Good Workout Morning

This morning's 45-minute workout session was very fruitful. I did three sets of lower abdomen exercises on the pool side lounger, stretching, star jumps, jump squats, hand weights, frog jumps, etc. before going for brisk walking and finally HIIT with jog and sprints for 15 minutes.  I had a good sweat out and a much wanted high of endorphins, which put me in really good mood the whole day 😇 

Why would anyone still not want to exercise when the benefits are in the jillions? No time is not an excuse. I can say that as I was once a full-time working mum with 2 babies under 2 years old then, who sacrificed my sleep, got up at 5 a.m. every single day and ran round the neighborhood with a baton or brolly in my hand (to ward off muggers) before travelling 25 km to my workplace. I stayed in Shah Alam and had to drive to Sri Kembangan to work. My working hours were long too.  If I can do it, so can anyone. 

One of the things that I intend to do when I retire is to spend an hour or two exercising once in the morning and once in the evening.   I'll most likely even learn yoga or dancing.  I'm going to keep myself more active than ever in my sunset years, just like my 73-year old mum who attends line dancing  and qigong classes, keyboard classes, learns Mandarin herself from our girls' old kindergarten Chinese books (LOL) and recently bought an Angklung from Indonesia to play in her free time. She also tries new recipes regularly and bakes like a pro.  I hope that she can continue to do all these activities to keep herself active physically and mentally for many, many more years.

Brunch was at the mamak with the hubs and Sherilyn.  Today is the first day of her final exam!

I had tosai and teh tarik with no sugar.  I gave specific instructions to the waiter that I wanted CRISPY and GARING tosai and he kept nodding his head but what came was totally opposite from what I ordered!  I was in a hurry to send the hubs back to his office and Sherilyn to school and didn't bother to send the half-cooked tosai back to the kitchen to have it re-fried till it's crispy. I just ate half and discarded the other half. What a disappointment.








Hubby's rice with mixed dishes.


Sherilyn's mee goreng.

Goodbye, My Beloved Longines

My 18-year old Longines watch died on me recently.  I got my Longines when I was in my corporate suits and needed a 'corporate watch'. Her price tag was about RM3,000 then and is now selling at USD1,290 (appr. RM5,394) in Amazon.  Until today, the facade of my Longines still looks brand new and sparkly, though she's been subjected to umpteen bangs, knocks, scratches, free falls and rain water.  Only the gasket inside is damaged.  Over the last 18 years, I must have spent a few thousand Ringgit just on batteries. Each battery costs about RM100, lasts for over a year only and can only be purchased from a luxury watch shop at Mid Valley Megamall.

When it finally stopped working, I was devastated. It would cost a few hundred Ringgit to get it fixed. Now that I'm no longer in the corporate world, I don't need a 'corporate watch'.  I'm good with just my red FitBit but I wanted something more elegant looking.  I have not decided if I should get the watch fixed.  But I'll definitely be keeping it forever.








I went on a watch shopping spree last Wednesday but almost all the watch shops at Mid Valley Megamall are luxury watch shops. Only Swatch carries 'affordable' watches. I'm not really a fan of Swatch watches but my girls are. I find the straps too plastic-ky and kiddy. The only advantage of owning a Swatch is that you'll get free replacement batteries for life. Warranty is two years only for the strap and internal parts.

After window shopping at four luxury watch shops and disappointed that none of the watches meet my measly budget of below RM400, I went back to Swatch to have another round of intense hunt for my dream watch. And then I saw this statement jewelry watch (RM340, yay meets my budget!) and I knew I had to get it.



She looks elegant with the bling bling pink and blue stones but I find it hard to put her on my wrist.  The moment I brought her into my room and tried to put her onto my wrist, she slipped from my butter fingers and BANG it fell onto the floor so HARD!!  My heart must have dropped along with her onto the floor. But thank God she survived the fall and none of the stones got yanked off.  That's one of the edges of getting a Swiss-made watch. You'll get quality product.

I had to have 6 frigging rings removed from my bling bling Swatch to fit into my skinny wrist.  4 of the rings were removed last Wednesday and when I found that she was still hanging too loosely on my wrist, I went back to the shop this week to have another 2 rings removed. Now my bling bling Swatch sits nicely on my wrist. 💓




Please be good my dear bling bling Swatch. I hope you'll keep me company for the next 18 years just like your half sis, Longines 😬

Why Boots Are A Must-Have Item For Women

Boots are always stylish and elegant. A pair of hot looking women's boots can jazz up even the simplest of outfit.  Boots can be paired with various styles of outfits from dresses to pants and skirts and they never fail to to make a woman look oh so chic.

A short skirt deserves a pair of statement ankle boots to go with it. A maxi dress can have a major impact with the right bootie peeping out from beneath the fabric - you can consider a black buckle slip-on ankle bootie, like the one pictured below from NewChic, for a sleek, cool-girl vibe.





Ankle boots look great with dress pants, cropped trousers as they do with denim, so step outside of your comfort zone and give one of these outfits a whirl on a pair of cool ankle booties.




Dress pants don't have to be boring anymore when you tuck them into ankle boots for an ultra stylish look that works just as well during the week as it does on the weekend!

Yes, black boots, ankle boots and booties work with everything but sometimes it is good to jump out of your comfort zone.  Try suede leopard print, ink print, floral retro heel or retro ankle boots to give everything you wear a leg up. You won't regret it!

Winter is arriving soon. Be prepared for whatever storm the next season brings and get your feet in some quality footwear that can weather all the weather. Boots have been a sure bet in winter.  The above video features some chic winter retro boots from NewChic that are sure to level up your fashion this winter.

NewChic 5TH anniversary sale is coming soon. Their SOCOFY brand shoes are up to 90% off!  Do click on SOCOFY vintage shoes page to check them out!

Chef Chew Kitchen Restaurant @ Section 19, PJ

After a month or two of frequent dining at Bangsar South, the foodie hubs has finally started to feel a teeny weeny bored of this lifestyle hub. Today he's aching to try a new place ~ Chef Chew Kitchen Restaurant at Section 19, PJ to savor good old tai chow dishes, thanks to postings on social media by his friends!  Our close and long time friend Jess, son and DIL joined us for lunch.

Chew Chew Kitchen is tucked in the Seksyen 19 neighbourhood on the Durian Street.  It's run by Chef Chew, a former chef in one of the best Chinese restaurant groups in town.  Serving home-cooked oriented dishes and comfort tai chow dishes, the prices are pretty reasonable and most importantly, you'll get good quality food.  Truly a bang for your buck kind of restaurant that's worthy of repeated visits.   The restaurant is air-conditioned and clean.

So jumping right into it - pix of our glorious dishes, for 9 pax.

Steamed kampung chicken served with ginger and scallion fluffy rice.  This combination dish is currently trending in upscale Chinese restaurants. For someone who does not like rice, I had a sweet surrender to 2 huge tablespoons of rice that goes along so well with the flavorful steamed chicken, dipped with house made fresh chilli sauce.


Fried kung po lala; Salted egg yolk fried squids.



Stir-fried mixed vegetables; Kangkung cooked with belacan in clay pot.



Claypot curry prawns ~ curry devotees' version of nirvana!  It would be a good idea to order a big plate of fried mantou to soak and mop up all the curry broth, provided you're certain you won't be corroded with guilt post-meal! 😋 😆


Steamed white moustache fish with pork croutons;  claypot braised pig trotters tendons - very flavorful but I don't eat such parts.




Smoked chicken



And the highlight of the lunch ~ 'ku lo yoke' served in a bowl of shaved ice. So unique, so flavorful, icy cold meets piping hot, this dish is truly a show-stopper.




It's very dangerous (to the wallet) to eat with the hubs. When he's very happy with the food, he is highly susceptible to ordering more dishes towards the end of the meal, as he's one who loves trying out new dishes.  Yeah coming from a chef  foodie, or rather someone who's in the food catering business, trying out new dishes is one of the ways he introduces new dishes into his own catering menu.

And so this Thai style steamed seafood dish comprising of prawns, squids and lala was ordered towards the end of the meal as someone's eating mode was activated with so much good food, teasing his papillae and exploding his taste buds to life. We were all stuffed to the gills but this dish really whetted our appetite and within minutes, everything was polished off as well.




The queen and the prince were obviously very pleased and satisfied with today's lunch. No doubt, I know we'll be heading here again very soon to sample other dishes. I can't wait.

滋味饭店 Chef Chew Kitchen Restaurant
Ground floor, No.52, Jalan 19/3,
Petaling Jaya, Malaysia
016-634 7948

Baked Gnocchi Balls

My baking queen was on a cooking rampage again with her creative juices flooding her right brain.

Making baked gnocchi balls wasn't her original plan.  But a failed fancy Italian dumpling in tomato-y sauce dish spurred my baking queen into putting on her thinking cap.
And then a light bulb moment popped up💡

She turned the sauteed gnocchi with pasta sauce into a new age delish snack -- something that you'll find at Insta-worthy modish cafes.

Because of the botched first attempt, a lot of work and steps were needed to produce these crispy gnocchi balls.




This is what she did in 'Phase 1'

1.  First she boiled the purple and yellow sweet potatoes and mashed them.
2.  Then she blitzed some organic oats into oats flour.
3.  Combined the oats flour and mashed sweet potato with salt and a beaten egg and formed it into a dough.
4.  Rolled dough and cut into pieces. Pressed cut pieces of dough with a fork to form pattern.
5.  Boiled the gnocchi al dente.

She wanted to cook some of the gnocchi with butter and cheese and some with garlic. This is a classic Italian dish. But I told her that her sisters will most likely not appreciate such Italian dishes as they've never tried them before and it doesn't sound like something that they'll want to eat.

Then she ransacked the kitchen cabinet and fished out a jar of pasta sauce that grandma recently brought back from New Zealand.   And so 'Phase 2' revolved around sauteeing the gnocchi with onions and pasta sauce.  However, the dish did not pass my perfectionist baker's high standard.

In 'Phase 3', she pounded a bag of baked bagel snacks that grandma brought back from NZ into crumbs and coated the sauteed gnocchi with pasta sauce with them before rolling them into balls. And in goes the gnocchi balls into the oven.  She waited with bated breath the whole time the balls were in the oven as she was worried that the balls would turn out to be yet another failure... coz her tiger mom was ranting and cussing away that she's wasting time and money experimenting on a new recipe again.




Finally the baked gnocchi balls were ready and the baking queen wasted no time in trying them and voila, they were delish. Addictive to be exact!

Crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside.



The balls came in two sizes ~ two giant balls and many bite size ones.  She gave some to her beloved kakak Maria. My dear part-time helper of 7 years finally returned from Indonesia after being away on maternity leave for 3 long months. How we missed her!!




After the success of the first batch of baked gnocchi balls, the baking queen made another batch (Phase 4), this time with crushed 'whatever crackers she could find'.  She also stuffed a wedge of gourmet cheese (that grandma brought back from NZ too) into some of the gnocchi balls.





These baked gnocchi balls store well in the fridge. To eat, just crank up the toaster and heat up the balls for 10-15 minutes in medium temperature.

From something that initially looked pretty unappetizing (it looked like a bowl of baby pureed food), my creative baking queen transformed it into some aesthetically looking yet delish and healthy snack balls!  I'll give her a 10/10 for creativity, determination and taste.

Healthy Meatless Pasta Bolognese

To encourage the girls to eat more vegetables and go easy on meat (especially red meat), I include lots of root vegetables, tubers and leafy vegetables in the dishes that I cook. For stews, I add carrots, sweet potatoes (yellow and purple), potatoes, onions, leek, celery, tomatoes, garlic, pumpkin, zucchini, mushrooms and lots of herbs (rosemary, Italian, bay leaves, cinnamon, etc).

Recently I made a meatless macaroni bolognese and the girls loved it.  If this dish was just for me, it would have been 100% vegan. But I wanted some protein in the bolognese for my growing girls, so I added boiled quails eggs and cheese.

My meatless bolognese sauce is composed of carrots and tomatoes (blitzed in my Blendtec), loads of red onions and garlic, bay leaves, Italian herbs, black pepper and a jar of organic tomato basil paste.

Meat is replaced with fresh jumbo BBQ Portobello mushrooms, white and brown Shimeji mushrooms, Japanese pumpkin, zucchini (yellow and green) and quail eggs.






My yummy bowl of low carb high fiber wholesome dinner, sans the pasta.  The girls had organic macaroni with it.








When asked which tastes better: bolognese with minced meat or no meat, the girls gave a resounding NO MEAT! They commented that the meatless version tastes no different than the version with minced meat. There you go, a meatless meal can still be yummers when you cook it with only plant-based ingredients and use lots of aromatic spices, herbs and allium (garlic and onions).

I'm one step closer to converting my girls to either lacto-ovo-vegetarians or flexitarians but I'll do it gradually 😉

Friday, 4 October 2019

Cass' final exam is finally over today, YAY!! 😅 NO more exams for her for this year until next year. Next year will be a tough year for all 3 girls as it's the year of their major exams!!

Tomorrow Cass will be going on a field trip organized by her school and it will be her maiden school trip. For years she's been badgering me to allow her to go on a school trip but I've been very hesitant due to her bladder issues. She needs to go to the bathroom frequently and it would be very bothersome in a school trip with hundreds of kids.  Since this field trip is within the Klang Valley and held indoors and her class teacher has kindly volunteered to put Cass in her group, I've consented to her participation, albeit reluctantly.  But I'll be worrying myself silly the entire day and can't wait for her to return in the evening.

Today Cass and I spent hours on end searching for her mobile phone which I've hidden several weeks back before her exam and we've still not located the phone yet. We can't do a Find My Device search as the phone's battery is dead and I've not reloaded the data yet.  This is not the first time that I've to play hide-and-seek with the electronic devices at home. That brat sometimes drives me hysterical, to the point that I almost want to strangle her and kick her out of the house.  Can you imagine me telling her to look for the hidden phone at all my hiding spots? The problem is I don't hide stuff in the same spot again after she finds them. I hide the stuff at new spots and with all the busyness and madness in my life, I sometimes forget where I hide them!!    Thank goodness grandma has agreed to lend her phone to Cass for the field trip tomorrow 😍

Here's something colorful that I cooked for the girls on one of the week days just before the mil's return from New Zealand ~ healthy Zha Jiang Mian with chives, raw carrots and cucumbers.










I used colorful somen imported from Japan. These noodles are naturally colored using different root vegetables and fruits.  The girls love it and it only takes 2 minutes to blanch the noodles.




I sliced up 2 organic kyuri and one large organic carrot using a mandoline.  These raw julienned cucumbers and carrots are added generously on the noodles, adding crunch, sweetness, juice and texture to the noodles and minced meat.




My Chinese salad, sans the noodles! Love the refreshing rawsome freshness of the vegetables on the minced pork cooked with chives.







I also gave a bowl of noodles to Cass' Mandarin tutor as she was here during dinner time.



Organic minced pork cooked with organic miso, shallots, garlic, Lakanto sugar and a dollop of organic black soy sauce.

Pet Therapy

Saturdays are pet therapy days for us.  Cass and I will segued into the pet shop right after piano class and this has been going on for almost 5 years already! And we look forward so much to checking out if there're any new dogs, especially Samoyed, our favorite breed of dog.  Last Saturday, we saw a 'new arrival' and it's an adorable and fluffy black and white Border Collie! We fell in love with it instantly 💗





Next to the Border Collie was a breed of dog that we've never seen before and I was gobsmacked when I saw the RM12,800 price tag of the Russian Caucasian Mountain Dog!!! According to the pet shop staff, this is a very, very huge dog and it can grow into a gigantic dog.  This breed of dog is usually purchased by farm owners as guard dogs.



I couldn't get a close up picture of this dog and what you see here is only a 3-month old pup and it's already this big.  When it's a fully grown dog, it can be double the size of an adult, as shown in the pictures below:










As I was admiring the Border Collie and Russian Caucasian dog, Cass went to the back of the pet shop cum pet hotel to check out the dog boarding section and saw a Shih Tzu that would smile at her! She pulled me to the Shih Tzu and as I whipped out my phone camera, the little fluff ball let out a wide grin that exposed her teeth and tongue. Oh. My. Gawd.  I melted!!



Each time I whipped out my phone camera, the Shih Tzu smiled and wagged its tail. I think it's been trained by its owner to smile at the phone camera.



As long as we live in a condo, it'd be difficult for us to keep a dog as it's against the House Rules of the condo. The only way we can get our dose of pet therapy is to visit the pet shop and watch videos of cute pets and dogs 😆  I find these videos really uplifting, mood-boosting and lead to greater resilience to stress and bad days.

Lucky Girls

Our girls are extremely fortunate to have doting aunts (hubby's sisters) who frequently shower them with gifts.  Last week, Sherilyn received a couriered parcel and it's an original Lululemon yoga pants all the way from Hong Kong, from her loving 'koo ma' (my eldest SIL).

I don't even own a Lululemon pants myself and now my daughter has one. The material is super stretchable and buttery soft and quality superb. Now I'm really tempted to get my first Lululemon pants!!  Shopee / Lazada, here I come!!!!






Similar Lululemon Athletica Sports Crop 7" pants selling at RM118 at Lazada. Love the side pocket for phone.

Choosing Bridesmaid Dress Colour Palette

What wedding colours do you think of when you think about the four seasons of the year? If you're planning your wedding in the winter, I think of gold, stormy, royal blue, red and emerald green.  Pastel palettes look really sweet and flowery for weddings in the Spring. The bright colours of pinks and purples in the golden sunshine of the Summer can look stunning. The Autumn is a time for auburns, oranges, reds and dark greens.

If you're thinking of a unique color for your bridesmaids dresses, Stormy is another elegant and soft color scheme that you can consider for weddings in fall and winter. Stormy bridesmaid dresses have such a dramatic connotation, although the color itself is really beautiful. Inspired by the beauty of an impending storm, Stormy is a grey-blue that is calm yet fascinating.  This colour brings out the best of your skin color, especially if you have fair skin and it also has a slimming effect. A universally flattering color, Stormy is especially ideal for Winter weddings with a modern edge. Stormy is just perfect for floor-length styles, whether constructed from sheen or coarser fabrics.







Here are 5 things to consider before choosing your bridesmaid dress color(s):

1.  Consider the color of your bridal gown
Whatever color or style you choose, keep that color in mind so that your bridesmaids won’t clash while they stand next to you. If you’re going to wear a white bridal dress, you could consider champagne bridesmaid dresses, mauve, soft pink or soft blue for your bridesmaids. These are some of the favorite bridesmaid dress colors in 2019.

2.  Location is key
Your venue will literally set the stage for your wedding day so choose colors that complement the space.

3.  Consider your own personal style
If you’re a minimalist, having a pink or purple wedding would seem out of your element.

4. Colors
If you like the idea of having your bridesmaids in different colours, I recommend that they are all in the same colour palette. So, perhaps all in pink but in different shades so that they are still identifiable as your bridesmaids.

5. Consider multiple bridesmaid dress colors
Mix-and-match is hugely in trend now, so it’s not uncommon to see a variety of colors in the bridal party.

Other things to consider when choosing your bridesmaids dresses are the price, body types, skin tones and your girl pals' preferences. Choose a fabric and design that's comfortable as your bridesmaids will be wearing the dress for long hours.



Get inspiration from BM Bridal ~ there are tons of elegant and affordable BM dresses from this wedding apparel website. They have a great site with stylists who are available online to help you find the dress that you have in mind. You can ask them anything from styling and sizing advice and tips on the perfect accessories for your dress, or just a second opinion. They carry some absolutely stunning elegant gowns for the bride and bridesmaid that you’ll sure to love. Oh, they have bridesmaid dresses at half price and a time-limited Buy-2-Get-1-Free promotion too!