How I wish Sunday is truly a day of rest. Just read on below for my last Sunday's time table's like and you tell me if it's really that?

7.00am : Alarm rings and I snooze max till 730am.

7.30am : Feeds, clean Hollie

7.45 : Bathes, gets dress for Mass

8.15am : Hangs on tight/continue sleeping while J drives like a mad man since we're late for mass Travel to STM for Mass

8.30am : Sunday Mass

9.40am : Travels home/Breakfast (Cooked french toast, cocktail sausages & coffee last Sunday)

10.30am : Cleans Hollie's crate/Bring her to the padang for some stretching

1130am: Cleans chicken (that's almost 45 mins to an hour)/Prepare other ingredient for stew/Cook stew/Clean up.

1.00pm : Helps J with preparing the week's vegetables blending for the doggies/Clean up.

2.30pm : Late lunch since had heavy breakfast rather late/Peeled/Juiced 1 kiwi & 3 oranges for the Humans.
4.00pm : Surfed the internet/FB/FV/Removed prawns from freezer to defrost.

4.45pm : Tried to nap but ended up tossing and turning.
5.45pm : Clean prawns, prepare ingredients, cook Oats Butter Prawns, clean up.
6.30pm : Feeds/Cleans Hollie's crate/Bring her to the padang for some stretching
7.30pm : Clean room.
8.30pm : Dinner
9.30pm : Walked Rex as J needed to work
10.00pm : Mandi time
10.30pm : Dead bone-tired & nodding off on the bed!

Really, how do people with kids and no domestic help do it? And I am only cleaning up ONE room and still have a basketful of clothes not folded. Urrggghh...the perils of housework. Cannot imagine what it will be like when we move in to our own home. Can die. Thank goodness it is colleague's turn to drive to work this week. I can catch up with snooze time to and fro work :p

Need to think of ways to reduce work or maybe just do all the housework on Saturdays? The thing is that I was out late morning/afternoon with PS and a spate of grocery shopping at night. Any suggestions? Maybe I need to load up with energy boosters like B pollen? How do you guys manage it?

Note : J  was also on his feet the whole day bathing the other 2 dogs and preparing the doggies weekly food, helping out with the clean up in the kitchen, ironing and worked after dinner.

JulieCat had cooked lasagna with home made pasta sheets and I quickly self invite for lunch/her attempt to tempt me away from my diet plans and graciously extended a lunch invitation to me. It was yummy and damn sinful. Covered with loads and loads of cream and cheese. The pasta sheet was also nicer than those store bougt type (Psst JulieCat...sudah banyak kilat kasut, now where's my share of frozen home made pasta sheets? Hehe) Had to stop her when she tried to serve me the third serving! Thanks JulieCat for a yummy lunch. So when is our next date? ; p

Anyways, this post is not about the sinful-lunch-that-I-consumed-during-diet-week, but rather the journey to JulieCat's house. Nope, I didn't get lost thanks to the GPS and JulieCat coming out to the main road to guide me. Rather, it was the journey there.

You see, she stays in a rather secluded part of Shah Alam and as I was driving there, could not help to think if I was getting lost. Of course, GPS said no. It was just TREES and TREES and oh, small hills every turn I took on the road. So much so that handphone/satelite connection keeps fluctuating on this route. It reminded me of those 80's Salem advertisements that you see on TV, as if I was in deep San Ba in some ulu part of the forest :p

Boy, was I relieved when I saw civilisation houses ; )

Note : Photos taken using my E71 on my way home from JulieCat's house.

Had a craving for something soupy, my favourite kind of dish! Hehe. Roped in helped from MamaFiza on googling for a good soup recipe online and found this. Looked through the recipe just to check through the ingredients - a variety of spice but easily attainable (at least that was what I thought).

Who would have known that marjoram is so NOT easy to find??!! Went to at least 4 supermarts/hypermarts - Carrefour, Jusco, Giant & Cold Storage but none to be found. Aarrghhh, so much for wanting to follow the recipe to the T. So I have to BAU improvise. Can't really remember what I replaced them with, just smelling and adding it to the pot as I go along :p

Loved the reddish colour of the soup and the many many carrots I thrown in. Toasted 3 slices of bread and dipped it into the thick, sourish, beefy soup and I was in heaven. Just my choice of dinner on a cold rainy night. :) While J had his with white rice.

And what did J had to say about it when prodded on what he thought about the soup? Well, he generally does not like food with sourish base, so suffice to say this won't make it to the dinner table if it's just gona be him and me for dinner :p

Wow, just realised that I've not updated my blog for almost a month now. Me bad! Anyways, here's another cooking post. Enjoy :)

I very seldom try out new recipes for Chinese style cuisine. Of course the normal sweet sour chicken, black pepper chicken dishes etc does not count. No particular reason, could be just that I was unconciously not trying them out as J is quite the fussy eater not too adventurous with his food and as I am trying to control my diet, would not want to be the lone ranger consuming whole dishes on my own. Also, Chinese cuisine is easily obtained when we're in the mood for chinese food and most of the time at reasonable prices too.

Nevertheless as I do blog hop quite a bit at foodie blogs, I do get attracted to the yummylicious photos that they post. So I decided to try out one of my favourites, Braised Soy Sauce Chicken/Lou Kai/See Yau Kai. Got the recipe from here and came siap with recipe for the dipping garlic and ginger sauce. Real easy peasy though I did have a hard time looking for 5 spice powder. Did not tell J what I was cooking nor allowed him near the stove area as I think the dish doesn't look all that appetising to the non-Chinese, being all black looking and all :p

                         

I also tried out another dish, Malaysian Butter Prawn; recipe also googled out from the internet/blog. Finished off with the normal stir fried kangkung belacan for our vege serving (No photos of this as it is really a simple dish consisting ingredients such as garlics, onions, blended dried chili, belacan, some oyster sauce & kangkung).

Now for the verdict...the Lou Kai was yummylicious, even I must say so myself :p Will add in hard boil egg the next time I try this recipe to get my share of those Lou Kai Tan which you see at the herbal shops in the shopping malls.

As for the butter prawns, I did not have a hand whisk and I used a fork as a replacement, the egg mixture turned up way too big (as seen above) when it should have looked like this...

J had no complaints though, and kept asking for more servings of both Lou Kai and the Butter Prawns & egg mixture. That is his way of showing that he likes the dish without having to compliment me :p Next time will make sure I have a hand whisk.

Both dishes are easy to cook with easily attainable ingredients. Will definitely try them out again.

Do you have any Chinese dishes recommendation for me to try out? Nothing too herbal-ish or funny looking to the non-natives though :p Next on my list for prawns will be Fried Prawns in Oats. Now, to google the recipe out.

P/s : Photo quality is rather bad, taken from my Nokia E71 as the D60's camera was flat. Boohoo!