This year, for our CNY reunion dinner, I decided to slave in the kitchen this year instead of subjecting ourselves to those rip-off festive restaurant prices. My dishes are very simple so it’s not too hard to whip up something pretty quickly.

Stirfried Kailan with Crispy Scallop Bits

Stir-fried Kai-lan (Chinese kale) is a common everyday dish. I merely funky-ed it up with a topping of crispy dried scallop bits. Surprisingly my say-no-to-veggie brood loved this .

Claypot Pork Ribs and Tofu

We’re big fans of Claypot Tofu (recipe here) and I cook this quite often for regular meals. Here I used pork ribs with carrot flowers and wolfberries and turned it into something special.

Spicy Thai-style Crispy Chicken

I topped my easy-peasy and very popular Thai-style Crispy Chicken (recipe here) with shredded carrots, cucumbers and onions.

Braised Mushrooms with Phoenix Claws

Don’t jump now. Phoenix claws are actually just plain old chicken feet.

Lotus Root Soup with Japanese Baby Scallops

This turned out so sweet and flavorful I surprised even myself .

You’ll agree there’s nothing very fattening here so no need for us to start reading phentermine reviews ! In fact, I cooked everything here with fresh ingredients and very little sodium, practically no sugar or added MSG.

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The week before Christmas, we went on a beach vacation to Penang where we stayed at the funky new Hard Rock Hotel. We set out at the unearthly hour of 4am. Just before sunrise, we were passing by Ipoh and decided to turn into town to have a bit of breakfast.

It’s amazing how we managed to locate Foh San so quickly and in complete darkness too without getting lost like we usually do. I’m pretty sure it was a fluke . But yeah, the old crowded Foh San where it was impossible to get a table, is now housed in a new building which is spacious and bright and where you can actually eat without having someone hit your elbow and shove the food right down your spine.

So we ordered our usual favorite dimsum. You can see we’re  not that adventurous with ordering all the other types of dimsum. We just pretty much stick to what we like.

And the Century Egg Porridge with minced pork is one of our favorites. Now it comes in a claypot big enough to feed 3 or 4. My only complaint is that the century egg was hard, not soft and melt in the mouth as it’s supposed to be.

We had to use the bathrooms before continuing our journey and we were lucky it’s still pretty new and fairly clean. Not sure if they have hand dryers or tissue dispensers, we were too sleepy to notice .

One Sunday afternoon, we were in the vicinity of Sri Hartamas and ended up at Soho KL tucked away in a swanky part of town. After walking around undecided, we finally settled on Ole-Ole Bali, an Balinese (Indonesian) restaurant with both an indoor and an al fresco dining area. We chose to sit outside as only a couple of tables were occupied and there didn’t seem to be any smokers.

We ordered this Nasi Campur Ole Ole (Mixed Rice, literally) which comes with various accompaniments like shrimp, squid, chicken on a lemongrass stick, stir-fried veggie, salad and assorted sauces. Interesting and quite tasty.

The Ole-Ole Trio was also quite interesting with chicken on lemongrass sticks, crispy deep-fried shrimp, barbecued chicken wings, sliced cucumbers, tartar sauce and chilly sauces.

My son, who prefers Western food, ordered the next best thing, the BBQ Combo with chicken and lamb which turned out not to taste very Western after all. The lamb was tough and he didn’t like the taste of the sauce.

My other Western food lover decided the safest bet would be the more familiar-sounding Chicken and Chips. It tasted okay, just like any ordinary deep-fried chicken chop.

The food is interesting and presentation is great. The way we were eating, it was a good thing we decided to share our orders or we might’ve needed something akin to an rv towing service to get out of our seats. Indeed we would’ve been able to eat more if the food hadn’t been so overly greasy and salty. You know how I feel about that. I wouldn’t be in any hurry to go back again unless my bank account is overflowing .

We were on vacation in Penang last week (read and see the photos here, here and here) and decided to check out Strada, a small restaurant tucked in a row of shophouses in busy Pulau Tikus. We’d read good online reviews about this place and thought, why not, since the set lunches seem reasonably priced.

The sets come with either soup of the day, which was Pumpkin Soup that day, or salad. Unfortunately the Pumpkin Soup was sweet and bland (if you can imagine that!) and none of us finished up our order, which is something we hardly ever do since my philosophy is not to waste food.

The salad came with the default dressing which means we didn’t get to choose our favorite dressing.

The Chicken Chop with Oriental Sauce was nothing to shout about either. The sauce was more like a pizza base.

I hate to say this but this Spaghetti alla Vongole was really hard to swallow. The presentation was great so I guess I set my expectations too high. It was bland (which is better than too salty, I guess) and the sauce was like some Chinese gravy?

The Salmon Fish and Chips was, by far, the best thing we had there though the portion was rather skimpy.

It’s a shame the quality of Strada’s food didn’t live up to the nice ambience of the restaurant. I guess if you don’t try it, you’ll never know, which also confirms my philosophy of not chasing down food no matter how good the reviews are made to sound.

On the day we were there for lunch, only a couple of other tables were occupied. There was a small family and 3 ladies discussing mortgage protection insurance rates.

I had some uncooked beef balls left over from our spaghetti lunch which I refrigerated overnight. The next day, I decided to try something different with them.

For these beef balls, I used very simple ingredients. Again I don’t really see the need to measure the ingredients.

• ground beef
• cornflour
• breadcrumbs
• paprika
• salt and pepper

Simply mix the ground beef with corn flour, breadcrumbs and seasoning of salt and pepper. Stir well till everything comes together. Then heap a spoonful onto my palm and roll them into balls. One of the easiest jobs in the world .

I keep the seasoning pretty basic because I want the beef balls to complement (not overpower) the spaghetti sauce, or whatever I pair them with.

In a pan with a fair amount of oil on high heat, I drop in the beef balls and let them fry for about 10 minutes before removing to a plate lined with paper towels to soak up the excess oil.

To my surprise, the fried beef balls turned out to be even more of a hit than the spaghetti ones . Crispy on the outside, soft on the inside. I served them with fried egg over instant noodles for a quick, lazy lunch.