How often do you go for holiday? Generally, a typical company will only give approx. 25 days of annual leave. Indirectly, you are only allow to have 25/365 x 100 = 6.8% of opportunity in a year to make something special in your life. If you are lucky to work in a country where it has a lot of public holiday, the percentile will increase by a little. Saturday and Sunday are not counted as holiday as it typically means, “no alarm clock” day or “I just enjoy doing nothing” day!

When I go on holiday, combining breakfast and lunch is kind of common to me, or as many called it brunch. To many, brunch means combining 2 meals into 1 but to me, brunch means, having 2 meals at 1 time. How can I afford to miss a meal especially I am suppose to keep my stomach happy during this period, right? Give my stomach a break too! 2 meals at 1 time?? Oh yea, this is what I have, not long ago at Sainbury’s Aberdeen.

2 x pastries (blueberry muffins and sorta raisin bread) and a drink for breakfast

Fish and Chips for lunch..with yummy sauce

With the combination of various sauces

Chicken Tika Masala with Yellow Rice and Pita Bread .. again for lunch.. I love this most! The gravy.. yum yum..

And.. Cafe Mocha as a closing drink..

How’s that? Is it brunch or breakfast + lunch + dinner to you? This only cost about  £ 38 and it proves that I still have bottomless stomach .. hehe..

Sainsbury’s Supermarkets Ltd.

Web: www.sainsburys.co.uk/

Flying to Paris for romantic dinner, enjoying dessert in Belgium and having coffee in San Francisco. Isn’t that wonderful if we can ever do that? No, I still cannot afford to do that but occasionally, something similar come to my mind. Having Western appetizer, Chinese main course and maybe Italian dessert but it is kind of hard to get all under one roof.

Most of the time, I ended up do a take away instead of dining in the restaurant. Oh yea, I do this all the time if I am unable to decide on which restaurant to go to. Odd? I think as long as I can get my preferred food, why not? This time round, I went to Giraffe To Go for Salad, Spur Steak & Grill for appetizer and Starbucks for my drinks. Awesome dinner isn’t it?

This the the take away paper bag from Giraffe To Go..Guess what is inside?

Grilled Chicken, Tiger Prawn & Mango Salad £ 9.95 .. strongly recommended !

Crunchy Coconut Shrimp £ 5.65 .. nice n unique but slightly pricy

Take away boxes from Spur Steak & Grill

Main course? More like appetizer to me hehe.. Peri-peri sauce of Buffalo Wings £ 8.95

N lastly, my drinks.. Starbucks Caramel Frappuccino..bet you are familiar with this?

Hmm… this dinner cost me less than £ 50. Therefore, I would consider a satisfying dinner for me

As many of you might aware, I am stuck in Singapore for almost few weeks now. Yes, I am craving for Malaysian Food. Yes, I am craving for Penang food but what should I do when I am physically elsewhere. Not to mention if I need to travel to Penang, it will be quite a long journey by car.

Luckily I have friends here who directed me to Gurney Drive, not the Gurney Drive in Penang but in Singapore instead. The restaurant is strategically located at Suntec City, Singapore. Not so difficult to find but please be prepared to burn your wallet a little. Is it expensive? To me is not, but the concept is like eating Asian food in the middle of London.. get it?

Let me share with you about this place and what I ordered for my lunch..

This is the exterior of the shop.. clean, simple and nice

The interior of the restaurant with some ancient wall photos of Penang Street (must be from Macalister road)

View from the place where I seat

Now comes the Penang Menu.. duh..

You can find Penang Local Side Dishes.. something like appertizer to start with..

Or Penang Favourite Grill.. like ikan bakar, whatever that can bakar.. (bakar – grill in malay)

Or Penang Wok Fried..this must be char kuey teow.. hehe..

and dessert. In other words, this restaurant serves varieties of Penang food.

Now, let’s see what I ordered. From Side Dishes I ordered Lobak as my appertizer.. – S$4.20

From Grill Menu, I ordered Ikan Pari Bakar (Grilled Stingray) – S$7.90

From Wok-Fried Menu, I ordered char kuey teow with prawns and Chinese Sausage – S$6.90

And Gong Bao Mantis Prawn – S$ 6.90

And from Dessert Menu, I ordered Famous Penang Rojak S$4.20

Generally the food taste good and I would say the best I can get from outside Penang. Ohh.. there is one similarity with Penang food that is the potions are really small. Including GST and Service charge, I paid about S$36.60 for this meal.

Gurney Drive

Web: http://www.gurneydrive.com.sg/

What do you normally do when you travel for long hours in a boring flight? As for me, I will probably spend long hours playing all  my iPhone games or enjoying the in-flight entertainment (especially when my morphie juice drains out). Sleeping is really not my cup of tea but sometimes I do enjoy listening to orchestra from snoring sound during the pin drop silence moment in flight.

Ohh, one thing that really makes me excited is the feeding time. In long flight, I will  hope for a decent food or it will definitely ruin my journey. How do the airlines expect their hungry passengers to be happy passengers, right? Before take off, the air stewardess will normally serves a glass of drink of your choice with a menu for you to select for.

During the recent flight from Doha to Singapore, I got to enjoy some ala arabic food.. or I would say more or less like  asian + middle eastern food. These are what I ordered …

Thai Beef and Glass Noodle Salad – with salad and some raw fish and pitta bread. The plain water taste like plain water although it is Evian :S

Lamb Biryani with Arabic Dakous Sauce .. this one is really a thumb up!  hmm.. I would prefer more fried onion tho..

Passenger at my side which happen to be my Mom chose this, Chicken Picatta with Lemon and Sage Scented Jus with Steam potatoes and witted spinach. Quite a mouthful when you order it but apparently it tasted better than it looks..:P

I suppose to get a cheese plate but I don’t know what happen to it but this Sweet Finale – Caramel Pudding taste good too! I love the caramel..

Last but not least, a dinky box of my fav. Godiva Chocolatier..

Did you see it yet? I embeded some tips in this post. If you want to go on anti-diet, travel as frequent as humanly possible. With that, I am sure in six months time, you will be fat ..I mean sexy like me..

Walking around the city of wind, led me to this place, not far from Maiden Tower where I can try all Famous Azeri Food. Speaking of Maiden Tower and City of Wind, you must be wondering where am I and what I am talking about.

I was at Baku, Azerbaijan and I am here to enjoy most of the local delicacies. It is kind of hard to explain the geographical location of this place but I know it is situated beside Caspian Sea. Anyway, I guess in future post, I should write less and put more pictures. With that, I am sure I can share most of my travel photos and besides, words makes people sleep? Let’s try with this post first..

White Cheese, Goat Cheese and Salty Cheese

Azerbaijani Dolma

Azerbaijani Brinjal Chutney

Azeri Mimosa (not so sure )

Qutab (this one macam chapati abit .. hehe)

Various Meat Kebab

Fruits Basket, Fruits Pickles, Vegetables Salad, Preserved Meat, Raw Meat and Khalva drinks

Now you tell me, isn’t it challenging for me to maintain my weight? Don’t be surprise if you see fat TikkoSS walking around next time..

Few weeks ago, I was in Aberdeen.  Due to long cravings for char siu and siu yok, I rushed all the way to Chinese restaurant to order few of these Chinese dishes. A close friend of mine reminded me not to have Chinese food in Aberdeen as it is will not be as good as what we have in Malaysia…but how bad can it be..

Without hesitation, I walked in to a Chinese Restaurant in the middle of Aberdeen City Centre, acknowledging it will be pricy, I ordered few dishes, just to ease my cravings. In a way, I am like ant seeing sugar. Not much of choices there, so, please don’t ask if I can order anything fancy.

Instead of having my dinner in the restaurant, I decided to place a take away order. The first one dish that I ordered is sweet and sour prawns. A lot of prawns in one container but  the taste, I would say it is delicious. If fact, I think I can cook better.

Despite Aberdeen is just right beside seaside, the prawns are frozen type and not the fresh type. That makes the prawns taste more like tendery type of meat instead of fresh juice prawns. How disappointing considering I paid about 16 pound for few of these small little creatures.

The waitress suggests this SCALLOPS with vegetables. From the name, it paints a mental picture in me that the dishes will come with a lot a lot of scallops and few vegetables as side than main. When I opened the aluminium foil, the dish is more like VEGETABLES with scallops.

But this dish is surprisingly good, just a bit stingy on scallops. Ohh.. I can also sense that they put a lot of MSG. All because as soon as I finish eating it, I felt the thirst that lead me to drink a big glass of water.

Finally, I can’t resist my temptation and ordered this, Siu Yok, Char Siew and Roasted Duck rice. This on cost about 17 pound. The rice is just simple plain white rice and not the oily type and the meats, so so only lor. Instead of usual cucumber, they put lettuce as a replacement.

Overall, I will also not recommending anyone to try Chinese Food in Aberdeen but in the event that you need to ease your cravings, you can do so by punching big hole in your wallet for these dishes which are not as good as what we used to have in Malaysia.. now I miss Malaysia a lot..

Tofu with Mince Pork

Ingredients

1 tube Silken Tofu

½ cup Carrot cubes

10 g Needle mushroom

50 g Mince pork (Marinate with 1 tsp soy sauce, 2 dashes pepper and 1 tsp sesame oil)

1 Chilly (Finely chopped)

3 cloves Garlic (Finely chopped)

½ tbsp Light soy sauce

½ tbsp Oyster sauce

½ tbsp Dark soy sauce

½ tsp Sugar

1 tsp TikkoSS’s Secret Ingredient

½ cup Warm water

½ tsp Corn flour (Mix with 1 tbsp water)

Method

1. Heat wok with 2 tbsp of oil. Fry garlic and chilly until fragrant and golden brown.

2. Add mince pork and fry for 5 mins. Add carrot and needle mushroom. Continue frying for 5 mins.

3. Add and mash tofu in the wok for 5 mins.

4. Add warm water, light soy sauce, oyster sauce, dark soy sauce and TikkoSS’s Secret Ingredient. Simmer over small fire for 5 mins.

5. Add sugar and mixture of corn flour. Ready to be served.

Stir Fried Long Beans with Onion

Ingredients

100 g Long Beans

3 Onion

¾ tbsp Light soy sauce

½ tsp TikkoSS’s Secret Ingredient

½ tbsp Oyster sauce

Method

1. Cut long beans into small cubes and onion into thin slices.

2. Heat wok with 2 tbsp of oil. Fry onion until soft and fragrant.

3. Add long beans and continue frying until soft

4. Add light soy sauce,  TikkoSS’s Secret Ingredient and oyster sauce.

5. Ready to be served.

French Beans with Tau Kua

Ingredients

1 piece Tau kua (Cut into 5 mm thick slices)

50 g French beans (Remove both edge of French beans and cut each French beans into half.

3 cloves Garlic (Finely chopped)

½ tbsp Light soy sauce

½ tbsp Oyster sauce

1 tsp TikkoSS’s Secret Ingredient

½ cup Warm water

½ tsp Corn flour (Mix with 1 tbsp water)

Method

1. Heat wok 4 tbsp oil and fry tau kua until golden brown. Remove from wok and set aside.

2. Heat wok with 2 tbsp oil. Fry garlic until fragrant and golden brown.

3. Add French beans and continue frying until soft.

4. Add light soy sauce, oyster sauce, TikkoSS’s Secret Ingredient and warm water. Simmer for 2 mins over small fire.

5. Add corn flour mixture and ready to be served.

Stir Fried Baby Dow Miow

Ingredients

100 g Baby Dow Miow

4 cloves Garlic

1 Chilly

1 tsp Salt

1 tsp Oyster sauce

½ tbsp TikkoSS’s Secret Ingredient

Method

1. Wash baby dow miow thoroughly. Finely chopped garlic and chilly.

2. Heat wok with 2 tbsp of oil. Fry garlic and chilly until golden brown and fragrant

3. Add baby dow miow and fry for 8 mins.

4. Add salt, oyster sauce and TikkoSS’s Secret Ingredient

5. Ready to be served.