Lost and Found

I went to a local university in 1995 and I came across a bunch of people that some I came to be closed with. There are some also I would know them by face but not by name or vice versa. Others, I might have known them by reputation or maybe introduced from far by my roommate. Along the way, we went through with our lives back then and after graduation, we went our separate ways, living our own lives. Some or maybe a few we might still keep in touch. Others, might have been forgotten.
Who would have thought that after 15 years, some of us are united again by a technology...an android phone applications. Well yeah, the catalyst might be one of my old uni-mate whom I'm quite closed with during my degree years. She invited me to join in this group chat. It feels awkward at first cause some of the girls, I might have not spoken to before. And there one or two that I'm quite close with and it was a joyous feeling to be able to connect to them again.
We started communicating about lives, about our children, things that happen in between, my favourite topic...food, even politics and of course religion. We have our differences, our ways of handling our lives but we still come to term with each other and compromise on the differences. We will still try to meet halfway.
This is the good thing about people that we could actually call friends. On how we lost them sometime ago and it resurface again into our lives, bringing all the experiences that we could share.

Saucy Prawn with Capsicum

Another simple dish that I took from the internet. It was long time ago hence I couldn't remember from whom I took the recipe from.
The family loves it, so it's a done deal for me.

Ingredients :
prawns - clean and deshelled.
1 large onion - slice
1 red capsicum - slice
coriander leaves - thinly slice
3 cloves garlic - pounded
2 tbs chilli sauce
1 tbs sweet soy sauce
1 tbs oyster sauce
1 tbs fish sauce
2 tbs blended dry chillies
salt and sugar to taste

Methods :
Sautee garlic and onion until fragrant. Add in blended dry chillies and stir until evenly cooked. Add in prawn, chilli sauce, oyster sauce and fish sauce. Mixed well and stir until prawns are cooked.
Add in capsicum and coriander leaves and mixed. Remove from heat and serve with hot rice.

Compartmentalise

Compartmentalisation....easy said than done. Especially with the female genders. I'm not trying to be sexist though I am a female. But being a female I would know how emotional we female could be. It's the reality. We females, always feel passionate in everything we do hence the outcome will yield a spectacular result. We put our heart and soul into our life, work, people around us and we will also channel our energy in our communication as well. Hence when anything happen, it will be a really hard thing to separate ourselves from the emotion that we are in.
And the rambling ends!

Dried Kurma Chicken

I wanted to cook something simple due to the time constraint hence when I went through the internet I saw this recipe but it calls for squid but since what I have defrosted are chicken cubes so chicken cubes it is. Got these chicken cubes from Tesco Kajang and it looks pretty enough to be eaten so I grabbed 1/2 a kilo for me.

Ingredients :

1/2 kilo chicken cubes or you can use small chicken cutlets
1 large onion, slice
2 green chillies, halve but I don't have it at that time so I didn't put it in
2 tomatoes, slice into wedges

Mixed with a bit of water to make a thick gravy
2 tbs kurma powder
3 tbs sweet soy sauce
2 tbs dark soy sauce but I don't have it at that moment so I didn't put it in
2 tbs oyster sauce
3 tbs tomato sauce


Pounded
3 garlic gloves
5 shallots
2 cm ginger
5 dried chillies - soak and cut into small pieces so we can pound it easily

salt and pepper to taste

Method

Heat oil in wok. Sautéed pounded ingredients until fragrant. Add the mixed sauce and chicken. Make sure the chickens are all covered with the sauces then cover until the chickens are tender.
Add green chillies, onion and tomatoes and stir for 2 mins.
Season with salt and pepper. Simmer until the sauce thicken.
Remove from heat and serve with hot rice.

Sundried Tomato Linguini with Salmon

Another dish from Giada at home. My son loves it....well atleast another person in the house loves it besides me. A mixture of sundried tomato, basil and olives.

Lemon Pavlova With Berries

I'm so fascinated with foodnetwork until I will not let anyone else watch other channels. I love Giada at home. I think most of her recipes are quite easy to follow.
The best thing is I could get the recipe over the internet as well.
I have been thinking about pavlova eversince I couldn't eat at Ben's. Apparently they are out of stock even though it is only 1pm when I met my friends over lunch last week.
Well, it is not Ben's level but at least I got to eat pavlova.

Ayam Masak Merah Ala Magribi

Haven't been writing for quite sometimes. And haven't been cooking properly for sometimes as well.
Been going through my new sought recipes and will start to try cooking them.
One of many recipes that I've tried is Ayam Masak Merah Ala Maghribi. Not sure whether it's going to be a hit with the kids but let's just try.

Ingredients:
10 pcs chicken (small cut)
2 cm ginger - finely chopped
2 tsp black pepper
1 tsp saffron
3 cloves garlic - finely chopped
2 onion - finely chopped
1 cm cinnamon stick
2 tsp coriander powder
1 can tomato soups
2 tbs honey
1/2 lemon juice
salt to taste

Method :
Sautéed onion, garlic, ginger and cinnamon stick
Add in chicken and coriander powder.
Keep on stirring so that all the mixtures will fully covered the chicken.
Closed the wok and let the chicken's juices flow out. But we need to stir it once a while.
Then add in the tomato soup, a bit of water, honey and saffron.
Let it stew until the chicken is tender then add in lemon juice, pepper and salt.

You've Got Mail - Quote

The odd thing about this form of communication is you're more likely to talk about nothing than something. But I just want to say that all this nothing has meant more to me than so many something, so thank you.

I've Got Your Number by Sophie Kinsella

Synopsis 

I've lost it. :( The only thing in the world I wasn't supposed to lose. My engagement ring. It's been in Magnus's family for three generations. And now, the very same day his parents are coming, I've lost it. The very same day. Do not hyperventilate, Poppy. Stay positive!! :)

A couple of glasses of bubbly with the girls at a charity do and Poppy's life has gone into meltdown. Not only has she lost her engagement ring, but in the panic that followed, she's lost her phone too. As she paces shakily round the hotel foyer she spots an abandoned phone in a bin. Finders keepers! Now she can leave a number with the hotel staff. It was meant to be!

Except the phone's owner, businessman Sam Roxton, doesn't agree. He wants his phone back, and doesn't appreciate Poppy reading all his messages and wading into his personal life. As Poppy juggles wedding preparations, phone messages and hiding her left hand from Magnus and his parents, can things get any more tangled?

 

Review 

 

 When I first read this book, I knew how this book would end. Well, a girl going to get marry, lost her ring, found a phone and met a guy. The outlined of this book is so obvious that this girl will fall in love with this new guy that he has just met and felt like that his fiance is not the ONE.

What I didn't count in is that the her journey in this book of how she found out that her fiance is a commitment-phobic and and just using her to prove a point (though at the initial stage I suspected that one of her friend is the thief).

Overall, it is a definitely a fun experience and I could not stop laughing all the way reading this book.

Kinsella did it again!.

Life Mask - Emma Donoghue

Synopsis :
Set in London during the late eighteenth century and with the French Revolution as its bloody and passionate backdrop, Life Mask tells the tale of three women caught in a kind of love triangle.
Donoghue’s fourth novel is formed around a fictional recreation of the relationships between a group of real-life historical figures. Eliza Farren is a Drury Lane actress whose virtue is her most prized possession. Her long-running relationship with the twelfth Earl of Derby has never progressed beyond conversation and the occasional hand-touching as it is always played out under the watchful eye of her mother. Derby is a married man, although estranged from his wife, and this chaperoning is a situation devised (as much by Eliza as by her mother) to keep Eliza’s reputation intact. Anne Damer is a successful sculptor who meets and befriends Eliza. She is unable, or unwilling, to acknowledge that she has lesbian feelings towards Eliza, despite the obvious warning signals, and here the story takes off.


My Thoughts :
It is bit boring at the initial stage of this book. Not much of excitement until at the later part whereby the rumors of Mrs Damer's situation has caused the friendship or perhaps relationship between her and the rising actress of Miss Eliza Farren to drifted apart. I was not familiar with the word "sapphist" until I googled it up.
Pretty intriguing plot towards the end.