Couscous recipe (10 min meal)

Before this, I never knew there was a food call couscous, I learn it from a TV show hosted by Jamie Oliver. Couscous (/ˈkʊskʊs/ or /ˈkuːskuːs/) is a traditional North African dish of semolina (granules of durum wheat) which is cooked by steaming. [1] It is actually something like rice as a staple food, you can serve with meat or vegetables. I am surprised by how fast it can be cooked. So I decided to give it a try. It is really easy and fast. So now I share it here with everybody, hope you will like it too.

Ingredient 

Couscous (I found it at Aeon big, I'm not sure other places carry this item or not)

Vegetable (Any vegetables, I use my left over vegetables.)

OR

Meat (Any meat, you can use any leftover stew, or you can make a new one)

Garlic 2 cloves

Lemon juice

Salt and Pepper

How easy is it?

1. Take the couscous, measure it according to the chart below:

1/2 cup          -serve 2 persons

1 cup             -serve 4 persons

The measurement is always correct. Pour the couscous into a bowl, add in the twice amount of the hot water into the couscous. eg: 1 cup of hot water into 1/2 cup of couscous. Add in 1 cloves of garlic, salt and pepper. Cover it up with a cover/lid or plate. Wait for 10 min.

2. Meanwhile, add the hot water into the rice cooker and put your leftover to steam. Well, since I don't have any leftover, so I make a new one. I steam the green beans with garlic, oyster sauce and a little bit of the soy sauce. 

3. Fluff the couscous with a fork after 10 minutes. Then serve with any dishes that you like.

There you go, my dinner for today. Opps! i add in 1 egg too when i steam the green bean. Yummy!

Rice cooker recipe

Since I'm not currently staying at my house, and all I got in this temporary house kitchen is a rice cooker. So I'm gonna use it to cook my dinner. Today I'm going to cook is a all in one pot dinner. Using only the rice cooker, simple ingredient, and you will have a complete balance meal. You will get the balance food pyramid in your dinner (Protein, greens and carbohydrate).

As usual here are the ingredients:

Rice
Spinach
Bean sprout
Pea shoots
Chicken fillet
2 eggs
Deep fried bean curd or we call Tou Fu Pok

Seasoning
Oyster sauce
Soy sauce
Salt
Pepper
Peanut oil or sesame oil


1. Marinate the chicken fillet with a little bit of oil, oyster sauce, soy sauce, salt and pepper. No measurement needed, just follow your instinct.

2. Pour 4-5 cups of water in the rice cooker, add in some salt & oil then bring it to boil. We need to cook the vegetable one by one, so any sequence will do. I boil the bean sprout, following by the pea shoot, last i put the spinach. When all the vegetable is ready, put it aside for later used.

3. Steam the chicken with the deep fried bean curd. I add in a little bit of water to make sure the bean curd has enough of the liquid to absorb. Steam it for about 10-15 minutes or as the chicken cooked.

4. Wash your pot, then is time to cook the rice. Depends on how much rice you want to eat, so you cook what ever quantity that you want. Just about 5 minutes before the rice cooked, put it all the vegetables and the chicken around the pot. Leave a space in the middle of the pot. Crack in 1 or 2 eggs in the middle, put the lid on and wait for the rice to be cooked. After the mode change to keep warm, let it set for awhile just to make sure the eggs are cooked. There you go a complete dinner for 2 or 3 persons. I prefer to eat the chicken separately so I didn't add them in.

Brown Sugar Body Scrub

It is time to pamper your skin with the scrub to exfoliate all the dead cells and encourage the new cell production. Usually the scrub in the market is quite expensive and it is not so natural. So what I do, i made myself a natural scrub. The ingredient is easy, and all you need to do is just mix it up. So here we go, the brown sugar body scrub.

Ingredient
1/2 cup of brown sugar (I don't have a measuring cup, so I use 8 tablespoons.)
3 tablespoons of oil (you can use any oil: olive, almond, coconut, baby oil etc.)
2 tablespoons of honey
A bit of the lemon zest or lemon juice.

I don't actually have a grater in my kitchen, so i go for the traditional way- chopped. Chop the lemon zest until you think it is small enough. I'm not using lemon juice as I don't want my scrub to be watery and my baby oil is with lavender scent. So i think lemon zest will be good enough. 

Next, all you need to do is mixing all the ingredients together, then your natural body scrub is ready to be used!

Then you keep the scrub in a proper container, with cap of course. It can be stored for 1 week, or if you keep it in the fridge it can actually last you longer. 

雨天

雨天

很多人告诉我他不喜欢雨天， 觉得雨天很麻烦， 要撑伞， 衣服都不能晒干，身上的衣服鞋子全都被雨水弄得湿湿的。尤其是穿着高跟鞋迷你裙的女生， 双脚都被雨水弄脏了，高跟鞋都湿透了， 好 狼狈啊！而我， 却对雨天有一种特别的感觉。 我觉得雨天让我感觉好舒服， 凉风习习， 雨声也特别的好听。

我特别喜欢在雨天的时候， 走到屋檐下， 看着天上的 云朵。 雨天的天空虽然不是彩色的， 而是灰灰白白的， 可是灰白也很配不是吗？天上的云，随着风， 慢慢的飘着， 随风摇摆着， 多么美的景色啊！云是一种大自然现象， 有地面上的水， 蒸发到天上， 然后它们团结一起形成了云，到最后云也变回了雨， 重新回到这片土地上。 云给我的感觉就和人类一样。 大地孕育了人类， 让人类生存在这片土地上， 让人类有机会学习，生存，成长， 成家立业， 到最后变老了， 死了， 也是一样回到大地的怀抱。这就是大自然啊！

望着天上的云朵，看着雨水慢慢的滴落到地面， 滋润着大地，好美丽的一幅画啊！ 习习的凉风会把你的坏心情， 忧虑和压力全部都吹走。 随着而来的， 是青草的味道， 香香的清新的， 大自然的味道。那是多么的纯洁， 一点杂质都没有。 城市里肮脏的空气， 顿时变得很清新， 很干净了。

雨天对我来说就是一个好天气， 它给我动力， 它给我灵感， 它让我不再感觉烦恼。
期待着下一个雨天。。。

Rainy day
There are a lot of people telling me that they don’t like rainy day. Rainy day is so troublesome, all the laundry couldn’t dry, they need to take umbrella if they want to go out, shoes will become wet if they walk on the street and etc. Especially for the office or young lady who wear high heel shoe and mini skirt, their shoes will become all wet and it is very difficult for them to walk in the middle of the rain. For me, I think rainy day gives me a special feeling. I like a rainy day, it can make me feel relaxed and comfortable. Especially with the wind and the raining sound, it is the best orchestra in the world.

I like to go under the eaves, watching the beautiful color of the sky. Many people think that the sky during rainy day is just grey and white, but don’t you think that they actually match very well? The cloud is such a nice nature process, from the water on the earth, evaporates into the sky, gather together to become the clouds and then fall back to the earth again. It is just like human beings, the earth breeds the human; let us have the chance to live, to learn. Then we get old and we die, but eventually we go back to the earth at last. That is the nature of everything.

Looking to the sky, watching the rain drop slowly and moisturize the land, it is such a beautiful picture. The wind is so nice to blow all you bad mood, stress and anxious feeling, and then it will bring the smell of nature, the greenish smell of the plant, a very clear environment. All those dirty air in the city will be all gone, the air become so clean and clear.

For me, rainy day brings energy to me, it inspired me and it makes me feel relax.
I am waiting for the next rainy day to come… 

Unbake Cheese Cake Making

Today I'm trying to make an unbake cup cheese cake which I saw from Facebook. It is a non-baker, no measurement required recipe, and it ends up really great!

Here are the ingredients:

1. Tataru Cream Cheese (You can use any cream cheese)
2. Sweeten condensed milk about half of a tin (depends on how sweet you would like it to be)
3. Biscuit (it can be chipsmore, oreo, Marie etc.)

Steps:

1. Crush the biscuit to small pieces. If you like to have some crunchy biscuit when you eat it, you can leave some in the big chuck. Then set aside.
2. Cream cheese puts it at room temperature until soften. Mix with the Sweeten condensed milk until smooth. (For me, I don't have the mixer to mix it, so I use the fork instead. That's why it was not so smooth.)
3. Then you just have to put 1 layer of cheese, 1 layer of biscuit until your bowl full.
4. Put in the fridge for at least 6 hours for the cheese to set. 

* You can actually add in a lot of things that you like. For me, I just add a little bit of the Nestum oat on top of the cake because I like it. You can add in lemon juice, chocolate powder or other thing as your preference.

There you go, my tasty Cheese Cake.

Review: MRM CLA 1250

After I read so much about the benefits of CLA, I decided to buy some and try it out. Since the Malaysia's CLA is so expensive for me, so I google online to search for another alternative. Then I found this website Bodybuilding from US. The product is quite cheap, and guess what? The CLA were on promotion!! Buy 2 Free 1 for only USD 44 = RM 143 exclude postage. So without delay, I quickly bought the CLA with this promotion. They are sending the product by USPS and the delivering estimated to reach Malaysia in 1 months time. What is surprising me is that they actually took less than 1 month to reach Malaysia, they reached in about 2 weeks time. Nice and Fast!



The CLA is in the softgel capsule, quite big in size. For the people who can hardly swallow big capsule, will have difficulty to swallow these huge capsules. So what to do? I bought it and I squeeze the oil out without swallowing the capsules. Although some people might think that it is a waste because some of the oil will still stick on the capsule, I'm not going to swallow the empty capsule.


As usual, supplement needs to take time for you to feel the effects. So I've been taking the CLA for 3 months from now. I took 4 capsules a day half an hour before food. For people who don't know what is the function of CLA, here are some of the major functions:

• Suppress appetite
• Break-down stubborn fat
• Good oil for skin

It actually do help me to suppress appetite. I don't feel hungry in the afternoon and night time, so eventually I ate lesser. In breakdown stubborn fat wise, I do feel my thigh & hip become smaller. I really can see the effect as my pants become loose now. Without exercise, I lost around 2kg in 3 months, I eat like usual, not dieting. Too bad that I didn't measure my thigh & hip before I started to take CLA. I am very happy with the results. I will definitely continue to take the CLA until I reach my targeted weight.

Review: Groupon Gladys Skin Solution Kepong

Last month I bought a voucher from Groupon.com.my  for the hair & scalp treatment + hydrating facial + cut + wash + blow for only RM 48. Since there are 4 days Raya holidays, so I made my reservation and I'm going to do this on Friday, 2nd day of Raya. Unfortunately, for this great deal, a lot of people bought the voucher and made the reservation earlier than me, so I only able to made the reservation for facial. The person in changed say that I can claim it separately. So i had to go twice for my facial and hair treatment.

I went to this Gladys Skin Solution on Friday morning 11.30am, as I understand they will only be open by 11am. So I assumed that I'm the first customer. Well the decoration and the environment are quite good I can say. There is a very nice information table, with all the information or brochures just beside the entrance.

Then when you sit down on the sofa, the staff/ beautician will make you the flower tea (chrysanthemum with dates) for you to relax and calm down before you start the facial treatment. Very delicate glass and pot doesn't it? While you are enjoying your tea, you will need to fill in a form, just a simple one for their reference. They will be also asking you about your lifestyle and your concern. So for me, my main concern is my stubborn blackheads. Hopefully she can help me to get rid of it. 

 The facial room is quite big, with air con, and all the product will be setting up beside the bed. So the beautician will ask you to change the clothes 1st, they will provide you the robe to change.

After all set, the beautician will start the facial treatment and she will explain step by steps what she is going to do. That's the part I like the most as I like a knowledgeable beautician to explain to me all the things they are doing. The whole process last for about 1 hour but i top up RM 50 to do a full facial which includes the hyaluronic acid serum and a complete cleansing for blackheads. So the facial last for 2 hours including neck and shoulder massage. The massage is really nice as they used essence oil with the aroma of YlangYlang and rose I think. 

For my blackheads, I don't think it is a complete blackhead removal. The beautician told me that 80% of the blackheads are gone, left 20% which are very stubborn and difficult to remove. But from what I see, 20 % are gone while 80% is still there. I didn't satisfy with the result of this blackhead removal. Since I already told her that I main concern is the blackheads, doesn't she suppose to really clean it out for me?

Pros

Nice service

Friendly staff

Relax environment

Cons

Not focusing on my concern (blackheads)

Normal Price expensive

Review: Johnson Body Care Oxygen Fresh Gel Lotion

Today I saw a post on Freebiesland.com.my regarding "Guardian: Free Johnson’s Body Care Discount Voucher Giveaway!!". 

The guardian is giving out RM 3 discount voucher for the Johnson's Body Care range product. All you need to do is to like Johnson's Facebook page. Then you can print out the voucher and redeem it at any Guardian outlet. 

So I print out the voucher and redeem it at the nearest Guardian stores. The choices you can choose are:

• Johnson’s Body Care Oxygen Fresh Gel Lotion
• Johnson’s Body Care 24 Hours Lasting Moisture Lotion
• Johnson’s Body Care Naturally White Lotion
• Johnson’s Body Care Melt Away Stress Lotion

The others I've tried before, so this time I'm gonna try the new Oxygen Fresh Gel Lotion. So there is my 100ml Oxygen Fresh Gel Lotion with original price RM 7.20, after discount RM 3 become RM 4.20.

The packaging seems very nice, with light blue color (which is my favorite) and cute small bottle. It states there that it contains ocean minerals, coralline extracts & aqua essences, I think that's why they are using a blue color bottle. When I pour it out, it is a bit watery and milky texture I can say.  It really looks like the facial serum texture i apply on my face....

The smell is really nice, as it says ocean smells. You can feel the aqua smells. Normally, when we apply lotion, it will be oily at first. But for this Oxygen Fresh, you won't feel oily at all!! It will be absorbed once you apply it and then you will feel your hand is so smooth and moisturized. I really like this lotion, smells good,  absorb faster, not oily, you can straight away start your work without waiting. Good product for everyone to try especially office lady.