My hubby didn’t get to eat Tang Yuen this year, I thought I have the children make it for him. However it has passed the Dong Zhi festival, so pre-made dough is not available. I will have to make the dough myself. It is really easy like making play doh. 🙂

I gave some to my MIL & FIL because they also didn’t have any this year. Hope they like it.

Recipe For The Dough
1 cup glutinous rice flour
½ cup boiled warm water
Natural food coloring of your choice. Emily said “No Blue!” I chose pink.

1. Sieve the flour onto a mix bowl
2. Mix the coloring with the warm water.
3. Slowly pour the warm water and mix it. I used a wooden spoon and later use hand to mix it into dough. Do not add too much water because it will be too sticky, hard to pick it for boiling.

Tang Yuen Balls
Palm Sugar
Glutinous Rice Dough

1. Cut the palm sugar to small piece
2. Take a small piece of dough, make it into a ball
3. Press the center with your thumb, add the piece of palm sugar and close it. Use both your palm to roll it into a ball again

Tang Yuen Syrup
Pandan Leaves
Ginger
Rock Sugar / Palm Sugar & Water

1. Boil the water with Pandan leaves with squash ginger
2. Add rock sugar to taste. I use 1.5 piece of rock sugar for ½ pot of water. If too sweet, just add water.

Last step, boiled another pot of water to cook the tang yuen. When the water boiled, put all the tang yuen balls inside. Once it is cooked, the tang yuen will float to the surface. Use a big metal sieve, pick up the tang yuen from boiling water, run it through cold water. This will give a good texture to the tang yuen. Put the tang yuen into the syrup water to boil in a low fire. Once boil, it is ready to serve.

Next week, I will make tang yuen with peanut jam fillings. Yummy :P~~~

I found this pasta place called Pasta De Waraku in Singapore. I must say it have the most variety of cooking pasta. I have thoughts of opening a business like that.

I ordered a Seafood Cabonara Pasta, the portion is very little for me but the bowl is huge. Bad choice of bowl selection because it makes the portion smaller. The taste, not bad but I still want MORE.

Besides that, it has kids menu. The kids menu is not bad. It has 2 selection of pasta with a juice, some sides with fried stuff and ice-cream. On top of that, they get a toy to goes with it. I believed it was SGD6.90++ for the meal. Emily was very happy with her doctor set and Tim got a car set.

If the portion is bigger, I will certainly go back there again.

The mystery gadget is an ice-cream maker without electricity called “Play & Freeze”. It is really cool because my children and I can make ice-cream at home. The problem is hard to find creamy milk in Malaysia, to really make creamy ice-cream. However, I only managed to get full cream fresh milk.

Here is the simple recipe.

For freezing process:
– Lots of Ice cubes, can get it from the local petrol station mart.
– ½ cup of rock salt.

For the ice-cream:
– 450ml of full cream milk
– 1 tablespoon of vanilla essence
– 1/3 cup + 2 tablespoon of sugar
– Dice strawberry

The play and freeze has 2 openings at each end. One end, I placed the ice and rock salt. The rock salt will maintain the ice freezing point to freeze the ice-cream. The other end, you put the mix the above ingredients. After that it is playtime, roll it, kick it and shake it. Play it for about 10 minutes then open up and stir it a little with a spoon. Play for another 10 minutes, you should get a nice ice-cream.

Tada….simply delicious ice-cream. I even tried to replace vanilla and strawberry with 1 bottle of vitagen. The children love it. We have more homemade ice-cream with this gadget.

Would you eat from a toilet bowl? I believed not. On mother’s day, we went to TBowl restaurant where almost everything is in toilet bowl. Chairs are toilet bowl and table are sinks with a glass top. Food served is in the toilet bowl. The taste of the food was not bad but nothing special. The only thing that is special about this place is the toilet bowl deco concept.

Tim wanted to order ice-cream that was shaped like a piece of shit. Sorry no pictures as I ordered banana split instead. And thank goodness, my drinks came in normal glass.

I saw a lady who couldn’t accept this concept. She asked the waitress to remove the toilet bowl. It was a hot soup noodle and after many tries, the waitress failed. In the end, she had no choice but ate from it.

If you are down in Penang, you must try this.

Flowers from hubby & children:

I had a German visitor last week. Before he came, he messaged me to prepare his visit. Oh well, I took the opportunity to ask him to bring some German chocolates. I adore German chocolates as they have alcohol or liquor in it. It is much creamier and melts in your mouth.

He didn’t just bring one bar of chocolate, he brought a bunch. How lovely of him. Our team certainly enjoys it. When we left the meeting room, there were only a few left. Even that didn’t last very long.

Hehehe…I ate so much of it and I believed I need some acne treatments to recover.

My children love to eat sorbet type ice-cream. They called them ice ice-cream. I got a mini ice cream tray from Daiso in KL. I thought Emily and Timothy how to make ice-cream. You can practically choose any juice for the ice-cream. I bought a big pack of Vitagen for them to make ice-cream. They like it very much.

Now I can turn juice into ice-cream for them to eat. However they know that too much ice-cream is not good for them. I only allowed them to have it once a week or every other week. Try it, it is fun especially they make it on their own.

My children love to go supper or maybe they just want to “sau kai” meaning “don’t want to stay at home”. Anyway, they always want me to bring them to mamak stall. Here in Penang, we have lots of indoor mamak place because famous for nasi kandar stall. Most of them are 24 hours and some are air condition like Kayu.

My children love the Roti Tisu from Kayu. It is huge and is required to be served on 3 plates. It is crispy and sweet, that is why they love it. Look here if you do not know what Roti Tisu is:

Once it a while, it is good to have supper.

It happens in Kuala Lumpur Mid Valley. My children love to ask me to treat them ice-cream. By the way they don’t regard ice-cream as junk food. Just to see them grin from ear to ear, I treat them Gelato Fruity.

I kind of like their customer service. When you approached the counter, the moment you point to the ice-cream, they will scoop a little with their tiny spoon and let you taste it. It is done without asking. My children have fun with it because they can taste it before ordering.

Both of them got a big huge scoop on the little cone. Yes the ice-cream is huge, like a double scoop. They also like to sit on those high chairs where they can swing around.

I turned around and Timothy was upset. His scoop of ice-cream felt on to the ground. I am not sure how he did it but in his hand was just an empty cone. Poor him! I took his cone and when back to the counter. I am not sure whether I can ask for a replacement or not. I was ready to pay for it. Guess what, they replaced it for free and with the same amount of ice-cream. I was amazed! I will certainly go back because of their customer service and their ice-cream is delicious too.

Tim loves this and so do I. It is the Japanese Green soy bean called Edamame. I got a pack from Jusco and I usually steam it when I want some snacks to chew on. Another great snack that my family has is sweet corn. Tim and Emily love getting those little corns out from the cob. It is another healthy way to snack. It is definately better than fries, chips or sweets.

Now Emily discovered prunes from SunSweet. After she takes it, her stool becomes soft.

Tim is a fan of mooncake, fortunately it is once a year kind of festival. The way Tim eats mooncake, I probably will go bankrupt soon. He can finished one mooncake all by himself. Mooncakes are not what it used to be. I am still a fan of the traditional mooncakes. Now mooncakes comes in many colors and very costly. I remember I used to buy it for half the price.

A few weeks back, I was shopping at Jusco with Tim and Emily. Tim saw mooncakes and his eyes were big. He kept asking me to buy. I asked him what he wants as there are so many types to choose from. In Jusco, the mooncake’s stalls were setup in rows. Each brand has a menu. Tim picked up the menu and scanned through. He went to the next and the next because he couldn’t find what he wanted. Finally found one stall which have his type but the promoter was nowhere to be found. He was very upset.

He went to another stall to scan the menu again. After the third stall, he found another of his choice. However, the promoter said that it ran out of stock. Tim was frustrated. By now he scanned through all the stalls but none avail. Anyway we waited for the MIA promoter to return, she did and Tim was happy.

As for Emily, she told me that she wanted the purple yam mooncake and got what she wants. Simple. Now guess what mooncake Tim wanted? I think only 2 brands has it.

Tim was looking for is the dragon fruit mooncake, dark pink in the inside.