For those who saw my Facebook status, you all should know what cooking experiments took place over the weekend. It all started on Thursday night when my dear husband and I decided to have a quiet evening watching a movie ( since the TV is bought, Alex has banned us from the cinema). We watched Julie & Julia, a story about Julia Child, a celebrated American cook and blogger Julie Powell who attempted Julia’s recipes. Anyway, he was thoroughly impressed with the fact that Julie could cook with such ease all Julia’s recipes and decided that I could do the same!

Therefore since this Friday was Awal Muharam, had some time, went grocery shopping and attempted my first French cooking, Boeuf Bourguignon. Since I didn’t actually have Julia Child’s recipe book, which I so intend to get, I googled for the recipe. This is the link to the recipe. I halved all the ingredients since I am only planning to feed four.

To my surprise, most of the ingredients were very easily available. I bought the cheapest red wine I could find, a 2008 Australian wine which was selling for RM29.90! The only thing that I could find was actually the beef bouillon. Probably the only place that is probably selling it could be Bangsar Grocer’s but am too lazy to drive all the way there just to get that!

Alex was also working on Friday, therefore I was back at my parents’ place cooking this out. Sorry to say, I didn’t have my camera with me, thus no pictures. But overall verdict was: It tasted like GOULASH!

On Sunday, I’ve decided to make some of those wonderful-looking Salted Pistachio Brittle seen on this blog. Simple enough to make. Sugar, syrup, butter and nuts! The unfortunate part however was that the pistachios are very expensive over here! Mine looked exactly like the one on the blog. So proud of them!

While I am at home, I thought I’ll do a bit of rearranging of the furniture in the guest room. Was told that the furniture put such is not good fengshui, therefore decided to change it a bit. Generally, I prefer the ‘AFTER’ arrangement because it makes it easier to make the bed and such. What do you all think ?

I am having a block module running now and have taken some time off from work to concentrate on it. I cannot imagine myself working and studying for 1.5 weeks. I will probably go mad!  Anyway, it is quite fun to stay at home!

Was pretty excited about the new Pyrex set and straight away starting formulating what I could cook with it. Over the weekend, I invited my parents and brother, who is back from Penang, to come over for Sunday lunch. Usually, I go over to my parents’ place, but for a change, they came over.

After planning for the menu a few days in advanced, this was finally decided to go with this menu: -

1. Mustard & Honey Oven-Baked Chicken
2. Grilled Vegetables
3. Roasted Pink Potatoes with Rosemary
4.  Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms

The dishes were quite a hit especially the stuffed mushrooms but the same cannot be said for the grilled vegetables. Probably it is the way I did it. Need to find a good recipe. The chicken, I didn’t manage to snap a picture of it since it was the last dish out of the oven.

I’m loving my new casserole set!

Nothing makes you more ‘aunty’ than going for a Corningware/Pyrex/ Visions/Corelle  Warehouse sale. Despite it being such an ‘aunty’ event, I actually had a lot of fun! Thanks to my very sporting colleagues.

So this was the modus operandi: We went there and straight away we wanted to back off the sale. The line to pay was so long. At least  a couple of hundred folks before us. My experienced collegue, straight away lined up while the two of us went around looking at stuff. My first item was the Visionsware which I wanted for quite some time but the price tag put me off. Now with the great markdown, I grabbed one set, had it checked for cracks and scratches and went to my waiting colleague.

The Visionsware in the Box

The Visionsware Out of The Box

But since my eyes did wandered a bit before passing the trolley to my colleague, I just had to grab the casserole set which was going for a song. I grabbed that and plonked it down with the Visionsware and obediently went to queue while hurrying my colleague to also join in the frenzy!

Pyrex Casserole

Pyrex Casserole in Threes!

While waiting, my other colleague also beginning to fill up our little plastic trolleys with more goodies.  By the time, we reached the checkout counter about 1hour later, our trolley was overflowing with about 4 feet of Visionsware, Corelle, Corningware and Pyrex!  Between the three of us, the bill came up to well over RM1000. This warehouse sale thing can be so addictive!

I am sure by now that those who follows me on Twitter as well as those who has seen the status of this cardigan on Facebook would know that I am knitting my dear ole hubby something.

Alex has been complaining quite a bit that most of my knitted/crochetted items goes to someone else. His status as my other half obviously has earned him nothing. So after all the grumbling, I decided to make him something wearable. To set the record straight, I did knit him a beanie and a scarf which he says he cannot use it at all in Malaysia!

Due to that, I made a order to Cucumberpatch for this particular yarn since it was on sale!

A mixture of viscose, nylon and angora actually made this yarn rather wearable in Malaysia although the angora bit traps a bit of heat but in very cold offices and perhaps even Genting Highlands, this cardigan would be perfect! Alex’s colour is Mocha while mine (since the yarn was on sale! ) is in Lavender.

The pattern that I am attempting is a lovely simple beginner friendly pattern by Mary Townsend and if you’re interested in making one for your man, it is here:  Rogers-esque Cardigan . Since the original pattern was named Rogers-esque, I’ve decided to name mine Alex-esque!

Lately, I am in the mood for cooking. So besides the usual ‘roasting’ I attempted to make ravioli in cream sauce. Before this, all the pasta sauce that is cream-based, all come out of some bottle. After watching a cooking programme on TV, I thought I was game enough to try it.

First up was shopping for the ingredients. I had no issues. Found all the necessary ingredients in Mercato, the supermarket in Pavillion. Surprisingly, it was not too expensive.

Clockwise from bottom Left: Bacon strips - shoulder not streaky , Italian Parsley, Frozen Ravioli, whipping cream and lemon.

And of course, lots of garlic.

The tomatoes are not really part of the pasta attempt rather they were the side dish to complement it. I think eating cream based pasta often a bit too much without something sour to enhance the appetite.

I sauted the garlic with some olive oil and added in the sliced bacon and fry till fragrant. Added in the parsley and lemon zest.

Added in the whipping cream and some white wine to add to the flavour.

Taadaa! The final dish with the baby tomatoes as side.

Another view of the dish to make it look more appetizing.

Sadly, the verdict for this dish is that, it isn’t too great and I won’t be attempting it in near future. I am not sure what went wrong, but I will try to figure out and then only try again. Sigh!

My sister in law recently delivered a baby girl. Actually, Hannah was born  on 29th January (same as Sila’s) 2009 and my in laws will be going to Caveland’s area to visit her. We didn’t know what gender the baby was because they didn’t want to spoil the surprise. Therefore upon hearing that it is a girl, I got to work!

Don’t mind all the extra ends that is sticking out, will weave them all in when I finish the whole thing

A Closeup of the shells. Totally love the texture of this yarn

The shells from another angle.

Yarn : Jaeger Aqua in Muse (3 skeins) ~ 345.0 yards (315.5m)
Purchased at Cucumberpatch UK
Pattern: Magia Do Crochet - Baby Shell Cardigan

It is still very much a Work-In-Progress rather than a finished item. I am still contemplating on whether I should leave it sleeveless and also I am wondering what buttons to use. Also just realised that to be really baby-friendly, the buttons have to be of a certain size to be choking hazard-free…

ok…that doesn’t sound as glamourous as Bruce Lee’s movie, Enter the Dragon but then..what the heck.

Over the weekend, Alex and I finally settled on a new water filter system for our house. This is one thing that we have been procrastinating about. We have an little ceramic indoor filter for our kitchen use i.e. food and drinking water ( we still boil it). But then we wanted to get a point-of-entry filter because some of our white clothes were starting too look a bit yellowish.

Therefore, we got a bit of help from The Bird @ Emperor Penguin from the South

Ok.. This isn’t really it. We got the mini, inanimate version of that Emperor , which is this :-

These little fellas are slightly pricier than we thought it would be but since this is water the basic need of any life form, we thought what the heck. Would really like to hear from the experienced on water filter systems!

My colleague was in the midst of doing a scrap blog for this wife (since it’s Valentine’s Day this Saturday) and he introduced this program that was available for free. Well like they said, the rest was history…

As much fun as scrapbooking/scrapblogging is, sometimes, I feel using a simple border and let your photos speak for themselves has more satisfaction.