Winter Trip 2007

Ok now that I have the time to write something on our winter trip, I'll try to make it quick and painless. Hehe..
The first whole day was driving to San Francisco. Took us about 10 hours to get there. In SF, we went to Alcatraz, an old abandoned prison. It's a prison on an island, people used to believe that it's impossible to escape from the prison since you have to swim like 1.5 miles to get to the main land. Throughout the years, 6 people escaped. Two of them were found dead, 1 was sent back to the prison, other three were missing and never found. They shut it down (can't remember when) because of the high maintenance costs. For the movie fan, there's even a movie on Alcatraz; 'Escape from Alcatraz'. I love the tour.

1. The cell house

2. Bilik penjara. Hehe geli kan tengok. I was making my disgusted face.

3. On the 3rd day, before leaving SF, we went on cable car ride. It's one of the must-do-things in SF. Sejuknyee..

4. In front of rumah2 cun. You can see these in 'Full House' series. Ala yg ade Olsen twins tu.

I'll write more on Disneyland and Vegas soon.. Stay tune

Which Gucci?

I love these two bags. Both have the same price $475 Ouch! I couldn't decide which one to go with. Can someone please help me to pick one. Please..please..
1. I think I should get this one since the design is different from my other handbags. But I'm afraid I will look old.

2. I have a Coach bag that have pretty much the same design like this one. I think I should pick something different. But I kinda like this one better

Resepi Ayam Percik (My Own Version)

I just cooked ayam percik for dinner. Sangat2 la sedap hehehe. Here's the resepi (atas permintaan Janet)

Ingredients (for 1 whole chicken cut into 10-12 pieces):

1 whole onion (if the onion is small, use 1 1/2 onion)
3-4 cloves garlic
1/3 cup of coconut milk
1 inch ginger
2 lemon grass
1/2 inch galanghal (if you don't have this, just add some more lemon grass/ ginger)
1 tsp corriander
1/2 tsp cumin
some sambal olek (ikut citarasa)
1 can (8 oz) tomato sauce
some salt and brown sugar (ikut citarasa)
some rice flour

Methods:

1. Just blend everything except the rice flour. (Of course you need to cut the onion, garlic, lemon grass etc into small pieces first).

2. If you are not sure how much brown sugar/ salt/ sambal olek to put, make sure to taste it a little bit before you marinate the sauce with the chicken. It should taste sweet (and pedas, kalau nak pedas), masin sikit2 je.

3. Nak marinate overnight pun boleh, nak marinate for a few hours/ an hour pun boleh. Takde hal, but of course lagi lama marinate lagi sedap.

4. Then pour everything into the pot, wait until almost cook. (You can check the drumstick, if you see the blood coming out of its bone, that means you need another 10 mins. Anyway, just make sure it's not over cook)

5. Coat the baking pan with a layer of oil (vegetable oil/ olive oil), then put the chicken into a single pile. Make sure that you shake the extra sauce off the chicken before putting it on the baking pan.

6. Then broil the chicken in the oven until it turns brownish on both sides (kena terbalik2kan la)

7. Now for the extra sauce, just cook it on the stove some more. To make the sauce thick, add some rice flour (yg dah dilarutkan dlm air) bit by bit. Then stir the sauce. You can also add salt/ brown sugar/ sambal olek (ikut citarasa).

8. Then pour the sauce onto the ready to serve chicken.

Last tips: I usually serve this chicken with nasi oren. Baru sedap sikit mkn :)
Nasi oren tu, color dia oren because I put some paprika powder. Also add some margerin stick (biar jd ala2 nasi minyak), some chopped onions, cinnamon stick, bunga cengkih and bunga lawang, and some salt.

Winter Vacation 2007

Haiyos..just got back from my winter trip. It was pretty much like my previous trip in 2004. We went to the same places, San Francisco, LA and Vegas again. But this time, we focused on attractions yg tak pernah pegi lagi.
Zuhri and myself celebrated our 1st anniversary on the road. We didn't do much, just exchange gifts. He bought me 2 sets of sexy lingeries, hehe.. and I bought him an electrical shaver. But at LA outlet, zuhri wanted a leather jacket instead. So there goes my $200.
The LA outlet was superb with lots of high class shops, dior, armani X, gucci, D&G, etc..but semua2 mahal2 nak mati. One handbag costs at least $500- $2000. Huarggghhh...mana ade duit. I like this gucci bag but when I looked at the price tag $498. Waduh2....but I want it so bad. Tapi tak beli pun.
At Vegas I bought a red leather jacket from Wilson Leather. It's nice..I like the color, not so much on the design.
I really want to be on a trip where I can shop all day, all week provided that I have the money of course. Bila la nak jadi kaya and beli bag harga $1000 ni...waarrghhhh sedey!
I'll post the pics later.

yeaaaaaaaaahhh!!! akhirnyer aku da benti keje da pon....hihihihihh

Christmas Eve @ Raymond & Mary Daniel house

We went to Raymond house last night for their Christmas eve party. Raymond is Amin's senior officer at Cerner. He is also a Malaysian, used to live in Kelantan. He got married with Mary, a native American, and they recently got a baby boy.


Mary and Raymond with their son Brandon.

I unfortunately got sick since I went to the Eid Festival. I shouldn't have come because I don't want other kids and the baby to get sick either. But since I told Raymond that I would come and Amin wasn't interested to go by himself, I decided to go. But when I was there, I just looked at the baby and took pictures, I didn't dare to touch/held him.

The gathering was great. They catered halal food from a Malaysian couple. I actually made some karipap for the gathering, but it wasn't enough. In 2 hours all my karipap were gone! A few sisters hadn't get a chance to taste my karipap. So I think I'll make some more if we have another gathering.

Eid Festival @ Olathe, KS

The weather was terrible on that day. It was kinda like a small blizzard, so windy and snowing like crazy. But since I've participated, I gotta go. The festival took place in Olathe, KS which is 40 mins away from our house. But it took us an hour to get there because the traffic was quite slow. There were lotsa accidents involving trucks and vans along the way. We counted 5! Fortunately our car was heavy with foods and drinks, so alhamdulillah we got there safely.

There were not many people when we came. The other vendors were still setting up their booths, and some just arrived.


Our booth - Malaysian cafe.

Eventually, lotsa people came, mostly from Pakistani community. They estimated 2000 - 3000 will come, but only 400 people showed up. And half of them were teenagers, I guess they got nothing to do at home, so they came to hang out with their friends. They didn't buy anything much, just talking and watching the performances.

The other vendors that sold food, they are from restaurants. We were actually the only one who sold homemade food. So since they got some sort of reputation and people knew them well, they sold more food than us. Also, it was hard to sell Malaysian dishes because these people were not familiar with our food (we even gave them to sample our food!)


So basically it wasn't a successful event. I came home, rugi banyak :(

I spent $220 to buy all the stuffs, and I only got around $90 from the sale. But when I think about it, I knew other vendors from the restaurants also didn't make money at all. They had lotsa food left at the end (one of them had food for 35 people left), and they also had to pay for labor cost (because they brought their employees with them). It was like, semua org rugi la, so I didn't feel that terrible.

I was thinking about going to Alamo Bowl to watch PSU football game with Texas A&M on Dec 29. But since I didn't make money at all at the festival, I can't go anywhere, takde duit. Hmm tinggal angan2 saja la.