Cleffairy's Blog, page 184

Simplot hashbrown potato and shrimp pancake

So, okay… I got a little bit lazy and so this recipe post came in abit delayed. You know, I wasn’t in the mood and all that. You can blame hormone, stress, and even sheer laziness on that.

Anyway, better late than never, right? So here’s the recipe for Chef Wan’s Simplot Hashbrown Potato and Shrimp Pancake

They key to making a good pancake is the batter…

If you get the batter right, then the pancakes will be awesome…

Here’s Chef Wan, teaching us how to fry the pancakes in the pan. One thing he told us is that you got to control the fire.

If you’re frying a pancake, you must always remember to do it with slow fire.

And it will turn out just right, all fluffy and nice.

Here’s the recipe for you to try

Ingredients:

6 eggs

2 cups of fresh milk

1/2cup flour

1 tablespoon of baking powder

1 packet of Simplot hasbrowns, fry til golden brown and mashed

2 large yellow onions, lightly sauteed in olive oil

2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

2 chillies, sliced

1 tablespoon of white pepper

300 grams of prawns, deveined

1 tablespoon of tumeric powder

Olive oil

Here’s how you do it:

1. In a bowl, beat eggs and milk. Add flour and baking powder, mix well.

2. Add mashed Simplot Hashbrowns with the rest of the ingredients and add some salt to taste.

3. Heat up some olive oil in the pan, and pour the batter in. Cook both sides til golden brown. Serve piping hot.

 

Cleffairy: This would make a wonderful weekend breakfast in bed, don’t you think? Happy trying.

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The world did fine

Do you remember my previous rantings about me needing a break and I’d do anything, including commit a murder to get it? Well, I did managed to get one last week without any bloodbath involved, and while things did not really go as planned and there’s plenty of glitches along the way, I suppose I did have fun and most importantly, I get to get away everything just for a while just to recharge my depleted batteries.

You see, I’ve been feeling very, very stressed up that’s it’s heading to the realm of dark depression. There’s too much nonsense that’s going on in my life that it’s overwhelming to deal with.

I have plenty of emotional bagage that’s getting heavier and heavier with each passing seconds and I did not think that I can manage to carry it anymore. It’s too exhausting for me to the point that I told myself that how great it would be if I were to be able to sleep and never, ever wake up again. I noticed that it’s not a healthy thing to wish for, and a break is what I really need, and I decided to take it, by hook or by crook.

The hell with the world and it’s people. I need to take some time to heal myself and recharge before I could deal with nonsense, despite of my husband’s initial opinion that taking a break will solve nothing. True, it will solve nothing. The problems will still be there when we get back, and annoying people would still be alive when we get back from the vacation, but to me, it is important to take a breather.

We’re no robot. We can’t keep going on and on and on without stopping. At some point, things will get too overwhelming for us to handle, and therefore, it’s important to get a break from everything just for awhile. The world was fine when I left it unattended. And it always will be.

And right now…as weird as it sounded, I wonder why I should continuosly care about the world and people who cares nothing about me, when they get along fine without me? And why the hell should I care about mutual friends who is just interested in using my family members to their own interest, and have no respect whatsoever for us?

Cleffairy: Should I even care anymore? I think not. I should just focus on what’s important; which is me, myself and I.

 

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Taste

Genre: YA Paranormal Romance

ISBN: 978-1-937254-55-1

E-ISBN: 978-1-937254-56-8

Length: 259 pages

Publication Date: April 30, 2012

Cover art by: Liliana Sanches

Published by: Crescent Moon Press

Taste by Kate Evangelista is exquisite, and the story is a revelation in itself. Reading this paranormal fiction is like eating a box of doughnuts. You know that it’s not really good for you, and yet you need to keep having it to satiate your appetite.

The story is highly original and as soon as I turn the pages, I found myself being hurled into a labyrinth of a strange world without a way out.

Taste is a wonderul read, and at some point, I could relate to the characters and their strange world.

Thumbs up to Kate Evangelista for coming up with such a wonderful story for the readers to savour. I rate this book 4 out of 5 stars for the fantastical world for me to escape to.

Book description:

At Barinkoff Academy, there’s only one rule: no students on campus after curfew. Phoenix McKay soon finds out why when she is left behind at sunset. A group calling themselves night students threaten to taste her flesh until she is saved by a mysterious, alluring boy. With his pale skin, dark eyes, and mesmerizing voice, Demitri is both irresistible and impenetrable. He warns her to stay away from his dangerous world of flesh eaters. Unfortunately, the gorgeous and playful Luka has other plans.

When Phoenix is caught between her physical and her emotional attraction, she becomes the keeper of a deadly secret that will rock the foundations of an ancient civilization living beneath Barinkoff Academy. Phoenix doesn’t realize until it is too late that the closer she gets to both Demitri and Luka the more she is plunging them all into a centuries old feud.

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A memorable Mother’s Day in Glaneagles

Mother’s Day is definitely an event that transcends across cultures. Every Mother’s Day, everyone in the world finds ways to show their appreciation towards mothers for all their sacrifices, love and dedication.

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Mothers at Gleneagles Kuala Lumpur were pleasantly surprised during the Mother’s Day celebration recently. In conjunction with this year’s celebration, all mothers in Gleneagles received cookies together with a rose and a special ‘Baby Starter Kit’ for mothers who gave birth on the auspicious day compliments of Fisher-Price and Gleneagles Kuala Lumpur.

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Each starter kit includes a gift hamper and baked treats from Gleneagles Kuala Lumpur and various early development products by Fisher-Price such as the ‘Newborn-to-Toddler Portable Rocker’, ‘Healthy Care Booster Seat’ and ‘Learning Kitchen’ amongst others. This exclusive gift from Fisher-Price and Gleneagles Kuala Lumpur is worth over RM1,000 in total each.

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For more information about Gleneagles Kuala Lumpur and their services, please visit www.gkl.com.my or call, 03-4141 3000 and for further information on Fisher-Price’s future products, events and activities kindly contact fpenquiry@directavenue.net.

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Do you remember?

Do you remember any of your teachers? I remember most of my teachers. I was a little bit of a teacher’s pet, and I have a good relationship with my teachers.

I’m happy to say that my schooling time was not just about academic achievements,but was a wonderful journey where I learned about alot of things in life.

Once, my BM teacher told me this “Don’t keep chasing the worldly things. Let the worldly things chase you. Your life will be more meaningful,”.

I did not understand her words then, but I do now, and I am doing my best to not chase thr worldly things.

Thank you for inspiring me, teacher. I won’t be who I am today without you inspiring me.

Cleffairy: Happy teacher’s day to all teacher’s out there. Don’t stop inspiring.

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Salute, to all of you…

It’s Mother’s Day for most. But to me, it’s just Sunday. I know I sound like the fictional Bison in Street Fighters, but just like the previous years, there’s nothing special going on in my end, and there are no plans made to celebrate either though I  made a point to celebrate it with my own mother last Friday when she came up to KL with my father. We had simple dinner and it was really fun catching up with my young at heart old folks. At times, I feel I’m much older and less interesting than them. *SIGH*

Some people asked me why I don’t celebrate Mother’s Day? If you asked me that, you probably do not know me very well. So let me tell you why. My husband is not the kind who likes to celebrate things. I think he don’t really like to celebrate things  (or rather, he is not raised for that)… I mean, to date I’ve been a decade with him, and yet he only started to learn to celebrate special occasions and whatnot when my friends celebrate special days with me and stuff during the past two years.

Touching on Mother’s Day, my husband always remind me that I’m not his mother… so… we don’t celebrate Mother’s Day in this family, and I kinda return the favour on Father’s Day every year, since he is not my father either. So bad of me. But hey, these things are rather commercialized anyway. Eating out costs a bomb on these ‘special occasions’.

Anyway…as much as I don’t celebrate anything on my end, I ought to give myself a pat on my back for doing a darn good job in raising my kid, despite of what those judgmental and cynical people out there say. And I ought to congratulate myself for still staying sane after being a mother for almost a decade.

You have no idea how it is like to deal with a special need child 24/7 unless you’re stuck with one for the rest of your life. You don’t get a breather and you can hardly boast about any achievements or milestones at all like what other parents could do. In other word, I feel that it sucked being a mother to a special need child, but here I am, still sane, and have yet to end my pathetic, chained and shackled life.

So yes. Congratulations to myself for putting up with what not many could survive for so long.

And having said that, happy Mother’s Day to all mothers, especially those with special need children. My salute goes to all of you, for it’s easy to be a mother to a normal child, but it’s almost hell on Earth to be a mother to special need children.

Cleffairy: I should learn to have no expectation at all. Then life won’t disappoint me as much.

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Love Mother Earth, BYOB!

The weather is such a terrible thing these days. More often than not, I find myself drenched in my own sweat every day, even when it’s raining. Yups, the weather here in Malaysia especially, is a killer. I feel as if I’m in a sauna room everyday. And I know that I am not the only one who complains about the awful weather.

Others are complaining too. The Earth is getting hotter and hotter with each passing day, and it’s all our own fault. We did not take care of Mother Earth well enough, and now, it’s getting back at us, with awful temperature, unpredictable weather as well as various natural disasters.

What can we do to save the Earth from being further harmed? Well, we can start small by being environmentally friendly. We must stop wasting resources. We must reduce, reuse and recycle. And we must stop using things polluting the Earth.

Touching on recycling, it is unfortunate that recycling does not really works well on plastics.

It’s hardly biodegradable. Made using our precious petroleum, plastic bottles takes about 400 years to fully biodegrade. Did you know that plastic bottles were only created a little over a century ago? This means that every plastic bottle ever made ( apart from the few that were incinerated) still exists and are probably in landfills or the ocean.

Since recycling doesn’t really work when it comes to plastic bottles, downcycling is the correct word to use because all those bottles you put up for recycling has been downcycled to lower grade plastic products rather than recycled into plastic bottles. But that isn’t the main concern, the process involved in downcycling plastic involves additional carbon footprint ( transportation from recycling factories, electricity needed to blend them into smaller size granule before melting them down completely). Why waste all those additional resources just to turn a readily useable plastic bottle into some cheaper plastic product?

You can REUSE your plastic bottles while buying certain products. What products, you ask me? I’ll tell you.

You can bring your plastic bottles to BYOB. BYOB stands for Bring Your Own Bottle, a concept detergent store that is promoting the 3R concepts.(Reuse, Recycle and Reduce).

Many times we hear people use those three words but how many of use actually put it to use? BYOB is now offering you a chance to do your part in saving mother nature and the best part of this whole idea – you get to save some money too!

Every household need detergents, be it for your floor, clothes, kitchen, stove, and so many more and did you know that every time you buy one from your nearest convenient store, you’re wasting money buying the plastic bottle that comes with it as well? Stop paying for plastic, bring your own bottles to BYOB and refill them with their ecofriendly detergent.

Here’s the price list, in case you’re interested:

 

Cleffairy: So what are you waiting for now? Go and dig out your bottles, and refill them with sweet-smelling detergents!

Note: This is not a paid post. It just happen that the author of Over A Cuppa Tea is all for going GREEN!

 

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I’d kill for a vacation!

You know how desperate for a vacation I am? Well, stress is killing me to the point that I’m now browsing for chicago vacation rentals. Why the hell I’m looking at vacation rental in chicago, I have no idea why. As far as I’m concerned, I’m not getting any vacations anytime soon, so right at the moment, looking at vacation rentals chicago is useless, unless I could ditch all the life comitment that I’m having right now!

 

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Greek Moussaka

So, okay. I got a little bit lazy and moody over the weekend, so now, as promised, I’ll share with you another recipe I learned from Chef Wan’s workshop, Greek Moussaka.

Here’s Chef Wan, preparing the ingredients for the Greek Moussaka.

Raw ingredients in the pan

The base of the Greek Moussaka

How it should look like after spreading the sauce and the fried eggplants on it.

One tip to make a good Greek Moussaka is that you must be generous with the cheese, or it won’t taste nice

Final product…

Yummy looking, isn’t it? Here’s how you make Greek Moussaka:

Ingredients:

2 packets of Simplot hashbrown, fried and crumbled

2 yellow onions, chopped

6 garlic, minched

800grams of minched beef/lamb/chicken

1 tablespoon of dried oregano

1 handful of fresh basil, chopped

A few stalks of fresh thyme

A handful of fresh Italian parsley

2 cans of Leggo’s Tomato Puree

4 large table spoon of Leggo’s Tomato Paste

3 tablespoon of sweet paprika

4 large Mediterranean eggplants, sliced 2 cm thick and sauteed til soft and brown with olive oil

1/4 cup of extra virgin olive oil

4 cups of milk-bring to simmer with a pinch of cinnamon powder and nutmeg

3 tablespoon of flour

150 grams of butter

2 cups of grated mozarella cheese

2 cups of grated parmesan cheese

To make the Greek Moussaka:

 Heat olive oil and sautee the onions and garlic til soften and add the minced land/beef/chicken in the pan. Add fresh herbs and brown the meat slowly over a medium heat.
Add Leggo’s Tomato Puree, leggo’s Tomato Paste and season with salt, fresh crack black pepper and sugar. Cook the meat sauce until it is slightly thickens.
In another pan, prepare the white sauce by melting the butter and adding the flour, stirring for 2 minutes. Slowly add the hot milk and stir them to form thick sauce. Season with salt and pepper, and set aside.
To assemble the Moussaka, spread a layer of Simplot Hashbrowns in the bottom of a greased baking tray.
Spread the top of the hashbrowns with the meat sauce and arage a single layer of all the eggplants.
Sprinkle both mozarella and parmesan cheese, and repeat everything in two layers.
Finish the top later with white sauce and both cheeses. Cover the tray with alluminium foil and bake in the oven for 180 degress for approximately 30-40 minutes. Remove from the oven, and leave it to stand for 5-10 minutes to set before putting it back in to bake for another 10 minutes for the top to brown.
Serve Moussaka lukewam.

Preparation time: 15 mins/Cook 1 hour 15 mins/Serves 4-6 person.

Cleffairy: Have fun trying, folks.

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Improving intimacy with Vibrance Kegel Device

Let’s us all admit it, after being comfortable in a marriage, or a relationship, sex is simply not very…interesting anymore. Come now, let’s be honest…how many of you married men and married women still have the hots for each other and couldn’t wait to get down to business on the bed every night?How many of you still have go at it a few times consecutively in one night?

I doubt not many feels the way that we feel many years back when we’re still pretty much ‘hormonal’ during first few months, or first few years of our relationship.

For most, after a decade or two in a relationship or a marriage, having sex is just another task you got to endure. It’s simply too much an effort to get movin’ and instead of having a sizzling foreplay to make each other feel good during the process of it, it’s usually just another one of those get down and ‘unload’ to scratch the mutual itch, and it usually takes what? Less than 10 minutes? No, I’d say, 5 minutes would have settled the job. It’s a quickie, they say…

Libido, tends to go down, down, down and almost nonexistent for most. Not just women experienced the decrease of libido. Whoever tells you that only women experienced that after giving birth, is a big liar. Men experienced it too, trust me on that.

You see, many things tends to get in the way of our sex life; mainly other commitments like work. And it doesn’t help that sometimes nuisance of kids tends to make noises when you got the mood to get intimate with your other half. Yes, I’m speaking about this through experience, and I am not ashamed to admit that if I managed to get laid at least once a week these days, I’d considered that as winning a lottery, I kid you not! I’d pretty much blame it on dumb smartphone addiction as well as the tendency to ‘make love’ with your Facebook friends through chats, stupid forums, nonsensical online community, Twitter, and so the list goes on.

Having said that, I suppose I am still lucky enough that I get to my other half’s online and Facebook addiction on my sex life, or lack thereof. Some other ladies are not lucky as that as their other half not only put them aside because they find communicating with their other half in real life is difficult to accomplish, but their other half loosing interest in them altogether because they couldn’t ‘feel’ them anymore while getting intimate. I think that is much more worst.

Some men give this lousy excuse to their wives that they could no longer feel the contraction around their penis whenever they’re having sex.

A lady whom I know, told me before that her husband refused to get intimate with her anymore after she gave birth to her baby. He said, ” I’m sorry, I can’t feel you anymore. You’re not tight anymore”.

Imagine her devastation. Yes, such things do happen, though we don’t exactly discuss such things openly. A lot of women feels apprehensive about discussing their sex life, or lack thereof, because it is considered a taboo topic in most society and community.

I don’t feel apprehensive about it, though, as I feel that sometimes, you need to highlight certain issues openly so that things will be better. Holy houses might have us believe that such things must remained behind closed doors, but I don’t feel that it should be left unsaid.

So… on the issue of men not being able ‘to feel’ the tightness of our vagina anymore after having vaginal birth, why does that happen? How it happens? And how can we improve the situation? And why urine leakage happens in some women after giving birth?

Well, ladies, do you remember my post on ‘Getting Intimate with your Pelvic Floor Muscle’? I am not sure if you remember, but in that post, I have explained that like many muscle in our body, the vagina tends to worn out too, and it needs working out if you want to maintain the elasticity.

When a man complained that you are not tight anymore… or they can”t feel you anymore during your intimate moments, that would have mean that your pelvic floor muscle is no longer strong, and couldn’t contract accordingly during sexual intercourse.

If you have any signs of these:

Involuntary loss of urine during physical acitivities, such as coughing, laughing, sneezing or exercising.
Sudden urge or need to urinate due to bladder spasms or contractions.
Difficulties in achieving orgasms during sexual intercourse.

Then most probably your pelvic floor muscle is no longer strong. It usually happens because:

Pregnancy
Childbirth
Aging
Obesity
Menapause
Chronic cough
Genetic disorder

And you can actually improve the situation by doing Kegel exercise.Kegel exercise (named after Dr. Arnold Kegel), consists of repeatedly contracting and relaxing the muscles that form part of the pelvic floor. By performing Kegel exercise regularly, we could help strengthen pelvic floor muscle, increase of blood flow and nerve supply to the pelvic region, help the restroration of vaginal muscle tone and improve vaginal health. Apart from that, it also helps to increase thickness to the vaginal wall and encourages lubrication after menapause. It’s great, isn’t it? Apart from that, performing Kegel exercise regularly can also prevent involuntary urinary leakage. And you’d also be surprised to discover that Kegel exercise also help improve sexual response and function.

So, in other words, if you perform the exercise regularly, you’d find that your contraction around your other half’s penis will get better and better and stronger, and he have no reasons whatsoever of accusing you being ‘loose’ or ‘not tight anymore.

The problem with Kegel exercise is that it is difficult to do. Well, at least to me it’s difficult, cuz I don’t exactly know the correct muscle to exercise. Trust me. I’ve attended Kegel exercise demonstration a month back, and I think I ended up working on my butt muscle instead and I ached everywhere, all in the wrong places.

Truth be told, Kegel devices like Vibrance Kegel device in my previous post really helps us who wants to work out the correct muscle alot. And as I promised a month ago, here’s a little testimony on whether the device in question it is effective or not:

Is the device effective? Well yes, I must say the device is effective, though I must be honest that I couldn’t really use it as prescribed, which is daily, as I don’t exactly have the privacy to do so at home with my son being at home 24/7. I had to really find time and privacy to do it behind close doors; as I need to insert the device into my vagina and it actually makes a series of funny beep sound during usage if you activated the sound guidance function on the device. The device works well. Whenever I contracted my pelvic floor muscle around it, it will vibrate, indicating that I’m exercising the correct mucle.

Basically, I started off with high sensitivity sheath and proceed with low sensitive sheath that requires more pressure.

 

This device is hypoallergenic, and therefore, there’s no allergic reation whatsoever, even though I’m sensitive towards latex and whatnot. This stuff is easy to take care of. All you need to do after using it is just rinse it with soap and place it in the capsule to dry.

Thanks to the Vibrance Kegel device, I can now perform Kegel exercise correctly without having to worry that I’m exercising the wrong muscle.

It made a lot of difference to me, actually, as after using this, I find that my blood circulation actually improves and I don’t feel so breathless whenever I try to contract my pelvic floor mucles anymore. And I noticed that there’s no more urine leakage problems whenever I sneeze a tad too hard.

I have been told that this device could actually help a smooth childbirth delivery too, considering that it improves the pelvic floor muscle condition, but I can’t comment on that as there is no baby on the way right at the moment, and from the looks of it, won’t be any baby anytime soon either.

In any case at all, I have to say that this device does improves my confidence and my health, and if you’re interested to get it, you may check out MyBioinfinity website. It can be bought online through the website for Rm498 per boxset.

A note to the readers: This device is for those who are sexually active. If you are a virgin, I wouldn’t exactly encourage you to use this as it’s invasive in nature. And if you’re pregnant, do get your gyne’s advice before using this device.

Cleffairy: Well, the device can help improve pelvic floor mucle and improve sexual response. However, how you improve the attitude of men towards women after they give birth, however, is another thing altogether. All I can say, it takes two hands to clap, and women can’t be the party who tries to make things right all the time. Men needs to recicoperate too to work things out.

 

 

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