Home Cooked Chilli Sauce!

This is The-Family-Chili sauce. It is our Nasi Lemak chili, Wanton Mee and Fishball  Noodle Chili; also using it to stir-fry the Petai and prepare barbecue Stingray and Squids. I just have to record the recipe for future reference!

Mum will stock the cooked chili sauce in the refrigerator and constantly reminds us to use a clean dry spoon for the chili whenever we wanted some for dipping sauce. This will prevent spoiling the entire bottle of chili with impurities and moisture.

INGREDIENTS:
A) Dried Shrimps, 100g
     Shallots, 3 balls
     Cooking Oil, 3 Tbs
B) Dried Chili, 75g
     Chili Padi, 6-7 pieces
     Shallots, 100g
     Garlic, 4-5 cloves
     Buakalat, 4-5 balls
C) Assam, 150g - soak in 2 bowl of water
     Sugar, Salt

STEPS:
1. Soak the Assam piece in water.

2. Blend ingredient 'B' by grinding to a smooth paste in a blender/ or mortar and pestle.

3. In low heat, fry ingredient 'A' until fragrant (under the perfect heat, the oil should be foaming - as picture shown below)

4. Add ingredient 'B' and fry till fragrant, with the paste slightly dried up. Press the paste slightly with the spatula while frying to hastening the process. The entire frying process feels long and tiring on the arms, and should take about 15-20mins on the low fire.

5. When the paste is ready, pour in the Assam water gently. Taking care to leave the Assam seeds and residue behind, do not add them into the cooking wok.

6. Mix well. You should notice that oil now 'floats' on the surface and give the chili sauce a beautiful glaze! Add Sugar and Salt to taste.

7. Leave the cooked chili to cool off in the wok.

8. Bottle and store in the refrigerator.

Body Moisturizers for 2014

To effectively care for your skin, you don't need expensive products that you don't use often, but cheaper products working just as well if you apply them regularly. Here's 3 mid-range priced body moisturizing lotion which i received, and will be using this year.

1. Green Finger Intensely Hydrating Lotion (320ml) from Kimberly-Clark, the global leader of baby and child care brands. When most intense hydrating lotion tends to feel heavy and sticky, Green Finger feels thick but absorb well and fast into the skin! And it comes in light sweet fragrant of a body soap.

2. Milk Plus Calming Moisture Body Lotion (300ml) from the The Face Shop. The Korean lotion contains calming moisture complex and promises to help skin grow better - i didn't know about the latter, but the lotion surely relaxes the skin; if you know how it feels like! and distresses the mind with its light talcum powder fragrance.

3. Nivea Q10 Firming Body Lotion (400ml). This bottle has proven to pump up my skin from wrinkles when i was having obvious loosen skin from weight lost, many years back. I hasn't stick with the product after the skin recovers as i didn't quite enjoy its stronger floral sense; also the cream that feels heavy and took a while to be absorbed by the skin.

In the cabinets, there are also body butter/cream from the Body Shop that needs to be consumed this year. But, don't you finds them too thick and sticky for our temperate climate? So i am procrastinating...

New Shoots; New Year

It was gratified to climb up the hanging pots, and witness these new shoots of the Peppermint cuttings!

When i planted them on the Christmas morning, i thought they are not gonna make it because of the dry, non-absorbent nature of the earth. But they made it!

New Year Eve's Fireworks

It's been so many years since we gave up catching the New Year's Eve fireworks at the Marina South - some 8 years ago when we noticed Singapore's population starts burgeoning, that everywhere which used to be quiet became crowded, even at this wee hours.

I was still taken aback to see the entire roof top of the Marina Barrage filled with spectators for the midnight fireworks! Wow...! We even got to bump into some long-lost friends; which is nice :) I like this first picture taken of Ric and our friends in the shadow.

Watching the firework displays, we shared some quiet moments, crossing over to year 2014. "Happy New Year." We greeted one another shyly before parting to return home. It was a memorable night.

Beaujolais Reserve by Georges Duboeuf, 2003

Georges Duboeuf Beaujolais, 12.5% Alc.

I had wanted to save this colorful bottle for the occasion, but guessed the Beaujolais '03 has been laid down for too long in the fridge, for it was much lower on acidity - Beaujolais tend to be very light-bodied red wine, with high amount of acidity.

Marked by wine labels with use of colorful flowers images, the French wine from Les Vins Georges Duboeuf, a well-known wine merchant in France is famous for making Beaujolais wine.

The bottle still light-bodied; and we had preferred full-bodied reds.

Korean Fried Chicken at Seoul Xpress

2 pcs Fat Chicks Meat Meal, Spicy ($7.90)

We have never tasted Korean fried chicken, but if these at Seoul Xpress are anything to come by, i don't think we enjoyed it - the taste is heavy and way too salty for us.

We also didn't appreciate the thick flour that coated the chicks, and getting moisten with the savory bean sauce. Am quite desperately begging for some rice to go with this. Much as i hate wasting food, i couldn't finish the meal. The fries was great though.

Now, i miss the KFC.

2 pcs Fat Chicks Meat Meal, Garlic ($7.90)