It’s Chinese New Year and it is usually filled with eating. Well, yes, there’s all the family reunions, meeting long lost relatives and friends but it’s always around food. It used to be that most breakfasts, second breakfasts, brunch, lunch, afternoon tea, evening tea, dinner and suppers were all home-cooked food. Today, most people have no time to prepare such meals from scratch and resort to eating out. Even in my family, we’ve started to supplant home cooked dishes with store bought ones. Of course the main meals (the eve, first and second day of the New Year) is still home cooked.

Anyways, along with Chinese New Year, it was also my father-in-law’s birthday. It’s kinda cool to have your birthday around Chinese New Year because everyone will know about it and you will get more presents! Anyways, I digress but we got him a fancy iPad2 which I setup to keep him busy with lots of e-mags, news portals, flip board and more.

For lunch, we went to this restaurant in Sri Kembangan that is famous for it’s Poon Choi. Read the wikipedia link if you want to find out more but it is translated wrong in my opinion. It should read “basin dish”. Inside this boiling pot, we had chicken, oyster, vegetables, pork, prawns, bean curd, fish maw, bean curd skin, abalone, eel, fish balls and more…

Anyways, the food is pretty decent fare but the highlight of course was the Poon Choi which was full of stuff to eat. There were other dishes of course such as fish-wrapped oyster with sea weed balls, suckling pig and stewed goose feet with sea cucumber. I ate everything except the feet — I don’t eat legs… chicken legs, pig legs, cow legs, fish legs, human legs… whatever.

The food is pretty good and it’s a pretty packed on the Saturday we went. I don’t know if the other dishes are worth going for though. They’re famous for their Poon Choi so if you are longing for that dish, the one they serve up is pretty good.

Hee Lai Ton
12, Jalan Muhibah 3,
Taman Muhibah,
Seri Kembangan,
43300 Selangor D.E.
03 8992 5561

Sometimes, it’s nice to have a little BBQ party at home versus going out to a fancy (or even not so fancy) place to dine. There’s a feel and sense of casual-ness and perhaps, more relaxed atmosphere. Parking is a lot easier of course and there’s not opening time or closing time. You’re free to dress-up as much as you want or dress-down. The only downside is probably for the hosts who has to cleanup. I guess I don’t mind that so much as the amount of time we spend with each other. Relationships need time and if you don’t invest time, you can watch them shrivel up and break.

Anyways, here are some photos.

Who says you can make pizzas on a BBQ?

During my brother’s Birthday last weekend, we had a nice surprise for him (no, not talking about the LX5) in the form of cupcakes as a birthday cake. Cupcakes are getting to be the in-thing nowadays and the good thing is that you don’t need to cut them and they come with their own little plates! Of course if you’re anal about some traditions such as cutting the cake, you’ll be disappointed. Actually, who says you can’t cut a cupcake? You might look silly though.

Anyways, since he’s in the financial industry, we’d get an appropriately themed cake with stuff like bulls, bears, charts and so on but we decided to throw in a few funky things like fishes, boobs and bums. I must say that Audrey does bake some lovely cupcakes and they were nice and moist. A bit of the sweet side but I guess that can be custom tweaked on request (I didn’t order them so I didn’t make that request). Of course the fondant designs were the nicest compared to the regular cream and icing decorations but they come at an added cost.

Time for me to stop talking and the photos to salivate you!

Celebrated my mom’s birthday at a cozy little seafood restaurant in Subang called South Sea. In some ways, it’s set up close to what some termed the “death row” considering that you pick your fish happily swimming away in their little glass aquariums. They then end up on your dinner plate and your stomach! Of course the selection available is smaller than a similar restaurant we went to in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah called Ocean seafood but then, again, it’s close to home and had good food, reasonable prices and most of all, super fresh. Here are some of the “inmates” on the “death row”…

Well, if you’re reading this then you’re on my new server