Foodies

I’m a sucker when it comes to foods. I love foods and so are you guys right? My fasting went so well except when I’m on my period so I’m not able to fasting during my a week period 😂. So we went to foods bazaars at Army Training Camp located in Lok Kawi yesterday so these what we bought for sungkai.

Yes, during this month of Ramadhan Kareem a lot of foods bizarre here and there were open for those family or workers whose not able or not have much time to cook at home to buy their chosen menus for sungkai in the day. But bear in mind because a lots of choices and yet some quite pricey and you guys need to spend your money wisely. And do not waste. Buy what you think enough for you all and not because of your hungers then you think you need more foods but in the end, you end up cannot finish them all and yes you’re wasting foods. Avoid that. There are unfortunate people who need the food but you are wasting it? Not gooddd 😅.

If you’re a worker or a customer who barely have time to cook at home, I advise to buy different kinds of food to try everyday. Don’t just buy the same kind of food you bought yesterday. Try something new. You’ll not be bored 😊.

Well that’s all because I’m out of ideas wha to talk about. Till next time buddies 😘

Better On My Own Companion

Yes. I admit it. I always made mistakes. I trust people so easily I let them in and I let them judge me. It tears me apart. Being judged for who I am and being labeled as a selfish and egoistic person is bad. I don’t and I’m not what they think they know who I am. 😞

I care for everyone. Even if I don’t have much but I give everything I have just to ease some people burden. But being called selfish and ego and being asked to say SORRY for what I never do give me a heartbreak 😔. Do I have to please people? Do I have to be dorry for someone I’m not? I get so tired everyday pretending that I’m okay but I’m not. Whenever I try to speak out I even gets judged and labeled as if I’m-the-only-one-who-own-problems-in-the-world. No. I just need someone to LISTEN to me without judging. I never ask for solutions or for sympathies. I just need someone to be able to listen to me without adding up the size of the problems. 😞 I’m so tired day by day.

I wont say anything about the deeds I’ve done or about the helps I’ve gave. I did it in the name of sincerity. But people keep prying about this and that. And at the end I was the one getting blamed. 😶 I hope someday I’ll be able to say “I’m fine” without pretending it. That I was so badly hurt. I was really in pain. Because I never have space or courage to say or speak it all out since whenever I try to speak, it will get worst. I better shut my door and be in my own companion so that no ones can disturb my peace of mind. No one will hurt and no one will judge me.

I choose less so I can have more.

It’s quite sad when we working so hard for a life we imagined would rather be good turns out to be soooo difficult to achieve. Some say it’s in the matter of mind and some said it’s all depending on how we react to those obstacles.

But me, as an independent person, the idea of being a workaholic so I can gain more pocket money to be used for self pampering at the end of the month just to feel my own effort is too hard to get.

I pay my own bills, room rent, give to my parents, car loan and some other bills. I don’t even have enough for myself. Sometimes, I hate myself for being so kind to others that even if me myself don’t have enough but I still be able to give to other people a helping hand. Even of I have none. I tend to be so caring to others until I forgot that I, too, need to care about my own life.

When I have nothing and I can’t offer anyone’s even a bit of help, people keep labeling me as a SELFISH human being. Only think about myself. But little do they know how hard my life is and how hardworking I am just to have a little just to make sure that I feed myself well and keep thinking how I will survive this month until payday. I can’t help it when I hear other’s difficulties while I was just there doing nothing or without giving anything to the hopeless person. I will give whatever I have just to help the person. Even if just a little but it’s from the heart. I get this relieving feeling in me whenever i give.

Today’s Lunch Menus

Today I only can share what are the menus I managed to cook. They are Chicken with mushroom and Kailan (Chinese broccoli) with salted fish. But unfortunately I didn’t manage to take photos of ingredients and preparations to share here in my blog. But I’ll just share the pictures anyway 😂.

The first menu goes to this rich and lovely chicken with button mushrooms (I use canned button mushroom) with oyster sauce (of course my favorite brand, Lee Kum Kee). The ingredients to make this simple yet rich looking dish is as listed below:

🔴 Chopped garlic

🔴 Chopped Ginger strips

🔴 Red carrot cut into dice size

🔴 Onion

🔴 Mixed Herbs to marinade the chicken meat

🔴 Chicken meat (breast part, cut into strips)

🔴 Canned Button Mushroom (cut halves)

🔴 Lee Kum Kee Oyster sauce

🔴 Tapioca flour (thickening agent)

🔴 Salt and pepper to taste

✔️ Yeap you can put the canned baby corn and also the colorful bell peppers on it too (but I don’t have those in our fridge so i use whatever available only 😁. So the final product is as you can see in the picture below 👇🏻😋

My second menu is Kailan with Ikan masin or a.k.a salted fish in english. Also a simple dish for lunch. The ingredients also as simple as I can found whichever readily available in the fridge 😂. The ingredients as listed below:

🔵 Kailan (Chinese broccoli) cut into strips and separate the leaves and the hard part.

🔵 Two cloves of garlic

🔵 Salted Fish (cut into thin strips)

🔵 Red carrot (cut into thin strips) for color

As usual, you can add bell pepper for color too. In this recipe, I have added white cabbage too. It goes well with it plus gave color to the dish.

Voila, bon appetite everyone 😄

Lunchies 19.11.2015

Today I decided to cook something different from our typical family menus for lunch. I suddenly think about curry and ginger. So I grab some chicken meat and lady’s finger to prepare these two menus.

So I shall start with my first chicken with ginger menu:

The ingredients you will need is as stated below;

Core ingredients:

1. Ginger (cut into strips + thinly crushed)

2. Shallot (just a small one for the taste and aroma)

3. Lemongrass

4. 6 cloves of garlics (chopped)

5. Onion (preferably the bombay onion but I just just whatever available 😬)

6. Chillies (I don’t have chillies though but adding it would be nice 😏)

7. Yard long bean

8. Chicken meats (main ingredient)

Firstly, of course you have to fry the onions and whatsoever needed to be thrown into the hot oil 😂 like this below 👇🏻😚

And then put the chicken meats and stir fry for minutes without adding water first. So that all the fried onions and ginger absorbed into the chicken meats and it gave it aroma.

And then put the lemongrass altogether and keep stirring until the chicken meats turned brown. After that, put about 300mls of water (preferably chicken stock), salt and sugar to taste. Then close the lid and leave for about 5mins until the chicken fully cooked (to diffuse the bacteria).

It’ll look like this when it’s boiling 😋. Lastly, put the vegetables (yard long bean and onions) as they’re easily cooked and close the lid for few minutes and then you’re done!! Enjoy the simple typical yet healthy meal.

BON APPETITE 😄

Hinava (Sabahan traditional dish)

안녕하세요 😄

Yes, I know I didn’t post here for a long long time, and also didn’t update my Instagram quite frequent. I was actually quite busy with my work and my personal life. But I did updating my twitter from time to time 😜 (my twitter ID: @joannanaa).

For today, I’d love to share with you guys about my simple recipe or appetizer which is a traditional dish for my natives here in North Borneo Sabah. We call this as “Hinava”. Below is the caption from wikipedia about this dish;

Hinava is a traditional native dish of the Kadazan-Dusun people in the states of Sabah.[1] It was made from fish and mixed with lime juice, bird’s eye chili, slice shallots and grated gingers.[2] While the Kadazan are famous with their Hinava tongii.

For oversea, they might call this as fish salad with the lime juice as the dressing. It’s a same technique as well. Just different preparation or ingredients. I’m not gonna use the same ingredients as stated fully but instead, I find out that using raw mango to neutralize the foul odor of the raw fish used in the preparation is a great way. Well I just use whatever available that I can grab to create this simple yet appetizing menu.

Photo: Simple ingredients (raw mango, tomatoes, green pepper, onion (other than that, you can either use shallot or red onion), ginger, lime (aka calamondin) and salt/coarse sugar to taste)

The main ingredient should be the fish meat. I am using the tuna fish meat in my recipe because it is chewy and the smell is not that strong. You can use other types of fish as you like. But make sure the smell isn’t that strong 🐟

Photo: Main ingredient. Tuna fish meat (blanched in a warm water, shifted and blanched with two table spoon full of lime juices to diffuse the bacteria – since it’s raw)

Firstly, chop all of the raw ingredients above and put it in the preparation bowl. Cut whatever sizes you like as long as it’s a bite size 😜. I prefer them to be cut into a thin strips. The pictures is as below.

Photo: I cut the ingredients into those sizes because that is the easiest and faster way. 😜

Then put salt and sugar to taste. Mix them altogether harmoniously. Add the fish meat later on after the ingredients well combined with the salt/sugar or else the fish meat will be all broken into small pieces that will affect your dish presentation.

Photo: The end result! Mouth watery 😍

This is the best dish ever! Appetizing and the ingredients harmoniously combined. I love it and try it at home. I am sure you’ll love it to the max. I love Sabah. Next time, I’ll share with you guys any upcoming recipe or interesting post when I have free time.

Rica-Rica Chicken

Yesterday, I’ve got this chance to made a special menu for my family. Get bored with typical everyday’s menu and cooking styles, then I learned some other culture dishes.

The menu is from East Java called Rica-Rica Chicken. It’s a simple dish consisting of several traditional herbs and easy-to-get ingredients. I will just go through roughly on the ingredients used in this recipe. The ingredients is as shown below.

⚫ Lemongrass (thinly sliced to get think chunks)
⚫ Shallots (crushed or blended)
⚫ Garlics (crushed or blended)
⚫ Ginger (crushed or blended)
⚫ Bird Eyes Chillies (crushed or blended)

Note: I used a food crusher instead of blender to get thin chuncks of above ingredients. That chunks is what made them even more tastier and looks somehow traditional. 😂

⚫ Chicken (you can use either only the meat or the wings etc – but first, marinate them with a small amount of powder of turmeric to remove the foul smells)
⚫ Cube sliced Tomatoes (to control the spicy taste of the chillies)
⚫ Kafir Lime Leaves (thinly sliced for aroma)
⚫ Sweet Basil Leaves (in our country, we call it Bawing Leaves – it has a great smell. Goes very well with lemongrass based food)
⚫ Chicken Stock, Salt, Sugar

Well, that’s all for the ingredients. Cook them all accordingly which come first and last. I am sure you all know right. Put the crushed shallots, lemongrass, garlics, and ginger into oil together. Followed by the chicken. Added up some water and sliced tomatoes. Put Chicken stock (powdered), salt and sugar to taste accordingly. Boiled for 20 to 30 minutes. Lastly, don’t forget to put the kafir lime leaves and sweet basil leaves for great aroma. And then you’re done. ☺👍

Below is some medias or pictures taken during preparing the recipe and the end products.

Crushed Lemongrass, Shallots, Garlic, and Ginger

And I think that’s all. Easy recipe to try. Feels like I’m in Indonesia enjoying their very well known menu. Oh-so-blessed. ☺

Life And The Emotions

Life and the emotions; that was the topic lingering around my mind. Ones cannot escape from the past. Some people still with their past. The different is whether it’s a good or bad past life they have. Me too, as a normal human being, I still live and remembering my life in the past. It was quite horrible for me especially when the bad life in the past surrounds me. It makes me sick.

So then I’m telling myself to not to too over-thinking about my life and just live facing the future. Concentrating the very life I have and just live my life to the fullest. I realized I cannot be like this too often. It may reduce my quality of life and lower my self-esteem at the same time. Living in the past is like visiting and re-visiting history hoping that the past can alter the present, or reminiscing on what might have been, or chewing on plain, old fashion nostalgia. We cannot rewrite history, but we can only learn from it, and MOVE ON. Just keep moving on and on! Even if life keeps knocking us down.

Forgive yourself for the wrong choices that you’ve made in the past. They are not evidence of who you are, they are evidence of who you were.

Eat For Your Life ♥

I eat anything. I love trying something new around me. Including tasting other types of food that I found I’m interested with. I’m so glad to have a country that is rich with many kind of foods, whether traditionally or non traditionally. I thanks God for being here.

Aside from that, I’m not only a food lover, but I’m a well cooker too. Haha.. I can cook and create something new on my menu. Not to demand, I’m well suited with the sense of knowing what-is-the-ingredients of any dishes I tasted without asking the chef or whatever it is. If I’m too lazy to ask nor googling it out, I will just cook it from what readily available ingredients I have and just simply cook what can be made with those. I’m not a demand persons when it comes to work in a kitchen especially in cooking. What is the utmost important is the kitchen must be clean and not messy when I’m in it doing my cooking things.

My only problem when it comes to prepare a dinner or breakfast is I’m taking time too long to prepare a dish. That’s my weakness. But the outcome, I will make sure my guest or relatives wont regret and make them satisfied.

Today, my menu theme is traditional. Well, depends on what menu you’re preparing. If one of your dishes is traditional, then prepare the whole menu in traditional. What I mean here is not mixed with the modern menu or dishes. That would be weird right if modern and traditional food being mixed up in your meal. If it’s traditional, just prepare it in all traditional.

My slogan in cooking is simple.

The simple it is, The tastier it will be. 🙂

Here is my menu I cooked for our dinner tonight. Just an eye candy for you who reading my blog. 🙂

This is our traditional food. I call it “Pucuk Ubi Keriting Masak Lemak”. I don’t know how to pronounce it in English. So, just stick to that title. The ingredients is simple. I just gain few oz of dried salted fish, few slices of chillies (optional for those who wants it more spicy), coconut milk and of course the “pucuk ubi” as the main ingredient. What is special on this dish is, I don’t use any onion or garlic or ginger. Because, any natural food that is naturally grows doesn’t need that.

Second dish is my father’s favorites. “Spicy and Sour Fish Soup”. I use turmeric and ginger a lot for this to remove the smell of the fish. I also put in the lemongrass which made it rich in aroma. Besides, I also put tomatoes and a lil bit of “asam jawa” to give it a sour taste. I love it too.

This is the appetite booster. In english, they call it a mango salad. But in my language we call it “Ulam Mangga dengan Bubuk”. Bubuk is a name for a thinly dried prawns that I think only can be found in our country, Malaysia. Especially here in Sabah. I highlighted again, in Sabah. We’re rich in seafoods things if you don’t know yet. Just so you know. The ingreadients for this “ulam” is so easy as pie. You just need shallots, mangoes and bubuk. To make it clearly, just see the picture below to see how the dried prawns (bubuk) looks like.

Well..it’s a long post isn’t it? LOL
It’s quite rare for me to post anything nowadays. But since I have some free time now, I have to share something interesting on my blog.

Don’t Let…

Yes. Never ever let someone dim your light, simply because it’s shining in their eyes!

I need to keep reminding myself about this. Every day in my life I have to face with so many type of people. Bad or good, they are the colors my life.

It’s true that life’s knocked me down a few times. But yeah, it showed me things that I never wanted to see. Sadness, and also failures are all mixed up and messing up my life. But there’s just one thing I can be sure of, I WILL ALWAYS GET UP! Keep my chin up and just walk away and make another stories of my life’s journey.

There’s only so many times we can allow someone to let us down before we can’t handle the disappointment anymore. I always know that when things change, people also change. There will come a point in life where we get tired of chasing everyone and trying to fix things. But it’s not GIVING up. I have got to do what’s RIGHT for myself. Even if it’s HURT..

I feels like throwing my hands up and saying “I give up! I’ve had enough!” today. (—.—) Then I pray;

Dear God,
I’ve tried my best,
But if today I lose my HOPE,
Please tell me that your plans are better than my dreams…..

Dear God,
I can’t say it in words,
Can you please just listen through my HEART ♡

I LEARNED THE HARD WAY! I know I can’t always count on others to respect my feelings. Even if I respect theirs. Being good and kind doesn’t guarantee that they will be good too. I have to control over myself and choose what type of person I wanna be. As for others, I might only choose to accept them or just walk away.

PEOPLE ARE GOING TO JUDGE YOU ANYWAY. SO FORGET EVERYONE AND BE YOURSELF!