Favourite Idea

CNY Day 4 - Breakfast at Ikea. We were there at about 10 am and there were so many people having the same idea as us that we had difficulty finding a seat but we finally found 3 seats.

French toasts, sausages, baked beans - MYR3.80

Ikea Beef Meatballs MYR15 for 15

Cinnamon roll?

Deep fried popiah. Around MYR0.60 each?

Dancing Fish

CNY Day 3 Lunch - Met up with friends and their children to have lunch at Dancing Fish restaurant (which I have never been to) in Bangsar Shopping Centre. I have eaten deep fried fish like this before at the "House of Sundanese" restaurant in Suria, KLCC a long time ago before the restaurant closed down. One of our friends told us that this is the same restaurant, just renamed but I could not verify his claim.

We started off with emping chips / crackers made of melinjo or belinjo (gnetum gnemon) nut (MYR6.90) a portion. It tasted slightly bitter but was delicious! I forgot to take a photo of it. Free flow of Barley drink at MYR7.90 per pax. Fresh fruit juice costs MYR12 a glass.

Dancing Fish with Kerabu Mango (Mango Salad) - MYR47.90

Plain Dancing Fish - MYR42.90, it came with a very appetising spicy dip. The fish is so crispy that you could eat almost all of it, not oily at all.

Deep fried egg tofu - MYR12.90 - I just quickly took the photos because the children need to eat fast and so all the photos turned out like this, a hastily taken look.

My bowl of yellow rice - MYR4 each. The plain white rice was refillable at MYR3 per pax but not this yellow rice.

Half a fried chicken - MYR 26.90 - I like this chicken because it was not oily and was quite firm and dry.

Terung Belado (Brinjal) - MYR13.80 - I find this brinjal quite oily but I finished the last few pieces when nobody wanted them anymore.

Sup Buntut - Oxtail Soup I guess - MYR18.90 - I find the soup very salty but the one piece of oxtail I ate was quite tender.

Half Bebek Bali - deep fried duck - MYR35.90, I am not sure which part of the duck this was. I did not take a photo of this dish after we sent it back to be cut. Maybe I was too full by then because I find that this way of cooking the duck did not give justice to the tastiness of duck meat.

The meal came up to MYR396++ for 6 adults and 4 children inclusive of rice and drinks. Parking at BSC costs MYR3 for the 1st hour and MYR2 for each subsequent hour.

Dancing Fish CNY decor on the table

Chawan

CNY Day 3 - Breakfast at Chawan, Bangsar.

Muar Coffee - MYR4 - a refreshing aftertaste it said on the menu. Toast with butter and kaya - MYR3 and 2 Omega 3 eggs MYR3

My order - Soto Nasi Impit - MYR4 - I think this dish originates from Indonesia

Nasi Impit means Compressed Rice

Begedil Kentang made from potato

Nasi Impit (Compressed rice) - 4 cubes only - just nice for my breakfast. I love to eat nasi impit.

Chawan at Bangsar

BM Yam Rice

CNY Day 2: we went to Publika for an early lunch as the parking fee is a flat rate of MYR2 per entry during public holidays and weekends.

We ordered the BM Yam Rice with Pork Soup set meal (MYR10.90 nett) to share

I tried a bit of the coagulated pork blood this time - not much taste while I was chewing it but once I swallowed it, the aftertaste that hit me was bad, almost like smelly tofu (chow tofu). I like the sourish taste of this soup. This soup is very different from those pepper pork soup because it is sourish and not peppery.

The menu that attracted us to order this set

Pork meatballs, stomach, small intestines, coagulated pork blood and other ingredients to be included in the mixed pork soup. 

Looked like we were very early!

Luckily BM Yam Rice is open during cny day2

CNY Day 2 Cooking

On CNY Day 2, my spouse cooked dinner for his parents and I was there to help him. The dishes were:

Mushrooms and pork slices stir fry (cost price around MYR16)

Blanched vegetable (choy sum)

Steamed fish (siakap - barramundi or Asian Seabass) with tofu and minced lemongrass and ginger. We bought the fish from Aeon Supermarket for about MYR10.90 ish (by weight). I only remember to take a photo of the fish dish after we have started eating.

Choy kon (dried pak choy) soup with pork, red dates, chicken feet and dried mini scallops.

Here are the chicken feet in the soup

Ingredients:

Lemon grass, spring onion, ginger, coriander, red chilies, lime, tofu, red dates

Bunashimeji Mushroom - MYR9.30 for a twin pack

Special offer - pork loin for MYR6.20 only (MYR16 per kg)

Cooking process:

slice the pork into strips, marinate them with soy sauce and coat them with corn flour

Stir fry some garlic, add the pork strips, then add the mushroom. There is no need to add any water for there will be water coming out from the mushrooms as one cooked them.

Chopped up the lemon grass and ginger (for the fish)

Arrange them onto the fish before steaming.

Soak the dried pak choy (choy kon)

Boil the soaked dried pak choy (choy kon) so that they are softer and easier to wash to remove the huge amount of salt and sand on them.

Clean the chicken feet by rubbing them with salt before rinsing them a few times.

So after going through this, it further enforced my thinking that it is not worth putting in the effort to cook food for myself. I would rather eat "chap fan" (mixed rice) than to cook like this for one pax.

What did I do to help? 

Prepare the vegetable (choy sum) for blanching only. LOL!! :D

Vegetarian

On CNY Day 1, every year without fail, we will go to "bai nian" (pay CNY day 1 respect and wishes) to my in-laws and eat the first meal of the day which is a "vegetarian" meal with them.

Vegetarian meal eaten on CNY Day 1, cooked by my spouse after the reunion dinner. Ingredients: glass noodles, bean curd sheet (fupei), bean curd puffs (topok), black chinese mushroom, black wood ear fungus (muk ee),  button mushroom, straw mushroom, enoki mushroom (golden needle mushroom), flower buds of daylilies (golden needle  - 金針 - kam chan), chinese cabbage (wong nga pak/ napa cabbage) cooked with red yeast fermented bean curd (nam yu - 紅腐乳/南乳). "Vegetarian" in quotes because it has dried oyster (hou si) in it.

According to a story told to me, dried oyster is considered "vegetarian" because the goddess Guan Yin has allowed it. I have no comments about this story because I could not verify it of course.

Then this year, I spent 2 hours and 43 mins in the ER of a public hospital accompanying a relative who was having some unexplained discomfort, nothing life threatening fortunately. There were not many people, mainly parents with sick babies and children in the ER. The relative was referred to a specialist for follow up on Monday.

Late lunch was at Paparich. No photos as everyone was ravenous after the nearly 3 hours wait at the hospital. Well, looking at the amount of people eating there, Paparich just got richer.

Reunion Dinner

This year we decided not to eat out for reunion dinner because there are only 6 of us instead of 10 (a family of 4 cannot make it due to work commitment) and those reunion dinner sets offered by restaurants are for 10 pax. As I had to work until 4pm on that day, my spouse had to do all the cooking himself without me helping him but luckily his sister and her husband were there to help out a bit at 3pm after having an earlier reunion lunch with her in-laws who were kind enough to accommodate her by having a reunion lunch so that she could have a reunion dinner with her own family.

Yee Sang from Grand Imperial Restaurant bought by SIL

After mixing

Below are the dishes cooked by my spouse:

Wild Yam ( Huai Shan ) 淮山, pork ribs, red dates, goji, small dried scallops soup that was not cooked with any salt but is very flavourful with the goodness of the ingredients

Blanched Choy Sum vege with fried garlic garnishing on top.

Steamed Red Snapper with tofu covered by coriander. We bought this fish at Aeon Supermarket for MYR18.90 nett per fish (not by weight). The texture of the flesh is somewhat like sek pan (garoupa) fish which is not that smooth.

SIL cooked the chinese black mushroom with chicken below at home in the morning and brought it over to MIL's house before joining her in-laws for reunion lunch.

Black chinese mushroom with chicken by SIL

Steamed waxed sausages, The darker ones are liver sausages. The loh bak is made by SIL's MIL. I did not eat from this dish at all.

So that was the home-cooked reunion dinner I had with my in-laws at their house.

CNY wishes

Wishing all of you .....

大吉大利 (Dàjí dàlì) - 吉利 (jili) means auspicious, 吉(ji) means luck, 利 (li) profit so here's wishing you all great good luck and good profits.

三阳开泰 (Sān yáng kāi tài) means an auspicious beginning.  阳 (the sun) and 羊 (goat) sound the same and as 2015 is the year of the goat, this wish has become "三羊开泰" instead.

身体健康 (Shēntǐ jiànkāng) - wishing all of you good health

万事如意 (Wànshì rúyì) - 万 ten thousand, 事matters 如 as, 意 meaning so this means wishing everything goes your way.

心想事成 (Xīn xiǎng shì chéng) - 心 heart, 想 think, 事matters, 成 completed/done so here's wishing you all - may all your wishes come true (literal translation means whatever your heart thinks, it will be completed that way)

恭喜发财 (Gōngxǐ fācái) - 恭喜(wishing) 发(expand/grow) 财 (wealth) so wishing all of you great prosperity!

Many thanks to Wenn for the above red packets (红包).