FINALLY, a McDonald’s outlet has been opened nearby my place! You have no idea how happy I was when I found this out. You see, about 2-3 years ago, there was only 1, I repeat, ONE McD in town. No drivethrough, plus the traffic is always congested there, no place to park.. overall I hate going there. Then one by one McD started to pop up. Nearest to me is at Jusco area.. which, even using the highway, is not that near. Then I heard a new one is being built nearby my place (about 5 minutes of driving if there’s no traffic) and damn, I was overjoyed.

I have been watching the construction from the beginning. I use that road a lot so it’s hard not to watch the building being built while you count the days and wait in anticipation. Seriously.

It’s actually very interesting to see that site, used to be a flower shop, being demolished until the building is built. That’s how much I was looking forward to it.

And boy, the excitement just increased when you don’t see those walls anymore and you actually see the building, 85% done now. Just waiting for the days for it to open. I think it took about 3 months for the whole construction from demolishing the previous building to the opening.

A day after the opening, I went there for breakfast with my mom and my mom’s friend. The place is very colorful. It does feel like a cheerful fast food restaurant and also a cozy cafe. Not bad.

There were colorful balloons, walls, everything. The place was however quite small, but not too small.

There was also a small playground for kids. Beside it there’s another area, more like a lounge? It’s more comfortable in there. The chairs are more comfortable inside too.

We sat there until lunch hour and boy, it started to go crazy. The place was packed with people during lunch hour. It was so crowded and so loud that I got annoyed, haha. I think we must have spent over 3 hours just watching people and talking.

I even spent my new year’s eve there with my friend. Back in December when I had to work mostly outside, I could say every 2 days or so I would stop by and buy my prosperity burger. I can consider myself a regular customer :P I should get special regular customer discount or something haha.

However, I have a bad memory when one night where after buying my food there, as I was going out of the traffic light, some idiot taxi driver stopped for what he thought was red light (it was for another junction) and BAM, I crashed into him. So in turn, I wrecked the front of my very new car, and got fined RM300. Some justice huh? I can’t talk much about this because it hurts too much.

This is Mr. Indy. He introduced himself as the franchisee of this McDonald’s. When he saw me taking pictures inside and outside, he stopped to ask me and then we talked a bit. He’s a very nice and friendly guy. I’m so surprised though because he looks so young. That’s when I found out this McDonald’s is a franchise. If I’m not mistaken, I received a flyer earlier this month that they had the official opening. I missed that however.

Well thank you for making my wish come true… been hoping that a McD would open near me for ages.

Popin’ Cookin’ are Japanese DIY candy that’s really fun to make! I’ll make a detailed review of each one soon. I got the cupcake set, bento set and sushi set. So far I’ve only done the sushi set and boy it was a lot of fun. Stay tuned for the review!

It’s by Crumb Boss and you can get the recipe here. It looks so tempting that I am going to try make it for my birthday this month. This along with some cupcakes :D

The box itself was nicely wrapped.

But sorry son, I couldn’t resist myself much longer. The moment I opened the box after taking the pictures above, I started devouring them like some starving carnivores. It had 4 different flavors. I’m not so sure the exact flavors but I tasted peanut butter, something like mocha or coffee? Not too sure on this.. another one is orange or lemon perhaps? And salted caramel.

GOD. I can’t describe how lovely and delicious the salted caramel was.
The lemon had a nice tangy zesty flavor. Loved it.
The peanut butter is yummy!
And the mocha or coffee one is actually not that sweet compared with the rest. It has a bit bitter flavor, which is really nice for those who doesn’t wanna risk going into sugar shock.

I wish I had more, especially salted caramel because it was the best out of the bunch. It was my first time tasting salted caramel ones too.

I just wanna write about this awesome mushroom!

I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE this mushroom! When I went to KL last month, they gave out free samples for this mushroom at Cold Storage 1Utama. It tasted awesome. I loved it. It’s great as snack to. The lady told me how she fried the mushroom. The thing about this mushroom is that you don’t have to wash it. You can just straight away open the pack, cut out the bottom (dirt) and cook. The stem is the best part. You just fry with 1 teaspoon of oil because the mushroom itself will release its own moisture when you cook so you don’t want a lot of oil.

Then you add in a little bit of ‘Perencah Ikan Bilis’ (Anchovies Flavored Stock Seasoning Powder) and voila. Done. It’s so tasty that I just make it as a snack when I’m hungry. You can find this mushroom at anywhere that sells Japanese food – Cold Storage or Jusco. Try it!

It’s an online shop selling trendy fashion clothing from Japan, Korea, Malaysia and other Asian countries. Please do support it! It’s very new, just launched it today, so we have limited items but more will come soon! I decided not to go with just a blogshop because I don’t have a lot of time to maintain it compared to this. I also like to be very organized and have a record for every transaction. It’s also more professional this way.

So please support it and click ‘LIKE’ on the facebook page!

When I went shopping I saw this golden curry roux from S&B, the only curry roux available in Jusco Ipoh. On the package it mentions ‘NO MEAT CONTAINED‘.. at the back it also says “NO MEAT-RELATED PRODUCT CONTAINED‘. So I fgured this is somewhat ‘halal’ to eat, as it has no meat or meat related product in it. I made my first Japanese curry. IT WAS DIVINE. It was so awesome.

But I’m still a bit suspicious about the ingredients. Googling gives me more disappointment because I can’t find any info on this S&B product beside its official website – S&B Golden Curry Sauce Mix. True enough that the ingredients do not contain any meat product.

WHEAT FLOUR, EDIBLE OIL(PALM OIL, CANOLA OIL), SALT, SUGAR, CURRY POWDER, SPICES, COLOUR:E150a, MONOSODIUM GLUTAMATE, MALIC ACID, DISODIUM GUANYLATE, DISODIUM INOSINATE

I googled each of the ingredients and was disappointed again to find out that ‘Disodium Inosinate’ CAN be non-halal if derived from animal. From wikipedia, it says:

Disodium inosinate is generally produced from meat or from fish. Alternately, it may be produced from tapioca starch without any animal products involved in the production. Therefore, disodium inosinate may not be suitable for vegans and vegetarians, and in most cases not suitable for observant Jews, Muslims and Hindu, depending on the origin of the product. Like rennet it is normally a non-vegetarian product; only the producer can provide information on the origin although it is in some cases labelled as “vegetarian” in ingredients lists when produced from plant sources

NOOOOOO. :(

Unsatisfied,  I decided to email S&B and clarify this once and for all. I don’t wanna stop eating the curry because I love it, and it’s so awesome. Today I got an official reply from S&B.

Dear Ms.Tany

Thank you very much for your message and interest in our products.

I am Hiroki working for S&B FOODS INC as a sales for Southeast of Asia.

Regarding your question,
The product does not contain meat or meat-related products as you said, but we don’t have any HALAL certificate.

As for your question, Disodium Inosinate in its ingredients are derived tapioca and sugarcane, NOT animal meat.

Thank you very much for your attention.

Please don’t hesitate to ask if you have any further questions.

Best Regards,

—————————
Hiroki Ito (Mr.)

Yay!!

Thank you S&B!

Do you have any idea how happy I am to know this? It sucks that all curry roux are not halal, so I’m very happy to find one that is halal. Sure, it doesn’t have any halal certification, but I’m fine with finding out that none of the ingredients contain non halal product and that disodium inosinate derived from tapioca and sugarcane instead of animal so I can eat in peace now. I love Japanese curry because of the taste and the thickness of it. I don’t like Indian curry that much because it’s runny, and not that fond of malay curry because of the thickness of coconut milk and oil.

No wonder I can’t find any other Japanese curry roux brand in Jusco Ipoh anymore except for S&B.

So yeah, to any Muslims who are suspicious about Japanese curry, you now know that this one is safe to eat. Another one that I heard is halal is ‘Kenko Foods Gourmet Curry‘ though I haven’t found it yet in my city.

When I browse food blogs, I keep reading about red velvet cupcakes. They said it tastes soooo good. Quite recently I went to Cupcake Chic and saw red velvet cupcakes and decided to try. They were right, it was SO GOOD. It’s my new addiction. So I decided to try to find the recipe and make it but never got around to it. Earlier this month I decided I wanna make it as my cream cheese was expiring haha.

I also found my key ingredient. So how did it turn out?

It was a partial success! It was so delicious!

Why it was a partial success? Because the cupcake was a bit too soft. Maybe I overbeat the batter. I did take a bit long to beat them so that could be the reason. If the texture of the cupcake were just a little bit firm and ‘full’, then it would’ve been a complete success! However, I don’t think it was bad for a first try! The cream cheese frosting was a bit too sweet in my recipe, but the sweetness plus a bit sour taste was still so good.

Can’t wait to make it again. Hopefully my updated version will taste even better :D

Wow. I have been abandoning this website for ages! My last update was last March. I have been really busy with stuff – house renovation, finding work and things like that. Now I’m trying my best to get back into blogging about food. I always take pictures when I eat and I always think about what I want to blog here but I ended up not doing it :( I have piles of photos and pending blogs I need to write about but never got around to do it. Well, lately I’ve been into baking and stuff. We renovated our kitchen and now my kitchen is all nice. Because of this, I started to experiment with baking and I’m loving it. So I told to myself, I need to share this in my long abandoned food blog and need to revive this again.

So let’s start!

Chocolate Lava Cake/Molten Lava Cake/Petit Gateau/Moelleux au Chocolat

If you like Domino’s I’m sure you know about their super awesome and super delicious ‘Chocolate Lava Cake‘. It’s my favorite. They did it so well that it became my must-order food whenever I order Domino’s. So today, after craving chocolate for the whole day, I decided to experiment with my own lava cake and the result was surprisingly good!

The recipe is simple. I still need to perfect this though. The first four ramekins turned out gooey.. there was no cake but just gooey chocolate after you try to take the cake out. I think I put way too much butter inside the ramekins. It was still good but the chocolate kind of makes you sick.. too much chocolate is also not that good. I only had some batter left just enough for one last ramekin. I reduced the amount of butter for the ramekin and baked it for 14 minutes instead of 12. And the result?

It actually looked like a cake!!

And I could see the gooey chocolate in the middle so I knew this last experiment worked. So I cut it in half and guess what?

Out came the chocolate goodness oozing like the lava from the volcano!

Yay! My experiment was a success. The chocolate tasted sooooooo good. I definitely would try this again. If you’re interested in trying out this chocolate lava cake, check out this youtube video. This is the simple recipe I tried out.

Good luck!

Oh gosh, I’m so bad at keeping up with my blogs. I’ve been extremely busy lately that I didn’t have time to write in any of my blogs. Right now I’m trying to update all my blogs slowly. There are a lot of photos that I took that I haven’t posted. Some of the shops have even closed O_O That’s how long I have been delaying stuff.

I will try my very best from now on to update this blog regularly.