Happy 14th

My eldest is celebrating her 14th birthday today. Happy birthday, Jan!!

My baby girl has all grown up! Strong minded, mild tempered and friendly young girl, her interests are in arts and music. The artistic lass in the house.

Early in the morning, I cooked chicken mee suah for her and family as breakfast. Added in 2 hard-boiled eggs for her. 

After breakfast, I started to make a chocolate birthday cake. Her favourite flavour (and the only flavour this mummy knows how to make!).

Before this MCO started, we have planned on where to celebrate her birthday. Her special request was dinner at BBQ King Seafood, Stapok but due to the lockdown, we could not do it.

So on her special day, we have a food delivery for dinner.  Food is from Sharing Planet Stapok.

Happy birthday, Jan. Best wishes always; stay healthy, happy and great forever.

We love

My family loves luncheon meat. I usually make them luncheon meat and egg sandwich for breakfast and snack box to schools. 

Our preferred brand is this. We only buy and eat this. 

Other than sandwich, sometimes I would cook the luncheon meat with big onion as a dish. It happened that I had some potatoes at home and I thought of putting everything together to make a tasty dish. 

Simple and quick dish so if you are run out of idea on what to cook or run out of time, this would be a great dish. 

Ingredients:
Luncheon meat, cubed
1 onion, minced

2 medium sized potatoes, peeled and cubed

White pepper powder

6 curry leaves for garnishing, fried slightly in oil and drained on kitchen towel

Methods:

1. In a pan, heat up about 4 tbsp cooking oil. Add in luncheon meat and onion, saute till cooked. 

2. Add in onion ans dashes of white pepper. Cooked till everything is cooked. 

3. Dish out and garnished with fried curry leaves. 

Another family favourite is mung bean soup.  Good to take on this hot season. I usually cook it once a week or at least every 2 weeks. 

I love to use slow cooker to cook my mung bean soup. I had a sliced pumpkin in my fridge and decided to use it up with the mung bean soup. A little variation from normal mung bean soup. Yet, it was good and nice to take, either warm or chilled. 

Ingredients:

Mung beans, soaked and refrigerate overnight

Pumpkin, sliced into smaller bites

Rock sugar

Salt

Methods:

1. Add about 2L water in slow cooker. Boiled the mung bean and pumpkin till soften. 

2. Add in rock sugar, based on your sweetness preference. 

3. Add pinch of salt and switch off the slow cooker. 

4. Serve warm directly or chilled in fridge before serving

More to come

It was Day 26. A Sunday. Easter Sunday. Woke up later than usual.

There was leftover chicken soup from dinner so I used it up for mee suah soup. That was our breakfast. 

Mee suah chicken soup

As for lunch, we had food delivery. This was our 2nd food delivery order. I expected more to come as I lost idea on what to cook. And kids started to complain on how much they missed this and that. Oh well, this mummy doesn't know how to cook everything that they want so we opt for food delivery instead. 

Ah Seng Hainanese chicken rice in Big Thumb Cafe. We ordered through FoodPanda. In less than 30 minutes the food was delivered to our gate. 

Steamed + fried chicken rice RM8.50

It was about time to enjoy a warm pack of chicken rice as it has been quite sometime since we ate Hainanese chicken rice. We do miss our usual chicken rice shop. 

Chilli dipping

That day I also placed a 2nd delivery order but not on food. It was on contact lenses. My disposable lenses ran out in few days time, so I ordered from an optical shop. Paid through internet banking and they delivered my contact lenses and solution the next day by Grab express. 

For Day 27 lunch, I ordered food delivery from FoodPanda as well. This time, we had Sugarbun's well known broasted chicken rice and nasi lemak classic.

In 30 minutes we got our warm lunch well packed in Sugarbun's disposable paper boxes. 

Support the local food industry by ordering and have the food delivered or self pick up!!! 

Life is pretty convenient with all the delivery services. No need to go out from my house. Some more hubby's car broke down few weeks ago. Cannot start. Need to wait for this MCO to be over to be able to call and get the car serviced. So for time being, hubby uses my car to go to work. He also did all the shopping whever he went to work. Tried to reduce the frequency of going out during this time. 

In the rice cooker

Some day we took it easy. Nothing extravagant but simple one pot meal.

Like one evening, my man was inspired to cook this one pot dish. Not sure what to call it but for the purpose of this post, it would be called pumpkin and Chinese sausage rice.

He watched a cooking video of this dish in social media and wanted to taste it. So one evening, the kitchen was all his.

Basically prepared and chopped the ingredients, which was tedious. Except for a peeled potato and handful of groundnuts, other chopped ingredients included a carrot, quarter pumpkin, some fresh shitake mushrooms and Chinese sausage.

In the rice cooker, add washed rice and then arrange the ingredients on top of the rice. Cooked as normal in rice cooker. Recommended to braise the groundnuts first if you prefer softer texture.

Another evening, we had homecooked bak kut teh. How we missed bkt as it has been a while we have that.

I used pork belly and pork ribs for my meat, add some dried beancurd sticks, tau pok, button mushrooms, garlic, and the ready packed bak kut teh herb, our dinner was ready and served warm on the table.

To complement the bkt, I also cooked some fragrant oil rice (yew fan). I fried 10 thinly sliced shallots in 3 tbsp cooking oil till fragrant. Then add in about 3 cups of washed rice and salt to taste. Stir fry and mix well for 2 to 3 minutes. Pour all the rice mixtures into rice cooker. Add water and cook the rice as normal.

Fragrant oil rice and bak kut teh ; they come hand in hand together. 

Want to try

I always want to try cooking this dish since tasted it few years ago. Dabai fried rice. 

I loved the taste of our local olive in the fried rice. It gave the rice a different taste and flavour. Not many people cook and sell this over here. The few places I knew have since closed down. 

It happened that I had some frozen dabai in the freezer, so being adventurous and bold, I tried cooking dabai fried rice during the MCO. 

It was actually very easy recipe with few ingredients only.  The star of this dish was this local black olive. I thawed the fruits since they were frozen. Once thawed, they will soften and ready to be eaten. 

I peeled off the flesh from its seed. Mine was red flesh. Another colour was yellow flesh. 

Then I chopped the flesh further with knife.  Tip from an Iban friend was to fry the flesh first. I only knew that after I cooked this so I will try to fry it first before adding to the rice next time. 

Ingredients:

Overnight rice

1 big onion, sliced

Half cup of anchovies

1 cup of dabai flesh

Salt

Chopped spring onion

Cooking oil

Methods:

1. Fry dabai flesh with little oil in pan. (optional) 

2. Mix rice with some salt. 

3. In a wok, heat up about 5 tbsp cooking oil. Saute onion until fragrant and browned. Add in anchovies and fry for a minute. 

4. Add in dabai and stir well. 

5. Add in rice and stir well to mix. 

6. Dish out and garnish with spring onion. 

To my doorstep

It was Day 22 and we had our first MCO food delivery that day 

Our breakfast was ready and sent to our house in the morning.

I ordered a day prior from this fb page. Basically Whatsapp-ed the guy on my order and transferred money to him and my order is delivered right to my doorstep. Literally speaking. But close enough. Right inside my porch, hanging at my gate. Contactless delivery. I didn't get to see who delivered to me!

They had more than 10 dishes to choose from and price was reasonable. What was great about it was it was free of delivery charges, as long as you spent RM20 and above.

Our breakfast that Wednesday morning was RM37.50. We were kind of missing such food after many days of cooking and eating at home.

Yue tiaw RM1.50 each

Lek tau suan RM4/pack

Curry puff RM3 each

Lo mai kai RM4

Bak chang RM4 each

Overall, they were good. I heated up the lek tau suan. Curry puff were both eaten by Jay but I did get to taste it. Spicy and had that curry flavour. Lo mai kai was alright but bak chang was sweeter rather than savoury. Not much filling in it. Yue tiaw was slightly hard so need to be soaked and eaten with lek tau suan. 

Recommended

Day 12

It was drizzle in the morning. After early morning grocery shopping in CS Mart, MJC around 8am, we drove to the back lane of the supermarket to head home. But my hubby saw this corner coffee shop, You & Tea and wondered what they had. 

A friend recommended this place before for its nice fried noodle and curry rice but I had never been here. So it was a chance to peek at what it sold that morning. 

Hubby went out to order breakfast while I stayed in the car. 

A young man mending the noodle stall. Kampua and kolo mee stall. They also had fried noodle that morning. 

After quite sometime, we went home with our breakfast. Kampua noodle and liver soup. 

Plain white and soy sauce kampua to choose from. The kampua tasted good enough, authentic Foochow kampua, according to my man. 

As yours truly doesn't fancy kampua, my man also bought 2 packs of fried kway teow. Jan and I took the kway teow. Could detect the wok hei of the noodle. Nicely fried, we liked it. 

Day 13

Around 8am, hubby and I went to check out on this food court in Stapok. Dai Pai Dong.

It used to be this place before it revamped and turned into a road side food court. We had never been here but it looked like to enjoy brisk business in the evening. 

It happened the same friend (who told me about You & Tea) posted on this place and its food promotion. So, that was how we ended up here on a Monday morning to check it out. 

That morning, not many stalls were opened. Only kolo mee, Sarawak laksa, fried banana stall and this ready packed food counter were operating. 

Let's check out what we bought from here. The surprise finding has got to be Hakka long beans and dried prawns rice. I didn't see anyone selling this. Used to eat that when my mum made it. 

Hakka chai kueh, RM7

Hakka long beans and dried prawns rice

RM10

Nasi lemak, RM10

Nasi lemak, RM10

Curry chicken rice (RM10) 

We bought a lot from Dai Pai Dong. That were our breakfast and lunch on Day 13.

Two places that we had never been to before and discovered interesting food during the MCO. Thanks to my friend for recommending them.