And the Horse comes galloping in..

I know that this might be a bit late but..

Happy Chinese New Year!

It's the Year of the Horse, and haz you people read your horoscopes?

I did. But I can't remember much.

Whateverlah.

Pre-CNY was BBQ with some of my ex-unimates.

Been ages since I last saw them.

thank you Mun Yee for the photo!

They actually took the initiative to buy yee sang from a nearby restaurant so that we could all lou!

Looking forward to more gatherings!

* * *

CNY Day 1

This year we celebrated CNY away from our hometown.

Here in PJ actually.

Went to our usual wat on the first day.

It was our first time going to a temple on the 1st day of CNY so we didn't know what to expect. But there were a lot of people, all decked in their new clothes, praying for blessings before going out for house-visiting.

As it was the 31st, we took advantage of Baskin Robbins 31% off for handpacked items. Initially we wanted to go to Blackball to have some desserts and tapauing but ohmy it was closed (so was Chatime, Gongcha and Secret Recipe.. Starbucks bukak though!) so we ended up just tapauing ice-cream.

okaylah we only got a pint

Then my youngest sister got so semangat wanted to bake a brownie using one of the Betty Crocker brownie mix as my brother's belated birthday cake!

We didn't have anything to decorate the cake so we just took some assorted candies from the meiji Pokemon assorted candies collection which I bought excitedly during a Shojikiya sale.

CNY Day 2

Did nothing much beside receiving some visitors and with my brother down with viral fever, we had to abandon our trip to KL. So in the end we only went out for an early dinner in Suki-ya in Paradigm Mall.

We had two pots so we took all four soups available: shabu shabu, sukiyaki, miso and kimchi.

I didn't bother trying the other two soups because I had the miso and kimchi ones in front of me hahaha.

For your information, Suki-ya does not have that many selection of those fishballs, chickenballs, fresh seafood etc. When I went they had seafood tofu, beefballs, crabmeat, one type of clams while many types of veges and mushroom.

Okayla maybe not that many also. But just enough for you to munch on and to dump inside the soups to make it tastier because the highlight of this shabu shabu/sukiyaki place is actually the meat.

There's chicken, lamb and beef for you to choose from. We omitted beef (because I stopped eating due to personal reasons and my siblings were already at the buffet counter mwahahahaha).

There's actually a step-by-step instruction on how to enjoy the meat slices on your table.

Or you can follow my guide.

First you break an egg into your bowl and beat the hell out of it. I actually dropped some of the sauces inside the beaten egg, but it's not necessary.

Then you dump your meat into your soup, have fun twirling it in the soup, letting it dance until it cooks.

Then you dump it into the beaten egg, make sure you let it guling-guling and be coated with the egg!

And then dip it into any of the two sauces, or both, if you like it like that.

Then savour the slimy goodness of the meat!

I superlove the lamb eaten this way compared to the chicken! I'm sure beef would taste just as good as well.

Okayla I know my instruction is damn lousy and uninteresting so you can check out the how-to at Suki-ya's website.

The buffet comes with refillable green tea but there are also other drinks you can order. Other items on the menu includes garlic fried rice, tempura and etc. There's sushi as well at the buffet counter!

There's ice-cream for dessert. The green tea one tasted a little.. vanilla-ish. Not much green tea taste. :(

CNY Day 3

Nothing much on the 3rd of CNY except for having my relatives visiting. Brought them to Heritage Village, Paradigm Mall which I feel, need to buck up on their food, since I don't find anything special about it. But then again, most people tipped that the nasi lemak there is the best so I'll go and give it a try one day.

Cielo Dolci is a must!

earl grey tea and salted caramel + fairy dust are my go-to flavours

I'm not sure why I always ended up with the two flavours. I just love salted caramel. I mean I drank Starbucks' Salted Caramel Frappucino ALL THE TIME when it was available (love adding the tea jelly in it) so it was a big boo when the promo ended. :'(

Do you know they have some random flavours once in a while? Like when I was there they had nasi lemak (!!!) flavour, which boggled me, but I didn't try. My sisters and cousins did, they said there are bits of ikan bilis in it! :O

Maybe I should have tried.

CNY Day 4

Had brunch with my girls (plus a guy) at Ben's, Publika. Service was meh. Waiters brought someone else's order to our table twice, mine and PW's drinks came after our food while JY who arrived later than WZ got his order first.

-______-

Had the mexicana tortilla and the mocha.

The food is okay only I guess.  It's not bad, but it's not a WOW for me. But PW was very satisfied with her portobello mushroom burger so I'll give it a try next time.

Then rush to have early dinner with the family before sending brother to the airport.

We ended in Tropicana City Mall, and chose beyond veggie by Secret Recipe after seeing their Lunar New Year sets.

Photo from beyond veggie by Secret Recipe FB page

Never expected my siblings not objecting to vegetarian food, but I guess the menu sounds promising, so we took set A.

The food didn't take too long to arrive, with the lo sang arriving first.

The waiter helped pour the two sauces for us - sorry I have no idea what they were! And lou we did, without standing up and minimising any mess hahahaha we were just too damn shy.

Not bad for a vegetarian yee sang, no fish but the crunchy crackers are good. But I think the portion is too big for the 5 of us.

This fried rice has loads of ginger bits in it, which adds to the spicy flavour, but not overpowering.

If you're a fan of dishes like butter chicken, you will like this!

I like! Tofu is nice as well..

sorry for the blur photo!

So sad that this yam basket didn't turn out well. I meat the whatever things in it were good, but the basket itself is just disappointing. The yam is thin while the batter is thick, making it hard.

This is good too, but if you prefer thicker gravy then you'll be disappointed. :P

Okay this dessert you can forget it. The beans were burnt while the sago overcooked. It has a bitter citrusy scent/taste in it as well, and not sweet.

CNY Day 5

Nothing much. But went out to watch The Journey or 一路有你, a story about a Chinese father's journey with his Western son-in-law, in distributing wedding invitations to his estranged daughter's marriage to the ang moh.

Although the acting of the cast can be somewhat awkward at times, and the cast managed to move hearts! Good movie I must say.

CNY Day 6

I don't remember what I did. Haha.

CNY Day 7

Lepak at home. Still on holiday! But then appeared a distress message from officemate! *horrified*


CNY Day 8

Went to office, although I still declared it as a leave, because then I could leave anytime I want!

Lunch with the girls I attended my 6-month programme with, did some catching up, found a nice shirt in Bauhaus but didn't buy and had ice-cream! :9

green tea and my usual pralines 'n cream

Then went out for dinner with my mom and my sisters at Ming Tien and got greedy.

Besides the fish head curry, which was a so-so only, I got greedy and ordered bak kut teh besides having some nyonya steamed rice haha.

Damn sad it wasn't really a satisfying dinner I really need people to recommend what to eat at Ming Tien please!

poor piggies

It was also the Jade Emperor's birthday, so Ming Tien also placed a table full of offerings after the entrance of the food court.

Come to think of it, we've never witness this ceremony before haha. Because we're always at home.

CNY Day 9 = Wai Loon's birthday

Dim sum at Grand Imperial, 1 Utama.

Asked the gang if we needed to book since it's still CNY so WL made a call to reserve, only to be informed that since it was only for a table for 3, we could just walk in.

...

There's actually 4 of us wtf.

Anyways, come the day, we still had to wait. -______________________-

yummy siew yoke!

xiao long bao

yam cake which has a bit of a smell

siew mai

errrrr... what vege is this? *bimbo mode*

eh. what do you call this ar?

tau fu fa

Overall.. I think it's an okay place for dim sum, but there's not much variety. No fried stuff, no egg tarts..

Maybe because they were focusing on their CNY menu?

Oh the porridges are good though! We had fish porridge and dried oyster porridge - really loved the porridge. It's the very hancur kind, very smooth and just yummeh.

Mom doesn't cook porridge at home this way so I always look forward to this kind of porridge outside.

Then we went to Whisk, Outpost for some coffee!

coffee arts, simple or complicated, make me happy!

mochaccino with a (nutty) twist!

Okay, so the mochaccino just taste like your usual mocha, the Nutella doesn't do anything to it, but it was fun to scoop the spread out and lick your spoon!

And I'm not even a fan of Nutella!

CNY Day 10

What did I do I can't remember?

All I can remember was going to Daorae Express for lunch! Haha

cute cup for my sister's drink!

Can't remember the last time I had Korean food. Usually me and my sisters would go to Kimchi Restaurant in Tropicana City Mall for our kimchi jigae/bibimbap fix, but the famous Daorae opened up Daorae Express nearby home, so I just had to go!

I had the pork kimchi jigae, and it was so good! :9

Am pretty sure gonna go again. But I wish they offer more banchan (side dishes) like how Kimchi Restaurant. The latter serves 6 refillable side dishes!

CNY Day 11 - 15

Back to work. And was single on Valentine's Day.

Oh well.

Better luck next year.

Not that it's not a bad thing to be single on Valentine's Day, but it would be nice to spend my time with someone on that day.

And that wraps up my Chinese New Year post!

kbai~