Julie & Julia

I finally saw the movie Julie & Julia on Astro last night. Can you believe it, I’ve never heard of this movie nor book before seeing the movie last night. Where have I been?

Needless to say, I loved the movie!! Such a warm adorable story.

So, today I did some googling on Julie Powell. Read thru her blogs and other stuff that google came up with, and I love her answer to a question in an interview she did for The Drinking Diaries,

What do you like most about drinking?

I use drinking as anesthetic and balm. Nothing seems unbearable after the first few glasses of wine. Except not having another.

I felt like putting my hands up and shouting “Totally agree…me too!”

xoxo

ToyGirl

Eat Pray Love

I’m reading Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. Pretty obvious given the title of the post. One of the paragraph goes like this.

She “wanted to learn to live in this world, and to enjoy its delights, but also to devote herself to God. He (a local medicine man) told her, “To find the balance that you want, you must keep your feet grounded so firmly on earth that it’s like you have four legs, instead of two. That way, you can stay in the world. But you must stop looking at the world through your head. You must look through your heart instead. That way you will know God.”

We so often forget this. I so often forget this. I often forget that there is a world around me. I often forget that the world as I see it, doesn’t revolve around me. I often think I am right and you are wrong.

ToyBoy and I. We read a lot of  books. Different books read at different times, give us different meanings. For instance, reading Eat Pray Love, especially that particular sentence above, it gave me butterflies. Because that is exactly what I am yearning for. To be able to learn the mysteries of the world, the mysteries of being born into this world, to enjoy all it has to offer without feeling any guilt over having too much enjoyment (you know how parents like to remind you when young to finish all your food coz the poor have nothing whilst you have all things) and to be able to find the wisdom and enlightenment that will bring me closer to God.

Eat Pray Love. It just about sums up what I want in my life. To be able to Eat and enjoy the abundance of food the world has to offer. To be able to pray and thank the universe and God for all I’m enjoying. To be able to Love all around me. To be able to Live.

Perfect

” A meal without wine is like a day without the sun.”

Came across this picture in Vanilla Garlic’s blog. The sentence mirrors my sentiments exactly :p

xoxo ToyGirl

Its been a while

Life’s been really hectic recently with many things going on at the same time. I suppose the past few years have beenhoneymoon years for me in terms of work. Business was really steady, so much so that it didn’t really require my constant focus and attention. However, all that changed in the span of a few days! Now, I barely have enough time for myself to do all the things I that I started doing early this year.

Beginning of the year, I started Qi Gong classes. My Qi Gong master is an American based master that comes to KL every 2 months. The last time he came, I only managed to see him twice! And don’t even talk about practising on my own. By the time I get home, I’m too tired to do anything but cook dinner and watch TV. I know I know…i could have used the TV time to practice Qi Gong. But….

Then, almost around the same time, I started Gu Zheng lessons. I’ve always wanted to learn. But not enough will power to push me to find out more. Serendipitiously, my Qi Gong master plays Gu Zheng, AND he had a second hand Gu Zheng from one of his students laying around. He offered it to me REEAAAALLL cheap and brought me to see his teacher immediately. How to refuse? Its almost like its fated. SO I did 3 months of Gu Zheng lessons….NOW have stopped classes for almost 3 months. And to make matters worse, I haven’t been practising at home! I can just hear my teacher going tsk tsk tsk…

3 more months till the end of year 2010. Time flies. Keeping my fingers crossed that the next 3 months things will be flowing smoothly.

xoxo ToyGirl

Homemade Applesauce

I use applesauce quite a bit in my dog treats baking. Applesauce is a great substitute for oil in dog treat recipes and also a great flavour enhancer. But store bought applesauce usually have some form of preservative and lots of sugar. So I started googling for applesauce recipes. It never occured to me that it would be so easy to make applesauce. Plus so cost effective!

Ingredients:

10 apples (I bought Royal Gala apples that were selling at 10 for RM4.90)

2 Cinnamon sticks

Steps:

1. Peel and cut apples into quarters. Remove seeds and core. The core and seeds of apples are toxic to dogs.

2. Put all cut apples into a pot. Cover with water and let it boil for 20 mins.

3. Strain the water and remove the cinnamon sticks.

4. Mash / process the apples till you achieve a consistency that you like. Can be chunky or smooth paste.

Boiled apples in my hand-held mini blender/processor.

The finished product. Could fill two glass jars.

1 cup of this is going into the Apple Bran Muffins for dogs that I’ll be making later. ^0^

xoxo

ToyGirl

Variety is the spice of life

I love eating chap fan, simply because there are so many varieties to choose from. Like this blog title says, Variety is the SPICE OF LIFE. I’m the kind of girl that likes adventures and excitement. I don’t like to stay in one place too long. I get bored very easily.

A while back I asked Lyrical Lemongrass about her perfect weekend, her answer was sweet and simple. However, when I thought about it, my perfect weekend got a liiitle bit complicated. I have not one but several ways I like to spend my weekends.

On days when I feel like pampering myself, I will book my facial, mani, pedi and/or wax treatments (which have all been paid in advance), and go from one to the next. This is what I call my me time. Best of all is that I get all these done without spending (don’t count the pre-paid lah. Its already paid for. :p). Go home in the late afternoon, all shiny and polished and wait for ToyBoy to bring me out for dinner. Perfect delicious way to spend a Saturday or Sunday.

On days that feel like exercising, I will wake up early, hit the gym/pool, work out for an hour, then go home and hopefully ToyBoy will be awake to go for lunch.

On days that I don’t feel like doing anything, I will just drag ToyBoy to go out for lunch and maybe hit the mall. One fact you should know about us, we love people watching and I love malls. Especially malls that have nice places to chill and have a drink. Our favorite is Pavilion. We usually do this on a sunday. We will go there after lunch so Toyboy can have his Espresso Correto (espresso with a shot of grappa) and I will have my ice cream at Espressamente.   

So there you have it. My weekend plans.

xoxo

ToyGirl

Guiness Chocolate Cake

Last week, I had the itch to bake something and ToyBoy wanted a chocolate cake. So I searched through Nigella Lawson’s website. I always use her website when I want a recipe. I’ve tried several and they always work. Plus point for amateur bakers like me. I’ve tried various baking recipes from different websites and 7 out of 10 of them turn out bad.

The entire mixing of the batter was done in a deep pan on the stove with almost one can of guiness (which I finished off). I must say, guiness is definitely not my favourite drink. But the guiness chocolate cake, turned out VERY moist and fluffy with hardly any hint of guiness in it but also very crumbly.   

This cake may be decorated with cream cheese frosting. But I didn’t bother with it. You can find the recipe here. It was a huge cake (23cm round cake) that took us an entire week to finish. I ended up eating it for breakfast, lunch, tea and supper. ToyBoy only ate it for a few days. That’s why took me so long to finish!! Definitely not craving for another cake after this one.

xoxo

ToyGirl

 

Pink Sage with the ladies

Boys have this ‘thing’ for brotherhood. They call each other bro, they have their brotherhood handshake, and they have their bonding sessions. On the other hand, girls are more individual. We do things on our own, or in small packs. AND, we call each other by name, not Sista!! LOL.

I had this discussion with ToyBoy when frat mustard said they’re gooing to have their own Gentlemen’s Club that gets together once a week to drink and party.

I asked ToyBoy, “Why do men need to have this brotherhood ‘thing’?” (pardon the repeated use of word ‘thing’. can’t think of replacement)

 His answer was, “men are hunters, hunters hunt in packs. Hence the brotherhood.” Ahhh…so they need numbers for protection. I see.

Because of that, I decided to have my own Ladies Club. Just to see how a sisterhood feels like. :p 

Our first soiree was held at Pink Sage which is a BYO restaurant. BYO is a HUGE bonus point coz cheaper booze means more booze!! And more booze is always a good thing in my book. (didn’t manage to take a picture of all 3 bottles of bubblies)

We had a pink bubbly to go with the name of restaurant. Too bad I forgot to tell the ladies to dress in pink. ^0^

The lovely ladies.

 

Till the next Ladies Day Out…

XOXO

ToyGirl

Want to do list

JoytheBaker’s blog has become my one of my daily clicks. And yesterday’s post was about to-do-lists.

People often talk about preparing their to-do-lists, bucket lists, list of things to do before they die. Most of the time, these kinda lists are filled with tasks that we always dream of doing. Most of the time, these lists are daunting,  terrifying  or just plain hard to do!!

So instead of making a list of things I’m gonna do before I die ( so morbid), I’m making a list of things I want to do this week. And these are things that I can easily do, are fun to do and I’ve alreday got the equipment to do them.

1. Do a painting.

2. Practice QiGong everyday

3. Bake a cake I’ve never baked before (I’m always baking butter cake or chocolate chip cookies. :p)

There. 3 things to do this week. I think that should keep me VERY occupied.

Nature’s Alarm Clock

Most morning, at 8am sharp, 2 birds will come knocking at our bedroom window. Like woodpeckers.

The first time it happened, scared the hell out of us and my dog Mochi. We jumped out of bed and looked around frantically wondering where that sound was coming from. Once we found the source of it, it became rather funny. We had to keep Mochi quiet so the birdies don’t get scared and fly away.

Picture’s a bit blurry coz it was shot through the window.

We believe their nest is somewhere above our windows and every morning, before they leave for ‘work’, they knock on our window to say hi.  And I’ll (ToyBoy’s usually too lazy) get up and wave hi back to them.

xoxo

ToyGirl