Thursday, November 25, 2010

Happy Thanksgiving

This is our first time that we are celebrating Thanksgiving in US. We are excited to experience the celebration here. We are invited by our church friend to celebrate with their family and we are looking forward to it!

This year, we are thankful for God’s provisions and blessings upon our life. He has led us into new phase of life and a journey that is nothing short of excitement! Ezra 3:11 says

With praise and thanksgiving they sang to the LORD: “He is good; his love toward Israel endures forever.” And all the people gave a great shout of praise to the LORD, because the foundation of the house of the LORD was laid

Anyway, we just want to wish you Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Chirps Chirps

One of my new found hobbies here is to bird observing. We have quite a big back yard here. There are always squirrels, rabbits, chipmunks and birds in our yard. But I was so excited when I first spotted a blue color bird. Later, I got to know from the internet that it’s called Blue Jay. From then, I developed my hobby of taking photos of birds and recognizing their different chirping sound. I never have the chance to observe birds back in Malaysia because we stay in apartment and we just don’t have time to do so. With the trees getting bold, bird observing has also become easier.

Most of the birds here are very colorful and ‘fat’ because they have to get ready for winter. Some birds here are migratory birds but we are not encouraged to feed them because they will stop migrating to the South during winter as they have stable food supply.

These are few of my favorite and common birds in Hershey. These are some of the pictures I took at our backyard and around Hershey.

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Blue Jay. I think their churps are not as nice as their color =P

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Northern Cardinal (male)

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Northern Cardinal (Female)

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Robin. One interesting thing about Robin is they have blue color eggs!!

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Black-capped chickadee. It’s so hard to take nice photo of them because they are tiny and very fast in action.

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Canadian goose

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Migrating Canadian geese, I can hear them every morning during summer and early fall. I guess it’s too cold for them to be here now.

We are not allowed to feed the birds in the park as the steady source of food will change their migratory pattern.

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We bought this bird house in a garage sale and hope to have birds building their nests in it soon.

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Tomato Salsa Chicken

I cook almost everyday and sometimes, I am really out of idea what to cook. I got this ‘brilliant’ idea when I was preparing to cook tomato chicken (another of my own recipes). Why not use up the salsa I have made?! Save my time from chopping and the best thing is I don’t have to throw away the salsa. So, I come out with this recipe- tomato salsa chicken. It’s sweet and sour and it goes well with rice. To my surprise, KC likes it. So I will definitely cook this again!!

Ingredients:

  • 2 chicken leg quarters
  • ½ sweet onion
  • 2 cloves garlic
  • ½ cup salsa
  • 1 tbsp. rice wine
  • 3 tbsp. tomato sauce
  • 2 tbsp. chili sauce
  • 2 tbsp. sugar
  • 1 tbsp. balsamic vinegar
  • salt to taste
  • corn starch (optional)

Instructions:

  1. trim off the skin and cut the chicken into smaller pieces. Pan fry the chicken until brown to get rid of access fat and set aside.
  2. Sauté the onion and garlic until brown, then add in the chicken, wine, salsa, tomato sauce, chili sauce, sugar, balsamic vinegar and salt.
  3. Simmer for 10 minutes or until the gravy thickens to your liking, stir occasionally. Add in a bit of corn starch helps to thicken the gravy and serve.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Cream Cheese Cake

KC and I celebrate our 3rd anniversary today. You want to know how we celebrate? Well, we don’t because he is still not fully recovered. He still feel dizzy if he moves his head too fast and can’t walk steadily. We have been ‘quarantined’ for 3 days!! But since he has had better appetite, I thought of making something he likes for our anniversary. He loves cheese and he has been asking for cheese cake. I like making this cheese cake because it’s doesn’t require baking and I didn’t fail making it the last time!! =P

However, the texture of this cheese cake is nothing like the baked one. It’s very soft and it melts. It needs a bit of trick when you cut, especially the first piece.

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Ingredients

  • 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
  • 1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
  • 1/3 cup lemon juice
  • 1 (9 inch) ready-made graham cracker crust

Instructions

1. Cream together cream cheese and condensed milk until smooth. I use only 3/4 of condensed milk because I don’t want it to be too sweet and please make sure that you get condensed milk, not evaporated milk.

2. Add lemon juice and blend well.

3. Pour into graham cracker crust.

4. Chill for overnight (at least 6 hours) before serving.

Just in case, you can’t get ready-made graham cracker crust, you can make one yourself!! All you need is 1 1/4 cups graham cracker crumbs, 1/4 cup white sugar and 1/2 cup butter (melted). In a medium bowl, combine graham cracker crumbs, butter and sugar. Mix well and press into the bottom of a 9 inch spring form pan.

Well, cheese cake is for dessert and we have lotus root soup for dinner.

Monday, November 15, 2010

Garden Tomato Salsa vs Vertigo

This is my second time making salsa. The reason I choose this recipe is because I have all the ingredients in my fridge, except cilantro and all I need to do is chop or blend. It’s pretty easy, simple BUT tasty!! KC is not a salsa fans (because he doesn’t like cilantro) but surprisingly, he said this is a good one.

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Ingredient:

  • 6 fresh tomatoes
  • 1/2 sweet onion, chopped
  • 1/2 green bell pepper, coarsely chopped
  • 1/4 cup fresh cilantro
  • 2 cloves of garlic
  • 5 slices pickled jalapeno peppers, or to taste
  • 2 teaspoons olive oil
  • 2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar (or red wine vinegar)
  • 1/2 lemon, juiced (or lime)
  • 1/8 teaspoon salt

Instruction:

1. Coarsely chop 3 tomatoes and quarter 3 tomatoes.

2. Place onion, bell pepper, cilantro, garlic and jalapeno peppers into a food processor. Pulse until finely chopped.

3. Add the quartered tomatoes, and pulse just a few times until the tomatoes are coarsely chopped. Transfer to a bowl with a tight-fitting lid.

4. Add in the coarsely chopped tomatoes and mix well.

5. In a separate bowl, whisk together olive oil, red wine vinegar, lime juice, and salt.

6. Pour dressing over tomatoes, and stir well. Cover, and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

I made this for the young married couple meeting but we ended up in ER  because KC was sick. At first, we had no idea what had happened to him. He was happily drinking Pepsi and the next moment, he felt very dizzy, as if the whole room was spinning. He could not move his head, not even open his eyes!! Once he moved his head, he would start throwing up. I was very worried because we are in a foreign place and I have no one to turn to. I prayed for him and for myself. We hoped that he would get better after a nap, but no! So, I decided to bring him to ER at around 6pm with a friend’s help because by then he had threw up for at least 5 times and he could be dehydrated.

We spent almost 5 hours in ER but praise the Lord that KC did not have to spend a night in the hospital. He was on drip and feeling better but he started to vomit again when we were leaving the ER. I could see that water was all that he threw up then. He did not eat anything and that was the 10th time…According to doctor, viral infection was the reason to it and the dizziness will last for few days, even up to a week. It’s very common here but this is our first encounter with this fancy friend- VERTIGO!

He is on medication and resting at home. He still feels dizzy when he moves his head but praise the Lord that he has stopped vomiting. We have a walker at home which helps him to move around a bit. Get well soon, dear… I need you to finish the salsa!!

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He has been having minced meat porridge for the whole day, but he is happy to have chai-boh nui (prickled raddish with eggs).

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Sweet and Sour Prawn

This is my first blog posting and let me first introduce myself before talking about, well, the title of this post.

I am from the land of the Hornbill, Sarawak, Malaysia and currently living at Hershey, Pennsylvania. Since I stay at home most of the time and my husband is away for work, I try to cook as much as I can for him. Well, they said, the way into a man’s heart is through his stomach. However, unlike what most will think that I have a lot of time being a stay-at-home-wife (SAHW), in contrary, I don’t. Times passes by in a whoosh...

Anyway, I thought I will like to share with all of you some of my cooking recipes which most is through trail and error.

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I am sharing with you the recipe for sweet and sour prawn. It’s easy to make and quick too.

Ingredients

  • Prawns
  • Green/ Red chili pepper (Capsicum)
  • Pineapple (fresh/ can)
  • Garlic
  • Tomato (optional)
  • Sweet onion (optional)

Gravy:

  • Chili sauce
  • Tomato sauce
  • Plum sauce
  • Corn starch
  • Sugar
  • Thai chili sauce (optional)

Steps

1. Mix the gravy to your liking, either to be more sour, sweet or spicy. The tomato, chili and plum sauce are mix in 2:1:1 ratio.

2. Stir fried the garlic until fragrant.

3. Then, add the prawn, followed by chili pepper, pineapple, tomato and onion.

4. Finally, add the gravy which has been pre-mixed and cook until thicken to your liking.

You may add sugar or chili sauce to your liking. I will like it to be spicier to give it an extra kick and not too sweet. As you can see, I prepared it with more gravy because KC would love to mix it to the rice. It’s hard to get fresh seafood here at Hershey and we normally buy cook frozen prawn from Giant. However, it definitely taste better with fresh prawn.

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New author

I have just added my wife as an author to this blog too. So, hopefully you will get more postings and updates from us. I am almost sure, we shall add a new category of posting to the blog too, which will be classified as ’recipe’.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Mac advertisment

Currently, I am reading a book called ‘Inside Steve’s Brain’. It’s about how Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, work and well, how he operate!

In the book also it talks about the various advertisements that Apple launched over the years. One of the campaigned struck me and I love how they have the tongue in the cheek adverts.

They had stopped this campaign early this year. But their advertisement is really cool. Here is another one.

On the other hand, here are some old advertisements which runs on our TV is the 70s and 80s.

1. Nespray MIlkpowder – susu segera yang sebenar

2. State Express 555- cigarette advertisement which I you won’t find it anymore.

3. Cadbury Chocolate – look at the wrapper.

4. Guinness Stout – baik untuk anda?

5. Kotek pink – who still throw around ball and having fund with it.

6. Carrier air conditioner – Globalization.

You should try to watch this too.

I don’t recognize some of the brand advertised here but Guinness or bulldog (Or Kau in Hokkien) as it was called, is good for pregnant mother? Mum’s now are not even allow to drink and to imagine bulldog is good for pregnant mum?

The Milo advertisement is good too, I like it.

What do you think?