing the post title color in my blog, even with instructions. These guys deserves the success, fame and wealth from their talent.

Smart guys are hot.

Nasi Lemak 2.0

Image borrowed from Wikipedia

Official website: http://www.nasilemak2.com/020220.html

Finally gotten to watch Nasi Lemak 2.0, a film directed by Namewee. This is the second movie review I have done in this blog, the first one being Julie and Julia. Overall, the movie and plot line is not bad, especially since this is a low budget movie filmed entirely with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II and also Name Wee's first movie on big screen. Many familiar local faces had joined the making of this film like Adibah Noor, Afdlin Shauki, Reshmonu, Karen Kong and David Arumugam from the Alleycats. Did you know Karen Kong was from Labuan, Sabah?

The movie revolves around a local 'hero' Huang Da Xia played by Namewee, who is always approached by the local Chinese community for help in various matters, big or small. He would record the people's plight and upload it to his Youtube account. He worked as a chef specialized in authentic Chinese cooking, but his restaurant does not appeal to the local patrons and he hardly gets any business. On the other side, a hawker stall owned by Adibah Noor had always attracted many local customers of all races and ages. Her Nasi Lemak stall has become a source of scorn and envy from Huang Da Xia, he didn't think Chinese should be supporting this sort of local dish as it is not originated from China, little did he know, the dish-Nasi Lemak will be teaching him an important lesson of harmonious coexistence among all races.

His journey began when Xiao K, played by Karen Kong who approached Huang Da Xia to help her father to win back the ownership of his restaurant through a cooking contest. His involvement had brought a lot of trouble to himself and his restaurant, during the lowest moment in his life, one of the Chinese patrons had brought him a packet of nasi lemak, he was hesitant at first but once he'd taken the first mouthful, he was mesmerized by how delicious the dish actually was. This drives him to discover Kak Nor's secret in preparing her nasi lemak, after many trials and errors, Kak Nor finally decided to help send him towards a journey to learn the secret of nasi lemak.

Throughout the journey, he and Xiao K had met people of different races, background and cultures, not only had they taught him the secret of nasi lemak, they also taught him the spirit of 1 Malaysia, of how different culture and races played a role in creating the Malaysia we all lived in today. The Peranakan (Baba-Nyonya) couple taught him how to make the sambal, where the cooking style is a mix of Chinese and local Malays. Next stop where an Indian father and daughter had taught him to cook the curry which originates from India,  lastly, where a Malay fisherman, his four wives and countless children had saved him from a car accident, while living with them, they had taught the two about the importance of living together harmoniously despite the differences between all races.

This movie had a theme in which most Malaysians can relate to, the various dialects used such as Hakka, Hokkien, Cantonese and Mandarin, also other local languages like Malay, Tamil and English must be most familiar and yet close  to our hearts. The nasi lemak represented the essence of all our culture combined, each detail is different, but yet they combined so harmoniously within a dish. It is one of our Malaysian National dish. Go watch if you haven't, if given the support and funds, Namewee could be the making of the next Jake Neo in Malaysia.

I have a sudden craving for nasi lemak, tomorrow is a public holiday, I'm going out to find some. The best nasi lemak I've tried is from Bits and Bites at Wisma Merdeka, the rice is fragrant from the coconut milk and does not stick together in clumps, the sambal is tasty and not too spicy for my taste and they gave a generous halved hard boiled egg, unlike some stingy place who gives a quarter slice or worst, only 1/6! Eggs aren't that expensive, why be stingy?

Fresh Lemonade

Made fresh lemonade the other day, I have 2 lemons in the fridge but nothing to do with them. Since I bought a new citrus juicer from Daiso for only RM5, I decided to make some ice-cold lemonade. 2 lemons can really go a long way: just squeeze the lemons for all its juice, pour into a tumbler and add water all the way to the top. If you have a large tumbler, use more lemons and then add sugar or honey to taste. Pop it into the fridge for a few hours or add plenty of ice-cubes.

 Nothing like a cold lemonade to refresh you in a hot day. I rarely buy lemons as I didn't know what I could do with them, now I have this citrus juicer, I could make lemonade or orangeade anytime I liked. There are lots of nifty and useful stuff you could get with just RM5 at Daiso, like my Popsicle mold from this post . I'm keeping an eye for an apple corer and a meat tenderizer hammer and perhaps some baking utensils for when I have an oven.

Citrus Juicer

Lemon halves

Short Hiatus

I need to send this laptop back and reformat it. The stupid virus and problems won't be completely gone till we do, I have some new pictures in my camera but the last time I tried transferring it to my lappie, some of the pictures were messed up, irritates to no end. Oh well, it's good to start afresh with less junk in the trunk, in the mean time I'm going off in a short hiatus again. Fingers crossed that this laptop will return in tip top condition so that I could write better posts with less interruption. I will be back.

Let me introduce you to some of my favorite daily links and videos, you could visit them while I'm away: (Click on the title which will take you to their respective website)

Links:
1. Daily Squee Pictures of squee animals aplenty on this site. What is not to like?

2. Very Demotivational For some reason, I find myself reading this on daily basis.

3. The Daily What  Lots of random happenings and stuff, good for whenever you are out of ideas what to browse for. You'll never know what you'll find, there are quite a lot of interesting things in there.

4. Cracked.com  Another humor blog in which you could learn about lots of random facts like the 6 animals with better memory than yours.

5. Geekologie It's a geek blog for those who likes gadgets, Star wars, dino sex (oh well, whatever floats their boat) and all manner of nerdy stuff.

Videos:
1. Mark Lives in Ikea This isn't anything new, but I enjoy watching it still. Check out what Mark Malkoff is up to when he gets invited to live in Ikea for a week. I do envy him, it's something I fantasize a lot as a kid, getting locked up in a department stall, museum or library like the two kids in the book: From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L Konigsburg. It's one of my favorite book, how fun it is to roam the dark depths of a museum when nobody is around to stop you from doing anything? It somehow reminds me of a movie I once watched by Natalie Portman- Where the Heart Is.

2. Epic Meal Time Super cool, yeah I admit I do like that kind of stuff, even though the sort of food they make is absolutely artery clogging but it's really nice to watch. A fast food+ junk food fest, for Christ sake! Epic! I think what they're doing are what many people fantasized about, but never acted on it. The best I could think of is a Pizza with fries and chicken McNuggets. It's not for everyone, be warned.

3. The Ellen Show Channel on Youtube I absolutely love her, she's super funny and you'll never feel bored watching the snippets of her show. I didn't subscribe to Astro so this is the only place I could see her show. I like her interviews with people and celebrities, there is always a humorous take to it, a good place to pass time at.

Oh well, here you go, that should keep you occupied till I get back. Enjoy and have fun.

Flan

Made Spanish style flan with caramel sauce using Jello's powdered custard, it's easy just following the instructions given at the back of the box or you could just as easily google a simple flan recipe. One box makes 4 to 5 cups of flan. I'm going to try something new with the pictures this time, as it looks pretty boring on its own. The recipe calls for 2 box of milk, but since I have some leftover cream in the fridge, so I decided to use that and 1 box of milk instead.

Stir flan mix with the milk and cream in a small saucepan and bring to a full boil on medium heat, stir constantly. Pour into individual bowls and refrigerate until set, I poured the caramel sauce last instead of at the beginning. Not that it matters, the end results are yummy flan. I'm going to try making flan without using the flan mix next time, I'm sure it won't be too difficult.

Jello No Bake Cheesecake

The only cheesecake I've ever made is this Jello No Bake Cheesecake, its downright impossible to bake since we do not have an oven right now, will be getting one after we moved. What oven do you use, btw, and do you have any recommendations? The oven I used previously doesn't last very long and I'm not quite sure what I should be looking for while buying a new one. Do leave me some comments regarding ovens if you have any.

Okay, back to No Bake cheesecakes, I've made these a few times before and I find them too sweet, the instructions required me to mix the crust mix with sugar, but I cut that out as the crust is sweet enough as it is. The cheesecake cream is still too sweet, perhaps I should add more milk in it next time. As you can see in the picture, I had a box of Peach Jello as well, I'm going to experiment with it to make Jello cheesecake, read more about the near disastrous attempt.

On the left side is the crust mix and on the right is the filling mix

It's perfectly simple to do, just follow the instructions given and you'll be fine. It's fool proof, even a monkey with instructions reading abilities can do it.

Melt 5 tablespoons of butter in a pan

It's the last chunk of my butter, I just tossed it all in, after it was melted, pour it all into the crust mix as below:

The goodness of melted butter

Mix up your crust with the melted butter

Line your cake pan with the crust mix

Be sure to make it compact with the back of a spoon.

Peach Jello powder

Comes in white but turn peach when hot water is added to it. Lesson learned: After making the Jello, let it cool down a bit before pouring it on top of the crust.

Put it in the bottom shelf of your fridge to let it cool down a bit. I made the mistake of preparing the filling mix too soon, but it's still salvageable, but it's best to wait till the Jello is cooled down, poured on top of the crust, placed on the upper level of your refrigerator to set the Jello quickly and then whisk up the fillings.

Whisked together the cream powder mix and milk

I wonder if more milk will make the fillings more light and fluffy and less sweet? Does it work that way, we'll find out next time.

Step to step instructions are provided at the side of the box

Omit the 2 Tbsp sugar as it is sweet enough already. Just add the melted butter or margarine to the crust mix.

This is what I wanted to attempt, but failed

Looks good doesn't it, but I poured in the Jello whilst it was still too hot and the Jello mixture seeped into the crust  instead of setting like the picture above. Must wait till the Jello is cooled down and a little set before pouring.

 Made some fritters while waiting, one is ikan bilis (anchovies) and the other is lemak manis.

Guardian of the fridge

Disastrous cheesecake inside, DO NOT ENTER

It turn out okay, aesthetic wise, not so appealing, but it's quite tasty, I still find it quite sweet though. 

xx

LadyG