Dress Up In Summer Dresses

Summer is here and some of the best things about summer are the warm weather, perfect blue skies,  outdoor activities, trying new sports, beach fun, bikini and donning on sexy women bodycon dresses!  Yes, summer is all about flaunting your curves with a collection of bodycon dresses from dressab.com because before you know it, summer is over and you'll be all wrapped up in thick woollies again.

Whether you wear an S, M, L or 2XL, dressab.com has the perfect bodycon dress for your body.  Rock a bodycon midi dress for a classy look and pair with statement jewellery and a hot red lip.  Or create a luxe look in a silky bodycon dress with layered accessories and a sparkly spherical clutch.









For those of you who prefer not to show off your legs, maxi dresses are your next best choice this summer. This frock exudes charm and makes every woman look elegant and feminine.  Maxi dresses are very versatile and allows you to wear it for just about any occasion ~ party, beach, office, shopping. If you've never tried on a maxi dress, then head over to dressab.com to check out their amazing choice of high quality maxi dresses. You can see some of the maxi dresses below and you'll be spoilt for choices at dressab.com.











Of course you can wear a maxi dress during fall and winter months as well. Summer maxi gown styles are mostly strapless, sleeveless, sheer, made of thin fabric while maxis made of thicker fabric and long sleeves are for chilly weather.  Maxi dresses are pretty forgiving. Even if you are on the larger side, you can still look stunning in a maxi. I recommend that you choose floaty and lightweight fabrics, so your bulges don’t appear too obvious. Better go for dark colored dresses, as they have the ability to camouflage unwanted parts and make you look slender.

Specially for Health Freak Mommy blog readers!
Get a USD8 discount off USD100 when you shop at dressab.com
Just key in discount code BLOG8 during checkout.

Whatever the occasion and season, if you're a dress lover, www.dressab.com is the place to shop for them.👗
Happy shopping!  😉

Monday Lunch, 17 June 2019

After half a day of cafe-hopping and trying out new eateries at The Sphere @ Bangsar South on Sunday, Monday is a day of home-cooked meals.

For lunch, we had organic quinoa, millet and white rice porridge cooked with roast pork ribs with a side of chilled ice plant.


Fried vermicelli with bitter gourd, roast pork slices, bean sprouts, fish cake and curry leaves. We had this for lunch and dinner.


If you've run out of creative ideas on how best to cook bitter gourd to make it more palatable,  try frying it with noodles.  The noodles, sauces and other ingredients are sure to mask the  bitterness of this superfood known to have several impressive health benefits.

Oppo F11 Pro Review

So I finally got a new mobile phone last Saturday!  That's after my 3-year old Huawei repeatedly died on me whenever I needed it the most.  I was initially undecided on which brand of phone to get as I was very comfortable with my Huawei and didn't want to get any other brands.  In view of the current trade war that China and USA are trading, I do not want to take any chances in getting a new Huawei phone.  I had in mind to get Samsung again (I used to own one) but gosh, Samsung android phones are super expensive ~ ranges between RM2,500 - RM4,000!

Having used the Oppo F11 Pro for exactly 7 days as of today, it has become increasingly difficult to find any reasonable flaw that might deflect people from buying this device.  It's incredibly user-friendly, produces equally good photo quality as my Huawei Mate 10 and has been serving my needs very well.

The truth is that for a price of RM1,300, the F11 Pro is a device that looks and feels way more expensive. The price is almost half of what hubs paid for my old Huawei Mate 10 three years ago and its performance is pretty much the same. Well, at least that's how I feel for the past seven days.

The internals may be lacking a little in comparison to the phone’s exterior, but this is not a device that has marketed itself as a performance beast. I don't need a high performance phone anyway.  It is, as most of Oppo’s phones are, a camera-first device, and a very good example of one.  A good camera phone is what a blogger mommy's top priority is 😁

Released in March 2019, the F11 has a triple-shaded gradient at the back panel.  There is a dual-camera setup that's aligned centrally with the flash on the phone’s backside, and so is the pop-up camera on the top of the phone for purpose of selfie and wefie (I don't do selfie and wefie often though). The polished edges do not cut into my palm and also give a grippy feel.

Love the fingerprint reader feature (one of my requirements as I have to prevent the littlest brat from hijacking my phone all the time!) and this time, I scanned both my pointer fingers for ease of access.  Being a busy mom, my hands are either wet or dirty most of the time. If one hand is not accessible, I can access the phone with the other hand.

The display auto dims in the dark to not hurt my eyes. Oppo also provided a blue light filter for night-time phone browsing. Overall, this China-made device is totally up to my satisfaction.  Let's see how long it can serve me. This time, I have banned the littlest brat from downloading Roblox and Clash Royale into my phone as these two games use up quite a bit of memory.







Photos credit: gsmarena.com



My first food snapshot taken with my new Oppo F11 Pro ~ dad's homemade pandan kaya on a slice of sourdough jalapeno cheese toast.



My first outdoor view taken with the F11.

The F11 Pro has a 48 MP main camera and a 5 MP depth sensor, in which the latter is used only for background blurring to give DSLR-like pictures.  In this aspect, I prefer my Huawei Mate 10 camera as it has a button that I can touch on screen that gives an instant DSLR-blurring effect.  F11 Pro lacks this feature.  By default, the F11 Pro uses a technique called pixel binning to produce relatively sharp, detailed 12 MP images from that 48 MP sensor. You can change camera settings to shoot at 48 MP if you prefer.

According to the seller, F11 has superb battery life that can last for 48 hours.  I haven't tried it yet as I charge my phone every night.

Thanks to my darling for this belated birthday and mother's day gift 😍

Bridesmaid Dresses 101

When I got hitched 19 years ago, I didn't get my bridesmaids proper bridesmaid dresses.  I had a fairly simple wedding and my bridesmaids wore simple yet elegant dresses of their own. There was no theme for my wedding either. Generation X weddings were pretty simple back then.  Fast forward many years later to weddings of the millenials and we welcome an exciting era of themed bridesmaid dresses, personalized wedding favors, chi chi wedding themes and venues, wedding planners, extreme wedding shoots and all the bells and whistles to make a wedding feel like a wedding made in heaven 😅

There are many things to consider when choosing your bridesmaid’s dresses. You need to consider the most flattering shapes, the color scheme, the theme. the venue and whether there is one style fits all solution. It can be a challenge appeasing all your bridesmaids but it's not that difficult if you know where to shop for bridesmaid dresses.

If you’re a bride on a budget, check out BM Bridal for the perfect bridesmaid dresses. With hundreds of fashion essentials and unique fashion insight, this site is the best place to find trend-led bridesmaid dresses at affordable prices.  There's no need to worry about the sizing of the dresses as there is a Custom Measurements feature at the site where you can key in your specific measurements and the dress will be customized to your measurements.  Isn't this just awesome?

Navy doesn’t just have to be for winter, this one-shoulder piece in flair long skirt from BM Bridal is light and breezy and your bridesmaids will be able to move it and shake it all night long! I so love this dress!



I can’t promise you won’t get jealous of your bridesmaids in this gorgeous cold shoulder Maxi Dress in burgundy from BM Bridal. The glittery straps and waist are wedding perfection.



I also couldn’t resist this simple yet elegant flounce sleeves maxi dress in sunny yellow from BM Bridal for all the same reasons…



Choosing a look for your best pals on your big day is equal parts fun, funny and stressful.  In 2019, it's all about bold colors and statement detailing, so prepare to gasp when you see some of these looks at BMbridal.com 😊

Ipoh Trip (Monday, 3 June 2019)

We were supposed to return to KL on Monday but the boss gave us one more day in Ipoh. The girls and I were elated! 😁 One more day in Ipoh meant more time to spend with my parents, more Ipoh food for us to tuck into and more time to relax in my hometown.  We would have to wait for another 5-6 months before our next trip back to Ipoh. The second half of the year is always the toughest for the girls and especially me.  I wanted a longer break to fully rest my mind, body and soul before I head back to battle zone KL.  I don't need expensive overseas holidays. A simple few days in Ipoh with my parents, tucking into all my favorite Ipoh food and just slothing around doing bugger all is sufficient to make me a very happy girl. I am pretty low maintenance 😉

Since we have one more glorious day in Ipoh, the boss announced his plan for Monday on Sunday night, which is to have dim sum breakfast at 9 a.m. and the girls and I went "WHAT?  SO EARLY ON A HOLIDAY? EEEEEYERRRR!!!!"  Since the boss said so, we all dutifully dragged our butts out of bed by 8 a.m to get ready to head over to Ipoh's Dim Sum Street with high hopes of getting a table for 11 pax at Ming Court Hong Kong Dim Sum.  No such luck for us as the restaurant was filled to the brim, so we ambled a few steps away to Yoke Fook Moon Dim Sum.








Check out how humongous the 'tai pau' is juxtaposed with the normal size paus.



Love this stir-fried fish noodles with bean sprouts, carrot strips and eggs.




As we walked out of Ming Court Dim Sum, we chanced upon a rare sighting ~ of a ting-ting candy man in action!




Ting-ting sweets are traditionally made from white sugar, maple syrup, honey and glutinous rice. The Chinese call it Gui Fei sweets (concubine sweets) because only the emperor’s concubines consumed these delicacies back in the dynasty days. It gives you a sugar high, but what harm is an occasional candy, eh? But I didn't get any ting-ting candy for the girls as they are not fans of sweets and candies.

After breakfast, it was free and easy afternoon for everyone. Hubs had a gathering with his ertswhile school mates while I went retail therapy with the girls for over 4 hours -- we shopped at our own pace at every store that enticed us, sat down to sip and savor every drop of our Tealive milk tea (this time I didn't choke on the grass jelly!), and had a leisurely lunch. This is something that we could hardly indulge in back at our battle field.  It's always a mad rush from one activity to another back in KL and shopping can only be done within 2 hours on a weekday morning before abruptly leaving the mall to drop off Sherilyn in school.


Despite a heavy dim sum breakfast, the 3 piranhas with bottomless pits could still scarf down Korean food for lunch! And then had boba tea!

After dinner at Sun Marpoh Restaurant, we had Haagen Dazs ice-cream to celebrate Father's Day in advance.


Me with the two fathers in my life and my gorgeous 73-year old mum.

Traipsing Around Ipoh And Tucking Into Good Food (Sunday, 2 June 2019)

Our road trip back to Ipoh during the school cum pre-Hari Raya holidays was surprisingly smooth. The KL-Ipoh trip was delayed by about 20 minutes by the bottleneck at Slim River. Other than that, traffic was pretty smooth. Weather was chilly and we were freezing in the car.

Breathtaking foggy hills scenery towards Ipoh...


Our trip back to KL on the eve of Hari Raya was super smooth all the way and we reached KL in under 2 hours. Thank God!

Our lunch on Sunday was at Thean Chun kopitiam, one of the most popular kopitiams in Ipoh located at the hottest tourist spot in Ipoh. Again, we were lucky as we got a table in under 10 minutes despite the crazy crowd.   A visit to Ipoh will not be complete without tucking into a bowl or two of Ipoh 'kai si hor fun' at Thean Chun or Kong Heng kopitiam. These two kopitiams are located alongside one another. Across the road is the famed Concubine Lane.







After our satisfying lunch, we segued into Concubine Lane.  The girls love walking down this lane, checking out queer knick-knacks, costume jewelry, snacks, rainbow toasts, colorful ice-balls, trinkets and much more.



Then we had white coffee and milk tea at Lim's Delights White Coffee, located just next to Concubine Lane.




You'll be greeted by impressive wall murals when you walk along the roads of Ipoh Old Town. This time we noticed a new wall mural, painted by Ernest Zacharevic, the Lithuanian artist in Penang who has made quite a name for himself from his interesting wall murals in Penang.  OldTown White Coffee recently unveiled a series of murals painted by renowned artist Ernest Zacharevic in conjunction with the Art of Old Town project.



This above mural can be found on Jalan Market off Jalan Bijih Timah.



Around the same location, we spotted this beautiful wall mural on local fruits.





Then the hubs brought us on a joyride around Ipoh old town and new town, revisiting all our childhood places, including his old alma mater and mine.

Above: St Michael's Institution. Hubs spent his primary and secondary school years with my older brother in this school.

Next stop was at the pomelo stall at Tambun to get some pomelos.



On our way home in the car, I casually mentioned to the hubs that the entrance fee to the Movie Animation Park Studios (MAPS) in Meru is now FREE and guess what? We made an unplanned visit to MAPS and all of us were totally not prepared for the half day visit to the theme park!  Cass only had flip flops and an old faded tee on. Fortunately I had a pair of super comfy Hush Puppies sandals and walked the entire theme park without an ache on my feet 😁

Restaurant Sek Me Choy

After a scrumptious lunch at The Farm Foodcraft followed by calorie-laden yummo desserts at Sunbather Coffee, I was stunned when, on my drive back from evening service at the church, the hubs suggested going out for dinner.  We would usually skip dinner and have something really light and easy in the evening after a heavy lunch.  He hadn't decided where to bring us for dinner though and after a lazy evening Sunday drive around KL, he remembered a famous 'tai chow' restaurant in Salak South that serves really good traditional Chinese dishes. The hubs used to patronize Sek Me Choy with his pals after basketball matches but it's the first time for the rest of us.




Sek Me Choy is well known for their signature pepper Bak Kut Teh.  Sek Me Choy’s Bak Kut Teh has a history of more than 20 years. It is one of the first shops in Malaysia to start making pepper Bak Kut Teh. In 2006, it was chosen as one of the “Top 20 National Kings of Bak Kut Teh”.

Sek Me Choy's pepper Bak Kut Teh is reminiscent of pig's stomach and intestines pepper soup.  As it was our first time tasting it, we were confused as to why it's called Bak Kut Teh when the soup tasted like pig's innards hot pepper soup. Instead of using pig's innards, pork ribs, puffed tofu, mushrooms and vegetables are used in the claypot of piquant hot pepper soup. Hubs couldn't get enough of it and ordered another pot!  The Sarawak pepper soup mix sachet is available for sale at the restaurant.



French beans with salted egg yolk has a very creamy and aromatic taste of salted egg. Every strand of bean is well coated with salted egg yolk. The beans are crunchy and not overly cooked. This was nicely executed. I loved it!

I super duper love the claypot chicken cooked in rice wine and wood fungus topped with fried egg and finely julienned ginger strips. I had so much of this during my three confinement and till today, I've never gotten bored of this dish as well as other confinement dishes.

The aroma of the claypot kangkung fried with belacan can mesmerize you!  Even for someone who's not hungry will suddenly have his/her tummy rumbling just from the aroma of the belacan!



Sweet and sour deep fried fish can really whet one's appetite and the claypot fish paste cooked in vegetables soup is soothing and not salty.


Mui Choy Khau Yoke (braised pork belly with preserved vegetables) served with mantou and signature Kai Choy (bitter mustard green) rice.  The signature Kai Choy rice is very flavorful but a tad salty for my liking. It would score an A+ if they go easy on the sodium.


Sek Me Choy is a family run business.  One of the lady bosses who attended to us is very jovial, witty and vivacious. She and her sister, who is the chef at the restaurant regularly appears on 8TV cook shows and had even hosted Chef Martin Yan at their restaurant.  This is one gem of a Chinese restaurant that I will revisit again and again.


Restaurant SekMeChoy
199, Jalan Besar, Salak Selatan
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Call 03-7982 3132

School Holidays Bakes and Makes

School's out and someone's aching to bake and cook in the kitchen again!

Thus, I've been grocery shopping almost everyday! First for fresh basil, then for flour, butter and nuts.

First baking project was pesto sauce. We tweaked the classic recipe a little.    Here's what we used to make pesto sauce:
1.  3 packets fresh basil leaves
2.  3 cloves garlic
3.  Extra virgin olive oil
4.  Nuts ~ mix of pecan, walnut and cashew. Sorry, no measurement was used.
5.  Salt to taste.

This time we omitted the cheese so that the sauce can last longer.  Plus it's healthier sans cheese.

This pesto sauce is keto-friendly and perfect for weight watchers. Plus it's so yummo and healthy!

You just need to adjust the taste and consistency during blitzing in the blender. If it's too dry, add a tad more olive oil and if it's not creamy enough, add in more nuts.


Directions:
1.  Wash the basil leaves thoroughly and dry them in a salad spinner. Make sure that the leaves are dried so that the sauce can last longer in the fridge.
2.  Separate the ingredients into half and pulse all ingredients together in blender in two batches.
3.  Store in sterilized bottle.

What was supposed to be enough to fill up 2 bottles was only enough to fill up 1 bottle coz the second the pesto sauce was poured into a bowl, everyone charged at it, dipping bread and crackers into the sauce!

Sherilyn said that pesto sauce was unexpectedly so easy to make. That's music to my ears as I'll definitely be asking her to make another batch 😁






Second holiday baking project was cookies.


My condition to my baking queen before I consented to her baking cookies was that sugar must be reduced by at least half as I cannot stomach anything that's too sweet.  Sweet cookies, cakes and desserts often make me feel sick.



Same dough baked into 4 different flavored scrumptious cookies:

1.  chocolate chip for the girls
2.  organic oats + pecan for moi
3.  premium matcha cooked with white chocolate and
4.  Nutella for the girls.

The cookies have a hint of caramel aroma as the butter was cooked on the stove before being mixed into the dough.



Next baking project for the baking queen when we return from Ipoh next week will be tortilla wraps and probably another batch of pesto sauce! 😀💓

After the holidays, Sherilyn will be hyper busy choreographing and practising for the inter-school Berjaya Teen Challenge dance competition semis and inter-school Taekwondo competition.  She's really a very busy teen 🙋🏃

Teacher's Day 2019

Teacher's Day gifts for the girls' teachers this year:



Grandma's home-baked biscotti and a bottle of body lotion / shampoo from Melaleuca.  Cass topped up the gift with a cute keychain for her favorite teacher who's been her class teacher for 3 years but  this year she's no longer the class teacher but History teacher instead.


Freshly baked from the oven, Cass helped to pack the pistachio and almond biscotti.

Teacher's Day was celebrated on the last two days of school this week at Cass' school with a pot-luck buffet-like spread class party complete with games that ran for two days.

The two-week school holidays started today. Besides a trip back to my hometown in Ipoh and catching several movies at the  mall, I still haven't planned anything yet. I suggested a one-night stay in Pangkor Island as I've been 'poisoned' by my friend's beautiful photos of her recent stay at Anjungan Beach Resort & Spa Pangkor. 😆  But the hubs said NO as he's always avoiding crowds during school holidays. It's going to be a double celebration ~ Hari Raya and school holidays; crowd and traffic will be double too!  Well, maybe we'll go in December then.

#keepingmyfingerscrossed

Wednesday, 22 May 2019

I was feeling bone-idle and didn't feel like lifting my finger in the kitchen on a public holiday today.  I just didn't feel like leaving my super comfy portable Osim massage chair while I worked on the computer.  I'm not a kitchen person to begin with but thanks to my middle child who loves cooking and baking and who gets better each time with her culinary skill, I can now order what I want to eat from her!  I pay and buy the ingredients and she'll take care of the rest 😆

Today Sherilyn grilled beets and vegetables for lunch. 



The boiled organic beets were seasoned with rosemary, salt, olive oil and Balsamic vinegar and grilled with garlic at 170C for almost an hour. Super yummy and healthy, these grilled beets can be really addictive. 

Sherilyn pureed some of the grilled beets with garlic, walnut and the juice from the boiled beets in our Blendtec blender to go with pasta. She made this for her school lunch box for tomorrow. Her mid-year exam is still on-going and only ends this Friday.



Also baked some organic pumpkin seeds for snacks. In our home, there are plenty of nuts, beans and seeds, fruits, sugar-free yogurt and frozen yogurt as snacks. When I don't buy flavored yogurt, the girls have now learned to enjoy sugar-free skinny yogurt topped with nuts and seeds 😁


Throwback bake ~ Sherilyn baked some healthy oats muffins with blueberry, pecan and chocolate chips two weeks ago. The muffins are butter-free (replaced with peanut oil) and lightly sweetened with organic Javanese coconut sugar.

Tuesday Dinner From Dah Makan

Since the fasting month started two weeks ago, food companies are striking it big time while the iron is hot. Browsing Facebook  these day is too distractive when food delivery, food promotion and tons of ads on food keep popping up in between every two posts. And I finally succumbed to food delivery order today! The mil doesn't fancy food delivery but she's not feeling well today (Vertigo again) and I told her to rest and not to cook. But I don't have the mojo to cook too!! How?

So yeah, I ordered some healthy meals from Dah Makan today 😬.  Dah Makan approached me to do a review for them several years ago and since then, I've ordered from them several times already. The girls and I are pleased with their food which has a rather 'restauranty edge' as their team of chefs have a wealth of experience from previous attachments at restaurants and hotels. If you're feeling bone-idle or just too pressed for time to cook, do give Dah Makan a try.

Dah Makan's menu consists of healthy and wholesome meals at reasonable prices.  Just order from this link and you'll get RM40 off your bill!

Happy mid-week holiday peeps!  I can finally have a sleep in tomorrow!

Remember your order at Dah Makan has to be via this link to get the RM40 rebate off your bill yeah! By the way, this is NOT a sponsored post 😉

Our sweat-free scrumptious dinner from Dah Makan tonight consists of:

1 x Nasi Kerabu

RM 19.9

1 x Roast Chicken Breast with Ratatouille

RM 23.9

1 x Spaghetti Chicken Bolognese

RM 14.9

1 x Roast Chicken Breast with Sweet Potato Mash

RM 26.9

Super love the mashed sweet potato with grilled chicken breast and roast vegetables.