DAY 52 - Just an ordinary Sunday...

Just a normal sunday we had with lots of chillaxing and both of us are very much doing our own thing on the computer researching and planning for the holidays and the most importantly...budgeting! Yeap cant escape from this part thats for sure and its important too so we are doing it ahead of time so that we wont have too much stuffs to worry about when we are hard on concentration on having super fun during our vacation time comes May!

Anyhow..mon coeur had his twice monthly hair cut and yeap! his hair is like a G.I Joe now hehehe :)

Crew cut to the max :)

After all that hard work we had this yummylicious Baked Salmon top with dijon mustard and bread crumbs to satisfy our appetites :) yummmm!

Have a great week ahead everyone!

À bientôt

claritydefinesyou@gmail.com

L'humeur pour du fromage...(Mood for cheese)

When it comes to eating cheese, i must say i am a new addict :) Growing up in KK the only place that i knew that sells the imported kind is in Tong Hing Supermarket and usually it cost a bomb! Hence it's not so famous in our household. But every now and then we get to taste some during dinners or functions at a hotel buffet, but that's about it. And as for the names of the cheeses bah! couldn't care less what it taste like so knowing it's name is simply out f the question! One other thing....the smell! Yes this thing does smell badly and uhhh... can't imagine how it's going to taste like going inside my mouth is another thing!

But That was then, and now....i simply loveeeeeeeeeeeee cheese :) Married to a french, made me have more courage to try out bit by bit. My husband sudgested i try "Babybel", which is usually for kids in france as they first learn or introduced to the world of cheese or du fromage in french. So i tried it and gradually i move on up a level and now i can't seemed to let it go now :) My favourite is "Comte" and also "camembert" And now after every meal a good portion of fromage is a must for me now hehehe :)

Like the french says, a good plate of fromage and a glass of wine is all they need for a wonderful meal!

Here is a collection of cheese boite or boxes or plastic wraps that i've collected especially for this blog post and now..i can get rid of them heheheh :)

well, enjoy them cheese :)









oh and there is another thing that i go gaga about too and it is called...
"Petit LU"

it's 100% beurre/ butter that is why it's yummylicious :)



my favourites :) especially during coffee break which is @ 5pm here in France :)





À bientôt

claritydefinesyou@gmail.com

My 1st Croissant! :)

I have always love to eat croissant its one of my old time favourite. The problem with me is that, i love to eat my croissant with butter and thats sinfully rich in everything particularly fats. So i have been toying with the idea of making my own "guilt-free croissant" for i have done a few recipes of my own through trial and error for my butter free bread or organic wholemeal bread as well as guilt-free Brioches as well. So i was thinking why not make my croissant less oilly and less butter and make it as healthy as possible so i came up with my own recipe for this and so this is my first procuce. Raymond was my tester person for he is french and so he should know better on how a croissant should taste and he is very particular with breads and pastries and particularly croissant. So this morning i suprised him with my mini croissant as well as mini croissant breads and he loved it! Especially when its not oilly at all and its very crispy and crunchy he said to me you must have put in tonnes of burre but i told him just the normal then less amount of butter and unsalted and just play around with the texture for the mixture for the dough so voilà! a healthy croissant!


The process of making the croissant

And the final product...voilà! Clarity's mini croissant :)


clarity me!

Food for thought :)

I have been writing much about my travellings that i hardly write anything about cooking or food. So this time am going to do one post one what i ate for the past few days and how i made this simple easy to do dishes in less then 30 mins ;)



I think everyone knows Maggie mee and i know rich or poor just about anywhere people still prefer maggie mee to any brands. As for me i like the Maggie Kari version and for normal original recipe i go for Maggie Cintan and as for Mee Goreng i would go for Indomee. I dont know about you guys but my hey-day during college years in U-ITM was built on maggie mee sessions at night where we cant have anything more then maggie mee for some extra food besides what was given at the canteen. At that time its just as simple as Maggie mee and telur and pour hot water into a container and wait 7 minutes and you ahve urself a intant noodle treat. It was teh greatest pleasure then hehehe...Anyhow, those days are gone but doesnt mean i dont have my maggie mee thingy anymore...in fact i do have them but improvised to be more healtier and added with some other wholsesome goodness for an extra flavour.

I usually add some cabbages and chicken sausages thrown in then some prawns/chicken and an egg and voilà you have yourself a healthy simple food, good to go :)

My 2nd food is something that i picked up during when i was in Vietnam recently, i had this Conggee Rice porridge one morning and then i was hooked on it and ate it everyday for breakfast during my stay there. The conggee rice poridge actually comes with some salted fried peanuts and Century eggs which means preserved eggs probably a century old hahah kidding! but heck the eggs were black in colour looked kinda scarry BUT taste really good just like salted egg. But this one no smell at all. Anyhow, with what i have i improvised a little and used normal hard boiled eggs and add in anchovies and mushrooms in it just to get more flavours. The onions, mushrooms and anchovies are sauteed for a couple of minutes and then arranged on the top of the porridge and springkled with some onions springs to go with it. I find it a very filling but light food for dinner or breakfast whichever suits you best. for me i had it for dinner as i wanted to have a light dinner for my diet and so this is the just the right choice for it :)



Finally, my third and final food to talk about is this nasi lemak ala clarity! hehehe i was chating with my aunt before i decided to attempt this dish because she said have you ever tried making a nasi lemak before i said hmnnn..maybe but cant remember and i told her was going to try and do one differently coz i wanted to cut down on the calories as much as possible so i decided to just use normal white steamed rice, then as for the sambal, i used tomato paste and some diced tomatoes and + tomato sauce to make it look like its spicy which is not hehehe :) then thrown in the sauteed anchovies + unsalted tuna and you have yourself a sambal. well sambal look a like anyways as i dont like my sambal to be hot or too spicy so this is how i did it and then arranged my halved hard boilled eggs on top of my salad and pour in the sambal on top of the eggs and get ur steamy white rice on the dish and a Voilà you have urself a nasi lemak ala Clarity style :)

hope you guys enjoyed my simple food treat!
la di da di da..
Clarity!

A night of Mayhem :)

Last Thursday was the night where we had a small celebration of our own between myself, Hannie and Alys. Its kinda like a belated celebration of our birthdays together so we decided to have all the food that we longed to eat but not available. So Alys was put to work immediately to cook my favourite "Ayam Kicap Pecat + manis" Just like how my grandmother which is also Alys's mom way of cooking so its was going to be a blast and to top that off we also thought of "Ikan Tausi" the famous canne dfood from the olden days when we were living in Kampung Perinting this was our common food back then and not forgetting the green bean tumis with bawang. Goshhh! just as the food shows below the evening was a blast! we reminisce about our days back in the kampung we talked till midnight and finally we retire to our beds, its kinda like a slumber party because my other half was out stationed so it was a great joy to have some company and plus great food! Oh yes not forgetting also, our killer dessert! The Durian, Durian Delight! it was a tremendous delight indeed as i havent eaten durian in like for ages so it was a treat indeed! all in all, thank you hannie and aunty alys for bringing such joy to me with those yummylicious food! and happy birthday to both of us indeed!

Ayam kicap pecat + manis

ikan tausi

green beans

The durian durian delight from secret recipe yummmm :)

great food = great night!
Clarity!

The Big Boss Man came to town ..hehehe :p

Chieftan S. R. Nair came for a short visit in KL and we managed to catch up with hil and what a wonderful time we had laughing ans talking real loud like we dont care heheheh but i guess i just miss company from home particularly aliceinwonderland whose not been back home for ages so this was a very good opportunity indeed and we took advantage of meeting him for lunch and dinner.

here are the pixies :)



Thz Chieftan and the gals :))

@ Corus Hotel

Our Luncheon at the Nasi Kandar something i forgot hehehe but heck the food was fantabulous and delish i had a ball eating my favourite CURRIESS!

Dinner with Mon Coeur and Chieftan SRN :))


Our Food @ >Telawi Bistro<

All in all it was a grand and marvelous time spent catching up with SRN and hope to do it again soon :) Ok.... whose next?? Mewot??

Over and Out!
Clarity!

Recette : Eggplant Lasagne

here's the recipe Norma! Actually i never liked eggplants before because of how it looks like after they are cooked or whatever but somehow i made this dish coz i wanted something that will use a lot of vegetables in it and just toss it in the dish and bake and i also wanted it to be low on callories so i tried to get the cheeze to be the lowest amount of calories so choosing the types of cheese thats low on calories they have a lot at the supermarket these days but it should be a balanced so that the food wont compromised too much on the taste. Also by using the browned eggplants as the lasagna sheets cuts off a lot of calories already :)) anyhow here is eggplant lasagna :) hope you have a success trying it out Norma :)

Ingredients:

3 Large eggplant, (thinly sliced)
vegetable spray
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup chopped onion
16 ounces sliced mushrooms
1 cup of diced capsicum red/green and yellow

¼ cup of diced tomatoes

8 pieces of sun dried cherry tomatoes (halved)
1 jar (16 ounce size) spaghetti sauce with vegetables or White lasagne sauce
1 can of Chunky Tuna (drained)

8 ounces ricotta cheese, part-skim
4 ounces shredded mozzarella cheese
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

White sauce ingredients

250ml skimmed milk

4 slices of kraft cheddar cheese

2 tsp corn starch

salt and pepper

chopped dried basil leaves

Directions:

In large non-stick skillet sprayed with vegetable spray, quickly brown eggplant slices; set aside. In the same skillet in hot olive oil, cook onion for about 3 to 4 minutes, stirring occasionally, or until tender.

Add mushrooms and capsicum, dried tomatoes and tomatoes cook, stirring frequently, about 5 minutes or until they are tender then finally bring in the Tuna chunks stir softly for 2 more minutes add salt and pepper to taste transfer to a dish and set aside.

White Sauce

bring the skimmed milk to boil then add in the cheddar cheese until they are melted and blended with milk add salt and pepper. Take off heat and put in the dissolved cornstarch and let it thickens by stirring rapidly and forms a nice sauce texture then add in the chopped dried basil leaves and set aside.

Into an 11x7-inch baking dish, spoon about 1/4 of the sauce (i.e. Either White sauce or spaghetti sauce) Arrange three alternate layers of the (1) browned eggplant slices , (2) vegetables & Tuna mixture, (3) ricotta, mozzarella cheese, and Parmesan cheese alternately ending with the top layer with the cheese topping. Bake eggplant lasagne at 350F for 30 to 40 minutes.

Have a go N!

Clarity

Dinner @ Beijing Steamboat Restaurant with the Family :)

we wanted to have dinner with the whole family before mon coeur fly off back to KL and so we chose Beijing Steamboat as the venue for our dinner gathering with the family and i can only get a few snaps from my camera as the bummer thingy ran out of battery :(

Anyhow, here are the pics :)

Table # 1
L-R: Aunty Minah, Cassophia(cousin), Uncle Siven, Daddy, Reno (bro), Clare (bro's fiance)
and finally mon coeur :)

Table # 1 again...


Table # 2
L-R: Milly (sis), Dewi (cousin), Elly (cousin), mom, Daffie (cousin) & shafiq (cousin)

The tukang-tukangs ( John and milly)

seen on this picture is part of mon coeur's hand wt the choppy sticks :)

The food :)
and the item pointed by the green arrow seemed to be mon coeur's fav hehehe

L-R: Minah (aunty) , Cassophia (cousin) siven (uncle)

the food closer look at it

L-R: Mon coeur, Uncle siven, Reno (Bro) & Eilly (cousin)

Eilly facinated wt the lobster hehehe :)

The lobsters at ur service :) yummmyyyy! hehhee

Yours truly,
C & R

Dinning out @ Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., The curve

I was browsing thru the Malaysian Blogger list the other day and suddenly came acros to one Jackson Kah. He was making a review of the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. @ The Curve. So i decided that i will rate the place ourselves so off we go to The Curve and had our Dinner date @ Bubba's.

The Entrance to "The Curve"

Here's Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. :)

Random pictures of us both taken by the ever so friendly waiter and he is from the philipines and it was good fun as they will entertain you with some trivia questions about the the movie "Forest Gump" and he will also sing for you upon request and so it was a jolly good time waiting. We are also served with some cookies which is also nice :)

a few other random shots of us also taken by the waiter;

here are some of the shots taken at the restaurants with the pictures or memorabilia of the movie " Forest Gump" and i especially like the one that says...

IF
MOM
AIN'T HAPPY,
AIN'T NOBODY
HAPPY!

Our food, homemade fries, fish in shrimp sauce and baked salmon in the skillet with asparagus :)

It was a wonderful experience to dine here with good entertaining waiters and food was not too bad either :) It'll be good fun to bring kids to dine in this restaurant as they have plenty of things to feast their eyes on.

chill out guys!
C & R