First Timer

 

The time has come, today was the day. After many weeks of planning and dribbling, i have finally taken my courage to do it. Chinese new year is around the corner, and many people are doing it (more like the aunties and housewives). I too decided to join them.I am going to bake Cookies! Not any kind of cookies, but cookies that is only eaten during Chinese new year..Peanut cookies, Jam tart, butter cookies, almond cookies and finally Laska cookies...So ambitious, but yet havent actually tried baking cookies.. so i started off with the easiest, Peanut cookies....

My wonderful friend gave me this recipe which belong to her mother, and told me that nothing can go wrong with this recipe..so i gave it a try....

Im a type of person who love to bake and cook, but am always disappointed with the result..I can never seem to bake a cake or cookies( i have yet to try the cookies, cake always a failure, even if its from a instant pack, ops my secret is out.. :P)

So back to my adventure, i took out my peanut and started roasting it in my oven. I wasnt sure about the timing, so i left it in for about 40 minutes. After baking it for a long period of time, it was time to remove the skin. I wasnt sure how to remove it, but i tried.After rubbing the skin off, i was told to blow the skin outside of the house so it would fly away, where i dont know.My maid, watching me from afar, decided to input her comment. She suggested that :

* Dont use the oven tray, its too shallow to get the excess skin out , use a bigger bowl.( now i came to realised that she probably think im an idiot, using my breath to blow the skin away, and with the added effect that my saliva was contaminating the nuts

So i went back inside and continue doing it till i could no longer do( i got bored taking the skin out, i even asked her if there's a technique for doing it).

So leaving it to the expert, i started cooking my lunch. After a good 10 minutes, she took the bowl out and proceed in shaking the excess skin. It was only then i realised what she mean by using the big bowl. As she was shaking the skin out of the bowl, the skin which i thought will fly across the neighbor's floor, fell down. It was quite a sight. I felt kinda sheepish.... that shows how naive i am in cooking..

So after that event, i chucked all the peanuts in the blender, off i go... blend blend.....i started to panic a little.. ok.. so i read my hand written recipe, and took out my flour. Okay, still reading.. "1 cup of flour". Scratching my head, i was thinking.. hmm how many gram is 1 cup?So i went back to my recipe collection book, and found what i thought was right, 150gram is 1 cup. So i  carefully measured my flour and blended peanut.So far so good. Next was my sugar.. erm. 3/4 cup.. hm scratching again, i estimated, 100 gram of castor sugar.. should be ok... Next comes the tricky part.. How much peanut oil? my friend told me, whatever amount to make it into a dough. Initially i wasnt keen in using peanut oil for obvious reason, so i thought of trying olive oil. So i divided my dry mixture, one for peanut oil and the other in olive oil.So off i went, i started pouring in the peanut oil into my mixture, OPS! too much, from then on, i was feeling disappointed. The mixture became too wet, so i had to steal some from my so call olive oil dry mixture into my peanut. After mixing it, i was getting really nervous.. oh no, its still too wet....so i added more flour, and more nuts.. oh oh, its still too wet. I asked my maid.. Is it normal?.. is it too wet? Then she reassured me its ok. So i thought, so she said ok should be alright right?So i proceed to take my master 1's playdough mould, and started pressing my dough into the mould. I tried to take it out, but hmm doesnt seem to want to come out. My maid started touching the dough, and she suggested maybe it is still wet, so i continue adding more flour and peanut. From that moment on, i knew i was a total failure. Even a simple cookie recipe, i could not do. So anyhow, already feeling lousy, i continue to proceed. I wanted to add more variety to my cookies, so i separated my dough into 3 bowls, nutmeg, cinnamon, and chocolate. Since i couldnt use master 1's playdough mould, i started rolling it into lime size ball.

The cookie dough is finally in the oven, i took a step back as a sign of relieve, then my maid said, "Did you put the eggs"( she didnt exactly said it in english, but that was what i heard from her after a translation was made in my head).Ahh.. i quickly took out the egg and started beating it, the final touch to my failure cookies. I jokingly told off my maid, telling her why she didnt tell me she knew how to bake cookies and cake. I felt so embarrassed, i wonder what she thought of me.

 

While the cookie was baking, i called piggy, pouring out my disappointment and not having the abilities to bake,he reassure me that its all a trial and error. I guess i've never been good at baking, and i wanted it so much to be able to bake. Everything is trial and error before the product is perfect right, but for me, i want it to be perfect the first time. Too much pressure..

Ding, the bell went off. Time to look at the cookies. So far it looked ok, but how good does it taste??Being me, i dont really particularly like to eat the food that i baked, not that i think my food may give off food poisoning, but i just cant eat it. Too much pressure, i want acknowledgement from my guinea pig whether its thumb up or down. I told my maid that i was scared to eat, then i offered her to try. To my surprise, she was scared as well. I asked her why she was scared of my cooking, and she felt bad and gave in. I watched her took her first bite of my cookies, and watched her reaction. I asked her, how is it, and Ta taa, it was quite nice, so i took a bite of my very first made cookies, and i was surprised. It did taste good. So there you go, my 1st successful cookies~~!!!

So now time to distribute to my eager guinea pigs. So anyone else up for tasting?? :)

 

    

Some photos

 

 

Here are some photos taken randomly .. more in the other camera, but too lazy to download it haha

Pluto, camera shy....

 

 

 

Hmm taste like chocolate

Let me out!!                                                  Oops too loud...

Yeah bicycle                                           ....        and a donut

Weekend Trip to Malacca

We are late, we are late, we are very very late. This was us again.

I woke up early, 6am ( somebody left their mobile phone alarm on at 6am and kept on ringing till 7am). Its still dark, but i had to start the final packing before starting our journey. We were suppose to meet the Os family at 9am, so far on time. It wasnt until they started waking up late, as in 730am. My target was to leave the house at 815am max so we could reach their house at 9am. One thing lead to another. Master 1 didnt feel like finishing off his breakfast, master 2 decided to do his business , so chaos in the house. Everyone scurried out of the house to only realised that piggy has forgotten his wallet... so a U turn was made.

So doing a 100km per hour, we arrived approximately 9.45am or maybe a little later as i wasnt really paying attention to the time.

So finally its time to rock and roll. TV on, children in seating position and seat belts buckled. Time for our journey.. Vvroom...!!

Since we were not familiar with the road to Malacca, we were given a complimentary map by SZ for insurance purpose, incase we lost sight of them during the journey.Our tail racing through the highway to Malacca was interesting. Keeping up with them felt like we were racing at F1. Traveling at the speed of light, we have finally arrived Malacca at about 1130am.

The sound of our tummies growl, i couldnt wait to try out the local food.We had plans to tour Malacca like a typical tourist with a twist of our local tour guide taking us to the "only the locals know the best place to eat food".So we left master 2 behind, as we decided to take one car ( finally our car made used of all our 7 seats.. see it does come in handy haha)

We started our early lunch at a place that was once a childhood hang out food place for SW,Jeta Groves. A small simple food shop that offers a small sized range of dishes. Small enough portion to allow you to eat small other portion of another food. I tried the mee rebus, which i felt in love instantly ( partially i was dying of hunger and i've never tried mee rebus before.. yummy..) I had my serving and ordered another serving for master 1, who decided he didnt like it, so i eagerly took it without him having an option to object... HAHAHAHAHA .. Oh the tau kua ( grilled tofu?) and Chendol ( ice desert with some sweet stuff) was yummy too.... a thumb up....

"Tau Kau"

"Mee rebus" "Chendol"

Ok, stomach filled, off we go to the A'Famosa touristy place. We wanted to drive, but since parking is a little difficult, we decided that since its a really nice and windy weather, we took a walk there. Our local tour guide was proud of his home town. He told us the history of the place, he was like a walking history book. He even showed us his school which was nearby...

So being a tourist, we decided to take heaps of tourist photos. Our beautiful master 1, miss JW and master JX were our models for the day. Oh and all of us decided to do some photo shoot behind the building.. oh so nostalgic ...

Sw explaining the history Posing at the famous cannon

Mother and Son

Cool Pose by Master 1                Behind the scene

photo shoot

Deep thought pose Spiderwoman. Climbed up the wall and pose

Decided to put master 1  in the cannon

After posing for the camera, we headed to our next destination. Taking a ride to the menara tower. While heading to our destination, we were walking through SW's memory lane. To be able to let his kids and his friends to experience his memories, i feel that it was a little sentimental to him.

Reliving his past time

So continuing our journey to Menara Taming Sari, we saw the tower. It is about 60 feet. Paid 10 rm per person, we got into the machine and felt relief.Nice air conditioning, after a long walk!!Enjoyed our view, and relaxing at the same time.

Tower

Tickets

Kids enjoying the view

After a long journey, we were exhausted, but we still had a long way back to the car. Dragging our feet and kids behind us, we took a short cut through the megamall malacca ( it wasnt as mega as our midvalley megamall). Ah the coolness of the aircond made our life a little pleasant to continue. I was a little dehydrated and the plan was to stop by the herbal shop for some cooling tea. We didnt managed to, instead we stopped at a waffle shop and the kids indulge themselves into can drink... i stole a sip from master 1's can of grape juice.. ohh so refreshing.... Oh yah.. before we left the mall, we stopped over and SZ bought a dozen of Big Apple donut.. ohhh yummy..

On our way back to our temporary residence, master JX was out like a light, while master 1 and miss JW were still full of energy watching some puppy movie. SZ and myself couldnt continue opening our eyes, so we too tried to take the opportunity for some 5 mins winks

Heading back to rest Kids still full of energy

Rest of the late afternoon, the guys relaxed for a while and being me, im enjoying chomping on my donut before heading out for dinner.

Dinner was at Nonya makko, and it was great!SW took us to a really nice nyonya restaurant. The beef redang was one of my favorite dish, followed by many others.. we ordered quite a number of dishes for 10 adults and 2 kids, and it came out less than 15rm per person which considered quite cheap.

After a long and interesting day, the troops were beginning to show their exhaustion. My masters as always show disinterest in sleeping, whereas the parents were showing sign of depleting... about 20% left on their battery bar.So out goes the parents, and the kids, well some how they found their way to slumberland...

Day 2

Too lazy to do anything. The sun shinning, bird chipping (haha not really, couldnt really see any birds), kids screaming and laughing in the background. We didnt really feel like doing anything. We were satisfied with our sightseeing the other day. Instead we took everything to a slow speed...slow as in very slow.. haha

Had our last meal for our trip at Odeon. Apparently they are famous for their beef noodles, both wet and dry. Another eating place for SW.

Wet beef noodles Dry Beef noodles

After a nice meal out, we decided to call it a end of our holiday. But piggy was so exhausted from not being well, SW decided to join him in sumberland, and followed by me. It was only about 330pm we made a move back home. It was a great weekend trip, and i enjoyed so much that i proposed to lee to do it often... So lucky me, our next trip is Genting....