My journey as a mother: 2012

Monday, 31 December 2012

Smurf Village Game

I am a mom with a teenage daughter and I have to confess that I am addicted to this Smurf village game (**shameful face**). It all started a few months back when I just out of boredom install the game on my ipad and I’ve been on it ever since!

Smurfs' Village is a free social game where players must help the blue cartoon characters rebuild their home after the villainous Gargamel discovered it. The Smurfs are scattered around in the forest so the player help them to get back to the village. I love decorating and I love planning so this game suits me just fine. But this game requires patience and commitment because it could take a long period to finish each level. And not to mention the long period of time for each quests to finish but I found it interesting. I look forward to go to each level and I am now almost level 22. There are about 30 levels more to go through to finish the game? huhu.

Game is available on IOS (Apple) and Android (Samsung or HTC) as well. And I didn’t know there is a big community out there who are seriously addicted on this game, including me!

Now on to some pictures I took from my ipad :)

Wednesday, 26 December 2012

Nasi Briyani Kambing

During the xmas holiday yesterday, hubby thought of cooking the Nasi Briyani Kambing. Wow.. what a good idea! We usually indulge on nasi briyani from restaurants nearby. Not a big fan but sometimes its a good change from our normal menu.

We then went on to buy the ingredients and I didnt know its so easy to make. Not as hard as I thought, all because we were using the Briyani paste from a packet!! Hey.. life is all about fast paced and simple processes. Its so easy, hehehe.. The briyani paste is ready made and you could be an expert on your first try! The taste was ok, and we could do better next time, a bit on the hot side too. So it was all about Nasi Briyani at our household yesterday...

The ingredients:

Beef or Chicken (in this case, we opted for Mutton, yumm...) - 500gram
Basmatti Rice - 500gram
Onion - 5 medium slices
Tomatoes - 300gram (chopped)
Potatoes - 250gram (peeled and halved)
Ginger - 25gram (Chopped)
Garlic Paste - 25gram
Plain Yogurt - 200gram
Ghee - 175-250gram
Shan Bombay - One packet

The directions:

Fry onions, in hot ghee, Add tomatoes and fry until oil separates.
Add mutton, garlic, ginger, potatoes, yogurt and Shan Bombay mix.
Fry for 15 minutes then add 1-2 cups of water and cook on low heat until mutton is tender.
Then increase heat and stir fry until oil separates from the gravy.
Separately, put 12 glasses of hot water and 3 tablespoons of salt and soak the rice in it.
Then boil the rice until its half cooked.
Remove from heat and thoroughly drain the water.
Spread the cooked meat and curry over two layers.
Cover the pot and cook on low heat until rice fully cooked.

And, taddaa... our Nasi Briyani is done!

The garlic paste

The diced tomatoes

The mutton

The potatoes

The Ghee

The red onions

Now onto the cooking!

Fry the onions on the hot ghee

Then we added the tomatoes

Wait for the tomatoes to blend and the oil separates

Adding the mutton

Then the potatoes

half way there

Its time for the yogurt

After we mixed the briyani paste

The rice addedd to the mix

My Masterchef in action!

The finished product - Nasi Briyani Kambing

This is the Briyani paste we used

We will try again next time...

Thursday, 20 December 2012

Movie - The Hobbit - An Unexpected Journey

During our trip to KK, we managed to squeeze in a few hours to watch the latest craze of the movie world – The Hobbit, An Unexpected Journey, in 3D. We had no idea what the movie was all about, its all recommended by our daughter who even owned the novel. The Hobbit had been around for a long time and the novel/book was first published in 1937. Its also like the continuation from Lord Of the Rings movie years ago, I think the director is the same person, but I must check that out. I am very impressed with our daughter by the way, she is so up to date with everything! She requested we all should go and see this movie, and we decided to give it a go while we were in KK. We always watch movies when we travelled so this is no exception!

Well.. a few hours is exactly 2hrs and 40+ minutes. Thats how long the movie was. It started rather slow, I almost fell asleep but the movie picked up rather nicely and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Its now the No 1 movie world wide. The countless visual effects were awesome and I was more drawn to this one character which seemed so fierce but cute called Gollum, a former hobbit transformed into a piteous creature by its lust for the magical ring. The hero was Bilbo Baggins and he is the Hobbit. He is cute too on his own way.

Here is the official website and for more detailed read, click here.

I really liked the movie and definitely get my recommendation. This movie is all about challenge of your imagination especially the creatures and the visual effects and its much more effective and enjoyable while in 3D so don’t miss it....

Rating : 8/10

The Hobbit aka the Hero - Bilbao

The wizard

Gollum - I know he looks scary but could be so cute.

Wednesday, 19 December 2012

A short trip to KK

We are lucky we always have the time, money, energy and opportunity to go places at the last minute. Like last weekend we decided to go to KK, only a few days allowance and on impulse we just went and spent the weekend in KK. So its not like its a holiday of sort but more like a short break and not worth to mention in our holiday blog....

Its been almost 2 years we didnt go to KK so I guess its time and hubby always wanted to go to the seafood night market at Sinsuran and indulged on their seafood there. Its so heavenly and we missed the cacah there, so mouth watering even now when I think about it, yumm... So thats our main attention, two nights of seafood indulgence and a bit of shopping thrown in in between. We went to see a movie, as recommended by our daughter. The movie was awesome! Will blog about that in my next post.... Went to Gaya Market on sunday morning, visit the beach and Sinsuran market again. And we liked staying at the hotel too, our first time there and its not dissapointing. Not too bad I must say. I dont think many Bruneians know about this hotel although we did meet a few Bruneians families but its not like some other hotels where most Bruneians stay. So its good.

We went to Suria Sabah for the first time too. Hahaha.. I think the shopping mall has been around for quite a while but I dont know why we never set foot there before. Its always 1Borneo... 1Borneo, where in fact there are still other shopping malls to go to. Like Sabah Time Square. See... we didnt go there as well, so it must be included in our agenda in our next visit. Thats after the bridge is done which by schedule in August 2013. Its time, it took almost 3 hours of queuing to go to Temburong, so very long queue. But the journey back was shorter by 4 hours, no long queue... Alhamdulilah.

I didnt expect to go to KK until the bridge was done, thats my intention initially but I just changed my mind and went ahead. And its been great!