Sugimoto, Desa Sri Hartamas

Dad loves Japanese food so off we went in search of sashimi (yet again, heh). We decided on Sugimoto; arrived at about 7:30 p.m. and ended up being seated next to a huge family with small children who spent the whole evening running around and screaming. It was awful, and I was quite glad to see them finish up their meal and leave. At least we got to eat the rest of our meal in peace.

As usual, Dad ordered a sashimi set (actually come to think of it, he orders the SAME thing every time) :D

I had a dinner set that came with a bowl of sushi rice topped with all things salmon, and another bowl of Nabeyaki Udon. Sounds a lot for one person? Yah it was- carbo overload, man!! But at least I dished out quite a bit of the udon to share with everyone else..

Had to eat the udon first, while the soup was still hot. Now I've never been a fan of udon (prefer cold soba eaten with the dipping sauce), but this was actually quite nice. A poached egg that bursts into soup really does wonders for me, heh.

We ordered some starters to share, but they ended up arriving after our individual main courses -_-

The prices for the rolls seemed a little lower than those charged by other Japanese restaurants in the area, but when they arrived, I thought the rolls looked a little smaller- I suppose that's why!

Check out the Vigra Roll (I kid you not- that's what the menu says. Maybe they meant it to say something else?? :p ) With unagi, salmon skin and tempura bits inside; and avocado slices on top- this was delicious!! There was a nice balance between the soft unagi and the crunchy salmon skin. Everyone gave it the thumbs up :D

Also ordered a Rainbow Roll- doesn't it look so lovely and yummy?

Overall- a wonderfully satisfying meal!! :D

Land for Rent ?!?!!

This is most upsetting. Saw a couple of men putting up a signboard in the quiet plot of green right in front of the house; indicating that the land is up for rent. O_o

I dread to think what will eventually end up there. Shacks of some sort? Makan stalls? Pasar malam? *shudder*

Can only hope that the Residents' Association is powerful enough to stop any further development from going ahead. Sigh.

A Heavenly Tiramisu

The entire clan (sans Moonie) was up in KL over the weekend. It was Mum's birthday recently so we decided to surprise her with a Tiramisu from Just Heavenly.

The lovely 6-inch cake was decorated with tiny fresh orchids; it was such a wonderful work of art... and the taste? JUST HEAVENLY!! :D

It was a pure delight to savour the wonderful layers of the Tiramisu, complete with rum and all. Can't wait to sit myself down at the newly opened Just Heavenly Pleasures in Damansara Heights and work my way through every single cake (small ones lah :p) they have!!

Beef Noodles, Desa Sri Hartamas

Apologies to those who read this post and wondered why it only had photos. Must have accidentally published it when I only meant to save it as a draft... *shy*

Anyway, I met up with some dear college friends for lunch- we had Beef Noodles but I can't remember the name of the restaurant (that's why this post was to remain as a draft until I checked out the name!) But oh well.. :p

In any case, it's near Souled Out in Desa Sri Hartamas.

A starter that came with the set lunch-

a crispy pancake thingy topped with mango cubes

Anna had the soup noodles; I had the 'dry' version. Took a photo of hers since that was easier to capture, heh.

Food was ok; it was the company that was great! :D

Little Taiwan Bubble Tea House, Mid Valley

Decided to have a quick bite here after watching 'Next' starring Nicolas Cage. His hairdo in that movie is seriously awful.... hmm. As for the movie; well with 'Pirates' already showing and 'Shrek' on the way, I think one can afford to give 'Next' a miss. :p

Anyway, back to the Bubble Tea House. I went for the Strawberry Milk-

MK had the Mango Ice Blended; both MOKL and Harry Potter had the Mango Snowy Ice. Think everyone was quite happy with the mango stuff..

We also ordered the Deep Fried Enoki Mushrooms which turned out to be the yummiest snack. Dip into the chilli sauce and pop them right in!

MK and Harry Potter 'conned' me into finishing off the last Pumpkin Roll. Hmmm, the filling didn't seem like real pumpkin, more like pumpkin-flavoured (actually I wasn't sure of that either) starch. I took one small bite and that was more than enough; didn't think the extra calories from eating the rest of the roll was worth it. :p

Nando's, Mid Valley

Hubby and I are both fans of the chicken at Nando's. We like the different flavours that we can choose from, and how the flesh is yummy to the very last bite!

Dropped by for lunch the other day; hmm looks like the Mid Valley outlet has just undergone some renovation- it's brighter now and I think the 'sauce holders' (errr what do you call those?) are new. Quite cute, eh?

I went for the Hot Peri-Peri flavour; DELICIOUS! I always have the chicken with my favourite chips and coleslaw.

I vaguely recall eating Nando's for the very first time when I was in the UK. Being Malaysian, I scoffed at the idea that food could be spicy in the UK; and so I bravely took on the Flaming Hot Peri-Peri flavour.

O_o

Suffice to say, I have never tried that flavour again since.

Let the Games begin!

Hubby and I were so excited to hear that there was a Games Night planned on Sunday evening over at ML's place. Those who know me well will know that I'm a bit of a games freak, heh... :p

We were the first to arrive (told you we were excited) and was greeted with the sight of a lovely home with an art-gallery theme! The interior design was incredibly unique; there were rows and rows of paintings on the walls and even a lovely bench for guests to sit on to admire the artwork. Silly me forgot to take photos to show you what I mean... O_o

Anyway, there was also a day bed in the living room- decked out in Indian finery. It was so comfortable; can just imagine lazing around while being pampered and fed grapes! Hahahaha :D

We had KFC, satay and some lovely salads made by Cheese and ML. Yummy! There were soooo many types of desserts as well; mango pudding, chocolates, cupcakes, mini-ice creams, sesame snaps. All of us got so stuffed and ended up lying around the living room floor like beached whales! ^_^

Cupcakes made by JT (I had 3!)

With our tummies full of food and wine, it's a feat that we managed to play any games at all! Time only permitted us to properly try out 2 games- Charoodles (charades with props) and Absolute Balderdash (hilarious bluffing game). Think our laughter nearly brought the house down!! :D

Check out the games collection *drool*

It was a lovely evening indeed; haven't had so much fun in ages! Thank you so much ML for hosting!

CP & CE's Big Day!

It was a bright and beautiful morning when we arrived for our chee mui duties. The bride was getting all dolled up and we helped around the house a bit- cutting up fruits and looking for things to attach strings to (more on that later).

The heng dais were late, and there was a bit of a commotion when the bride's younger brother could not find the shoes he needed to step outside in order to open the car door. So there we all were; standing outside the house while the groom waited patiently in the bridal car!

Anyway, overall the heng dais were very sporting indeed. They did feedback to say that the challenges were not tough enough (though of course we chee muis were very kind and cut them some slack even when we spotted some blatant cheating, heh :p)

We also attached strings to different items, with the task that the groom had to passionately kiss anything at the other end of the string. He was told that one of the strings would lead to his beloved bride; but none of them did of course!

So he had to kiss a chair, a small piglet bolster and a tiny cactus in a pot (the kiss had to be on the cactus, not the pot). Actually we wanted one of the strings to lead to his mother-in-law but she was busy running around the house getting things done, so we had to scrap the idea. Now THAT would have been super-fun to watch!! Hahahaha :D

Made them drink some of the four flavours from a milk bottle- the bitter gourd juice was reserved for the groom on the bride's request :) Harry Potter breezed through the chopped chilli padi mixed with wasabi (darn)... and the look on MK's face when he downed all the vinegar was just priceless :D

Photos of some of the many dishes served at the buffet lunch- slices of fried fish and colourful konyaku jelly! :)

Congratulations CP and CE-

may your marriage be filled with much love and laughter!

Wedding Dinner at Restoran Janbo Cheras

Attended a wedding dinner on Saturday in Cheras; must really blog about some of the dishes. They were ever so yummy!

Check out the succulent scallops in the middle... There were also slices of abalone on a bed of jellyfish.

The sharksfin soup was quite nice as well. It was served in individual pots and there were also prawns inside.

Lobster was also served; now there's a dish you don't see often at wedding dinners. Delicious- the flesh was juicy and tender; all of it was gone in a flash! :)

Just HAD to take some photos of the dessert... Porcupine Buns? No lah, of course the filling isn't porcupine meat :p It was a pandan-flavoured lotus paste.

See the cute little creature close up ^_^

Another post on the wedding day itself coming right up!

My New Car!

I have been considering changing my 3-year old Vios for the longest time now. Started doing research on a couple of cars including the Honda Civic, Mazda 3, Ford Focus, etc. After much consideration, I am quite determined to get a Civic sometime next year. Everytime I see some of these nice cars on the road, I will ask Wifey to check them out too....but most of the time she will just roll her eyes... O_o

However, on impulse, I BOUGHT a car today! It's a Ferrari!!!

Front view (check out the sport rims!)

Rear View (check out the twin exhaust pipes)

Okay, okay...you guessed it right...it's just a miniature car. I bought it today at the Shell petrol station. Now they are having this promotion where you can buy 1 of these Ferraris for....not RM399,000, not RM39,900, not RM3,900 but just RM3.99....if you pump RM40 worth of V-Racing Power petrol....I'm such a sucker :)

Nyonya Kitchen, Damansara Uptown

Hubby and I were running errands at Damansara Uptown one day and as usual, finding a parking there is a nightmare. We had to park in some basement and ended up walking around in the hot sun (dreadful heat these days) to get things done.

We needed to grab a quick lunch so we ended up at the nearest air-conditioned restaurant we could see. It was packed; so ended up having to sit outside (at least there were fans, heh).

I ordered the coldest thing I could think of-

Cendol- it was delicious!

And you can add your own syrup to get your ideal level of sweetness..

I went for the Assam Laksa; I thought it looked a bit too red, but it tasted good. You can 'tailor-make' the dish by adding as much or as little prawn paste to it. Yummy...

American Idol Shocker!

I watched in horror as Melinda Doolittle got eliminated when it was down to the last three. I never expected her not to make it to the finals. After all, she has been the most consistent contestant this entire season, and even the usually grouchy and critical Simon Cowell showers her with encouraging comments after her performances (all except one, I think).

Losing a place in the finals to Blake is a terrible injustice. How can all that annoying 'eh-eh-eh' thing be called singing?!? His vocal range isn't great, and all that stuff he adds to his songs sound so fake, cold and soulless.

This is what happens when common sense does not prevail in the search for talent. All the mobile-toting teenage girls drooling over how cute Blake is cannot be expected to think, can they?

Oh, wait a minute- is American Idol still a search for talent? Maybe it never was, and if this season is anything to go by, I doubt it will ever be.

Cute Stuff!

Received some lovely gifts from my colleagues; aren't they soooo cute? :D

Some of us could not agree whether the small blue one is an elephant or a mouse. I thought it's quite obvious it is an elephant! How could it be a mouse?? Hehe ^_^

Anyway, did I mention the two tiny ones are magnets? There are little magnets on the feet, hands and right in the middle of their tummies, which enables them to perform various stunts....

Help! We need the loo!!!

Elephant's 'No-Shadow Kick' sends Doggy flying!! :D

Foodbyes :)

Don't like Goodbyes, so we had some 'Foodbyes' instead :D

We started off with a lunch buffet at Halia, located at the Sime Darby Convention Centre.

Piled my plate high with food; think the nicest item on this plate was the beef rendang (that brown chunk of meat in the centre)...

Of course I didn't just go for one round- who does that at a buffet!?! Heh. Anyway, shall skip all the other rounds and go straight to dessert. The cheesecake was nice but the bread & butter pudding was too 'custardy' for my liking. Somehow it lacked the 'bite' that I like when savouring the layers of soft bread. That thing that looks like it has a grape on top- well the best way I can think of to describe it would be 'an inverted kuih koci'. Haha :)

More food followed back at the office later... all this at tea-time!

Mini Thai Fair, Hartamas Shopping Centre

Heard that the Thai Fair was back in Hartamas Shopping Centre so we decided to pop by for a quick bite one evening.

Hubby had the Tom Yam; at RM 5 with that amount of seafood, I didn't think it was too bad. I counted 3 prawns! :D

I opted for the Thai Laksa (also RM 5) and I thought it was really quite good. And I'm not even a laksa fan!

The mangoes and the mounds of green and white sticky rice gave us....

This! Yummy!

San Francisco Steakhouse, KLCC

Hubby and family took dear mother-in-law out for lunch on Mother's Day. After much thought and debate, everyone finally settled on San Francisco Steakhouse, since mother-in-law likes a good steak :)

We had escargots as starters...

Mother-in-law's sizziling steak- looks yummy, huh?

Hubby's black pepper steak; had a few bites- delicious!

Personally, I'm not a big fan of red meat, so whilst everyone else was either opting for the cow or the lamb, I went for a pasta (Sicilian Marinara) instead. Now I have this habit of removing all the clams, mussels etc etc from their shells first, so that I can savour the meal without stopping to wrestle with some annoying mollusc mid-way through the meal. Anyway, I was happily doing the usual until I stumbled upon a very very grey clam. I looked closely and discovered that the entire clam was filled with mud!! Ewwww- I sent the pasta back to the kitchen. :p

I did get a new batch of pasta (well it looked new anyway); but I think next time I'll eat steak in a steakhouse...