Chicken Pie @ Our Daily Bread

Next to Ming Xin Cafe is Our Daily Bread, a bakery and cafe serving freshly baked breads, cakes and pastries.

Tempted by the pies in a display case, I bought a chicken pie. There are many other flavours, among which are minced beef, fish and leek pies. Each pie measures 10 cm in diametre. The chicken pie was sprinkled with some sesame seeds to distinguish it from the other pies.

Chicken pie

Inside, the pie was filled with chicken, corn and carrot bits in a white sauce. It wasn't that creamy but it was moist. The pastry case was freshly baked and was slightly sweetened and it went quite well with the savoury filling. I would loved it if the filling was more compact, though.

Chicken pie filling

Most importantly, for me, this pie had a homemade feeling to it. It looked like one of those pies that Mom used to make ;).

Breakfast @ Ming Xin Cafe

Perched atop a little hill is Riam Commercial Centre, where Ming Xin Cafe occupy the corner shoplot. The place looked modern, spacious and clean. This cafe does not serve pork, and from hearsay, the food was pretty good.

This morning, S**** and I drove across town to breakfast there. We ordered a variety of dim sum dumplings, both steamed and fried.

Siew mai

Century Egg Dumpling

Tofu Skin Rolls

Another variety of tofu skin rolls
These had black fungus strips in it

I liked all the dumplings. They were compact, yet succulent, and filled with the goodness of minced chicken, prawns, and other ingredients. I liked that the dumplings had texture and bite.

We also ordered a plate of carrot cake. Unfortunately, we did not like it at all. We found it strange that deep-fried carrot cake was diced and then stir-fried with chilli, beansprouts, spring onions and eggs. I'm not sure if this is always the case here, though. Usually, vendors would use steamed carrot cake to make this dish.

Stir-fried carrot cake

We decided to try the chicken porridge with century egg. Disappointingly, there was only 2 thin triangular slices of century egg and salted egg. We liked the fresh julienned young ginger in the porridge, though.

Chicken porridge with century egg

Both S**** and I did not like the crispy stuff sprinkled generously atop the porridge. Next time, we had to remember to tell them not to garnish our porridge with those. There was so much of it that this dish had better be named chicken porridge with deep-fried popiah skin!

The lotus leaf parcel sat very well with me.

Lotus leaf parcels

Yum ...

The glutinous rice was steamed till soft, and flavoured with chicken and salted egg yolk among other things. Very tasty and yum. A must-try, indeed.

There were lots of other things on the menu which we did not try today. Must go back ;D.

Manicure & Pedicure

Well, 2 months ago, I was strolling at a shopping mall, and was coaxed by my friend to buy a manicure and pedicure voucher. Since then, however, I had been procrastinating, finding myself really lazy to visit the nail salon. The voucher will expire the end of this month, so I forced myself to get my nails done today, by hook or by crook.

There was only an attendant at the shop when I went at 3.00 p.m. this afternoon. She looked very young and she could very well be one of my students! I asked her how long it would take. Her reply was two hours. One hour for the toes and another for the fingers. It was mighty long to me, longer than I had expected it to be, in fact.

The attendant started scrubbing my feet and legs, all the way up to the knees. The she rubbed off the dead skin and callouses on the feet. After that, the feet was pat dry and cuticle lotion was applied. Next, she removed the cuticles before filing the nails. The cuticles were pushed back and then trimmed. This was followed by filing the nails to your desired shape. Cuticle oil was applied, and finally, base coat, nail colour and top coat were applied on the toenails. The same process applied to the fingernails, except that they were not scrubbed for dead skin.

There are many shades of nail colour to choose from. I prefer to go for the neutral tone. For my fingers, I chose OPI P02, a colour named Nomad's Dream from the OPI Painted Desert collection. It is a shimmery pink, coral, tan that is suitable for every day wear. I love how it changes colour, depending on where the light hits it. It is so pretty that I can't stop looking at my nails!


For my toenails, I chose OPI C82, a shade named Niagara Falls from the OPI Canadian Collection. It is a mauve, rose, mocha with a frost finish. Love it lots!!!


Well, this nail salon that I went to is called CherNails, located at Bintang Commercial Centre. There is a newly-opened outlet at Pelita Commercial Centre, somewhere near Shanghai Cafe. This nail boutique has been in operation for quite sometime, but it is my first visit there. Be assured that it won't be my last visit ;p!!

Getting Peanuts

I have suffered emotional angst for the past 2 days when my broadband network fluctuates faster than you need to blink your eyes!

First, it was like this .....

A few minutes later, like this ....


Then before you know it, like this ....

As a result, nothing gets done, and I'm left with only frustrations, and of course expelling a mouthful of profanitites against the service provider.

C'mon, larrr!!! I'm paying RM68.00 a month, and why do I get a peanut of a service? Btw, it took me about an hour to upload the 3 little images this morning. It's just plain horrendous!

Cup Noodle Tower

As I mentioned before, my students love to have instant cup noodles for lunch. So we decided to collect the cups and build a tower out of it. Interesting, eh?

The tower after 2 weeks

Easy Tomato Soup

I haven't had anything home-cooked nor healthy for a long time. So for lunch yesterday, I decided to cook soup to warm my tummy up. I went to the shop behind my house for some minced pork and fresh tomatoes for my quick and easy tomato soup.

For a bowl of soup, I used 2 large tomatoes. I washed and cut the tomatoes into chunks. Next, I seasoned the mince with sesame oil, fish sauce, pepper and mixed it well. Then I chopped some anchovies and added them into my seasoned minced. The mixture is shaped into little round meatballs.

Once the ingredients were ready, I waited for a cup of water to boil in my AMC baby pot. Then I added the tomatoes and the minced meat. It only took about 3 minutes for the soup to boil. I let it simmer for 10 minutes. Then I turned off the heat and let the soup stand.

In my baby pot

When I was ready to have lunch, all I did was to reheat the soup, add some salt and pepper for seasoning, and then crack in an egg.

Easy Tomato Soup

The pork and the anchovies gave the soup an umami taste, and the tomatoes made it a little tangy. Most importantly, the rather healthy as it is low in fat, carb-free, and msg-free. Do try it at home ;).

We Love Tag

I visited my friend J***** yesterday. She showed me her newly-bought Tag Heuer Aquaracer. Like mine, hers had the mother of pearl dial. But of course unlike mind, hers was studded with diamonds. ;))

Our Tags
Models WAF1414.BA & WAF141G.BA

It was a birthday gift from her husband. After discount, the watch cost nearly RM7,000, which was more than half of what I got mine for!!

Welcome to the club, J*****! Glad to have a friend who loves Tag watches as much as I am crazy about them. ;))